Elisabeth Fairchild (6 page)

Aurora leaned into the surge of the loping gelding. It had rained in the night. The earth, the greenery, the very sky smelled fresh this morning. Aurora felt she began anew. She could forget the disaster of the evening when she had a horse beneath her. On horseback, Aurora was as graceful and sure, as fluidly swimming in her movements as Miles Fletcher was on the dance floor.
L' Amazon
, many called her, and she found nothing to object to in the title. The French referred to their serious female equestrians as such. In Greek mythology, the Amazons were a race of female warriors. On horseback she was a warrior--unbeatable, unstoppable, a creature to contend with, as though the power and spirit of the horse joined hers. When she mounted, they became one, a graceful, driven, intelligent entity.

Her knee tucked around a pommel, her legs and hips flowed as one with the pounding rhythm of the loping animal. On the gelding she fought wind and gravity. The trees tried to unseat her without success. She and the gelding soared over walls, gates and hedges, without faltering. For a brief moment, on horseback, she could outrun the embarrassment of falling clumsily onto her backside in the middle of a room full of her peers with Lord Walsh floundering atop her.

God, what a painful moment!
She nudged her horse to a faster pace, lost in the thunder of hoofbeats, renewing herself in the energy it took to ride fast and hard. She ignored the muffled beat of hoofs behind her, dismissing a muffled shout. She looked back only when the horse that followed began to close the distance between them. A tall man on a sorrel seemed intent on catching up to her. Well, if it was a race the fellow wanted, she would oblige him. She touched heel to the gelding. Over the ground like a low-flying bird they soared. The gentleman on the sorrel, she could tell he was a gentleman by the gruff eloquence of his curses, followed the gelding like a shadow.

He did in fact catch up to her! The sorrel pulled dangerously close. Damn! A hand grabbed at her reins.

“Hands off!” She cracked her quirt across the outstretched knuckles as she drew the gelding to a halt. “Whatever do you mean, grabbing at my bridle in such a fashion?” She twisted in the saddle, fuming, leather creaking beneath her hip, the roan nervously tossing its head. “Do you mean to unseat me, or merely to ruin the horse’s mouth?”

Lord help her!
Walsh rode the sorrel, his face crimson, a vein pumping in his temple.

“Unseat you? I thought the beast had taken the bit and run away with you! I thought you were sure to land on your backside in t mud.”

She could not help remembering how she had landed on her backside the night before on a polished wood floor. The way he examined her down the length of his patrician nose gave her the impression he remembered too.

“I meant to rescue you, Miss Ramsay,” he fumed, wrenching off his glove to examine the angry red stripe across his knuckles.

Aurora’s chin went up. “I did not require rescuing, thank you.”

Walsh glared at her. He was a gentleman of stature, accustomed to nothing but respect. “You may be sure I shall not ride to your rescue again,” he said curtly. “I bid you good-day.”  Kicking his horse into a trot, he rode away.

With a sigh, Aurora slid from her saddle to walk the roan. As they traversed the lane, she beat on the skirt of her riding habit with the same quirt that had lashed Lord Walsh’s hand. “Damn your tongue, Aurora Ramsay!” she hissed.

Whop!
The quirt slapped against the heavy layers of her skirt. “When will you learn to be still? Now the gentleman will never have any desire to further your acquaintance.” She cursed under her breath and kicked a shower of gravel from the lane into the hedge that bordered the road.

“Ow!” came a voice from the other side. “Was that entirely necessary?”

“Who in blazes is there?” Aurora insisted stridently. “Come, skulker, show yourself.”

The top of a fashionably clipped head rose above the line of the hedgerow--shining hair, dark and sleek, every lock pomaded in place, feathered back like the glossy wing of a blackbird from either side of a pale, deep forehead. Dark brows arched above a pair of amused blue eyes. Fletcher!

“I do beg pardon,” he said glibly. “It is Miles Fletcher. Perhaps you remember refusing to dance with me last night?”

Did she remember him?
Whop. Whop.
Aurora whacked her skirt. Two days in a row this man watched her make a fool of herself with Lord Walsh, two episodes in which she became a source of amusement for a pair of twinkling blue eyes. Fate was against her.

“How long have you been skulking behind the hedgerow, Mr. Fletcher?” she snapped.

“Skulking?” came the smooth voice again, as amused as the look he bent on her. “No such thing. I am doing something quite productive.”

Miles Fletcher was not a peacock she decided. He was a mouse, or a vole who stood peering at her over the top of the hedgerow. No, not a vole, his eyes were too large and bright, too blue. His features were too sharply chiseled. Aurora believed all men were animals, it was just a matter of defining which species. Last night she had determined Fletcher to be a cockscomb. Today she was not so sure.

Fletcher leapt over the stile that was placed for the express purpose of crossing the hedge and sat himself on the top step to wipe the tips of his glossy boots with a lawn handkerchief. He had an agile, sinuousness to his movements, a cleverness about his expression, that reminded her of a ferret or a weasel.

This weasel admired her. She could tell by the amused warmth in his gaze. It was freshly irritating that a gentleman whom she had no desire to attract should like her, while the one she wanted admiration of, galloped off in a cloud of dust. Even more confounding, Aurora found herself amused by this weasel.

“Pray tell me what you consider productive?” she asked sardonically, sure his productivity amounted to nothing more serious than managing to cross a meadow without ruining the shine on his boots.

He bowed gracefully from his perch. He seed incapable of riling, though all of her exchanges with him bordered on rudeness. His sharp, clever features were mildly amused, his dark eyes sparkled with suppressed mirth, but he was not at all inclined to allow her to draw him into a quarrel. That was unusual. She was used to men whose first reaction to the prod of her knifing wit was a competitive desire to spar with her.

There was a level of power that came with besting an angry man’s fuddled wits, and none at all in teasing this clever, unflappable fellow. That he did not fall into a squabble, as she had anticipated, did nothing to improve her mood. She was in need of a row.

His voice was level, vaguely musical in its amusement. “I have been walking about the fields with a farm laborer, who explained to me how the soil here at Holkham has been vastly improved through the use of marl and manure.”

“Marl and manure?” She looked at him as though he had sprouted horns. This silk-voiced exquisite--with walking stick, quizzing glass and gleaming boots, found something to interest him in marl and manure? “What intrigues you about something so mundane?”

Miles Fletcher cocked his head like a bird from his perch, examining her expression until she was made nervous by the intensity of his gaze. “I am curious,” he said.

“About manure?” she scoffed.

He regarded her steadily, an irritating half-smile lightly molding his lips. So intense was his gaze, she felt compelled to take a step back.

“I am curious about many things, Miss Aurora Ramsay. I am, for instance, curious to know why you so thoroughly distance yourself from any man you so much as come into contact with.” Soft and smooth and cool as a brook the devastating words floated around her. “Do you snipe at us, perhaps, in the misguided belief that we would in some way injure you--and so you take a bite out of us before we can sink teeth into your own tender flesh?”

Her mouth fell open.

She would have hated him had he smiled in such a moment, she would have snapped some cutting remark had he tried to make light of his comment. But, he did not smile at all. In fact, his expression was rather more serious than usual, perhaps even a little worried--and the worry was for her. “We would not all eat you, you know, and we do not all conform to your low opinion of us.”

She swallowed hard. This man never failed to confuse her. Just when she thought she had some understanding of him, he turned her opinion of him on its ear. “You are curious,” she said tersely.

He grinned an engaging grin. “As are you,” he said suavely.

“I am,” she admitted, feeling bested. “You are clearly no farmer. Why should you be interested in marl and manure?”

He watched her with a careful expression from his perch atop the stile. “I have expectations of coming into a patch of land.” He sounded as though he found the concept difficult to believe and unpleasant to contemplate. He shrugged. “I would know how to go about caring for it.”

“I see,” she said tersely. It seemed unfair to her, that this frippery fellow, who by his own admission had not the vaguest notion how to go about managing it, should have land coming to him. Fate was cruel.

She would not succumb to it. She meant to marry Walsh. Through marriage she would acquire land--for herself while she lived and for her children when she had ceased caring about earthly matters.

“Would you see what else I have learned today?” Miles Fletcher jumped down off the stile as he spoke, landing lightly in the lane beside her.

Th roan threw up its head in alarm. Aurora was a trifle alarmed herself. The weasel stood, she thought, too close to her. Yet she would not back away from him again, not after his provoking remark with regard to distancing herself from men.

“Easy, easy,” she crooned to the gelding.

“You have a way with horses.” He fell into step beside her. His voice was low and mellifluous. His eyes, from close quarters, seemed bluer than she remembered. “Have you any notion, Miss Aurora Ramsay, how truly magnificent you look on a horse at full gallop?”

The compliment startled her. Aurora was unused to compliments. She felt as if this weasel took a step closer in posing such an unanswerable question. Why did this creature, whom she treated so ill, persist in complimenting her? Why did he take her hand and tuck it in the crook of his arm? Did he think she enjoyed fawning and praise? Did he think he might seduce her?

“You were telling me what else you learned today.” She skirted his flattery as a nervous cat skirts a hound.

“Oh, yes!” His gill flower eyes lit with pleasure. He reached into his coat pocket. “I was behind this hedgerow searching out a bit of ribbongrass, so that I might finish the making of this.”

He pressed into her palm an intricate woven knot made out of cornstalks that vaguely resembled a heart.

She stopped so abruptly the roan almost trod on her heels. Angry color bloomed in her cheeks.

“Do you know what it is you give me?” she demanded.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” He leaned in happily over his handiwork, which dangled from her palm like a dead rat. “I must admit I have only learned such a pretty thing existed this very afternoon. It is called a countryman’s favor and is woven quite cleverly out of cornstalks. I had to try the thing several times before I managed the knack of it. What do you think of my first attempt?”

“I think you very rude.”

“Rude?” His dark brows rose simultaneously.

“Yes, rude. You knowingly insult me.”

“Insult you?” He laughed, his eyes crinkling up in a most appealing fashion. “Nothing could be further from my purpose. I wished to extend an offering of potential friendship. There is a proposal I would make to you . . .”

She glared at him, indignant. “A proposal? We have only just been introduced, yet you dare to come to me with such a suggestion!” She waved the cornstalk favor at him.

The roan leaned in over her shoulder, ready to eat the thing, its head following her movements. She would have allowed the horse to have it too, had Mr. Fletcher not snatched his creation back from her.

“Do not think you can seduce me with your smooth ways and countryman’s favors, sir. My brothers may be wild as spring colts, but just because my name is Ramsay, you’ve no right to assume I am lacking in scruples. A proposal indeed! I am no foolish country lass, ready and willing to engage in a lascivious liaison behind the nearest haystack for no more than a cornstalk love knot.”

His blue-eyed gaze fastened on her with fascination. “A love knot?” He blinked and smiled at her in such way as to make it clear that the name was a revelation to him. “My dear lady. As appealing a picture as you would paint, a haystack is not at all what I had in mind.”

“It is not?” Her heart sank into her boots as she tugged on the roan’s bridle and set off at a brisk walk. Lord above! Must she persist in making a fool out of herself before this man? She shot a rueful glance at him.

He smiled. Not the tight, contained little smile she was used to seeing on his lips, but a thoroughly engaged grin that spoke of lurking laughter.

“I believe haystacks are far more attractive in theory than in practice. Surely such a bower leaves one both untidy and scratching?”

“I would not know,” she said stiffly.

He nodded. “The only way to find out would be to test the idea.”

“With someone like you, perhaps?” she snapped.

His eyes widened in mock dismay. “You flatter me, Miss Ramsay. I was sure another gentleman’s name would pop instantly to mind.”

Her gaze slid suddenly down, as though the sheen of his boots was infinitely more interesting than his face. It was a small thing really, her reaction, but Miles was accustomed to reading small gestures--little bits of the language of the body. He had learned to read their significance in negotiating the prices of artifacts and artwork. Bits and pieces of antiquity were hard to place an absolute value on. He had learned to read the signs of agreement or withdrawal. He made a living--a good living--negotiating the ownership of lovely fragments from the past, reading movements such as the one she had just made.

“What has that to do with you?” She lifted her head, willow green gaze fired with resentment.