He remained silent for a long moment, so long she doubted he would answer her at all. Then he gathered a breath and raised his eyebrows. “My father wanted to sell him years ago. At the time, I didn't care who technically owned him. I'd carefully bred him, handpicked his sire and dame.”
“Harvest Moon and Pilgrim's Delight,” she interjected, remembering what he had told her during her tour of the stables.
“Just so. But my arguments meant nothing to my father and he insisted the horse be sold.”
“Perhaps he didn't understand just how much Cordelier meant to you.”
He smirked. “Oh, he understood. But you see, my family isn't like yours, Holly, or hadn't you noticed the difference?”
“I'd noticed,” she said, gazing down at Maribelle's mane.
“So, as flatly as Father refused to let me keep Cordelier,” he continued in a matter-of-fact tone, “I just as flatly bid him adieu, packed my bags, and returned to Cambridge. I swore I was through with the turf. Through with the whole damn business of racing.”
“Did you mean it?”
“I most certainly did. Racing is a useless, self-serving endeavor that feeds no one, teaches nothing, and leads nowhere but to greed and pride. I decided my future lay entirely in the laboratory, where I might develop ways of improving agriculture and strengthening the crops and herds that
do
feed people.” He laughed. “I even told my father I wanted neither the title nor the entail. To hell with them, I said. I wouldn't accept them.”
Holly gasped and whisked a hand to her mouth. “What did he do?”
Colin's hand strayed to his jaw. “He hit me. A right hook to the chin.”
“Good lord!”
“Split the skin. Can you see the scar?” Turning toward her, he raised his chin and pointed to the raised scar tissue. Then he shrugged. “After which I picked myself up off the floor tiles, strode up to my room, and packed my bags.”
The ache in her heart prompted her to reach across the space separating them and press her hand to his shoulder. “I'm so sorry. Although something tells me you weren't quite so ready to forsake the rest of your family.”
Turning, he bent his head and pressed a kiss to the backs of her fingers. “I honestly don't know what I would have done. About a month later, I received an invitation to return home, signed and sealed by Thaddeus himself. I let six weeks pass before I accepted, and when I arrived at Masterfield Park, I found Cordelier waiting right where I'd left him. Isn't that so, boy? You were happy to see me, weren't you? Or was it the sugar cubes in my pocket that made me such a welcome sight?”
“Why do you think your father changed his mind?”
“He had little choice. The truth was that he needed my knowledge, and more important, my instincts when it came to horses; he still does, because Father has none of his own.”
Â
Each day, they continued westward, riding hard until the evening shadows brought dangers to the road. Holly sensed that if Colin had been alone he would have pushed farther, perhaps reaching Devonshire in three days instead of four. For her sake he sought shelter. For her sake he delayed. But he spoke little, as if his lips were manacled by the brackets lying on either side of them, so that she didn't know if he begrudged her slowing him down or if he accepted the pace as a matter of course.
As proficient a rider as she was, and despite Maribelle's steady footing, Holly had never ridden so far in her life, and her body ached from the many hours in the saddle. Her shoulders and back, hips and thighs . . . all endured the punishment of each bumpy mile. It wasn't until halfway through the third day that her muscles suddenly relaxed and became limber, and she stopped estimating the remaining distance in terms of her discomfort.
Instead she measured the miles in terms of what she would discover in the end, and whether the close of their journey would mark the end of being close to Colin. She might no longer spend the days at his side, but she doubted that would stop her from spending the nights dreaming of him.
“How do you know her?” he asked that afternoon, just minutes after he'd informed her that they would soon stop for the night.
“Know who?”
“The queen, goose. Why are you spying for her?”
“Oh. I wondered when you would ask that question.”
“And now I have.”
She didn't marvel, really, that he had waited so long. Asking questions meant inviting questions, ones he obviously wasn't prepared to answer until they reached Briarview. That he could no longer contain his curiosity made her grin at him from across the space separating their mounts. “I have known Victoria nearly all my life, since before anyone guessed she would one day wear the crown. You see, my father was an officer under her father's command during the warsâ”
She broke off, wondering about the truth of the story Uncle Edward had told her. In the past year, she and her sisters had discovered possible family ties to France, which could negate all they had once believed about themselves. With a shake of her head, she continued with the only truth she knew. “Victoria and her mother used to visit us at my uncle's estate, and on the day she told us she would one day be the queen of England, my sisters and I vowed we would always be her friends . . . secretly, if need be . . . always ready to serve her.”
“My God . . .” He paled.
“I see I've shocked you. That does even the score somewhat.”
He smiled grimly. “I'll see your horse thief and raise you one secret friend of the queen?”
“Something like that. Or three secret friends, so far. Remember when Ivy came to Cambridge dressed in trousers?”
His eyebrow rose in an arc of astonishment. “You mean she wasn't merely seeking a higher education?”
Holly flashed him a look of confirmation.
“It's damned dangerous, what Her Majesty asks of you.”
“Are you saying I'm in danger now?” She tilted her chin in challenge.
He scowled. “No, but the queen doesn't know that. Ivy might have been killed last autumn.”
“The queen doesn't know that either,” Holly said firmly. “And she never will.”
As they skirted the foothills of the Cotswolds, the countryside grew wilder and more rolling, the terrain rockier. “There is still plenty of light,” she said, “and I'm not the least bit tired. We needn't stop if you'd rather press on. Colin, are you listening to me?”
He clearly wasn't. Ramrod straight in his saddle, he pricked his ears even as Cordelier did and held up a hand to silence her. He peered over his left shoulder, and then his right, and listened for another several moments, his brows knit in concentration.
A chill of foreboding swept Holly's shoulders, but she heard and saw nothing that shouldn't have been there in the miles and miles around them. Only birds and livestock and farmers with their plows. Only the half-stunted trees and clouds scudding overhead. She grew impatient, and then exasperated.
Finally, he dropped his hand to his thigh and relaxed. With a cluck he started the horses walking again.
The road before them dipped and entered the cool shade of a pine forest on either side, the branches reaching across to mesh like clasped fingers overheard. Holly welcomed the shadows. She loosened her collar and was tempted to drag her hunt cap off her head and free her hair to the cooling breeze. The nights and mornings might be temperate enough, but the days grew hot as the sun neared its zenith. Here beneath the trees she tipped her head back and let her eyes fall closed as Colin guided their direction and kept their pace.
A resounding crack broke the stillness. Holly's eyes sprang open as a tree limb split and came crashing down, spewing wood chips into the road. The horses jolted, their stride breaking. Maribelle's legs seemed to tangle as she pivoted, nearly tossing Holly from the saddle. Colin's voice echoed, sharp in her ears.
“Get down!”
Another blast rang out, and something whizzed past her face. Sulfur drifted in the air. The horses whinnied; the colt shrieked in fear. Maribelle reared up on her hind legs, then dropped down and kicked her back legs out behind her. Holly tumbled headlong, her arms flailing, her legs caught in her twisting skirts. Sky and clouds and treetops spun in her vision. She was falling . . . falling . . . and then her hip struck the packed dirt road with a sickening oomph.
She had no time to blink away the pain. Colin's hands closed around her shoulders and hauled her to her feet. Within waves of panic an instant of clarity sent her hand lashing out. Her fingers closed around the reticule she'd hung from her saddle. She tugged the bag free just as Colin shoved her to the side of the road and dived with her into the trees.
“Quickly,” he urged. “Go, go!”
On hands and knees they crawled through the underbrush, their clothes snagging, their faces whipped by weeds and trailing vines. Colin thrust Holly in front of him and half pushed her deeper into the vegetation. After they'd gone some yards the ground plunged to a narrow ravine. She would have slid down if Colin hadn't seized her about the waist.
Carefully he crawled up beside her and helped her to turn herself around. Then they lowered themselves down, lying on their stomachs on the sloping ground, their hands and chins resting on the edge, their faces turned toward the road. An unnatural stillness cloaked the forest around them.
Holly's heart pounded against her ribs. “Can you see anything?”
Colin shook his head. He rose a couple of inches and craned his neck. She could see his strained effort to control his breathing. The color had drained from his face; his lips were bloodless.
“The horses,” she whispered needlessly. Surely he was as painfully aware as she that they had abandoned the horses on the road.
“Before I helped you up I gave Cordelier a good swat to set him running,” he murmured back. “The others would have followed.”
“What happened back there?”
He held up a hand again, first to silence her, then to indicate that she should stay put. She wanted to protest as he inched up the slope until he crouched on level ground. Wherever he intended on going, she didn't want to be left here alone. Then she remembered her reticule, which she'd dragged along the ground in her fist. Bringing the soiled satin pouch up in front of her, she opened the drawstring and reached inside.
Colin was on his feet now, and when he glanced over his shoulder at her, his eyes went wide. “Whoa. Where . . . ?”
He let the question go unfinished. She didn't meet his gaze, but stared straight ahead through the tangled underbrush, her hands wrapped around the cool grip of the handgun she'd brought.
Colin mouthed, “Stay.” From his coat pocket he drew a weapon of his own, a double-barreled percussion pistol. If someone thought to continue assailing them, the scoundrel would find himself outnumbered and outsmarted. Unless . . .
There was more than one of them.
Holly swallowed and tried to stop her finger from trembling on the trigger.
Colin moved almost soundlessly through the trees. He had been right to leave her where she was, for she could never have maneuvered so quietly in her habit with its trailing train. The feather of her hat, bent and broken, sagged to tickle her cheek. She clawed the cap off her head and tossed it behind her into the ravine, then wished she hadn't when it hit the brush with a rustle that made her jump.
“I don't see anything, or anyone,” Colin whispered when he returned. He crouched in front of her on level ground, the pistol hanging from his hand at his side. He switched the weapon to his left hand and reached to help her up.
He half dragged her to her knees beside him, and though she meant to be brave, meant to show him that she was made of firmer stuff than the average woman, the strength seeped from her spine and she slumped against him. Her head fell to his shoulder and she pressed her face into his collar. Her hand, the one not holding her pistol, grasped for purchase at his coat sleeve.
His arms swept around her. “I'm here. I've got you.”
“Why would someone shoot at us?”
“We don't know for sure anyone did. I crept as close to the road as I dared, and didn't see or hear a soul. The shot could have been a hunter's misfire.”
“So close to the road?”
“A poacher's, then. Or a drunken fool's. We simply don't know. We mustn't panic.”
She heard the thud of his gun hitting the ground, and then his hands were on her, smoothing her hair, her back, rubbing up and down her arms. Setting a finger beneath her chin to lift her face, he peered down at her. Suddenly he pulled back and shed his coat. He draped the garment around her, then wrapped her in his arms again. “You aren't going to faint on me, are you?”
She shook her head against him, breathing in the reassuring starchiness of his shirt and cravat. “Of course not.” Her words were slurred and unsteady, her protest a weak little thread. “At least, I'll try not to.”
“Christ.” He pressed his palm to her cheek, his fingers spread, the tips burrowing into her hair. He tilted her head back and then his lips were on hers, at first a gentle nuzzle that fast became insistent. He deepened the kiss until Holly's bones turned liquid and her mouth surrendered all he would take and render back with each stroke of his tongue.
His mouth slid to her cheek, and he held it there as he panted against her and gathered her closer still, her breasts melding to the contour and hollows of his chest. “Christ, I've never been so afraid. . . .”
His lips trailed downward, sliding over her chin and beneath, to her neck and the pulse in her throat. He latched on to it, suckled it, as if to draw strength, life, from its lashing beat. Perhaps only a few minutes passed; perhaps many. Holly knew only that she felt numb everywhere but where he touched her, where their bodies pressed. At some point she, too, had let her gun slip through her fingers and drop to the ground. It wasn't until Colin eased his lips away that she realized how vulnerable they were, in the middle of these lonely woods.