Taken by Storm (19 page)

Her nose was beginning to run, now, and her sleeve was blurring beneath the gathering tears. She set her jaw in an effort to keep from crying. A long moment passed. And then she heard him clear his throat, and his hand, so warm and strong, reached out to take hers.

“Ariadne.”

She passed a knuckle beneath her eye. “What?”

“There is nothing to forgive.”

She sucked her lips between her teeth to still their trembling and looked up at him. Her heart ached with guilt, with confusion, with a mad wish to touch him, hold him, and yes, kiss him. But she could not tell him that, could never tell him that. Instead, she sniffed back the tears and accepted the handkerchief he pressed into her hand. “Oh, Colin . . . I—I know you probably don’t think you’re an attractive man, but . . . but you are, and maybe some of the things I’ve done have been because I could not help myself. I did not do them out of a devious wish to torment and tease you.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Of course. You’re . . . young. But no good can come of it, Ariadne. You said it yourself. We are as alike as—” he grinned, more handsome than he had a right to be, and she felt her chest constrict with a raw, unfulfilled ache that twisted her heart like a dishrag— “the digestive systems of the dog and horse.”

“Oh, Colin. . . .”

With a forgiving little smile he held out his arms, and she went into them, their hard, gentle strength pressing her close to his heart. She shut her eyes over a film of tears, the clean scent of his shirt and skin filling her nostrils, his heart beating beneath her cheek.
I don’t want Maxwell,
she thought, desperately.
Dear God help me, but I want
you
.

But that was impossible, and as she sensed the stiffness in his stance, she realized she’d stayed within his embrace a second longer than what either of them might’ve considered proper.

“Your shoulder,” she said, shakily, pulling back and pushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t just hurt you—”

He grinned, trying to lessen the awkwardness of the moment. “Not that you could. That fool horse of yours, on the other hand . . .”

“I think you should let me look at it. I feel horribly guilty—I mean, if it weren’t for me, Shareb would never have bitten you.”

“Shareb has been itching for an excuse to bite me since we first met. Don’t blame yourself.”

“Let me look at it. If only to satisfy my own conscience.”

He frowned, but her hands were already at the closure of his shirt. She tilted her head back and looked up at him. “Please, Colin?”

He shrugged in answer and looked away, his eyes dark with pain.

With trembling fingers, she undid the top buttons of his shirt. She drew it down and off his shoulder, her hands tender, gentle, shaking, barely grazing his skin as they moved over his collarbone and to the bruised area.

He shut his eyes and drew a ragged breath, and beside them, Shareb twisted his neck and watched.

“He says he’s sorry,” Ariadne said quickly, trying to take their attention off what she was doing.

“Does he, now?”

“Yes. He says he’s not
happy
about having to apologize, but since you did not punish him for trying to kill you he thinks he should act with reciprocal gentlemanly behavior.”

Colin looked at the stallion.

Shareb bared his teeth.

“How magnanimous of him.”

“Yes, I rather thought so, myself.”

“And what does Thunder think of all this?”

“Oh, Thunder doesn’t think,” she said, dismissing the old gelding with a casual wave of her hand. “He’s just a horse.”

“And Shareb is not?”

“Well of course he is, but he’s
special
.”

He looked down at her, his eyes soft. “All of God’s creatures are special, no matter what their looks, their character . . . or their breeding.”

No matter what their looks, their character . . . or their breeding.

Roses bloomed in her cheeks, and his gentle reprimand made her feel small and mean. He didn’t mean that statement, she knew, to apply to just horses. It was meant to apply to people as well.

She glanced at the old, broken-down horse. It had dark, soft eyes, and was gazing at her with infinite sadness.

Lud, it was uncanny, the way the animal was looking at her. Almost . . . accusingly.

“You are correct, Colin,” she agreed, and unable to face the gelding’s mournful eyes, turned her attention to the doctor’s shoulder. She felt his breath in her hair as he bent his head, trying to see the spot where Shareb had struck him. Her fingers began to tremble madly, and she heard the old horse take a step or two forward, as though it wanted to protect its savior.

Ariadne pulled the shirt away—and knew she’d made a mistake as soon as his chest was bared to her gaze.

She saw the soft, sparse hair there, light brown and tickly against her fingertips. She saw slabs of muscle, sharp and defined across his chest, flat and tapered where they embraced his ribs. She saw his chest rising and falling with his breath, saw the pulse beating at the base of his throat—and saw the purple bruise in the cup of his shoulder where Shareb’s teeth had broken the blood vessels.

She looked up at him, her eyes very wide. “Ouch,” she said.

He smiled, tentatively, though she sensed the tension in his body, the emotions that raged through him at her soft touch. “Ouch.”

She held his gaze for a long moment. Then, she lifted her hand, put her lips against her palm, and turning it outward, pressed it tenderly against the injured area.

“Ariadne.” He shut his eyes, shuddered, and took a deep, steadying breath. “You . . . said you would not touch me.”

“This is my way of kissing it and making it better.”

He opened his eyes, and in them was a desperate plea. Whether it was for her to keep her hand there or remove it, she did not know. Did not
want
to know. . . .

Softly, she said, “I can feel your heart beating, Colin. Tha-dump, tha-dump, tha-dump.” Her thumb grazed his chest, and she saw its wide expanse grow shimmery behind the tears that sprang up in her eyes all over again. “A few more inches, and Shareb would have crushed you and silenced that heartbeat forever. You have become very dear to me, Colin. I don’t think I could’ve borne it, if Shareb had fallen atop you.”

“Indeed, I don’t think I could have, either,” he said wryly. “He outweighs me by about sixty stone.”

She looked up and found him perusing her with amusement. The depth of naked desire she saw in his face unnerved her, and recovering herself, she snatched her hand away from him, closed his shirt and fumbled with the buttons. Every fiber of her being wanted to go into his arms and beg him to kiss her once again; every part of her ached to be close to him. The pain of denial was real, and unbearable. How unfair, this attraction for a man she could never have and should never want.

“Come,” she said, giving a false little laugh to disguise the ache. “You ride in the chaise and I’ll ride Shareb. That way, I won’t be tempted to touch you and you won’t be tempted to touch me in return, and nothing can happen between us, right?”

“That is the wisest idea you’ve had all day,” he said, his gaze lingering on her face for a long, searching moment. Then he turned abruptly and climbed back into the chaise. But as he picked up the reins and clucked for Thunder to move, his countenance mirrored the raw agony she felt in her own heart at being away from him—and she cried inside at the fates that had separated them by class and circumstance.

# # #

Tristan, Lord Weybourne, pushed open the door to the coaching inn, shoved his way through the crowded, smoke-filled room, peeled off his gloves, and threw himself down at the nearest table. His throat was dry with road dust, his stomach churned with emptiness, his fine clothes were damp with sweat, and he was nursing a headache of thunderous proportions.

Putting his elbows on the table, he bent his forehead to his hands and kneaded his aching temples.

“Hello, handsome.”

He looked up, and into the face of a buxom serving maid.

“Name’s Meg,” she said brightly, tucking a yellow curl behind her ear. “What’ll it be today, luv? A good pint of ale? Something to fill yer stomach and stick to yer ribs?”

“Ale, and whatever’s on the menu.”

She nodded and wound her way through the patrons, deflecting a groping hand here, saucily responding to a jibe there. A moment later she was back, a plate in one hand and a foamy mug in the other. “Should’ve been here a few hours ago,” she said, setting the food before him. “Missed all the excitement, ye did!”

Tristan didn’t bother responding to her attempt to draw him into conversation. His mind was elsewhere.

The woman persisted. “‘Twas quite the scene, I tell ye! Some fellow calling himself a veteran—” she frowned, cocked her head, tapped her tooth with a long nail— “vettanar — Oh, never mind, it don’t matter none. Animal doctor! Aye, that’s what he was, an animal doctor. Had breakfast here with his little brother, then went outside an’ laid John Beckett out senseless! And all for bleedin’ a horse. Can ye imagine?”

“No,” Tristan said flatly. He lifted his mug, closing his eyes as the cool, foamy liquid slid down his parched throat. By his calculations, Ariadne was probably a third of the way to Norfolk by now. Pain and terror washed through him at the thought, and he felt a fresh wave of cold sweat break out along his spine. By God, he had to catch up to her and that horse before—

“Oh, ‘twas something to see, it was! Such a quiet and gentle-looking man, who would’ve thought he had such fire in him? Some people, ye never know . . .”

“No, I suppose you don’t. If you’ll please excuse me—”

“Had a fine lookin’ horse with him though, and now he has two. Matched bays, though the broken-down old gelding he saved from the bleedin’—now what did he call it? A flu-bottomy. Aye, that’s what it was,
flu-bottomy
—can’t hold a candle to that fiery stallion he came in with. Gorgeous horse. Simply gorgeous.”

Something clicked in Tristan’s brain. He set the mug down and looked up, his eyes narrowing. “Fiery stallion?”

“Oh, aye. Grand looking animal, though ye couldn’t see much of it beneath all the trappings they had on it. Legs all bandaged up, blanket on its back, and the strangest hood on its head, covering most of its face an’ little cups over its eyes. Big chest, though. Long, long legs, rather like a racer’s—”

Rather like a racer’s.

Tristan’s hand shot out and grabbed the maid’s arm.

“Did it have a white blaze down the front of its face?”

She knuckled her brow, thinking. “Well, now . . . aye, as a matter of fact, it did. Couldn’t see much of it, though, what with that hood they had on him, but aye, I do recall ‘e had a white muzzle—”

“How tall?”

“Oh, maybe sixteen, sixteen an’ a half hands?”

“His eye—” Tristan was gripping the maid’s arm almost cruelly. “Was his right eye ringed with white?”

“Oh, don’t know about that, luv, ‘twas dark last night when they got here and what with all the excitement this morn, I really couldn’t tell ye. Only caught a good look at the horse this morning; the little brother was up at dawn and took it out for a hard gallop. Runs fast, that horse.
Real
fast. The laddie came back and fed it a piece of apple pie and then—listen to this!—shared a mug of ale with it. Imagine, a horse that craves apple pie and
ale
! I’ve never seen the like—”

Tristan leapt to his feet, grabbed his hat, slammed a coin down on the table, and nearly knocking over an incoming traveler, ran for the door. “Which way did they go?”

She folded her arms and pointed up the road.

“North. Toward Norfolk.”

After spending eight miles alone in the chaise, with only the two dogs for company, Colin found that physical separation from the little noblewoman was no release from temptation or torment, and as storm clouds began to sweep in from the west and low, angry rumblings of thunder sounded from far off in the distance, he felt the weather’s growing turmoil reflected in his own heart.

Granted, he did not have to suffer the exquisite anguish of having her leg bumping against his with every movement of the horse, didn’t have to counter her bald compliments, didn’t have to inhale her sweet scent or fight the impulse to kiss pretty pink lips that seemed to always be smiling at him, laughing at him, teasing him, but torture could—and did—come in many forms, all of them equally painful. It came in watching her sitting astride that stallion of hers with all the elegance and dignity of Joan of Arc. It came in gazing at the taut curve of her buttocks, and watching the play of her muscles beneath her breeches; it came in listening to the sound of her laughter, fantasizing that her smile really
was
for him, and biting back the unreasonable jealousy he felt every time she mentioned the name
Maxwell
.

“I am damned,” he muttered, tearing his gaze from her back and glaring over Thunder’s tail and plodding haunches. “Damned and double-damned.”

Bow put her paws on his chest and licked his face, and one of Thunder’s ears went back, listening. Even Shareb-er-rehh, walking just ahead of them, turned his head, the white ring around his right eye lending him an expression of high amusement.

“Colin?” His employer pulled the stallion up, allowing Thunder to catch up with them. “Did you hear me? I do wish you could coax some speed out of that horse. We’ll never get to Norfolk at this rate.”

“Thunder is old, tired and sore. I don’t wish to push him.”

“Yes, well if he ends up being responsible for Shareb’s loss and my capture, don’t expect that twelve thousand pounds.”

Overhead, thick, dark clouds were sliding in over the hills to the west, the late afternoon sunlight painting slivers of orange against their ominous black bellies. A gust of wind rustled the leaves of a nearby oak tree, and from off in the distance came the low rumble of thunder.

Colin raised a brow at her petulant words and slanted her a chastising look. Immediately, her face went pink with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Colin—there I go, sounding mean again. I hope you can forgive me, but the deprivations of this adventure are contriving to wreak havoc on my nerves.”