Taken by Storm (11 page)

“I can see that.” Colin stared at the stallion’s leg, then, frowning, walked around to look at it from the front.

“Well?”

He straightened up, and stared into the stallion’s eyes.

Shareb turned his face away, and hid it against his mistress’ chest.

“There’s a coaching inn just up the road,” Colin said. He unhitched the stallion and picked up the shafts of the chaise. “You lead him. We’ll stop, give him a rest, have something for lunch. If he’s indeed injured, I should find some swelling by the time we return.”

“What do you mean,
if
? Of course he’s injured, look at him!”

But Colin didn’t reply.

He was beginning to suspect that Shareb-er-rehh was a hell of a lot smarter than he’d given him credit for.

And—after looking at that long, aristocratic leg—not at all the
gait-horse
her Ladyship proclaimed him to be.

# # #

The coaching inn, a rambling, whitewashed building with a sway-backed roof, was nestled in a bed of daisies, grass gone to seed, and shrubbery through which two robins chased each other with merry abandon. Roses made pools of scarlet against the walls and sills, and a sign in front swung gently in the breeze, proclaiming the establishment to be the “Hungry Horseman.”

“Oh, good,” Ariadne said, breathing a sigh of relief. “It has windows.”

Pulling the chaise while the horse limped along beside him, Colin followed her gaze. An ancient hound slumbered on steps splashed with sunlight, and a mare with one hind leg propped beneath her was tethered just outside. Upon noticing Shareb-er-rehh, she turned and whickered softly.

Up went Shareb’s head, and his ears along with it.

“Windows,” Colin said, as the stallion began to prance and blow and arch his neck. “I should think the food would be of more importance than the windows.”

“Oh, no, Dr. Lord. It
has
to have windows. I have to be able to see Shareb-er-rehh from inside. What if someone should try to steal him?”

“I daresay they’d lose their fingers in the attempt.”

“Oh, stop!” she said, playfully. “I told you, he’s a very sweet horse, just angry because you denied him pastry and ale. Now come. Let’s get something to eat. My treat, of course.”

She went on ahead of him.

“Uh . . . my lady?”

“Yes?”

“If you wish your ruse to succeed— “ Colin rubbed his jaw, and looked thoughtfully at her shapely legs. “Try to not walk so . . . well, try to walk like a man.”

“Like a man?”

“Your hips, my lady. They—tend to swing a bit.”

“Very well then.” She let go of Shareb’s reins. “Shall I walk like this?” Apishly hunching her shoulders and letting her arms hang stiffly at her side, she walked awkwardly toward the stairs, where she turned and shot him a look of high amusement.

“Never mind,” Colin said, putting the shafts of the chaise down and taking the stallion’s head. Stiffness clawed through his leg as he led a protesting Shareb-er-rehh a safe distance away from the mare and looked for a place to tether him. “This is never going to work.”

“Yes it will, I shall make it work.” She glanced at Shareb-er-rehh, and her face lit up with excitement. “Look, Dr. Lord! Shareb’s not limping any more!”

“Yes, war wounds tend to disappear when there is a fair lady to impress.”

His comment went right over her head. “We’ll stop here for a nice, leisurely meal and maybe when we come out, Shareb will be all better. Come along, Doctor!”

Colin tied the stallion, casting a dubious glance over his shoulder to check the animal one last time as he went to join Ariadne. Shareb-er-rehh caught his glance, and lifted his left front leg to show that he was still lame.

But the horse had erred.

It had been the
right
that had supposedly been injured.

Colin grinned.

“Think he’ll be all right, Dr. Lord?”

Colin turned his back on the horse, and passed the mare as she perked up her ears and swung her rump toward the stallion in saucy invitation.

“Aye, my lady. I’m sure of it.”

# # #

The ceiling was thickly beamed and ancient, the walls painted in shades of oxblood and hung with prints of foxhunts and racehorses. Laughter came from a group of locals near the hearth, but the two travelers preferred instead to take seats beside the window where Ariadne could keep an eye on her horse. There, they lunched on steak and mushroom pie, thick, crusty bread, cheese, and a flagon of rich, foamy ale. Or rather, Ariadne did. Halfway through the meal, she noticed her companion’s appetite had not led him to touch the beef.

She stared at him in puzzlement. “Is the pie not to your liking, Doctor?”

He offered a rather sheepish smile. “I do not eat meat.”

“Why not?”

“It’s animal flesh. I . . . I just can’t. Not anymore.”

She frowned a bit, studying him. Then she put down her fork and knife, propped her chin atop the heel of one hand, and stared long and hard at him. “You are a very unusual man, Dr. Lord.”

He shrugged, broke off a piece of cheese, and ate it, grinning at her all the while.

Her gaze went to his unfinished glass of ale. “I see you don’t drink much, either. What sort of an Englishman are you, anyhow?”

“A sober one.”

“Indeed.”

“My tolerance for alcohol is remarkably low,” he added.

“Really? Mine’s not. Hand me your glass, Dr. Lord. Better yet, be a gentleman and order me another.”

She swept up his glass, shot him a challenging glance, and raised the drink high. “To . . . friendship.”

“Aye.” He picked up his cheese and smiled. “To friendship.”

She laughed, and downed the ale in three unladylike gulps. Their gazes met, and she blushed prettily. “You know, Dr. Lord . . . I’m really enjoying your company. I take back my earlier words, about wishing I hadn’t hired you to be my veterinarian. I’m very glad that I did, even if you
can’t
figure out why Shareb is lame. Now, if you don’t want it, may I have your beef?”

He looked at her, one brow raised, and she grinned in embarrassment.

“Well, if I’m to dress like a man, I might as well eat like one.”

# # #

Three miles ahead of them, Tristan, Lord Weybourne, sat in a similar public house, nursing a cider and staring gloomily into the clear, amber depths of his glass. He, too, had positioned himself near a window, where he could watch the traffic passing on the Norfolk Road and be on the lookout for the bay stallion.

The bay stallion.

All that stood between him and total ruin. And all that carried Ariadne to a nightmare she couldn’t even begin to imagine.

His mind wandered back over the years, to the time when Father had brought him to see his first race. He had never forgotten the thrill of seeing those mighty steeds galloping toward the finish line, thundering past with such force that he could feel the vibrations rocking his chest while the crowd went wild with excitement around him. Maybe the fever had started then—Papa certainly must’ve seen it, for he’d turned, looked steadily into his eyes, and warned him about the allure of the racetrack. But he hadn’t listened, of course. After all, he, Tristan, had picked the winner of three out of four of those races. He had a talent. What did Father know, anyhow?

And as he grew older, spending his mornings observing the Norfolk Thoroughbreds galloping around his father’s pastures, and his weekend afternoons stealing off to the races at Newmarket, it came to him that such a talent should not go to waste.

Age and maturity had not cooled the fever. He had found friends to share his interest, older, equally high-bred friends who didn’t mind that he was the youngest of the lot. After all, he was the future Lord Weybourne. He was bored, he was titled, and he knew horses. And the races! He would win some, lose some, win a little more, gamble a lot. And the fever had spread—to the gaming tables, to the boxing matches, to the cockfights. He couldn’t remember when it had begun to worry him. Maybe when he’d begun to realize that he was losing more than he was winning. When he knew he was in trouble.

And still, he could not stop.

Too proud, too ashamed to confess his dilemma to his father, he had gone to Clive Maxwell for help . . . again . . . and again.

And now he was in over his head.

He should’ve listened to Father, dear, wise Father, who had spent his life developing a horse that could outrun anything but the wind. His father had known more about racehorses than Tristan would ever know. Oh, how foolish he’d been! If only he’d gone to him before the debts had mounted, maybe things would’ve turned out differently. Maybe his father would still be alive; maybe Ariadne wouldn’t be on the run with the last of the Norfolk Thoroughbreds; and maybe he wouldn’t have a death threat hanging over his head.

He put his hands over his face, remembering his father’s horror when he’d told him about Clive, and just how evil the man really was. And now Ariadne was involved, and heading for her own demise as surely as he had engineered his own.

God help him, he had to stop her. It was too late to save himself—but not his sister.

Picking up his cider, he gazed bleakly out the window, scanning the passing horses for Shareb-er-rehh’s glossy bay coat. A damned common color, even if the horse himself was uniquely spectacular. But in the past quarter of an hour, no less than seventeen bay horses had passed, three in the last two minutes alone. One had been a smart, glossy-coated hack. Not Shareb-er-rehh. Another had been a stout Shetland pony hitched to a cart, with an old farmer at its head. Not Shareb-er-rehh. The most recent was a rangy, deep-chested, high stepping carriage horse with bandaged legs and a light blanket over its back, pulling a chaise with a man and his young son in it.

Definitely not Shareb-er-rehh.

Swearing in frustration and rising anxiety, Lord Weybourne put his head in his hands and ordered another cider.

# # #

Tristan was not the only one reflecting on the past, and thinking about his late father.

Some miles away, his sister was doing much the same thing.

They had been back in the chaise for an hour now, and the late afternoon sun slanted down through the trees and dappled Shareb-er-rehh’s glossy rump as they trotted along the Norfolk Road. Sweeping green hills bright with crops climbed away to the right and opposite, fenced pastures dotted with sheep and cows met the eye for as far as it could see, until the horizon finally dropped handfuls of clouds upon the distant rises.

It was easy, with the sun slanting down and her belly full, to let her mind drift, to daydream, to think of days and times past. . . .

To remember a day when she was eight, maybe nine years old, lonely, bored, missing her mama, who had died some months before. Her nanny was a cold, detached woman, and she didn’t see much of her father, who always seemed to be wrapped up with horses, and grooming Tristan to take over someday . . . which meant she didn’t see much of Tristan, either. There was nobody else in the nursery to play with, and Nanny always had her nose in a book, leaving her to her own devices.

The loneliness had been intense.

When Father had come in that evening from the stables, she had gone to him and begged him to play a game with her, and he had smiled rather distractedly and promised that he would, after he had dined. But he had broken that promise, claiming that he was too tired by the time he had finished his meal, and perhaps he was. Perhaps he always was, because he had not been a young man when his two children had been born, and the energy that might have been his as a youth, was certainly not there as a widowed man in his late fifties with two young children who were both starved for his affections.

Yes, he had broken his promise to play a game with her. It had been one of many promises to spend time with her that he had broken, and eventually, Ariadne realized that asking or even begging for his attention would never get it.

But behaving badly, would.

Behaving badly, as she had done when she had mounted one of Father’s prized horses during an afternoon soiree and, in a reckless attempt to prove to him that she, like Tristan, could be a part of his world, gone tearing across the front garden in front of all the guests. But all that had resulted from that mad escapade was a flower bed shot through with hoofprints, horrified guests—and a father that had been so embarrassed that she’d seen even less of him.

Behaving badly, as she had done on the day she had turned sixteen. Father had thrown a party for her, invited all the neighbors—and had then forgotten to show up. Her hurt and humiliation had been such that she’d had a little too much wine, grown a little bit too loud, and caught the attention of Sir Thomas Dovecote’s eldest son (not to mention Sir Thomas Dovecote, himself), which had resulted in Father’s pained disapproval.

Behaving badly, showing just a little too much ankle during those balls and soirees of her first season, and reveling in the newly-discovered fact that, while Father might never had had time for her—indeed, nobody did—such was not the case with the young men who had begun to swarm around her, hanging on her every word, filling her dance card, competing for her notice, and willing, all too willing, to give her that which her father had never had time to give her.

Attention.

It was heady, exhilarating, and a drug she could not get enough of.

Outrageous flirtation had netted her not only the attention of titled and rich suitors, it had also netted her—finally—the attention of her father.

But even that had blown up in her face, for all that had come of it was a hastily arranged marriage to a man she barely knew, a man who was twenty years her senior, a man who was as wrapped up in horses as Father had been. “Maxwell has a firm hand, and maybe he can control you when I cannot,” Father had explained, distractedly. “Besides, he has more interest in carrying on the legacy of the Norfolk Thoroughbred than you and Tristan combined. You will marry him.”

Behaving badly. . . .

It had not done her any favors then, and it probably wouldn’t do her any favors now, but beside her, Colin Lord had grown quiet, lost in his own thoughts, and Ariadne was becoming increasingly restless.