Suzanne Robinson

“I MAY NOT BE A PROPER LADY,
BUT I’M NOT A FOOL,”
KATE SAID.

Alexis folded his arms and smiled at her. She was glaring at him with her hands on her hips, which gave him an excellent view of her figure.

“You’ve been gone from the others for a long time. So have I. The whole castle knows we’re missing by now, and you can bet one of your precious gold mines they’ll never believe we spent the whole time talking.”

“I don’t care if they think I entertained a whole regiment. Anyway, you said yourself there’s nothing I can do.”

“There is one thing. Do me the honor of betrothing yourself to me, my dearest.” Alexis bowed over her hand and kissed it.

She snatched her hand away. “Toad.”

“Only for a few months. For your reputation.”

“A few days.”

“Months,” Alexis said.

“Six weeks,” Kate said.

“I bow to your wishes.”

“Somehow I find that hard to believe. What are you doing?”

Before he kissed her, he spoke. “I’m sealing our bargain.”

The kiss went straight through his body. He’d been trying so hard to keep from watching her all evening. He was done with looking.

_________________

“An unusual, compelling, sometimes funny, and often poignant love story that demonstrates Suzanne Robinson’s wide range of abilities. Readers can simply sit back and enjoy this well-crafted, satisfying read.”

—Romantic Times

“Excellent reading.” —
Rendezvous

England, February 1854

The death ride beckoned to him. Alexis kicked his stallion from a canter into a gallop. Leaning forward, he shortened his reins and rose out of the saddle. Valentine was taken by surprise, and Alexis laughed when he heard Val shout.

“Alexis, no!”

As his friend grabbed for him, Alexis swerved. “Don’t try to stop me, old chap. You’ll get hurt.”

Alexis bent over his horse’s neck. Standing in the stirrups, he let Theseus go. The animal stretched into the gallop. Hooves dug into frost-covered soil; legs contracted and sprang out until the horse seemed to claw the earth and then leap from it with each stride.

Alexis heard Val’s voice calling to him from far away, but the speed was flowing in his veins. He tore through the wet
dawn. Racing faster and faster, he strove toward that unattainable quarry—peace.

Devils and sins, they rode with him. Theseus sensed them, too, and strained to leave them behind. Shrieking taunts, they flew beside him, lurid pennants to the staff of transgression on which he was impaled. Dirt and pebbles thrown up by the flying hooves hit him in the face. His heart raced with the stallion’s, and his lungs heaved. Still the devils and sins kept pace with him, but now he couldn’t hear their screaming. The pounding of his blood drowned all other sounds.

On he rode through the open fields. He urged his stallion over fences and icy streams, bushes and wagons. With each leap he risked death. He beckoned it, reached out to it, but in the end Theseus pulled him away from it. Of his own will, the horse slowed to a canter, broke stride and began to trot. The demons settled down to their usual drooling murmur, and Alexis collapsed on Theseus’s neck, shivering in reaction.

He let the stallion take him back. Lacking the strength to lift his head, he rested his cheek on Theseus’s mane and blew white clouds of air from his aching lungs. The long walk passed in a blur for Alexis. When he raised his head, the castle was within sight. It was the size of a small town, his home. Towered and battlemented, dominating the nearby river and its valley, Castle Richfield was both his refuge and his prison.

As Alexis rode nearer, he could make out the gold of Val’s hair. The young man was waiting for him astride his own Thoroughbred. Alexis pulled out his handkerchief and buried his face in it. By the time he neared Val, he was calm. He guided Theseus alongside the other man’s horse and inclined his head to his friend.

Val held his body rigid, controlling his nervous horse with one hand. “Damn you!” he almost shouted at Alexis.

“Yes,” Alexis said. Valentine Beaufort was the only person
outside the family ever to witness the death ride, but Alexis wasn’t going to relinquish mastery because of it.

“Why don’t you put a gun to your head? It would be simpler.”

“But not nearly so fascinating for you.”

Alexis listened to Val’s curses while they crossed the bridge over the drained moat and walked the horses between the gates and into the outer ward. Grooms ran up to them. Alexis slid from the saddle, and his knees buckled. Valentine was there to catch him.

Alexis shoved at the younger man, but was forced to allow Val to help him as they passed into the inner ward. It was a long walk. He began to shiver, feeling alternately hot and cold as their boot heels clicked and echoed on damp paving stones. He was taller than Val, and heavier, so he had to listen to his friend’s complaints along the way.

“You’re a hulking idiot,” Val said between puffs of breath. “A black-haired and damned heavy madman.”

“Is that any way to talk to an old school fellow? And it’s not me who’s too big, it’s that you’ve got the build of a salamander.”

“Close your mouth and try to walk, will you?”

Alexis glanced down at Val and almost smiled. His friend had the temper of a cock robbed of his hens, and had had since they’d first met at Oxford. A good bit of his time there had been spent rescuing the fool from scrapes of his own making. Slender and volatile, with the face of a baroque cherub and a grudge against fate because of his illegitimacy, Val could start a row among a flock of doves, much less a hoard of upperclassmen.

Ahead the doors that led into the great hall swung open, and Alexis looked up. As he expected, his mother and his cousin Fulke appeared. Walking out into the morning sunlight, Fulke lent his arm to Lady Juliana. She stopped at the top step, tugged her shawl around her shoulders, and gazed down at Alexis. About her skirts
lurked three cats and a golden marmoset. Juliana’s mouth curled up at one corner. Her gaze swept her son, from his tousled black hair to his muddy boots.

“He survived again,” she said. “The Almighty has not answered my prayers.”

Alexis bowed. “I tried to answer them, Mother.”

Beside him Val stiffened, and his hold on Alexis’s arm tightened painfully. Alexis tried to stop the laughter that trickled out of his mouth, for he knew it would further enrage Val. He couldn’t help it. The low, bubbling sound came out of its own accord. Only he heard Val’s curse.

“My lady,” Val said. “Providence has shielded your son, and I pray it will continue to do so. There are many who admire him.”

Juliana waved a hand. “Lazy tenants, dissolute regimental officers like you, and beggars.”

“Juliana,” Fulke said in what Alexis called his clergyman’s tone. “Alexis has great Christian charity. Without his aid many folk in the county would go hungry.”

Alexis had managed to control his laughter, but he was still smiling. “Spare us the accolades.”

“But it’s true,” Fulke said. “And she should acknowledge your virtues.”

Another laugh burst from Alexis’s lips. Val poked him with his elbow.

“Mother has studied my character for years.” Alexis surveyed the woman standing before him amid her pets. “She sees me more clearly than you know, Fulke. Her vision is perfect. Is it not, my lady Mother?”

There was no reply. Juliana turned, skirts swaying to reveal another cat beneath them, and walked back into the hall.

Fulke came down the steps and grabbed Alexis by the arm. As the three of them walked inside, Alexis was spared more lectures. Both men were too angry to speak.

Val left them at the top of the staircase. “I tried to stop
him,” he told Fulke. “It was impossible. A devil riding a comet, and both too fast for their own good.” He scoured Alexis with his gaze, then addressed Fulke again. “You do something, my lord. I cannot.”

Fulke thrust Alexis into his bedroom and into the care of Meredith, his valet. Without a word he stalked from the room, giving Alexis privacy for bathing and changing.

By the time Alexis had pulled on his trousers, his arms and legs had stopped shaking, mostly. He walked into his bedroom, a towel draped around his neck, while he tried to make his fingers negotiate buttons and buttonholes at his waist.

The effort cost him all of his recently restored strength. Collapsing on the edge of the bed, he sat there and contemplated the drops of water that rolled from his hair, down his neck and shoulder to his arm. He hadn’t really meant to launch into the death ride with Val along, but the doubts and suspicions had invaded his mind without warning.

Burying his nose in the towel that hung over his shoulder, Alexis squeezed his eyes shut. If only he could remember more of what happened the day his father and sister were killed. If only he knew for sure …

But perhaps it didn’t matter. He’d been so young, and God forgave children much, or so Fulke said. And since then he’d tried so hard to be good, when the demons weren’t torturing him, as if to assure himself that he could be. Alexis rose and scooped up the shirt Meredith had laid out on the bed. The movement cost him a stabbing pain in his shoulder, and he winced. He was staring at the white wave of fabric when Meredith came back into the room to help.