When the Splendor Falls (20 page)

“I’m not,” she warned. “I am very capable of causing you serious injury again, and unless you truly enjoy pain so much, then I would suggest you get back on your horse, which I suspect must be stolen because I doubt the Braedons would sell you one of their bloods, and leave Travers Hill immediately. But first, you have yet to return my property to me,” she reminded him, gesturing with the barrel of the musket in case he had trouble understanding plain talk. “And I can use this, and very accurately too.”

The stranger’s smile widened, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that made Leigh any less uncomfortable. “I have no doubt whatsoever that you speak the truth, for you seem a most accomplished young woman,” he said. “In fact, I’m certain you could shoot the tail feather off a robin,” he remarked. Thinking she referred to the stocking and ribbon he had taken from her, he said, “I am afraid I cannot part with so tantalizing a reminder of my encounter with you in the woods. They will always be a sweet remembrance of an enchanted afternoon,” he said, then, when he saw her worried expression, he belatedly realized that the ribbon and stocking might be the only ones she had and he suddenly wished he could buy her a hundred ribbons of every hue and the finest silk stockings to wear against her soft, scented flesh.

“So, you think you can best me again? I’ll take that bet. Should you win, you reclaim what was yours, but when I win, your forfeit this time will be more than a chaste kiss.”

A chaste kiss? It had been far more than that to her. “I want my property. You are nothing better than a thief, and a stupid one if you think you can get away with this,” Leigh said, raising her voice in anger and fear and the hope that someone might hear.

“I would be very careful about calling names, my little light-fingered one, for you stole from the wrong man this time,” he reminded her, and Leigh suddenly found herself retreating before his tall figure. “Don’t come any closer. I will shoot.”

The stranger shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

Leigh backed into one of the empty stalls, wondering how Travers Hill could suddenly seem so abandoned. Never before had she realized how far away the big house was from the stables. No one would hear her if she screamed—not even Blythe, who would be listening for just such a sound.

As if reading her mind, the stranger reached her in a stride, startling Leigh from her thoughts, one hand closing around the curly-maple stock of the musket, while the other took possession of the long barrel. Struggling to keep her hold on her grandfather’s prized fowling piece, Leigh’s fingers moved for a firmer grip, finding and closing over the trigger guard just as his hand reached it. Their hands met, their fingers entwining and somehow moving against the trigger. A deafening roar, accompanied by sulfurous smoke that seemed to Leigh to have been belched from the fires of hell, filled the small stall. Stepping backward too quickly without looking, her attention centered on wrestling the family heirloom and her hand from his grasp, Leigh stumbled over a pitchfork that someone had carelessly left half-concealed in the hay. As her foot pressed down on the curving forked end, the long handle rose suddenly from out of the hay like a dragon’s head, ready to strike against the enemy. The stranger managed to jump clear before the end could hit him where her knee had done damage before, but he lost his balance as Leigh suddenly released her hold on the musket. Falling backward, he lay sprawled in the fresh hay spread across the floor of the stall, an incredulous look on his handsome face. Catching the hem of her gown with her heel as she tried to find her own balance, Leigh fell into the hay next to him.

Suddenly Neil heard the low, soft laughter that had drifted to him across the meadow the day before.

Despite her predicament, Leigh couldn’t help her laughter. It was irrepressible. Never had she seen such a startled expression cross someone’s face as it had the stranger’s in that instant when he’d become aware of the danger lurking before him. But it had quickly turned to concern when he’d quickly scissor-stepped the handle of the pitchfork, then comical disbelief when he had fallen into the hay in an undignified sprawl, when only moments before he had so arrogantly thought himself in control of the situation.

“Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” Leigh warned, her voice husky with laughter as she risked retribution by challenging him with the moral.

But Leigh was startled by his reaction this time, her laughter fading as she heard the stranger’s. Her breath caught as she listened to the rich sound and stared at his face, the harshness banished into boyishness as he laughed. The fine lines etched around his eyes crinkled with humor, and there was no cynicism or malice now in the smile that widened his mouth, showing the gleaming whiteness of his teeth.

Carefully placing the musket in the hay, he held out a gloved hand. Thinking he meant to make peace between them and help her to her feet, Leigh reached out unhesitatingly to accept his assistance, forgetting her previous opinion that he was not a man to be trusted.

Light as a feather, Leigh felt herself pulled to her feet, but then his arms were around her. They felt like iron bands enclosing her as he pulled her against his chest and between his legs as he rolled into the hay, carrying her along with him in his tumble.

“You are far too trusting,” he said, his breath warm against her cheek.

Breathless, Leigh stared up into his face, wondering how she had ended up beneath him, one of his long legs wedged between hers.

“A tumble in the hay with a lovely maid—or a rather silly little goose who seems fond of sticking her neck out too far, especially when there are wolves around,” he said, reminding her of the moral she had taunted him with moments before, but his grin quickly faded when Leigh’s teeth bit into his shoulder. “Damn,” he muttered, grasping her chin and forcing her into releasing his flesh.

Stormy blue eyes met and held startled but amused gray-green eyes.

“You obviously haven’t the same sentimental feeling for a tumble in the hay that I do,” he said, rubbing the painful bite on his shoulder.

“That is because it is always the gentleman who is doing the tumbling, and too often not at the request of the lady,” Leigh informed him, her back itching from the scratchiness of the hay beneath her.

“Ah, but a gentleman seldom tumbles a lady in the hay,” he corrected her, quite comfortable with their position in the hay.

“
Ah
, but only those beneath them,” Leigh couldn’t resist adding.

“Witty as well as beautiful. And dangerous,” he said, feeling a slight throbbing in his shoulder where her teeth had left their brand on him. “Where did you learn to fight? On the levy?” he inquired silkily, but the pleasure of holding her warm, slender body in his arms had been worth the pain of the wound. He had never met anyone like this young woman and she fascinated him.

“My brother taught me all I need to know about repulsing the unwanted attentions of someone who is not a gentleman,” Leigh warned.

“A brother?” the stranger repeated, glancing over his shoulder just in case the fellow was lurking nearby to brain him with a cudgel. Striking from behind a man’s back did not seem out of character for this brother of hers, and if he possessed even half the spirit and fight she did, then he was in serious danger. “Remind me never to get in a fight with him. I’m not certain I would survive such chicanery. However, he does seem to possess some intelligence, for beauty such as yours should never be wasted on some common lout of a fellow who could be expected to honor it with only his unimaginative praise and clumsy touch. And certainly not with the expensive trinkets from an eager gentleman admirer that a lovely and ambitious young woman would quite naturally expect as her due. Nor should she be cheated of that gentleman’s expertise as a lover. I wonder how many favors this brother of yours has demanded just to have you smile at an interested gentleman. However, I would question your claim of ‘unwanted attentions,’ for I remember a pair of soft lips kissing mine most persuasively.”

“Sometimes a person will do something distasteful just to avoid something far worse,” Leigh told him with brazen honesty, surprised to see a look of cruelty cross his face, but just as quickly it was gone and his gaze remained only slightly narrowed with amused speculation. “I’ve always been good about taking my medicine.”

“My kiss? Like taking medicine? That awful, was it?” he asked with a deep laugh, apparently not offended in the least. “I had no idea I was such an ogre. I would have thought you’d have had to put up with far worse. You’ve probably had to fight off the attentions of the young gentlemen of the family you work for since you were about thirteen,” he told her, his finger sliding through a long strand of her loose hair as if he could not resist the temptation. “Have you always managed to escape?” he asked softly, curious about this vibrant woman he held in his arms.

Leigh stared at him in puzzlement. “The family I work for?”

“Yes, this
is
Travers Hill. And you are either the head groom’s daughter or the overseer’s, and there are several eligible sons in the Travers family. One of the daughters, the eldest, I recall, is married to Nathan Braedon. Nathan might have married her, but he’d have had to have been blinded by love not to have seen you and sought your favors. Or did he?”

Leigh stared at him in amazement, then realized that her appearance had led him to believe her nothing more than a servant—certainly not a properly brought up young lady. No wonder he had taken liberties with her, daring to touch her and kiss her, knowing she would not expect him to act the gentleman. Indeed, in his mind, he might even have thought she wished for his attentions, hoping he would offer to remove her from her life of drudgery. And even had she not, she could not have stopped him had he wanted her. Nor could she have expected help from anyone, for it was accepted by society that poor serving girls had no virtue to be protected should some disreputable gentleman have seduction on his mind. And had the maid been innocent, then it was a pity, but she had probably enticed the young gentleman into his lustful actions on the unfounded hopes that he might offer her marriage. When attending her young lady’s finishing school in Charleston, Leigh had heard many a horrifying tale of unfortunate young women who had been ruined. It was scandalous talk reserved for whispers at night when innocent, well-bred young girls were safely tucked away in the cool darkness of bedchambers as chaste as cells in a convent.

And this stranger thought she was a serving girl, or a lady’s maid, or even the groom’s hoydenish daughter, Leigh realized in dismay. Her mother would have swooned, Leigh thought, suddenly unable to bridle her sense of humor, for once he discovered her true identity, this arrogant stranger, who seemed at times almost a gentleman but not quite, would be embarrassed and chagrined, humbled and humiliated before her. He might even know a moment’s fright, thinking her father or brothers might challenge him to a duel for sullying the family name. Or, if a bachelor, he might even feel it necessary to ask for her hand in marriage to save her from having been dishonored by his ungentlemanly conduct. And that—having
this
gentleman asking for her hand in marriage—would truly cause her mother a fit of the vapors.

Neil wasn’t prepared to hear her sudden laughter, the low, warm laugh having a strange effect on him as he held her quivering body close to him. He wanted to be laughing with her again, sharing the humor, but he had the distinct impression that she was now laughing at him, and it stung him to the quick as only a few things could. He felt apart from her, like the outsider he was and always had been.

“The Travers boys, unless there is something dreadfully wrong with them, would be as hot on your scent as their hounds after a fox, my dear. I am surprised you aren’t used to being caught and bedded in the hay. I thought I had given you chase enough. Or is this coy, maidenly demeanor of yours part of the game? What price will you now demand?” he challenged in a roughened voice, no longer amused, and wanting to hurt her as she had him.

Leigh opened her mouth, outraged by his remark about her brothers, and herself, and raising her hand, she slapped the stranger across his lean cheek before he could draw back. The impact left a ruddy mark against his dark skin.

“You’ve stolen from me, you’ve nearly unmanned me, you’ve drawn blood, you’ve insulted me, and now you’ve struck me. I’ve never had the incredible misfortune of meeting such a bloodthirsty young woman before. Not even held captive by the Apache would I be treated with such abuse. Not even by their women. But without a good fight, there is no honor in the victory, and you have proven a most challenging opponent. But you have lost, and I warned you that you would have to pay a far higher penalty,” he told her, capturing her hand as she raised it again. He held it bound to the other hand she had raised against his chest in a futile attempt to try to hold him off. Pulling her arms over her head, he stared down at her for a long moment, his gaze lingering again on the seductive curve of breast revealed by the tautness of the pale blue material of her gown. Slowly, he lowered his mouth, prepared to claim more than a kiss as his prize this time.

Neil smiled when he felt her struggling against him, her knee trying to find and strike against his most vulnerable spot again, but she couldn’t fool him twice, and her struggles only served to join her hips more intimately with his, which startled her even more when she felt him hardening against her. Her face was flushed, her dark blue eyes full of blazing anger, her golden-brown hair tangled and caught with spiky bits of hay, and he thought he’d never seen such beauty. With a certainty that came of instinct, and which he had learned never to question, Neil knew that this woman and he would become lovers. And even had it only been wishful thinking, he would have believed still, because her eyes could not hide the truth. There had been a look of desire in the dark blue depths when she had looked at him, and although quickly veiled, it had flared briefly, warming him with its fire.

She-With-Eyes-Of-The-Captured-Sky now haunted his thoughts. He could hear once again the softness of her voice in the darkness as she spun wondrous tales until his eyes had grown heavy as the peace of slumber came to his troubled spirit. Her softly spoken words had conjured up the magic of the ancient beliefs…of a destiny one could not change. Of a destiny one had to accept.