Authors: Juliette Waldron
"Swine!"
Somehow she was managing to keep him away.
"Especially
you, Christoph von Hagen.
Let me go!"
"As you wish,
Fraulein von Velsen."
Just as suddenly as
he'd started, he released her. Still, there was that unbearable smile, those
bright eyes flashing amusement.
"Hey, little cuz, don't you know that
a woman who sits down on top of a fellow runs a risk he might get the wrong
idea about what she's after?"
"By the Blessed
Mother!"
Cat protested, reddening and
angrily beginning to pummel Christoph again.
"Your
mouth!
I'm a lady!"
"Then ACT like one!" The roar
came from her half brother, Theo, who'd just ridden up. His square face red, he
leapt off his horse and caught Cat by the back of the jacket, yanked her onto
her feet and then gave her a tremendous shove in the direction of Star, who had
calmly settled down to cropping the grass a few feet away from the arms-and-legs
turmoil on the ground.
"GET HOME!"
Theo was short and burly, nothing like his
elegantly proportioned half sister. Seizing her again, he dragged her to her
horse and gave
her such
an angry boost to the saddle
that he practically tossed her over. To Theo, Cat's riding astride and all the
rest of her tom boy stuff was a never ending source of embarrassment.
Muddy chin held high, Caterina reined Star
briskly around and headed towards the gray stone manor. In a moment she'd risen
to a perfectly seated canter, wet red braid bouncing on her back.
* * *
As she approached the gray stone Schloss on
the hill, her heart was heavy, sinking with every rocking stride of the sorrel
beneath her. Not only had she been ignominiously caught by that wretched
Christoph, losing the wagers she knew Papa had made, but Mama would have a fit
when she saw her. Lady von Velsen thoroughly disapproved of her daughter
playing fox and had spent all yesterday afternoon quarreling with Papa about
it. What would happen when Mama inevitably found out the rest?
"There she was, Mama, rolling on the
ground like a wild Indian.
An absolute disgrace to her sex,
not to mention the entire family."
That would certainly be Theo's version. Cat
had a strong premonition that this was the last game of Fox and Hounds she'd
ever play.
In her heart was not only disappointment,
not only fear of parental displeasure, but something else just as disturbing.
Something to do with her half sister's fiancé, that fellow who thought he was
God's-gift-to-women, cousin Christoph.
It had started in the close up moment when
he'd been trying to kiss her. Those brilliant eyes, the brown flecked so
beautifully with green, those elegant features,
the
mouth tempting her, the whispers…
She knew what her sister, what everybody
knew, about Christoph's adventures with women. Up till this instant Cat had
always considered
herself
immune to the young rake's
charm. After all, hadn't he been around, in and out of the house, courting her
big sister, flirting with the maids, most of her young life? Hadn't they raced
their horses, hunted together?
Hadn't he rudely nicknamed her "Stork
Legs" and "Red"? Hadn't he tugged her braids, buried her in hay
in the barn, battled with her as if she were a little brother and told her a
thousand times to "get lost" when he wanted to kiss and cuddle Wili?
Now, since this afternoon's wrestling against
his hard body, Caterina felt something new, a strange, uncomfortable
excitement. She'd tested her strength against his, against a might with which
he could have easily overwhelmed her. For some reason, he had pushed her to the
limit and then, wearing that wicked, knowing grin, he had let go, had chosen
not to take the kiss he'd won.
The thing that had resulted, the
unimaginable thing, was that now she wished he had kissed her. What would it
have been like to have that beautiful mouth meet hers? "Damn you,
Christoph von Hagen." She began to chant the words aloud, desperately
trying to drive the thoughts from her head. "I'm not like all the others.
I don't want you to kiss me. I don't. I don't. I don't."
* * *
Down by the bridge the young men were passing
around a flask of fiery brandy. Theo had ridden off after Caterina, ready to
make his complaint to "Madame Mama" about his "wild savage"
of a half-sister.
"I couldn't let on while Theo was here
but, by God, I could hardly get up." Christoph confessed with a grin. He
sipped from the flask Max had handed him and then passed it to the next man.
"You unprincipled fellow," said
one of the cousins, laughing. "You can't mean that skinny child aroused
your interest?"
"Well, she seems to have aroused
something I usually think of as signifying interest," Christoph murmured.
"Good God!
But
why?"
There was a general chuckle of disbelief,
but von Hagen, with a mixture of amusement and seriousness replied, "You
fellows have no imagination. Here and now I predict that in one year our leggy
gosling cousin Red will become a swan."
"And there, may I remind you,
gentlemen," Max chimed in, "speaks a renowned judge of woman
flesh."
"Well, I think it's just the
experience of a wet woman in his arms talking," one of the cousins replied.
"Five gulden says that at sixteen Caterina von Velsen will be as skinny
and as unremarkable as she is today."
You're on." Christoph laughed, clasped
the challenger's hand. "Next year, mark my
words,
Caterina von Velsen will take your breath away."
"Whatever happens, by next year her
papa will probably start looking for a husband for her," Max added
meditatively. "She's got a nice little dowry, but it's hard to imagine our
wild Caterina wedded and with a full belly on. Beauty or not, who among us noble
bachelors would be
so
brave as to marry her?"
There was a general negative shaking of
heads.
"It seems the Landrat will have to set
his lures up north where no one knows her. Munich might just be far enough away,"
someone jokingly suggested.
"Well, after the tussle I just
had," said von Hagen with a chuckle, "I think that the fellow who
takes Red Caterina to wife had better know how to ride like a champion or he'll
never have a prayer of staying in the saddle."
"Ah, but Chris," Max shouted
through the following laughter. "I'm afraid that pronouncement
disqualifies all of us and leaves you, conqueror of the killer dike, the only
possible contender."
"God defend! Did you see the way she
used that crop?"
"Well, good sir," Max teased,
"
then
you better hurry up and wed gentle Wili.
Mark my words, Christoph von
Hagen,
it's the only way
to save yourself."
Continuing to joke and relive the various
adventures of the hunt, the cousins mounted their horses once more. Making
excuses for their poor showing and making new wagers, they began a lively trot
towards the ivy covered Schloss on the hill.
Christoph was a preoccupied, half hearted
participant. In order to stay out of trouble with his elders, he knew he'd have
to spend the next few days keeping his fiancé close company. Wili von Velsen
was a sweet creature, not exciting or clever, but pretty enough and
reassuringly in love with him. He was fond of Wili, so it was no hardship to
spend a few weeks going through the motions of courting her. Of course, at
first she'd be sulky about how long he'd stayed in Vienna, but he was confident he could soon
charm her out of that.
Ordinarily, Christoph enjoyed the rural
pleasures of his Donau valley home, but as he rode up the hill with the others
he felt something interfering with his usual relaxed anticipation of a few
weeks of ease and more or less chaste amusement. Before him floated a vision,
one that glowed with what he, with his experience of life and love,
uncomfortably recognized as the compulsion of a new divinity.
Those astonishing emerald eyes, that thin
girlish face, the lines as straight and pure as a sculpted angel's! The thick
red braid, which he suddenly imagined loosened, cascading across a pillow; the
tiny freckles, a golden dust scattered across even the most intimate, satin
places. Most provocative was the remembered sensation of a strong, lithe body
wrestling angrily and competently against his, a body which
belonged—alarmingly—to skinny Red Caterina.
* * *
Wilhelm von Velsen, a man with an aspect of
forbidding dignity, was Chief Magistrate of the valley, the Landrat. He was by
birth an aristocrat, a man unaccustomed to submitting humbly to lectures. His
continued silence now was ample acknowledgement that he'd earned what his wife
was dishing out.
"This is your fault, sir. Ever since
you saw how well she could ride, you have indulged her, spoiled her. This is
where it leads! Rolling on the ground with Christoph von Hagen as if they were
school boys! Theo says Christoph wasn't about to discourage her, either. Engaged
to
Wili,
and now the scoundrel's putting his hands all
over our Caterina."
"Gottesblut!
That young dog!"
The square face of
the Landrat was quite red. A huge ham fist landed on the table, making the
delicate blue and white china jump.
Caterina's father had been in a temper from
the moment he'd heard that the wagers he'd made on his fox had been lost, but
now an eruption was pending. Lady Albertine pressed her advantage, although she
knew it had to be done with care. She wanted her husband to pull the reins in
on Caterina, pull them in hard, but she didn't want the house party spoiled by
a rampage. It would be, she knew, a near thing.
"I told you how Caterina treats good
Frau Pluncke. The brat just throws down her sewing and climbs out the school
room window, right down the ivy, saddles that mare of hers and rides away. It's
a regular thing now, whenever she's set a task she doesn't fancy."
Lady von Velsen was determined, for once,
to get it all said. She herself was an able horsewoman, but she also boasted a
fine hand with a needle. More than that, she was an active and able overseer of
her husband's large household, from kitchen to laundry.
"She's fifteen, Wilhelm. Fifteen!
Quite old enough to marry.
Didn't I tell you she shouldn't
be allowed to play fox? Theo said that if it had been anyone but von Hagen
who'd put his hands on Caterina like that, he'd have called him out."
"Your Theo's a damned trouble
maker," the Landrat grumbled. He knew what Theo, his wife's son by her
first marriage, thought about his little sister. "But the lawless young
dog—Christoph! Where is he?" The Landrat gripped the table, preparatory to
heaving his barrel body from the chair.
"Very dutifully and lovingly sitting
in an upstairs window seat," said Lady von Velsen, beginning to rub her
husband's massive shoulders, "being most attentive to your Wili. I don't
think we want to interrupt that."
"No," growled the Landrat,
subsiding beneath her hands. "Damn him. He has a hell of an eye for
strategy."
"Indeed.
All the
more reason to press for a wedding."
"He has to go back to his regiment in
three weeks. He's only got a short leave and then it's off to the Turkish
wars."
"Isn't it always the same story?"
Lady Albertine took a seat beside her
husband. The conversation was getting away from her, moving in the direction of
the other looming family problem, the long promised and long delayed marriage
of Christoph von Hagen to the Landrat's daughter by his first marriage,
Wilhelmina.
"At his winter leave then,"
muttered her husband. "I'll insist upon it."
"Make him promise, Wilhelm, have a
talk with his father. Cousin Rupert is just as sick of it as we are. You know,
Wili will be twenty-three in October."
"Yes, her best breeding years already
gone by. Gottesblut! You'd think that land down by the river would be incentive
enough for him to take her. He could marry, get us a grandson and still run off
to play soldier to his heart's content. These young people nowadays—"
"And Caterina?"
Lady von Velsen interrupted. "You'll speak to Caterina? It has
to stop, Wilhelm. She's just too old to go parading around in trousers."
Lady von Velsen leaned forward anxiously, one arm still around her husband. She
didn't want to lose this opportunity to make him see how serious the problem
was. "The child can barely thread a needle, but that's nothing compared to
the rest. She hasn't a ghost of a notion about anything a woman should, about
cookery or about managing a house. Why, when she marries, her servants will
waste, steal, commit riot."
"Mmmmraaah," growled the Landrat.
"Of course," his wife said
soothingly, "I know how disappointing it's been, my giving you only that
girl."