Taken by Storm (22 page)

“That one kiss he gave me, ” she said softly, remembering. “It was out in the garden at Lady Andrea’s soiree. We stepped out for a breath of fresh air after a particularly strenuous round of dancing. He put his lips against my cheek, and he kissed me. But do you know something, Colin?” She looked up at him, her eyes confused, sad. “It didn’t make me
feel
anything.”

He gazed down at her, his face troubled. A drop of rain fell from the leaves above, hit his eyelashes.

“I would have thought that since Maxwell is to be my husband, that his kiss should have made me feel happy, thrilled, eager for more. But it didn’t. It was—cold.” She stared into his face, her eyes wide, desperate. “The kisses of your future husband are not supposed to make you feel cold, are they, Colin?”

Carefully, he said, “I shouldn’t think so.”

She laid her cheek against his wet shirt and stared dismally off over the darkening hills. “I suppose that if I had nothing to compare Maxwell’s kiss to, I wouldn’t be so worried. Perhaps this whole matter would not trouble me so much if I hadn’t kissed
you
. When
we
kissed, it was entirely different from when I kissed Maxwell. With you—” she blushed, and gave a sad little smile—“it was . . . different. I wanted more.”

Beneath her cheek, his heart was beating fast. Faster. He swallowed hard, and as she pulled away to look up at him, he gazed down at her, his eyes holding hers for a long, searching moment, before his hand came up to gently caress her cheek.

“Yes,” he said, softly, and she shut her eyes as his lips grazed her forehead. “So did I.”

“I’m sorry, Colin. It may be horribly vulgar, but I have always been one to say exactly how I feel. I don’t mean to embarrass you.”

“No, no. I am not embarrassed. Actually, I’m . . . rather flattered.”

She pulled back and looked up at him. “Flattered?”

“Well, of course. It is not every day that a lonely old sod like me hears a beautiful lady confess that she finds his kisses exciting.”

“You’re not an old sod! For heaven’s sake, you’re what, twenty-five? Twenty-eight?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Well, you look younger. It’s the spectacles, I think, even though you don’t wear them very often. Or maybe it’s your youthful face, or your teasing grin. Plus, you’re not paunchy like so many other older men—”

“For God’s sake, Ariadne, I’m not an older man!”

“Well, I didn’t mean it
that
way,” she said, quickly. “How is it that here I’m trying to tell you that I enjoyed your kiss more than I did my future husband’s, and we get into a row about older men?”

“Truly, I don’t know. But what I
do
know is that if your future husband were to see you standing here with your cheek against my chest, he would be inclined to call me out.”

“Oh, no, Colin, I would never let you duel over me. I’m not like some of those other women who like to have men fighting over them. If you ever got hurt—”

He sighed, his eyes twinkling. “First she thinks me an older man. Now she doubts my prowess with sword and pistol. Dear God, what will it be next?”

Ariadne laughed and drew back, still keeping her arms wrapped around his waist. “Oh, Colin. You always know just what to say to make me feel better. You have made me laugh in one of the darkest hours of my life.”

“Well then, before that hour grows any darker,” he said lightly, as the green faded from the hills and the shadows grew long, “shall we use what time we have left to try to find that confounded stallion of yours?”

He offered his hand, and she took it. It was warm, strong, comforting, and hers fit within it as though the two had been made for each other.

The thought hit her with sudden alacrity.

Made for each other.

Shareb-er-rehh was out there somewhere, perhaps in danger, perhaps gone forever. But there was something she had to say to the veterinarian before they did anything. Something she had withheld from him, something she could keep to herself no longer. She squeezed his hand, looked up into his handsome face, and knew it was time to tell him the truth.

“Colin,” she said, and held her ground as he grasped Thunder’s bridle and tried to move out from beneath the tree.

He paused, raising one brow in question.

She gazed up and into those clear, intelligent eyes that had so entranced her from the very first, and wondered how she had ever been able to keep anything from him. Why she had ever wanted to. Then, taking both of his hands, she drew a deep breath. “There is something about Shareb-er-rehh that I have not told you.”

“I know,” he said, gently, with a little smile. “He’s no gait-horse, is he?”

She shook her head, still holding his gaze.

“I didn’t think so. In fact, if I were to make one guess, based on his build, his carriage, and what I saw today, I’d say he’s a racehorse.”

“He’s more than a racehorse, Colin.
Much
more than a racehorse.”

“What is he, then?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “The Fastest Horse in the World.”

“The Fastest Horse in the World.”

He was gazing at her with a patient smile, the sort a parent might bestow upon a child who’d just said they’d seen a fairy queen sitting on their pillow.

“That is what I said.”

“Granted, my dear, the horse is obviously a Thoroughbred, but that is an extraordinary claim.”

They trudged through the pasture, the wet grass brushing their knees, Thunder between them, and the two dogs leading them back toward the road.

“No, Colin, you’re wrong. Shareb-er-rehh is
not
a Thoroughbred. At least, not a Thoroughbred as you might know them.”

Overhead, the clouds began to break up, and patches of bright blue sky peeked through.

Ariadne gazed off over hills dotted with sheep and cattle. “My father was a very wealthy man. He had the money to pursue many interests, most of them eccentric, but his life’s passion was horses. In particular, racehorses. He was an active member of the Jockey Club, and he devoted his life to a project that he had begun long before he and my mother were even married—specifically, a quest to develop a superior racehorse.”

Ahead, the road beckoned, a flat, brown ribbon of mud wending through the green pastures. “Do you remember the famous, immortal, and unbeaten Eclipse?” she asked. “Well, Father bred two swift little mares—one, he’d imported from the Orient and the other was a gift from a Bedouin tribe leader whom he befriended when he went there to study their horses—to Eclipse. Then he bred the finest of
their
fillies back to him. Surely, you know the benefits of selective inbreeding. Well, it took my father decades of meticulous planning to see the embodiment of his dream, but see it he did. Fifteen years ago, he produced the very first Norfolk Thoroughbred, an animal similar to our English Thoroughbreds, but one with more intelligence, more heart, more fire—and more speed. They are the fastest horses in the world—and Shareb-er-rehh is the last surviving stallion.”

Colin gazed down at her, and saw the truth—at least, as she believed it—in her eyes. Fastest horses in the world or not, only a timepiece could tell. But after seeing Shareb-er-rehh’s blistering display of speed, he wasn’t altogether inclined to challenge her claim.

“Is he faster, then, than Black Patrick?” he asked, thinking of the mighty and undefeated King of Newmarket.

“Shareb has never been raced. But he
is
the Fastest Horse in the World, Colin. Trust me on that.”

“And he is the last stallion?”

“Yes. And Gazella is the last mare. Because Father gave her to Maxwell as a betrothal agreement, she was not in the barn when that strange illness claimed the rest of the stock. Shareb-er-rehh was the only horse to survive both that and the fire. And if something happens to him . . .”

“The Norfolk Thoroughbred will be no more.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “Now you know why I must get him to Maxwell’s before my brother can catch up to me. Tristan has no regard for our father’s dream, and is in debt to the tune of thousands. Shareb-er-rehh is his only means of paying off his creditors—and to that end, he’ll sell him off without blinking an eye.”

“How much is the horse
worth
?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. But the Duke of Leighton once offered my father three hundred thousand pounds for one of our stallions, and he wasn’t nearly as nice, nor as fast, as Shareb.”

They had reached the road. Ariadne climbed over a small fence and stood there in the mud, gazing off at the wide vistas that rolled away on all sides of them. She cupped her hands to her mouth and called the stallion, throwing her head back and letting the wind carry her voice off over the hills.

Nothing.

She let her hands drop to her sides and stood looking up at him in defeat.

“Colin—I know I should trust in you, but I just don’t know where to go from here.”

“I have an idea,” he said, and held out his hand for the stallion’s leather lead shank. Wordlessly, she handed it to him, her brow creased in a frown as he squatted down and called little Bow to him.

Even Thunder pricked his ears, curious.

“Really, Colin, what is Bow going to be able to do—”

But the veterinarian was holding out the lead shank to the dog, who approached it and sniffed it furiously.

“Go find,” Colin ordered. “Go find Shareb.”

Cocking her head, the little dog yapped and regarded her master with bright, button eyes.

Again, Colin held the rope out to the dog. “Bow,
find
!”

“Rarf! Rarf!” Bow cried, and like a white cannonball, streaked off the road and over the adjacent field; Marc looked at her for a moment in confusion and then, wondering what he was missing, charged off after her.

“Let’s go!” Colin cried, and leaving Thunder safely ground-tied, grabbed Ariadne’s hand, ducked beneath the fence and ran as fast as he could after the dogs.

Running beside him, her hand caught in his and her legs flying through the wet grass, Ariadne felt exhilaration and hope race through her for the first time since the stallion had escaped. Her cap bounced on her head and she swept it off, stuffing it in her pocket as she tried to keep pace with her companion. Wind drove against her flushed cheeks, dried her wet hair, filled her lungs.

“Hurry, Ariadne, or we’ll lose her!”

“Rarf! Rarf, rarf, rarf!” came Bow’s voice as the dog paused to wait for them at the crest of a hill. Then, barking, she turned and disappeared from sight, only her excited yaps marking her flight as she raced headlong down the other side, Marc running easily beside her.

“Colin,
wait
! I cannot keep up!”

But laughing, he only gripped her hand harder and pounded up the hill after the dog. Higher and higher they climbed, the breath roaring through their lungs, their hearts pounding—and then, as they reached the crest of the hill, Ariadne looked down and saw a flat, fenced-in field, a barn, and a rambling old brick house. In the paddock was a herd of mares. They looked sleepy, sated, happy—

And in their midst, preening himself like a proud rooster, was Shareb-er-rehh.

“
Shareb
!”

Gripping Colin’s hand, she raced down the hill—and lost her footing.

She shrieked as she landed hard on her backside, dragging the veterinarian down with her. Down the hill they went, sliding in mud and grass, laughing with delight and Marc racing alongside, barking, until they both ended up at the bottom looking and feeling like two children who’d just been given a sled and a snowy slope on which to try it out.

Ariadne came to a stop first, and giggling hysterically, gazed up into the veterinarian’s mud-splattered face. He looked more than a little shocked, more than a little embarrassed.

“Oh, Colin, you
found
him!” she cried, and tears of happiness raced down her muddy cheeks. “Never, ever, will I doubt you again!”

“Oh, no, it was Bow who found him.”

“And
you
who thought of setting her on Shareb’s scent!”

She laughed until her sides hurt. Colin smiled hesitantly, then, as he saw the absurdity of their situation, and the amount of mud that covered them both, he too began to chuckle, until they were both giggling and guffawing uncontrollably.

“I feel like a pig that has just spent the day in a pen of muck!” Ariadne cried, reaching out to wipe away a spatter of mud from the doctor’s nose. “And look at you! You sure don’t look like any University graduate
now
!”

“Forgive me, my lady, but
you
don’t strike me as any nobleman’s daughter! Perhaps you should maintain that coat of mud and even your brother will never recognize you!”

“Oh, Colin! I haven’t had this much fun since I was a little girl and Tristan and I put earthworms in Nanny’s bed!”

With the herd of mares watching them, and Shareb-er-rehh shaking his noble head as though disdaining their childish delight, they both erupted in laughter once again. Then, Ariadne looked into her protector’s clear, beautiful eyes, and her laughter stopped abruptly.

As did his.

The moment was as fragile and precious as a raindrop poised at the edge of a spring leaf. Neither moved. Ariadne saw only the intense color of his eyes and the shape of his mouth, heard only her racing heart and the sound of his breathing. She drew a deep and shaky sigh. Then, his hand came up to clear the damp hair from her brow, his knuckles grazed her cheek, her jaw—and, heeding the gentle pressure, she moved her head toward his.

“Kiss me, ” he said softly. “That is—if you want to.”

She swallowed hard, and looked deeply into his eyes. “Yes, Colin. I want to.”

Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back and sighed as he touched his mouth to hers. This time, there was no punishing savagery, no angry lesson in manners. This time he kissed her slowly, deeply, carefully, giving her time to savor the warmth and firmness of his lips, the taste of his mouth, the wondrous sensations that began to pulse through her blood. An involuntarily shudder swept through her; a helpless moan escaped her lips. Her hand came up to encircle his nape, her fingers splaying up through his wet hair, pressing against the back of his head and pulling him toward her. His tongue moved against her lips, touching, licking, tasting, until her mouth opened under the gentle onslaught. Oh, the sweet taste of him, the feel of him, the heat of his breath against her cheek, the bold touch of his hand upon her knee! His fingers moved up and down her leg, then her arm, and the sensation of her wet shirt sliding over her own skin, and his hands touching her so intimately, was enough to send shock waves of sensation driving through regions of herself she hadn’t known existed.