Taken by Storm (29 page)

Screaming, the stallion bared his teeth and struck savagely out, just missing him.

“Colin, do something!,” Ariadne cried, trying to get close to the horse. “He’s sick!”

“Get back, Ariadne!”

“I will not, he’s my horse and—”

But Shareb was clearly out of his mind with panic. Mighty hooves slashing the air, he reared, wheeled, and thundered off, shaking his head and making a pitiful, horrible noise that raised the hair on Ariadne’s neck. He galloped a circle around them, his hide flecked with sweat, saliva flying from his mouth; then, the grass plowing up before his hooves, he came to a stop, blowing hard and staring at them as though recognizing them for the first time.

Ariadne stood frozen, her fingers caught, claw-like, atop her lower teeth.

Slowly, she turned to look at her companion.

He stood as still as a stone, one hand stretched entreatingly toward the trembling horse a short distance away.

Shareb shook his head and began to back up.

“Here, boy,” Colin murmured, never moving. He stared deeply into the stallion’s dark eyes, willing the animal to come to him. “Let’s have a look at you.”

“Oh, Colin, what’s wrong with him—”

“Get his halter,” the veterinarian commanded.

“But Colin, I— ”

“Ariadne, get his halter,” he said, again.

Blind with terror she ran to obey, feeling that same horrible, paralyzing nausea she’d experienced upon being told about the stable fire and her father’s death. Frantically, she tore through their belongings in the chaise, trying to remember the symptoms that Father’s other horses had shown just before they died, trying to think of anything that might help Colin save her beloved stallion—

There, the halter. Clenching it in her fist, she ran back to him.

He never turned, merely reaching out to accept the halter while keeping his gaze on Shareb. The stallion took a hesitant step forward, shaking his head. Thick, foamy blobs of blood-flecked spittle arced from his mouth, spattered on the grass.

“Come here, boy,” the veterinarian murmured, so softly that Ariadne wasn’t even sure he’d even spoken. She watched the horse take another step forward; saw the barely perceptible movement of Colin’s fingers, beckoning the animal closer.

And closer . . .

Shareb dropped his head in defeat and walked forward, ears drooping, body shaking, the drool running in little rivulets from his mouth. He stopped miserably before Colin, then lifted his head to look at the animal doctor with great, pleading eyes.

Colin hooked an arm around Shareb’s poll and buckled the halter into place. Once more, the stallion dropped his head and gazed dejectedly at the ground, his breath coming out in great, labored breaths.

“Ariadne, please bring me my lantern.”

She scurried off and found it, still in the grass beside the wheel of the chaise. With Bow and Marc trotting worriedly at her heels, she carried it back to the veterinarian, her eyes misty with hot tears that even now, were running down her cheeks.

Have faith in him, Ariadne. Remember the first day you saw him, and how he saved that dog. He is a healer. He can save animals. Faith, Ariadne, faith. . . .

But out here in a lonely pasture, with daylight strengthening and her beloved horse looking sicker than she’d ever seen him, it was not easy to have faith. She picked up little Bow and buried her face in her soft fur. The dog was trembling, and sensing Ariadne’s grief and worry, twisted around to lick her cheek. The little animal’s compassion was enough to bring on the sobs in earnest, and Ariadne pressed Bow’s fuzzy ear against her eyes so that Colin would not notice her distress and be affected by it.

She peered through Bow’s fur and risked a glance at his face, fully expecting to see grave concern there. But his handsome features were expressionless, his eyes intent as he murmured to the trembling horse, dragged his drooping head up, and ran a gentle, soothing hand down the stallion’s long jaw. Thick ropes of spittle leaked from Shareb’s mouth, slid to the ground and lay glinting upon the grass in the early morning sunlight.

The tears were running freely now, soaking Bow’s ear, raising the scent of wet dog.

Colin. Please, please save my horse . . .

Her arms locked around Bow, her body frozen with fear and grief, she rocked from side to side, watching as he bent sideways and forced the stallion’s head high. Shareb squealed and fought him, shaking his head and sending more drool flying from his mouth. Ariadne bit her lip so hard that the coppery taste of blood burned her tongue. The tears came harder, streaming silently down her cheeks and filling up her throat so that she couldn’t swallow.

Bow licked her face again, and Marc pressed himself against her legs, but there was nothing in her world but the veterinarian. She saw only his wheaten hair falling over his brow and picking up the first rays of sun, saw only the intense concentration in his eyes, saw only the skill in his strong, gentle hands as he pried open the stallion’s mouth.
Colin.
He would make everything all right. He
had
to, because if he couldn’t, no one could—

“Is he going to . . . to d-die, Colin?”

“Oh . . . I don’t think so,” he murmured absently, trying to peer into the dark depths of Shareb’s mouth. “Really, Ari, you make a terrible assistant. Bring the lantern over so I can see what I’m doing, would you?”

She didn’t like his calm insouciance, the jocular note in his tone, nor the fact he did not seem as concerned as he should be. Didn’t he realize how priceless Shareb-er-rehh was? Didn’t he sense the gravity of the situation? Pursing her lip, she put Bow down and did as she was told, holding the lantern up and wishing she could keep its bright glare out of the veterinarian’s eyes as well.

“What do you see?” she managed, swallowing back the sobs and feeling the prickles of fear clawing up her spine.

“Teeth.”

Teeth.

She watched as Colin turned his back, thrust his thumb between Shareb’s lips right where a bit would have gone, and then she saw only the back of his golden-brown head, the play of muscles in his shoulders and at his nape as he forced the stallion’s jaws wide.

“Eaaaayyuuuk,” he murmured.

Raw terror lanced her. “What?”

“Slimy tongue,” he said, flashing her a grin and pulling that thick, wet muscle sideways from Shareb’s mouth. The stallion protested, and tried to fling his head up and back.

“Hold still, you confounded idiot,” Colin commanded.

Shareb tensed, but did as he was told.

“Closer with the lantern, Ariadne, so I can see.”

Her sore arm aching, she propped her elbow in her palm and held the lantern up.

Colin all but thrust his face between the stallion’s jaws.

“Aha!”

“What?”

“Just as I thought. . . .”

“Colin,
what
?”

Somehow managing to restrain the stallion and hold his head up at the same time, the veterinarian held Shareb’s tongue aside, thrust his hand between his jaws, and craning his neck, peered up into the stallion’s mouth. “Our friend here has a foreign object—a stick, by the looks of it—wedged firmly across the dental arcade. Really, Ariadne . . . I do wish you’d be more cautious about what you feed him.”

“But I thought . . . you mean—a
stick
?” She stumbled backward, feeling such an intense wave of relief that her knees went weak and she nearly collapsed. “You mean there’s a
stick
caught up there?”

“Right across the roof of his mouth. Tie a string on each end and it would make a lovely bit.”

A stick. . . .

He wiggled his hand within the stallion’s mouth and triumphantly brought out a wet, chewed-up branch for her inspection. Grinning, he gave the horse a fond slap on the neck before taking the lantern from Ariadne’s suddenly limp fingers, knowing, intuitively, that she would otherwise have dropped it.

“Really, Shareb . . . I’m beginning to think you’d be better off with pastry, after all.”

# # #

Colin may have already won the undying love of the Earl of Weybourne’s daughter, but with the removal of the stick from the roof of Shareb’s mouth, he won the undying—and perhaps, unwelcome—devotion of the earl’s horse, as well.

It was a devotion that proved to have mixed blessings.

Shareb-er-rehh followed him back to their little campsite. He followed him down to the brook and stood waiting patiently as Colin washed the spittle and flecks of blood from his hands. He followed him back to where Thunder waited, followed him as he carried his sea chest back to the chaise, followed him when he went to Ariadne and put his arms around her tiny shoulders.

It was as Colin felt the stallion’s hot breath blasting against the back of his neck that his patience finally reached an end.

“Enough, Shareb. You’ve made your point.”

Ariadne melted against him, her dark eyes sparkling with love, reverence and admiration as she gazed worshipfully up into his eyes. “You’ve made a friend for life, now, Colin.”

“I think I’d prefer him as an enemy,” he returned, wryly, but he was pleased with himself and happy that his initial diagnosis had proved correct.

Yes, sometimes he
still
felt like a hero . . .

She laughed and buried herself against him. Her hair smelled like grass and wind, and she was so tiny that he was almost afraid to embrace her too tightly. But she wrapped her arms around his waist and gripped him with a ferocity of strength that belied any image of delicacy her small body conveyed.

He sighed and rested his cheek atop her hair.

“You’re wonderful, you know,” she whispered, as though he was a god and not just a mere human. “Every day, you do something to make me love you more and more. You don’t know how grateful I am, that I chose
you
, Colin, to be my horse’s veterinarian.”

“Dislodging a stick is not terribly difficult, my dear. Certainly, not the most challenging problem of my career.”

Her hand was sliding down his thigh, heading for his groin. “Then perhaps you need something
more
challenging.”

“Such as?”

“Helping me think up a way to break off my engagement to Maxwell . . . without losing Gazella.”

“Obviously you think me capable of great miracles.”

“Oh, you are far too modest! What am I going to do with you?”

He grinned, and said invitingly, “I can think of a few things . . .”

“Can you, now?” She cocked her head and looked playfully up at him. “And what are they, my good doctor?”

He looked down at her, his eyes glinting.

“Hmmm . . . ?”

She never gave him the chance to answer. Laughing, she slid her hand down between his legs, found his growing arousal . . . and made him incapable of thinking of anything.

Anything at all.

They reached the Burnhams three nights later.

It should have been a triumph—making it all the way to East Anglia from London without capture—but it was not. Ariadne had felt only dread and foreboding as she began to recognize landmarks, and their route took them on roads she’d known and traveled since childhood. Soon, she knew, she would have to confront Maxwell, and the thought, for some unexplainable reason, filled her with apprehension. She had begun this mad journey wanting only to get to Norfolk, beloved, familiar Norfolk. Now, with every mile that passed behind them, her heart beat a little quicker, and she grew more and more fearful. Even the landscape—which should have provided comfort and reassurance with its beloved familiarity—could not ease her restlessness, and she had felt tears of mixed emotion in her eyes at the sight of it. Sugar beets growing in endless, sweeping fields that were coffee-colored against the green Norfolk grasses; hard wedges of flint and stone peppering the dark earth, wind, windmills, the smell of the marsh, and always, the nearness of the sea.

The sea.

Her veterinarian sensed it too. She’d seen the change in him as they’d neared Burnham and the wind swept its salty scent across bent grasses and long, rolling pastures, saw the pain that darkened his beautiful eyes as a gull flew screaming overhead, and wondered at the cause of it.

He had his secrets.

She would find them out.

What was he hiding? What terrible, shameful thing from his past didn’t he trust her with? Whatever it was, Ariadne had no doubt that Colin Lord was the man she wanted to marry. Not Maxwell, whom she barely knew. Not Maxwell, whom her father had chosen to curb her wild behavior and cement the future of the Norfolk Thoroughbred.

Not Maxwell.

But Colin Lord, who was far more suited to her than Maxwell would ever be. She didn’t need someone to curb her wild behavior; she needed someone who grinned helplessly at her flirting and bold remarks and made her feel appreciated instead of foolish, someone who had patience and kindness, someone who was strong, intuitive and gentle, steady where she was volatile, wise where she was impulsive. He was everything she wanted in a man. In a husband. And even if there
had
been any doubts in her mind about him, they would have been eased by the way animals acted around him, for animals, she knew, were far better judges of people than humans could ever be. Shareb alone was a case in point; the way the stallion had forgotten his earlier animosity toward the doctor and now slathered all of his attention on him was almost nauseating. He was no different than any other beast who’d fallen under the veterinarian’s spell.

And neither was Ariadne.

Now, ten minutes from Maxwell’s estate, she twisted around in the saddle to gaze through the starlit darkness at him, following along behind her with Thunder and the chaise. Elbows resting on his knees, the reins held loosely in his fists, he looked preoccupied, gazing out toward the fields beyond which lay the sea—and heartbreakingly handsome as the wind ruffled his hair and sent his shirt sleeves rippling against his arms. She gazed longingly at those hands; he could reduce her to a puddle of honey just by touching her with them, could set her blood afire with the lightest of kisses, a mere sideways glance from beneath those beautiful long lashes. Oh, how she loved him. And she knew in her heart that she wanted nothing more than to be with him—forever.