Slightly Sinful (22 page)

"I daresay all your men hated you," she said nastily.

He laughed. "You cannot live in the country and not ride," he told her. "It would be an utter absurdity."

"I have lived all my life except for the last few months in London," she said, "and I will live the rest of my life there after this is all over."

"What do you plan to do there?" he asked her.

"I will find employment again," she said. "Or, if I have my inheritance, I will live on the proceeds of my jewels after I have paid my friends back what they are owed. What are you doing?"

"Urging this mount from a slow crawl to a sedate walk," he said.

"And you seriously believe," she asked him, "that you are going to persuade me to do this myself one day, all alone on my own horse?"

"I was hoping it would be today," he said. "But I can see that I was overoptimistic in having a horse saddled for you. It will have to wait until tomorrow."

"What are you doing?" she asked him again.

"Moving into a brisk walk." He chuckled. "Rachel, relax. I am not going to ride neck or nothing with you, and I am not going to jump any gates or hedges. We are merely going to trot across this grassy stretch and back so that you can get a feel for riding. I am not going to let you come to any harm."

"Trot?" Even to her own ears her voice sounded mournful.

The morning air was refreshingly cool, she realized suddenly. She had noticed it as soon as she set foot outside the house, but now she could feel it moving against her face, and as she got up the courage to unknot her neck muscles and turn her head to look about, she could see how lovely the lake was to one side of the lawn, its waters still and dark green from the reflections of the trees on the far bank. And this lawn was lovely too even though the grass had not been cut very recently. Daisies and buttercups and clover carpeted it, making it more meadow than lawn. The horse disturbed butterflies and other insects as it passed. Colorful butterfly wings fluttered above the green and white and yellow carpet of the ground. Birds flew overhead. The horse's hooves thudded rhythmically on the turf.

Rachel had a sudden surging memory of her six-year-old self riding up before Uncle Richard on the streets of London, and once in Hyde Park, when she had believed that riding must surely be the most exciting activity on this earth. Her childhood self had surely been right, she thought now at the same moment as she realized that they were indeed trotting-or perhaps cantering was the more appropriate word.

She heard herself laugh, and she turned her head to share her exuberance with the man beside her. He gazed back at her with very dark, unsmiling eyes.

She did not say anything-her stomach was too busy performing some sort of somersault. Neither did he.

She turned her head away again in some confusion and looked about her once more. Her exuberance had not diminished, but added to it now was an acute physical awareness of Jonathan Smith. She wondered briefly if she would have had the nerve to do what she had done with him in Brussels if she had seen him dressed and on his feet or on horseback first and had realized what a very virile, vital man he was when he was not laid low by injuries.

She surely would have dashed from his room and never returned. Though perhaps not. She had not lain with him because he seemed weak and puny, after all, had she?

She had simply been mad, that was all. Irresponsibly insane. Insanely irresponsible.

And then she had agreed to this wild charade.

Once upon a time she had considered herself an almost drearily sensible girl. She had had to be in order to hold together her father's household.

But she did not dwell upon such thoughts. She was, against all the odds, enjoying herself. The distant trees were moving up far too fast. Soon they would be turning back to the stables, and her first lesson-if it could be called that-would be over. She was reluctant to admit even to herself that she would be sorry.

"Well?" he asked, breaking a lengthy silence as they drew near to the trees. He eased the horse to a walk.

"The ride is quite pleasant, I must confess," she said as primly as she could. "But I know beyond any doubt that I could not do this alone."

"Yes, you could and will," he said.

But he did not immediately turn back, as she had expected. He rode closer to the trees and then slowly among them, bending his head as she did when they seemed uncomfortably close to a branch. At the edge of the wood the grass was long, but then most of it disappeared, discouraged from growing, no doubt, by the thickness of leaves and branches overhead.

They did not proceed very far, but they could both hear the sound of running water when they stopped.

"Ah, I suspected as much," he said. "I believe there must be a river flowing through these woods to feed the lake. Shall we investigate?"

"The trees grow rather thickly here," she pointed out.

"Then we must go on foot," he told her. "Stay there. You will be quite safe for a moment."

And he swung down to the ground before wincing noticeably.

"You forgot about your wound, did you not?" she scolded while feeling very unsafe herself. "And you do not even have your cane with you."

But he was grinning again when he reached up and lifted her down, though she could see from his gritted teeth that the effort was causing him considerable pain.

"I am mortally sick of my infirmity, Rachel," he said, "and of propelling myself about with a cane as if I were an octogenarian with gout." He was tethering the horse to a tree as he spoke. "Let us find this river."

It was not far away, which was a fortunate thing, as Jonathan was limping. The view was well worth the short trek, though. The river was not very wide, but it was flowing downhill here, down a slope of land to their right. The slope was not steep enough to cause a waterfall, but nevertheless the water was cascading down over stones of varying sizes and foamed white in places. With trees growing to the bank on either side, it was a breathtakingly lovely sight. But there was more than sight. There was the rushing, bubbling sound of the water and the smell of it and of the greenery surrounding it. There was the sound of birds, hundreds of them, it seemed, though they were all hidden from view among the branches of the trees.

To Rachel, who had lived all of her life in a city, it was like a piece of heaven. She was dazzled. She felt rather as if a large fist had collided with her stomach, robbing her of breath.

"Shall we sit down?" he suggested.

They were standing, she realized, on a large rock, around which the water flowed fast-and it was flat on top. She could also see that his left hand was pressed against the top of his thigh.

"Foolish man," she said. "You should still be in bed."

"Indeed?" He favored her with his haughty look-his eyebrows raised, his eyes appearing to be staring along the length of his prominent nose. "With you as my nurse, Rachel? I do believe the innocence of those days is gone forever. Don't fuss at me. The leg is healing and I will not coddle it."

He lowered himself carefully to the rock, his left leg stretched out before him, his right bent at the knee. He draped one arm over it while he propped the other behind him. Rachel sat down beside him, as far away from him as the rock allowed, and hugged her raised knees with both arms. Sometimes he seemed to be so full of laughter and mischief that she almost forgot he was also a man who felt the constant threat of terror.

He was not Sir Jonathan Smith. She did not know his name. Neither did he.

"But how are you going to get back onto the horse?" she asked him.

"I have been wondering that myself." He laughed softly. "I will think of a way when the time comes. This is a pretty spot and a secluded one too. It is perfect for dalliance if one were so inclined."

"But one is not," she said hastily.

"No," he said, "one is certainly not."

Contrarily, she felt insulted. Did he have to make it so obvious that her gaucherie that night had rendered her totally unattractive in his eyes? He had found her disappointing. How horribly humiliating!

She rested her chin on her knees and gazed about her. A scene like this, she thought, could restore one's soul. She did not believe she had ever been so affected by natural beauty. She had always imagined that she would not even like the country.

"One misses a great deal," she said, "by living all of one's life in a city."

"It is beautiful," he agreed.

"Did you grow up in the country?" she asked.

"A trick question, Rachel?" he said after a short pause. "But I believe I can answer it. I must have, or at the very least I must have spent a great deal of my life on a country estate. None of this looks familiar. I do not believe I have ever been here before, and your uncle showed no recognition of me, did he? But I feel comfortable here. I feel that I belong here, in this type of setting even if not in this specific place."

She turned her head to look at him, her cheek against her knee.

"You are developing a stronger sense of yourself, then?" she asked him. "Are there any specific memories, no matter how small?"

He shook his head. He was squinting into the cascading water, upon which the light from the morning sun was sparkling.

"Not really," he said. "Only the persistent dreams, which I am not even sure are anything more than dreams. If I focus too much attention upon them, perhaps they will lead me astray. Perhaps they will lead me to create a reality that in no way resembles the truth. There is the letter, about which I always feel a sense of urgency whenever I dream of it. And the woman waiting for me at the Namur Gates. Was there a woman there when you and Strickland brought me into the city?"

"Dozens," she said, "and hundreds, even thousands of men. It was utter chaos, though there were people who were trying to keep some semblance of order. No one came to claim you, though there were several women frantically looking into every face in the hope of seeing a familiar one, I suppose."

"Then perhaps she is a dream woman," he said. "But if she is not, who was she? Who is she?"

She could think of no answer with which to console him. She hugged her knees more tightly.

"And last night there was a new dream," he said. "It was of a fountain, its water shooting high into the sky, its basin set in the middle of a large circular flower garden. Nothing else. None of its surroundings. I believe when I heard the water from this river I thought I might discover the source of my dream. But that was man-made and very carefully cultivated. The light was shining on its waters as it is on these, but it was creating a rainbow of color. Some people deny that we dream in color. But I saw that rainbow in all its glory. Is that proof, I wonder, that the fountain really exists somewhere? But of what significance is it to me?"

"Perhaps it is at the home where you grew up," she said. "Your country home."

He did not speak for a while, and Rachel became aware again of the sounds of water and birds, of the peace one could find in such a place. She wondered if her mother had come here to just this spot-to play as a child, to think and dream as a girl. Had she come here to consider her fateful decision of whether to give up Papa or defy Uncle Richard and elope with him anyway?

There was a time-a distant time, perhaps even before her mother's death-when Papa had been far more dashing and charming and full of laughter than he had been in later years, when his addictions to gaming and, to a lesser degree, to drinking had soured him and made his moods far more volatile and unpredictable. It was easy to understand why Mama had thrown away everything for his sake. Though, of course, had she lived another year she would have had access to the very jewels that were now still out of Rachel's reach. They would have been far more affluent-until Papa gambled it all away, as he surely would have done.

"I think I must always have loved the land," Jonathan said. "I wonder if that ever saddened me, given the fact that I must have been a younger son and therefore was fated to be shipped off to the army. Or perhaps I denied my love because I knew I could never inherit and live close to the land after I grew up."

"You talk about the danger of putting too much trust in your dreams," she said. "Have you considered the fact that even your assumptions about yourself are not real memories? Can you be sure that you were a military officer?"

He turned his head to look directly at her, his eyebrows raised. He stared for many moments, during which she found it impossible to look away.

"No," he said at last. He laughed, though he did not sound amused. "I cannot even be sure about that, can I? But why had I been at the battlefront if I was not with the armies? Getting shot at for the sheer fun of it? I do seem to be a rather reckless man, don't I? My being a civilian would explain why I was alone and why I had ridden away from the battlefield, though."

"It is only a suggestion," she said. "I do not know any more than you do. I have just thought of something else, though. If you are twenty-five or thereabouts, you would probably have had your commission for five or six or seven years. But apart from the wounds you sustained no more than a day before I found you, there were no others anywhere on your body. No old wounds from old battles, I mean. Would that not be unlikely, even unbelievable?"