Yankee Earl (41 page)

      
As for Jason, he had decided to wait until they were in route before deciding his course of action. With three nights ahead of them and a boy who would be exhausted and sleep soundly…well, he could test Rachel's resolve quite a bit more before he sailed away—
if
he sailed away. Just exactly what did the countess want? Damned contrary female!

      
He saved Araby, riding another excellent mount from his stable, and leading the stallion by his reins. When they reached the Cargrave city house, they slipped quietly to the marquess' mews. While Rachel stood guard, Jason rubbed down their spent horses as the stable boy slept in a stall behind the tack room. The earl selected two new mounts apiece for her and Fox and another for himself. Then they led the six horses out into the street.

      
Nervously she watched for any wandering charleys, rehearsing in her mind what they had planned if anyone tried to stop them. Jason was still dressed as a gentleman and would have to bluff, playing the role of arrogant earl.
'Twould take little effort,
Rachel thought. The damned lout was born to it. Once they were clear of the city and on the road to Bristol, the earl would metamorphose into a Gypsy horse trader, traveling with his wife and son.

      
With their dark hair and a few smears of dirt, no one should question their identities, although some observant sheriff might wonder at the quality of the horseflesh they rode. Jason carried a sizable pouch of gold to bribe their way free if the need arose. If they were accosted by real thieves, they were both well armed. He carried his Hawkens and she her brace of Clark pistols. The earl also had a wicked knife concealed in his boot. They would make a good accounting of themselves if any bully ruffians thought to relieve them of their gold or their horses.

      
She shivered in the chilly night air, peering into the dark street. “Are you certain Fox is awake?”

      
“Only one way to find out,” Jason replied, cupping his hands over his mouth. He made a low, eerie bird call that she did not recognize. Then after waiting a beat, he repeated the call of an American horned owl. “Fox was trained to sleep lightly by his Shawnee family. If only English life hasn't made him soft.”

      
“We English are not a soft race, m'lord Yankee. Ask Napoleon,” she whispered sweetly.

      
Just then a figure holding a candle waved from the window above them. Fox! As the boy vanished, Jason instructed Rachel, “I'll bring him. Take the horses and wait for us down the street in the shadows of those trees.”

      
She did as she was bade. When a group of drunken young toffs came weaving around the corner, Rachel held her breath. If they saw her here, there would be the devil to pay. She crooned low to the nervous horses, keeping them silent until the danger had passed. Well into their cups and raucously loud, they passed by on the opposite side of the street and vanished into an elegant house halfway down the block.

      
When Jason and Fox came dashing toward her, she could see the boy was armed as well. Eyeing the small Manton pistols in his sash, she asked, “Have you learned how to fire those accurately? If not, they'll be a greater danger to you than to anyone else.”

      
“LaFarge is a fine teacher, Rachel,” the lad replied with bravado. “And I am a very good pupil. Though my aim was a bit off, I did stop that cracksman from hurting your sister. And since then, LaFarge has made me practice even more.”

      
“We can discuss the merits of Fox's marksmanship once we're out of the city,” Jason hissed as he swung up on Araby's back. “Mount up and let's ride. The sooner we're out of this neighborhood, the less attention we're likely to attract.”

      
“Tis a good thing Grandfather's such a sound sleeper,” Fox replied as he leaped nimbly onto Little Chief. He would really miss his horse and new puppy, but not nearly so much as he would miss Grandfather…

* * * *

      
The trio of “Gypsies” rode hard to the west, avoiding crowded roads in favor of back country lanes. Rachel was familiar with the countryside and knew ways to trim hours from the arduous ride without sacrificing their safety. An hour or so before daybreak they changed horses, deciding it was best to place as much distance between themselves and London as possible before finding a place to sleep.

      
After an expensive encounter with a Berkshire sheriff at midday, they decided to veer to the south and find a place to camp before they roused any more curiosity. A heavily wooded swale near a stream on Viscount Moreland's land provided the perfect spot. Knowing the old man was currently in the city with only a minimal staff left behind, Rachel assured Jason and Fox that they would likely not be detected if they spent the evening there.

      
“How long have you planned this route?” Fox asked her as they unsaddled their horses and began to rub them down. “You seem to know a lot about the countryside and who's in residence and who's not.”

      
She shrugged. “I spent my childhood riding about the Berkshires, attending markets and fairs with my father's cooks and stablemen and other servants. As to which members of the peerage are in residence at their seats this time of year, Harry was my source of information.”

      
Fox's eyes grew round. “Your sister knows what we're doing, and she has not told her husband or her father?” he asked incredulously.

      
Rachel stopped rubbing down her big bay gelding and looked at the boy. “Difficult as it is for the male of the species to believe, women do act independently of their husbands and fathers every now and again,” she said drolly, casting a meaningful look Jason's way before resuming her task.

      
They dared not make a campfire as the chill of evening settled over the land. After devouring a meal of cold meat pies and cheese that Rachel had packed, they laid out their blankets for sleep. She noted that her husband made his pallet a distance away from hers. If Fox noted that arrangement, he said nothing as he crawled beneath the covers and fell instantly into an exhausted sleep. It had been an arduous journey for a twelve-year-old boy, even if it was a splendid adventure.

      
Rachel lay listening to the low trill issuing from the stream nearby. A thick stand of sedge shielded their camp from the stream. Her body was tired, but her mind raced, leaving her unable to sleep. Only two more nights and she would never see Jason Beaumont again. Had his desperate behavior last night been but an aberration, perhaps brought about by seeing her naked in her bath? She admitted to herself that the decision to have the tub in her dressing room moved before the fire owed more to her desire to entice her husband than to a need for warmth.

      
But how could she entice him tonight?

      
Having the boy with them did complicate matters. If she went to Jason's blankets, most likely Fox would not awaken, but her pride was stung when she realized that such a brazen move appeared to be the only way she would gain her husband's attention. Great Yankee clodpole! She tossed off the blanket, then walked down toward the sound of the swiftly moving water. Perhaps it might soothe her.

      
Jason lay staring up at the starry sky, recognizing the familiar constellations he had studied all his life at sea. On the midwatch he had always loved walking to the bow of his ship and looking at the grandeur of the night. Soon he could be at the helm of another swift Baltimore schooner. Tonight the thought afforded him cold comfort. All he could think of was his wife, lying so near yet so far from him. He had waited to see if she would come to him, but she had not.

      
Suddenly he heard a soft rustle and saw her a short distance away. Hope surged in his breast until she began walking toward the stream. In an instant she vanished into the darkness. He assumed that she was simply answering a call of nature. But when she did not return, he became concerned. Damnable woman, did she have no idea how difficult this was!

      
Then the thought occurred to him that she might have fallen or somehow injured herself. Of course, she most certainly would have cried out and he would have heard; but Jason ignored that realization as he went in search of her. He found her sitting by the water's edge, her head resting on her bent knees as she hugged her arms around them. She looked small and lost and ineffably sad.

      
He knelt beside her, and she raised her head with a startled gasp. “I did not hear you approach,” she said, making a show of shoving the stubby Clark pistol back into her sash.

      
“I lived with the Shawnee, remember?” he said lightly, sitting down beside her.

      
“How did you get to be a…what did you call it? Blood brother? Is there some sort of ceremony?”

      
“Tis very solemn. Once an outsider is judged worthy by tribal elders, the warrior who wishes the blood bond with the outlander cuts his own wrist or sometimes palm and the outsider cuts his. Then they press the wounds together, allowing their blood to mingle.”

      
“William Harvey might dispute that,” she said, oddly miffed at Jason's willingness to follow her lead and speak of inconsequential things.

      
“Always the bluestocking,” he teased, lifting a heavy mass of dark hair away from her face so he could study it in the moonlight. “Twas not your Englishman Harvey who first discovered the circulation of the blood, but a poor benighted Spaniard a hundred years earlier. Michael Servetus.”

      
Rachel shivered at his touch. “Now who is playing the bluestocking?”

      
“Tis no fault in a man to be erudite.” Again he lifted a heavy curl, stroking it between his fingers.
 

      
“Tis a fault in a man to talk when actions are required,” she said, reaching up and seizing his ears to pull his face to hers for a fierce, hungry kiss.

      
Jason was startled by her voraciousness and tumbled back against the soft, damp moss of the riverbank, taking her with him. One hand cupped her buttock, pressing her closely to him, as the other caressed her breast through the grimy peasant chemise she wore. For convenience as well as modesty around Fox, they had retired to bed fully clad, removing only their boots. Now all that clothing seemed an impediment as they rolled across the ground, frantically tearing at buttons of trousers and shirts.

      
He buried his hands in her hair and savaged her mouth as she did his, kissing her with all his pent-up hunger. Her eager fingers had his fly unfastened before he could do more than cup a splendid white globe of breast in each hand after pulling down the low neckline of her chemise. When her hands touched his already rigid staff, he muttered a curse, muffled against her breast. He reached down and tried to gather her skirts in one fist, raising them to reach the treasure beneath.

      
She helped him, seizing the other side of the full skirts from the front and bunching them at her waist to accommodate his entry. Shadows veiled his face as he peered down on her with glowing eyes, watching her intently as he sank slowly into her wet, eager flesh. Rachel arched up to quicken his thrust, biting her lip to keep from crying out and awakening Fox.

      
Silent and swift it was, rapacious yet tender, too. Each gave and took as they rode to the crest together, their bodies now attuned to subtle signs of impending release. He knew when she neared her peak and struggled to hold off his own fulfillment. Perversely, she would have none of such control. Her legs locked around his hips and her pelvis arched upward. The ecstatic contracting of her sheath drove all possibility of slowing from his mind.

      
He drove hard into her repeatedly until the world seemed to spin away and the universe contained only the two of them, male and female, locked in the most ancient and beautiful of all rituals…and battles…and bonding. She was flesh of his flesh now. How could he ever leave her? Jason slumped over her body, damp with perspiration in spite of the cool night air. Cradling her in his arms, he vowed that he would never let her go.

      
“Bugger our bargain,” he murmured as an exhausted sleep claimed him.

      
His voice was muffled in her hair so that Rachel could not make out the softly slurred words. She held him tightly for a moment, treasuring the closeness that all too soon would end. But there was tonight. And tonight she would sleep in her husband's embrace. Her eyelids grew heavy and she, too, drifted off in contentment.

      
Jason awoke at false dawn, stiff from the chill given off by the stream and damp bank, but grateful that at least the moss was soft, for he had ended up on the bottom, cushioning his wife with his body. His wife. How natural the sound of that was now, he considered as he untangled their limbs. She awakened with a small cry that he muffled with his hand, whispering, “Fox,” as a reminder.

      
Like two conspirators evading the law, they put their clothing to rights, retrieving Rachel's Clark pistol, which had been lost in their amorous struggle. They slipped silently back to the camp, where the boy still slept soundly.
      
“Poor lad's exhausted,” she said as she rummaged through their saddlebags for more of the food she had packed.