My Fallen Angel (4 page)

“Are you all right?”

Lucy lay still for a long second, the breath knocked out of her from her collision with the ground. She sucked in some air, her mind refusing to comprehend the blessed relief of immobility. Never mind that she’d just tumbled from a horse galloping at full tilt. She’d fall off a hundred horses if it meant not having to ride a single one ever again.

“Miss Hartford?”

Slowly, she opened her eyes. A dark shape stood silhouetted against a star-infested sky, nearby trees even bigger blobs against the horizon. Tall, tall grass rose on either side of her. The smell of green blades filled her nostrils, almost as heady and rich as Mr. Wolf himself.

“I’m fine,” she finally managed to say.

“Good,” he grunted, turning away.

Lucy’s heart plummeted. No soft words? No helping hand?

Squelching the sharp stab of disappointment that agentleman could dislike her so intensely after knowing her for less than an hour, she pushed herself to her feet. But all her disgruntlement faded when she spied the white horse on the ground some ten feet away.

“What happened?” she gasped.

“He’s dead.”

Lucy’s mouth flopped open like a castle drawbridge.

“Fortunately, he staggered off the road before dropping to the ground.”

“Fortunately?” she exclaimed. “You call that good fortune? Your horse is
dead.”

She could see the silhouette of Garrick’s big shoulders shrug. She would wager the next county could see his big shoulders shrug.

“It happens sometimes,” he said.

She looked down at the horse. Poor, poor beast, she thought. To die while carrying them to safety. What a valiant animal. She might hate horses, but this had been an outstanding equine beast.

“We need to bury it,” she announced.

Silence. An insect buzzed by her face.

“At the very least we need to offer a prayer up to heaven for its safe passing.”

More silence. And then, “Miss Hartford. That is a horse. One does not bury a horse.”

She straightened, turning to him, noticing the way his blonde hair seemed to glow in the moonlight, the way his shirt defined the shape of him. “Why not?”

“Because,” he said in the clipped voice of a man on the verge of losing his patience, “a horse is not a human.”

“But it has a soul.”

She didn’t like the way he dropped into silence. As if he didn’t trust himself to speak. But she refused to give in. Every one of her pets had had a funeral. Even the frog she’d accidentally stepped on.

“Fine. Then say a short, fast prayer,” Garrick finally gritted out.

She relaxed, unaccountably pleased by his concession, though a bit disappointed by his attitude. Didn’t he love his horse? Wasn’t he attached to it at all?
She
might not like horses herself, but this was his pet. Surely he had some feelings for … Just what was its name, anyway. Thunder? Gray Fox? Silver?

“Horse,” he announced after she asked.

Horse,
she thought, feeling her brows rise. What kind of a name was that? She almost asked him, but then lost her courage. She had a feeling he was like that branch, ready to snap at any moment. She was used to people feeling that way around her, had even grown to accept the fact. But she didn’t have to like it. She reached for his hand.

He gasped.

Her heart thumped. “Oh dear,” she breathed, wondering if he’d been hurt in their fall. She held the limb up to her face and tilted it toward the moon so that she could inspect it. “Are you hurt?”

He didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.

Was he in so much pain he couldn’t speak? “It’s probably sprained. I’ll wrap it when we get back to my aunt’s house,” she said with a gentle, reassuring pat, not releasing his hand.

Again he didn’t speak. She looked into his eyes, barely discernible in the darkness.

“Lucy,” he said softly.

She could have sworn she heard a kind of longing in his voice, then assured herself she was being fanciful. According to her aunt, she was always being fanciful about something. But since her parents had died in that fire, she’d relied on her imagination. She imagined them as they had been, all smiles and love. She did the same thing with John, her brother. She refused to imagine him fighting in the war. She preferred to think of him astride a gallant white horse, not unlike the one that had just died. Her fantasies were the only thing that kept her going. She supposed that loneliness was why she’d taken such a shine to Tom. He wasn’t much younger than her eighteen years. She felt sorry for the boy, and sorrow was a word she understood.

But all sorrow faded as she stared up at Garrick. He was certainly nothing to be sorry about. In fact, he was ten times better than any fantasy she could have conjured. Even so, there was a loneliness to him, and a longing.

Holding his hand closer, she wondered what had happened to make him that way. Much to her surprise, he let her clasp his hand. Tiny scars crisscrossed the fingers, visible even by moonlight. She wondered where they had come from. Turning her face to his, she tried to discern the answer in his eyes.

Loneliness stared back down at her.

Her heart gave a soft little cough. “Oh, Garrick,” she said softly, letting her own loneliness leak into her voice.

She wanted him to kiss her again. Wanted to kiss away his pain, his longing, the despair she’d glimpsed through the soul of his eyes. The thought became a chant in her mind.
Please. Please. Please. Kiss. Meeeeeeee.

He lowered his head. She stood up on tiptoe.

“Lucy,” he groaned.

“Yes,” she murmured back, waiting.

“Say your prayer.”

Her eyes snapped open. She rocked back on her heels.

He stared down at her, and even in the darkness she could feel the coldness emanating from his gaze.

Oh, Lucy, you silly, silly girl,
she chided.
You’re a fool to have thought he’d want to kiss you. He wants no part of you. That much is obvious.

Defeat made her shoulders slump. She turned toward the horse, wishing …

Wishing for what? For things that could never be? For a man such as Garrick to fall in love with her despite her shortcomings? Impossible. She might as well wish for the moon.

Closing her eyes, and despising herself for letting the realization hurt when it shouldn’t, she tried to gather her composure. So she wasn’t what society considered a classic beauty, she could live with that. And what was so bad about being accident-prone? What she lacked in grace, she more than made up for in intelligence. At least, that’s what she often told herself. Sometimes she even believed it.

She took a deep breath, buried the knowledge that men such as Garrick were far beyond her reach, and began her prayer.

“Dear Lord,” she said in a husky I-refuse-to-cry-whisper. “We thank you for your kindness—”

Garrick released a breath that sounded suspiciously like a snort.

Lucy paused, opening one eye to peer up at him. He stood perfectly still. Must have been her imagination. She closed her eye again.

“I know Horse was only a horse, but he was a good horse. Fast. Easy to, ah, mount. That is, I think he was easy to mount. But I don’t know for certain.”

Garrick growled. Lucy hurriedly finished, her words running together. “I ask that You receive him into Your welcoming green pastures. Reward his valiant spirit.” Garrick squeezed her hand. “And may he always eat golden oats. Amen.”

She opened her eyes, determined to come back to bury the animal herself tomorrow, or at the very least, hire somebody to do it.

Garrick let go of her hand. Lucy felt like a ship suddenly cast adrift.

“Let’s be on our way.”

He turned. Lucy watched him walk away. And despite all her brave words, despite telling herself otherwise, she suddenly wished with all her heart he wasn’t so beyond her reach.

Fifteen minutes later Garrick wished he was back on board his ship, fighting against his enemies instead of his own desire for Lucy.

He found himself following a barely visible strip ofroad with a woman who was about to drive him to distraction, not to mention hell, plodding by his side.

He’d had no idea this would be so hard. For the first time in his life he realized one didn’t need to see a woman to be aware of her presence. He could hear her breathe, feel the soft brush of her arm as she walked alongside him, smell her elusive scent. What was it? Violets? Lavender?

Roses. It was roses. He clenched his hands at his sides, tempted to stop, duck his head, and take a longer sniff.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

The realization made him angry. Anger was good. Very good. It helped to keep him focused. It helped him keep his emotions buried deep down inside where nobody could get at them, not even one little sprite of a woman.

She stumbled. Garrick reached out to help her. Their hips brushed. His chest seized up.

“Thank you,” she mumbled.

Garrick jerked his hand away. It tingled, almost as if he’d immersed it in a pool of ice-cold water.

“I’ve been thinking,” Lucy said. “We need to go to London.”

And her voice. Never could he remember hearing such a voice: a low, husky alto that stirred his blood and made him think of warm beds and sweet, passion-filled moans.

But he would not let himself be attracted to her. He would treat her as he would a sister, even though he had no family. He would ignore the way her body spoke tohim. He would ignore the loneliness he heard in her voice. And above all, he would squash this ridiculous admiration he felt for her reckless courage.

“Which means we have to break the news to my aunt.”

She was nothing but a young girl. She had her whole life ahead of her, while he had only twenty-four days.

“And we should probably leave on the morrow in the event the countess connects our break-in to Tom.”

The mention of the boy’s name caught his attention. He halted. So did she. Years of adjusting his eyes to darkness allowed him to see her almost perfectly. Even in moonlight, he noted, her hair sparkled, a soft breeze causing it to shimmer like the gold braid of a uniform. He hadn’t wanted to be nice to her, he admitted. But it wasn’t her fault that fate had played such a cruel trick on him.

It wasn’t her fault at all.

Garrick prided himself on being honest, and he was honest enough to admit he’d been a heel.

“Do you think that’s a good plan?” she asked in a soft, little voice.

He had no idea what plan she was asking about, but there was a tentativeness to her voice, almost as if she expected him to yell at her. Ridiculous, he thought. He didn’t yell at young girls. And she was young. Too young for him.

“We can take my aunt’s coach,” she added.

“Take your aunt’s coach where?”

“London.”

It took a moment for the words to penetrate. Just a moment.
“London!”
he roared.

She flinched. Actually flinched. And, hell, there was that look of hurt he’d begun to dread. She tilted her chin up, just as she had earlier when she’d wanted to say a prayer for that damn horse.

“Yes, London.”

She held tight against his anger. He had to admire that about her. She was like a starfish, holding steady no matter how rough the seas.

“Well?” she asked, arching a red brow.

“I cannot take you to London.”

“Why not?”

And there was that grim pride he’d seen before. “Because.”

“Because why?”

Because she wasn’t a girl, she was a woman, and he damn well knew it. Because he didn’t want to think about being alone with her for six hours while they traveled to London. But mostly because he didn’t trust himself.

Bloody hell.

“Garrick?”

He turned away from her. “It’s out of the question.”

He took a step and nearly fell when he stepped into a carriage rut. Only years of experience standing aboard a lurching ship enabled him to remain on his feet.

“Is it because you don’t want to be with me?”

He stopped, faced her once again. She probably didn’t intend to ask the question in a self-pitying way. No. After the way he’d treated her, and his surly attitude, she probably meant it as a genuine question.

“No,” he growled. “I refuse to take you because it will be too dangerous.”

If he hadn’t been looking for it, he wouldn’t have seen the relief that sailed through her eyes. But there it was. Suddenly, unaccountably, he wanted to comfort her more. She had a heart to match her courage, he realized, a heart a man could wait a whole lifetime to find. He turned away, only to pivot right back on his heel again. Almost of its own volition, his hand rose up to stroke her jaw.

Green eyes widened, then softened.

“Stay with your aunt, Lucy. It will be much safer. The boy and I will go to London.” In London, he could keep an close eye on him and forget all about a red-haired sprite with emerald eyes.

She leaned her head into his palm.

Don’t,
he tried to tell her with his eyes,
don’t like me. Because if you do, hellion, you will lose your heart, as surely as I will lose mine, and my soul.

He stiffened, stunned by the realization.