Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 03] (16 page)

Remembering her duty, Daintry said firmly, “We must all go back, of course. What a shame.”

“Oh, no!” Charley cried.

Lady Catherine said grimly, “I am sure I would be perfectly able to go back alone, you know, only I do not know the way, and I would not for the world deprive you of your groom.”

Surrendering to her baser instincts, Daintry said, “Oh, we do not care for that, ma’am, I assure you. Indeed, if it were possible, I should simply tell Clemons to lead the mare home and change your saddle to his horse. But unfortunately, that animal is not trained to carry a female or even a sidesaddle. If you are perfectly certain you do not mind, I confess I would prefer not to disappoint the girls after promising them this outing.”

“I do not mind at all,” Lady Catherine retorted, “so long as you do not expect me to walk the whole distance back.”

“Oh, there is no need for that,” Charley said. “You must just let Clemons lead her and not permit him to go too fast.”

Daintry scarcely waited for the pair to ride beyond earshot before saying sternly, “You abominable girl, I do not know what you deserve for that ill-mannered trick.”

“You know? How did you know? Oh, isn’t it famous, Aunt Daintry? I’ve never tried it when I wasn’t actually riding her, you see, and I was not perfectly certain she would do it when she hadn’t yet begun to do it on her own, but she always limps when she thinks she has been away from her stable too long.”

“Charley, you are … I don’t know a word bad enough that I can repeat to you.”

Charley laughed, unrepentant. “Can we gallop when we get to the top of the road, Aunt Daintry?”

Daintry agreed, and when it leveled out a few minutes later, she led the way, leaving the hard-packed roadbed at once for the softer footing of the moorland. The two little girls were close behind her. Since she was concentrating on the terrain ahead, knowing there might well be muddy spots, even some deep puddles still, it was Charley who first saw the rider two fields ahead of them. Her cry alerted Daintry.

She had not the least doubt who it was, although at first he was no more man a dark shadow galloping against the horizon and looking, she thought, just like the centaurs of ancient days must have looked. Animal and man moved as one, their pace so smooth, yet so swift, that they seemed almost to fly.

He saw them and turned so quickly that the great horse reared, pawing the air. Then, heading Shadow straight toward them, soaring high over the stone walls that marked the field boundaries, Deverill closed the distance rapidly.

Daintry reined Cloud in to wait for him, and as the little girls did likewise, Charley waved her whip and cried, “View halloo,” adding in a lower tone, “Lord Deverill is a bruising rider, isn’t he, Aunt Daintry?”

“He certainly is,” Daintry agreed.

“That’s how I’d like to ride,” Charley confided.

“Then you must practice a great deal more, my dear,” Daintry told her absently, still watching Deverill. He certainly could ride, she thought, and he was an excellent judge of horseflesh, as well. Shadow’s forward action was as smooth as could be, though no one could mistake his power.

Deverill slowed the great horse before he reached them, and approached at a decorous walk. “Good morning, ladies,” he said as soon as he was within speaking distance. “Have you murdered your groom and buried his body beneath the heather?”

Daintry wrinkled her nose at him. “I did not think you, of all people, would dare to preach propriety,” she said.

He laughed. “Just shows how wrong you can be, does it not? Bodmin Moor is no place for any female to be without male escort, and certainly not three very young ladies.”

“I am more than twenty, sir,” she said, stiffening, “and I have been riding on Bodmin Moor all my life.”

“But not, I’ll wager, without a groom in attendance.”

Charley said quickly, “Pray, do not scold Aunt Daintry, sir. It is all my fault that Clemons is not with us at present.”

“So
you
murdered the groom.”

Melissa cried, “Oh, no, sir!”

Charley only chuckled. “You know very well that I did nothing of the kind, but I did arrange it so that he would have to go home. You see, we had company, and we did not want her.”

Deverill looked at Daintry, then back at Charley. “I cannot imagine that you would wish to send your Aunt Susan home, so it must have been the lovely Lady Catherine Chauncey. Was her company so objectionable to you?”

“She clucks at her horse, sir,” Charley said, disgusted.

“Definitely objectionable then,” he agreed without so much as a twitch of his lips.

“Well, I knew you would think so, and she saws at the reins, too, and bounces all over the saddle. Although that,” she added conscientiously, “might easily have been the Duchess’s fault.”

“And which duchess is that?” Deverill asked, casting a smile at Daintry as he maneuvered Shadow next to the silver dun.

Daintry, enjoying the exchange and wanting to see how he would deal with Charley, remained silent but returned his smile.

Charley said, “Our Duchess, of course. She is the prettiest little white mare you ever saw, absolute perfection. Very showy and precisely the sort of animal to appeal to Lady Catherine, just as I thought she would be. Only from some cause or other—”

“Charley,” Daintry interjected, “if you are going to tell the tale at all, you would be wise to tell the whole truth and not merely the bits of it that suit you.”

“Well, I was going to. Lord Deverill is not one who will give me away, and certainly not to Papa or to Grandpapa.”

“No, indeed,” Deverill agreed instantly. “Tell me.”

“Well, the real reason I wanted Lady Catherine to ride the Duchess is that I can make her limp by whistling at her, and that is what I did, and so Clemons had to take her back to the stable, on account of Lady Catherine thought she had strained her hock again, which she never really did in the first place, only Clemons said she did, and so of course I said the same thing. Only Aunt Daintry knew all along it was me.”

Deverill looked at Daintry in astonishment. “Is that the truth? Has she really taught the mare to limp on command?”

“Don’t encourage her to boast of the tricks she has taught the horses in our stables,” Daintry said, laughing. “I began it by showing her some simple schooling methods, but she left my teaching in the dust long ago, and I fear that any number of the things she’s taught them since must be entirely reprehensible.”

“No, they aren’t, Aunt Daintry. Well, only that one, maybe, but I did it because Duchess limps so often anyway that I thought it would be easy to teach her to do it on command, and so it was. Aunt Daintry says I have a knack, sir, though I still have not managed to teach Victor here not to be afraid of thunder.”

Deverill said, “You terrify me. I have schooled any number of horses, and I cannot remember a single time I have been the least bit tempted to teach one to limp on purpose.”

“Well, but we have taught them lots of useful things as well,” Charley assured him. “May we ride on ahead, Aunt Daintry? Melissa wants to try jumping the walls.”

Daintry, noting the quickly masked look of dismay on Melissa’s face, said, “You may certainly ride where you like, girls, so long as you do not go where I cannot see you, and so long as you are careful. You may jump the gates, Charley, but not the stone walls. One day when we can take time to examine them carefully first, we will see about attempting them, but not today when you two want to ride on ahead of us.”

When the little girls gave spur to their horses and dashed away, Deverill said, “They ride extremely well for their ages. Two of the firmest seats I’ve had the privilege of seeing.”

Pleased that he recognized their skill, and even more pleased that he had not qualified his praise by adding the infuriating words
for little girls,
or worse,
for females,
Daintry said with a smile, “They practiced their balance by riding without relying on reins or stirrups until they could sit on handkerchiefs and hold bits of paper between their legs and the stirrup leather. They have become quite skilled indeed.”

He nodded but made no reply. Charley had set Victor at a timber gate, and he watched alertly until horse and rider sailed smoothly over. When Melissa had followed Charley’s lead without mishap, he said, “I wondered if the little one might be a bit tentative. She seems less confident than her cousin, but I suppose I have done her a grave injustice by saying so.”

“She has implicit faith in Charley, sir. The difficulty was to induce her to look for her own route and not always to depend upon Charley to give her the lead. I finally convinced her by pointing out that she would be teaching Tender Lady always to require a lead horse, so now she makes it a habit to take turns with Charley. There now, you see, she will come back first.”

They continued to watch until the two children rode into the next field, when Deverill grinned at Daintry and said with a hint of challenge in his voice, “You will not want them to leave us too far behind, I suppose.”

She knew that Charley would do nothing of the kind, but she had been wishing she might join in their fun, and she did not hesitate now, giving spur to Cloud and riding to leap the nearest gate. Deverill, riding beside her, opened the distance between them and took Shadow over the wall at the same time.

Drawing up a few moments later, Daintry glanced at her two charges to see that once again, Melissa was taking the lead. To her experienced eye, it was evident that Tender Lady was going too slowly, but she relaxed when she saw Melissa touch the mare’s flank with her whip. Tender Lady seemed to jump cleanly, with the little girl leaning back just slightly, the way she had been taught, and all would have been well had the mare not stumbled on the landing. Melissa collected her without falling, but as the mare recovered and broke into a run, it quickly became clear that the little girl had lost at least one of her reins.

Looking frantically over her shoulder, she cried, “Charley!”

Muttering an epithet, Deverill urged Shadow forward, but Daintry drew rein, knowing Melissa was in no danger.

Before Shadow had taken half a dozen steps several piercing, gull-like shrieks rent the air, and Tender Lady slowed to a trot, then to a walk, before she stopped altogether. Melissa leaned forward, clinging to the mare’s mane and trying to snag the loose rein with her whip. “It’s broken,” she called to Charley.

Deverill had reined in the black, and looked back now at Daintry, raising his eyebrows. “Another of her little tricks?”

“An extremely useful one, you will agree,” Daintry said. “The only drawback is that well-nigh every horse in our stables responds the same way that Tender Lady just did. It would have been no use my trying to dash after her like you did until after Charley had whistled. However, that is one reason Melissa has become a confident rider. She was terrified to ride at Seacourt, because she cannot control her pony. The little beast has the worst manners in the world, and there are times when I think Geoffrey must have been mad to purchase him. But once Charley proved to her that Tender Lady would not run away with her, she became much more interested in learning to ride well. Now, I daresay even that awful pony won’t frighten her anymore.”

Charley had joined Melissa, and as they approached, both girls looked at Daintry. Charly said, “She knows she ought not to have relaxed her hold on the rein, Aunt Daintry.”

Daintry smiled at Melissa. “I am sure she does. You kept your head very well, my dear. I was proud of you.”

Melissa flushed a little but said, “The rein is broken. She must have stepped on it.”

Deverill, dismounting, said, “I have just the thing, ladies. I, too, know a few tricks, having spent more months campaigning than I care to remember.” He reached into a leather pouch attached to his saddlebow and took out a coil of leather. “I always carry an extra rein, because one never knows when a mishap will occur, only that when it does it will be most inconvenient.”

Charley exclaimed, “What a good idea! I shall begin to do that myself. If saddles were properly designed with notion bags, one could carry as much as Aunt Ophelia does in that great traveling reticule of hers. But how does one attach that, sir?”

He showed her how to attach the new rein to the broken piece. “It is only makeshift till your tack man can repair it properly, and we must attach it so the broken end will not flap around. If I had a knife with me, I could cut it off, but that will serve you until you get home.”

Melissa thanked him prettily, and Daintry said, “We all thank you, sir, but I do think we had better return now.”

“I will not offer to accompany you,” he said, frowning. “That is, unless your esteemed parent has changed his … No, I didn’t think he had. However, perhaps I will see you at Mount Edgcumbe’s house party on the twelfth.”

Her spirits rose considerably. “We have been invited, sir.”

“All of you?”

She chuckled at his dismay. “My father does not attend such parties, sir. He likes shooting parties, of course, but not mixed hunting parties, theatricals, or dancing, so I believe our group at Mount Edgcumbe will consist of only my aunt, myself, and Charles and Davina, for Geoffrey’s tastes are similar to Papa’s.”

“And there will be no children,” Charley said with a sigh.

Deverill laughed. “Your day will come soon enough, Miss Charlotte, and I doubt that the
beau monde
will ever be the same afterward.” The two little girls broke into delighted laughter, and under its cover, he turned to Daintry and said warmly, “I look forward to advancing our acquaintance, my lady.”

Unable to resist looking over her shoulder as she rode away with the children, Daintry saw that he was still where they had left him, watching. Smiling, he raised his hat, and she turned quickly away, but she could not so easily dismiss him from her thoughts. He could be charming and delightful, but he could also be extremely vexatious and at times even stuffy, as when he had taken her to task about her groom. In point of fact, there was no place in her life for a man like Deverill. At best he would provoke her; at worst he would rob her forever of the independence she sought.