Recklessly Yours (26 page)

“I've never seen anything more beautiful. . . .” She held the flat of her palm under the colt's nose, her fingers spread open so he couldn't catch one between his teeth. He sniffed, then gave a tentative nuzzle. His head lowered, and Holly took this as a sign of permission. With one hand still at his warm whiskers, she raised the other and patted his neck, then ran it down the length of his nose.

A sense of reverence filled her like a stormy ocean breeze—bracing, charged, powerful. Astonished, she whisked both hands to her bosom. The colt lurched, but was just as quickly restrained by Colin's ready grip.

Holly held her ground. Her thoughts whirled like a dervish. She had found Prince's Pride—found him! She had doubted his existence, but here she stood, within arm's reach, her fingers still warm from his snuffling breath. Her mission should have been over, yet every instinct warned that in some vital way it was only just beginning.

She needed answers, and from somewhere in her heart sprang the conviction that acting without those answers could prove disastrous. Maybe it was because of the man silently watching her, gauging her reaction to the secret he had shared with her. With a fresh jolt she realized that Colin could have gone on pretending. He could have sent her back to Ascot with his brother, but he had chosen to trust her.

Just as he had kissed her. Impulse? Or something more, something deeper?

Reaching out a hand, she moved closer to the colt again, and felt swept up in a humbling sense of awe. “I don't understand.” The animal lowered his head to allow her to scratch behind his ears. “What . . . what
is
he?”

“Special.”

“One can see that, certainly.” Her hand went still. “No, one can
feel
it. But why? How?”

“That is what you must come and see with your own eyes. If I explained, you would never believe me.”

She darted a sharp gaze from the colt to Colin, but his handsome features caused her to look quickly away again. She needed to remain steady, to remember her duty to Victoria. “I wouldn't believe why you decided to play thief, and with the queen, no less?”

His gravity suddenly vanished. He had the audacity to grin, the curve of his mouth and the light in his eyes sending her pulse for a spin. “Am I any more of a thief than you, my dear?” With his free hand he gestured pointedly at Maribelle.

Heat crawled up her neck and into her cheeks. She
had,
after all, taken Maribelle's Fancy without asking. But with false bravado she set a hand on her hip. “That is altogether different. I only borrowed Maribelle, with every intention of returning her. Can you say the same?”

“Indeed not. But that isn't something to discuss here.” His gaze had narrowed on her hips. Self-consciously, she dropped her hand to her side.

“What now?” she asked.

“Ah, yes, back to that essential question. There is a decent inn about a mile or two up the road. I suggest we head there before it grows dark.”

“Yes,” she said absently, once more spellbound by whatever enchantment the colt possessed. “I want to see him in motion.”

Colin chuckled lightly. “You'll see him walk. You might even see him at a canter. But I promise you, you shan't see this horse move, not as he truly can move, until we've got him back home in Devonshire.”

“I don't understand,” she said, not for the first time. In fact, it was beginning to become a refrain.

He shook his head. “No. I'm afraid that, too, must wait for Devonshire.”

 

The publican set two tankards on the table and retraced his steps to the bar. A small crowd filled the inn's tables and spilled onto the benches lining the side wall. Even so, the noise level remained subdued, and Colin had been relieved upon entering the place that it seemed to attract travelers rather than a rougher, local clientele. Even better, there were other women present.

He and Holly occupied a small table beneath a window that overlooked the stable yard. He would not have tarried here if he hadn't been able to monitor everyone that entered the stable, and every horse that went out.

Across from him, Holly raised her tankard but didn't drink. “How long have you known? That I was after the colt, I mean.”

“I didn't know for certain until I saw you on the road. Before that, I kept telling myself my suspicions had spiraled out of control.”

“And yet you moved the colt this morning.”

He laughed softly as he lifted his own tankard. “There was something else that gave you away, actually, or at least heightened my reservations. Last night, you knew it was Ivy coming down the corridor to the library.”

“Stupid of me, that slip.” Spots of color brightened her cheeks, and for a moment she looked as she had after he'd kissed her on the road. It made him want to kiss her again. The temptation pulsed through him until heat suffused his own face, making him glad he hadn't requested a private room . . . and rather sorry, too.

He swallowed a deep draft of his ale. “And you? When did you know?”

“Victoria suspected all along and said you seemed the most obvious suspect. But until you walked the colt out onto the road earlier, I held on to the notion of your innocence.”

“This must all come as a grave disappointment, then.” He'd tried to sound lighthearted and unconcerned, but he hadn't quite managed it.

Her fingertip traced the grain of the wooden tabletop. “It does present a difficulty.”

“You are free to turn around in the morning and return to Masterfield Park. I won't try to stop you.”

She looked genuinely puzzled. “Why not? For all you know I'll go straight to the queen.”

He didn't think she would. “My other alternative is to abduct you,” he said. “Shall I add kidnapper to horse thief?”

Her brows knit, she leaned over the table toward him, her elbows propped on the trestle boards, her tankard suspended between her two hands. “
Why
would you do such a brazen thing as steal from the queen? How could you hope to get away with it?”

“There are times when
getting away with it
becomes a secondary consideration.”

“Secondary to your future? To your family's future? What if you should be charged with treason?”

“Then I'll be stripped of my title and Bryce inherits.”

“How can you be so indifferent?” She slammed the tankard down, splattering ale over the brim. She sank back against her chair and regarded him with a silent plea for a rational explanation.

He looked down into his ale, then back up at her. “Some things are more important than titles, and more important than one man's future.”

“Such as what?” She held out the palm of her hand. “What can be more important? And don't tell me the answer is in Devonshire.”

The innkeeper returned to place trenchers of steaming mutton stew in front of them. “Anything else, milord?”

“Have you checked on that room as I asked?”

“Aye. We've one left for the night.”

“Good. Thank you.”

The man tugged his forelock and sauntered away.

Holly simmered at Colin, her lips pinched, her nostrils flaring.

He pretended not to notice—he
needed
not to notice the sparks shooting at him from across the table, and the silent innuendo that gripped his loins and refused to let go. He picked up his fork and sampled a bite of his stew. “Not bad. Try some.”

She went on staring, her gaze seething with questions while the notion of sharing a room with her, a bed with her, rendered his throat so dry it was all he could do to swallow chopped mutton and carrots.

“You never answered my question,” she said, surprising him. He thought she'd have taken him to task for the single room he had secured for the night.

“You said not to tell you that the answer lies in Devonshire.” He shrugged. “So I will say nothing.”

She seized her fork as if intending to wield it like a weapon, but stabbed at her stew and not him. “I don't understand you. You stole something your father rightfully gifted to the queen, yet you refuse to offer any reasonable defense.”

“My father did not—” He broke off as nearby patrons darted glances in his direction. His voice and his temper had both scampered out of his control, and that was something he didn't dare allow. There was too much yet to be accomplished, and too many people depending on him, for him to waver in his cool determination.

Besides, Holly Sutherland didn't deserve to bear the brunt of his anger, however much he sometimes needed to vent it. In a softer voice, he said, “My father did not rightfully gift the queen with anything. The colt was not his to give.”

“He owns your family's estates outright, and everything on them, doesn't he?”

He reached for her hand, trapping it beneath his own. “He doesn't own the colt. No one does. Not even me.”

Her skin burned like fire beneath his palm; her fingers trembled like trapped butterflies. He should have released her but he held on tighter, desperate for the slightest glimmer of understanding in her beautiful eyes, for even the most fractional lightening of the burden he'd carried since discovering the colt missing from the Devonshire herds.

But he saw only apprehension blazing in the brilliant green beneath her lashes, and he realized that he could offer explanation after explanation, and she still wouldn't understand. She couldn't, not until she walked the fields and saw the herd with her own eyes.

He eased the grip that had become tighter than he intended, and started to move his hand away. She stopped him, reaching out with her other hand and laying it on top of his. “Please promise me you're telling the truth. I want to understand, and I need to know you aren't lying. That this isn't all some bizarre trickery intended to cheat the queen and humiliate me.”

All at once he saw her not as a reckless girl playing at spy work, or as an inconvenience to his already complicated venture, but as a woman with much to lose and wishing fervently to do the right thing. And he saw himself, during all these months of knowing her, and most especially in these recent days, fighting the infinite temptation she posed, struggling in vain, defeated from the first.

“I swear to you,” he said, losing himself all over again in her vivid eyes and her sweet, springtime beauty, “if you can trust me a little while longer, you won't be disappointed. But you might be sorry.”

“How could I be made sorry by the truth?”

“Because you'll become my accomplice. You won't intend to. Even now, you might be as strong in your resolve as ever to send the queen an accurate report and return the colt to her. But in the end, if you come with me and see all I have to show you, you won't do that. You'll join me in treason.”

Her entire body jolted in alarm, then stilled. “How can you be so certain of me?”

I couldn't love you this much if it were otherwise.
Aloud he said, “The way you reacted to the colt tells me all I need to know about you.” Unlinking their hands, he brought hers briefly to his lips. Then he released her and gestured at their trenchers. “Eat up, and then get some sleep. I'll be by early in the morning for you.”

The alarm reclaimed her features. “You're leaving me here alone?”

“Of course I am. You didn't expect that we'd share the only bed left, did you?”

She blushed violent scarlet and darted a glance at their nearest neighbors. “I expected no such thing. I assumed you'd be a gentleman and sleep on the floor.”

The urge to toss his head back and laugh nearly overwhelmed him. How long did she think he'd have lasted on the floor, with her occupying the bed right beside him, her lovely body heating the mattress, her voluptuous curves barely concealed beneath some wispy linen shift, her sweet and spicy scent beckoning to him all night long?

“You didn't think I'd leave the colt unattended all night in these stables, where any highwayman might ride off with him?”

“Oh . . . I hadn't thought of that. Where will you go?”

“There is a farm not far from here. I've lodged there before while transporting horses from one estate to another. The farmer is an honest man and I trust him. He'll be glad to accept my coin and have his boy watch the colt while I catch a few hours' rest.”

She leaned forward, all eagerness. “I could come—”

“You are staying here. When I leave, everyone will see me leave, and they will see you retire upstairs alone. This way, should anyone recognize you tonight or any other night, they'll have no reason to cast stains on your reputation.”

“A horse thief with honor.” Her affectionate smile sent him to his feet before he changed his mind and dispensed with honor altogether. The thought stole the strength from his legs, and he gripped the back of his chair to steady himself.

“I'll see you early,” he said, and exited the inn.

T
rue to his word, he came for her even before the sun peeked over the horizon. Speaking little beyond what was necessary as they broke their fast and prepared to leave the inn, Colin looked tired and tense and ragged, as ragged as Holly felt after hours of lying awake and thinking of nothing but him. Him and his strange colt and the circumstances that drew her farther from her duty to Victoria and, as he had said, into treason.

To take her mind off her misgivings, as they set off on the road, she asked him about the horse he so obviously valued above all the others—not the colt, but his own mount, Cordelier.

“You told me you considered him a ‘young man's folly,' that he had presented a challenge to you. What did you mean?”