Recklessly Yours (31 page)

After a quick glance down the staircase, she tipped her chin and flashed him an irrepressible grin. “In case you hadn't noticed, my injuries didn't prevent me from achieving some highly acrobatic feats last night.”

Against his better sense, his arms spanned her waist. “I don't wish to take any chances.”

“Then leave me here while you search for the colt. You can't afford to lose so much time. Already he could be miles away.”

He had considered that very strategy, but he'd deemed this house with its two elderly custodians as not nearly safe enough. The colt's disappearance shed doubts that those shots yesterday had resulted from a badly aimed hunting rifle. But whether highwayman or poacher, if the villain showed up here, the Fulsomes could provide little protection. At least Briarview boasted a house full of servants, including a footman or two versed in the firing of weapons.

She was right, though. They could travel much faster on horseback. He held her cheeks between his palms. “Are you certain you're not hurting?”

“Watch me.” She eased out of his hold and performed a nimble pirouette. “If anything, I'll stiffen up if I'm confined to a bumpy carriage seat all day. In fact, Simon's research in muscular regeneration suggests that motion, rather than rest—”

“I give up.” With a laugh, Colin held up a hand. “I can't possibly out-argue you, not if you're going to quote Simon de Burgh at me. We'll untie the horses from the carriage and be off. But you're to say something at the first uncomfortable twinge. Promise me.”

She walked back into his arms. “I promise.”

“Why does that do so little to reassure me?” He scowled as he gave in to temptation and kissed her. In many ways he was grateful for her insistence on traveling by horseback, for now there would be no close proximity on an enclosed carriage seat to tempt him further.

As she predicted, they made good time and entered the village of Briarview by midmorning. On a ridge two miles to the north, Briarview Manor, the Ashworths' ancestral home, glared down like an exacting patriarch at the small collection of farms, cottages, and tiny, rickety shops as if to admonish such underlings to know their place and heed their betters.

Colin felt no joy at this homecoming. On the contrary, his misgivings mounted as, on both sides of the road, the effects of the “Exmoor curse” became more and more apparent.

The fields that had flooded weeks ago had not been replanted, and the surrounding moors threatened to encroach on the cultivated land. The barn roof that had fallen in had not been replaced. Worse, he saw sure signs that all but the most basic labors had ceased. Farming and herding beyond what the inhabitants required for their own survival, as well as local business and trade, seemed to have come to a screeching halt because these people, most of whom could trace their families to this wild, craggy land for centuries back, believed their efforts were cursed.

An unnerving quiet permeated the air. No clangs of the hammer rang out from the smithy. No pungent tanning fumes clashed with savory aromas from the Dancing Mare Tavern. The only scents Colin could make out were those of rotting crops and general decay, oddly mingled with fresh wisps of the heather clinging to the surrounding hills.

The first nudges of true fear crept up his spine. Was he too late to reverse a self-fulfilling prophesy?

“What's wrong with this place?” Holly asked in a whisper.

He had opened his mouth to reply when he noticed the faces peering at them from either side of the road, gaunt silhouettes gathered in the windows of cottages and shops. As they passed the greengrocer, the shop door opened. The proprietor, a bull-faced man named Harper, stood in the doorway and gazed out without any trace of the deference Colin had been used to receiving from these villagers. Another door opened, and then several. In every case, men, women, and children spilled onto front stoops and stared, their fears and worries evident in the shadows beneath their eyes.

“What is this?” Holly whispered again. “What does this mean?”

“The colt,” he whispered back. “They are the reason it must be returned.”

“What can a colt have to do with—”

A shout pierced the air. “Where is it? Where's the Exmoor? By God, what have ya done with 'im?”

“The Exmoor?” Holly twisted round in her saddle to view the stout farmer wearing rough woolens and threadbare corduroy. “What is he talking about?”

A chorus of disgruntled voices joined in the jeering; a forest of fists waved in the air. When something—perhaps a packed ball of dirt, perhaps a small rock—sailed across the road and thudded to the ground close enough to make Maribelle stumble, Colin tapped his heels to Cordelier's sides.

Both horses broke into a canter, a pace Colin didn't break until they reached the gates of the manor. There they were forced to stop and wait for the gates to be opened, and Colin tossed many a cautious glance over his shoulder to see if they'd been followed. An indignant frown creased Holly's brow, and she looked as though she were practically choking on the questions she longed to ask. Colin guessed that only the gatekeeper's presence checked her tongue.

“Thank you, Oliver,” Colin said to the man as they turned onto the drive.

“Milord.” Oliver Long, a burly man somewhere in his fifties whose father and grandfather had also occupied positions on the estate, dragged his cap off his head. But he didn't smile or offer the enthusiastic greeting Colin had come to expect from him over the years. He didn't ask after Colin's health, or inquire after the rest of the family. He didn't relate the latest news, as he'd always done after one of Colin's absences. Except for an initial glance, Oliver kept his eyes averted, his thoughts shielded by the sooty sweep of his lashes.

They moved past him, past the stone gatehouse and upward along the open expanse of drive. Before them, the home's austere facade looked out over fields and moors, and down at the village behind them, its stone and thatch structures reduced by the distance to a collection of insignificant dots.

Holly brought Maribelle to a halt. A few yards ahead of her, Colin also stopped and wheeled Cordelier around. “What?” he asked, but by the look on her face, he already knew what she would say.

He was not surprised, then, when her chin came up and her delicate eyebrows arched. “I'm not budging another inch until you explain what the blazes is going on here.”

 

“No more putting it off.” Holly injected into her tone an obstinacy she hoped would intimidate the truth from him. But she nearly laughed at the thought of anyone ever intimidating Colin Ashworth. The very way he sat his horse, tall and proud, his strong profile etched against the stark noonday sky, declared him a nobleman very much in command of his world and his fate.

Oh, but not completely so, she remembered. What happened in the village had momentarily shaken his authority; she had seen the crumbling of his confidence, however briefly, in the dimming of his blue eyes, usually so bright and sharp. In that moment she had sensed that the loss of the colt had stripped him of whatever plan he had devised, and that presently he steered his course one small step at a time.

She moved Maribelle up alongside Cordelier and reached to place her hand on Colin's wrist. “You need help, and I am here.”

Heightened color suffused his face. His fingers tensed, but his hand didn't move to clasp hers. “Do you know what an Exmoor pony is?”

“I've read about them.” She glanced up at the granite facade of the house, catching the flick of a curtain up on the first floor. She couldn't see in, but she felt certain a gaze met hers. Then the curtain fell back in place. A servant? Puzzled, she returned her attention to Colin's question. “An ancient breed, England's purest native pony. Surely the colt isn't—”

“The colt
is
. Partly, at least. We have a herd of Exmoors on our land here, and for years I've been crossing ponies with Thoroughbreds.”

“But why?”

“The Exmoor is one of the hardiest breeds on earth, resistant to many of the diseases that strike other horses. The Thoroughbred, despite its speed and power, is far more fragile in comparison. Have you any idea how many are injured in the races and must be put down each year?” When she shook her head, he didn't elaborate. “So I'd thought . . .” He broke off, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose.

“You thought to create a super breed. But the Jockey Club would never allow it. All racehorses must be descendants of those three original Arabians. I forget their names.”

“Darley, Godolphin, and Byerley Turk. And the colt
is
a direct descendant of Byerley Turk. Thoroughbreds themselves were created by crossbreeding those stallions with native Galloway mares. My experiments were meant to show the value of introducing new, hardier stock into the existing breed, but in infinitesimal amounts. The colt, you see, was the result of several generations of crossbreeding, with the Exmoor element having been added early on and not again. For all intents and purposes, he is a Thoroughbred, with a residual strain of Exmoor in his blood, but not at all evident in his physical traits.”

Holly paid close attention to every word, trying to understand. “This is all very scientific. But I've a notion that those villagers couldn't give a fig about your experimentations.”

“They don't. The problem is that nothing can be kept secret here, not when it comes to the Exmoors or anything else that takes place on these moors. The local populace knew full well what I was doing, and I had their approval, up to a point.”

She narrowed her eyes at him as a suspicion dawned. “When did you lose their support?”

“At the exact moment my father removed the colt from Briarview. They don't know why he did it, and they don't know where the colt was taken. They only know it is gone.”

She twisted in her saddle to peer down the hillside to the village, from here as picturesque as any rustic Devonshire hamlet. But what she had witnessed close up had left her more than unsettled. An inexplicable foreboding had taken root in her very bones. “I understand the villagers might be protective of the ponies, but, Colin, they threw things at us. They shook their fists. That is no way to treat their future duke and patron. It's downright unpardonable.”

“Their bile is fueled by more than mere protectiveness.” He might have gone on to explain, but at that moment the front door of the house burst open.

“Colin? Is that you, my boy?”

Holly shaded her eyes with her hand. Through the open door, liveried footmen and black-and-white-clad maids poured out and down the steps, hastily arranging themselves in a line facing the drive with men on one side, women to the other. In their wake a woman in an elegant, high-necked gown of black silk descended from the top step, her gray hair pulled back from a lined face and tucked beneath a lacy matron's cap.

Despite its wrinkles, the woman's face held an ageless beauty that to Holly spoke of resilience, even of defiance, as if she'd laughed at the passing years and dared them to rob her of her finest qualities. In that face, that expression, Holly recognized Sabrina's bold spirit and Colin's stubborn determination.

The woman started down toward them, balancing on each step with the help of an ebony cane. Her features tightened with the effort, but her smile remained fixed. Halfway down, a man—a butler Holly guessed by his formal suit and rigid bearing—scurried down after her and offered his arm.

“Your Grace, I beg you, please do wait for me before attempting stairs.”

“Oh, yes, yes, Hockley . . . Thank you.”

Holly needed no introductions to guess the woman's identity. “Your grandmother, I presume.”

Colin nodded. “Maria Ashworth, the Dowager Duchess of Masterfield.”

“You didn't tell me anyone would be here.” A sudden misgiving lodged in Holly's stomach. “What will she think of us, arriving together this way? I knew you should have left me at the hunting lodge.”

To her confusion, he let out the first true, wholly unburdened note of laughter she'd heard from him since . . . perhaps ever. “It's perfectly all right. Grandmama is the one member of my family to whom I do not shudder to introduce you.”

“But she is the Ashworth matriarch. She is sure to disapprove.”

“Come.” His eyes twinkled like a mischievous boy's, throwing Holly into further bewilderment. Surely this couldn't be the same man with whom she had ridden all the way from Masterfield Park, the Colin Ashworth of the solemn looks and bleak pronouncements. “The old girl is sure to surprise you,” he said irreverently. Then he sobered. “When I was a boy, sometimes I'd pretend she was my mother. She was the only person able to tell my father to go to the devil and get away with it.”

“Colin Ashworth,” the dowager duchess cried out with a force that belied her physical limitations. She thumped her cane on the ground in front of her foot. “You come here to me this instant.”

Holly chewed her bottom lip as the horses trotted the remaining distance up the drive. Cordelier had barely come to rest before Colin leaped from the saddle and rushed into his grandmother's outstretched arms. Just before he did, the woman thrust her cane into the butler's waiting hands.

She held her grandson for far longer than most dowager duchesses would have deemed dignified. She even patted his back and rocked him like a child as her delighted laughter rang out. This woman did indeed surprise Holly with an outpouring of affection she would not have believed possible from any of these Ashworths.

“Do you have him?” the woman pulled back and asked.

Colin's hands wrapped around her thin, black-clad forearms. “He's still at large, I'm afraid.”