The Risqué Resolution (4 page)

James had the sudden, foolish urge to
tip his hat, but he kept his hand wrapped tight around his horse’s reins and
nodded his head instead. “Lady Kincaid.”

“Out for an early ride?” she inquired
politely, as though she hadn’t just been yelling at the top of her lungs into
an empty field.

James blinked.
The woman
, he decided,
was
mad as a hatter
. “I am.”

“Excellent. I fear people spend far too
much time indoors during the winter which, as I am sure you know, is bad for
the constitution. At least I think so. What do you think, Captain Rigby?”

He thought she looked beautiful
standing in the snow with her hair a tangle of curls around her shoulders and
her cheeks flushed from the cold. He thought she was, without any sense of
exaggeration, the most stunning woman he’d ever seen. And he thought he wanted
to push her up against the fence, cup her lovely face in the hard palm of his
hand, and ravish her mouth until they were both senseless and gasping for
breath. “I…” He paused, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I agree.” Even
though by now he had no idea what the hell he was agreeing to.

Lily smiled, although a slight line
between her brows indicated her distress. “I was taking Mr.
Betram
for a walk, but then he saw a fox and I forgot to hold tight and now he has run
off,” she explained, although of course for James it was no explanation at all.

Beside him his horse snorted and rubbed
the length of his face against James’ thick wool jacket. He returned the show
of affection in kind, absently rubbing behind the bay’s ear in a spot he knew
the older gelding liked scratched, and the horse blew smoky plumes of air
through his oversized nostrils, warming the side of James’ neck.

“Your horse likes you,” Lily said. She
sounded surprised.

“We like each other,” James
acknowledged. “I have owned him since he was a two year old colt.” Gangly and
untrained, the bay had been a gift from his father. The gelding – named
Biscuit for his brown coat – was nearing his twentieth year. He did not
possess the energy he’d once had as a youngster, but his spirit was unchanged,
and with the exception of Natalie he was the greatest treasure in James’
life.    

“What did you do with him when you went
away to war?” Lily asked curiously, tipping her head to the side as she studied
Biscuit beneath long, snow covered lashes.  

It was an innocent enough question.
James could have answered it easily enough. He
should
have answered it easily enough, but when he opened his mouth
to form the words they would not come. He was not ready to speak of the war,
nor of anything that referenced it, no matter how small or inconsequential.
“Who is Mr.
Betram
?” he asked instead, blatantly
ignoring her question in favor of his own.

Instantly Lily’s entire face seemed to
crumple, and she turned her back on him to resume gazing out at the empty
field. “Mr.
Betram
is my dog,” she called over her
shoulder. “He’s a dear old thing, half blind and completely deaf, and I fear he
got away from me.” She spun around, her violet eyes wide and beseeching. “You
have to help me find him, Captain Rigby. I fear he will freeze to death if I do
not bring him home.”

It was an accurate assumption. The
winter elements were kind to neither human nor beast, and the snow was only
going to increase in intensity with ever hour that passed. Dark clouds warned
of a storm blowing in from the east, a storm James believed would be the
hardest hitting yet. It was one of the reasons he’d wanted to get his daily
ride in so early in the morning; the other being he enjoyed the solitude. After
being surrounded by noises for so long – gunfire, cannon blasts, the
agonizing screams of men – James craved the silence.

For that reason and that reason alone
he should have ridden on. He should have made an excuse, any excuse, and left
Lily Kincaid to her own devices. She was the opposite of silence.
The opposite of peace and calm and quiet.
The rational part
of his brain told him this, even as the other part – the bloody foolish
part – had him nodding his head and following her footsteps, now almost
completely covered in snow, down to the dilapidated fence line.

Biscuit followed, navigating the
slippery terrain with ease, and stood obediently at his master’s side, ears
pricked towards the distant trees.

“Do you think he would return on his
own?”

Lily shook her head. “No. Mr.
Betram
does not have a good sense of direction. He is
probably wandering in circles. Oh, I have to find him. I absolutely must.” She
blinked, her lashes fluttering in rapid succession, and James was stunned to
her eyes were sparkling with tears.

He knew women cried. He’d seen evidence
of it in his own household, both from his mother and from his sister, but for
some reason Lily did not strike him as a woman who shed tears easily, nor as
one who used them for manipulation. She was too strong for that.
Too honest.
And yet here she was, fighting back tears over
an old dog
who
had wandered into the woods. 

It made him feel… protective. And the
protectiveness made him wary. Wary of his feelings towards this slip of a
sprite with her tangled mane of black silk and glimmering eyes made of jewels.
Wary of what he might do because of them. Wary of what she would do in return.

He set his jaw, determined in that
moment to turn on his heel and walk away, but then Lily sniffed — a tiny,
unladylike sound of pure distress — and he was lost.

“I will find your Mr.
Betram
and return him to you.” With practiced ease he
slipped Biscuit’s reins over the gelding’s head and readied himself to mount,
praying he wouldn’t be made the fool when he attempted to use his right hand
where he once would have used the left. “Where do you live?”

Lily pushed away from the fence and
lifted her chin. “I am going with you, Captain Rigby.”

James paused with his boot half in the
stirrup and looked incredulously at her over his shoulder. “Into the woods? You
bloody well are not. Go home, Lady Kincaid. The winds are picking up and
heavier snow will soon be upon us. It is too cold for—”

“A woman?” she interrupted, lifting one
dark brow. “Please spare me your lecture on propriety, Captain Rigby. I brought
Mr.
Betram
out here, and I will see him safely home.
If your horse can carry two I will ride, if not I will walk, but be certain I
will go with you either way.”

James stared hard at her. She returned
his stare unflinchingly, her posture as rigid as any general’s. Hooking his
fingers under the pommel of his saddle James mounted, swinging his right leg
over without incident. He took the reins in hand, rubbing his thumb across the
smooth leather. Biscuit tensed, his muscles rippling and shifting in
anticipation of his master’s cues. He mouthed the bit, clanking the metal
between his teeth and tossing his head.

“Open the gate,” James said at last.

“And?” Lily challenged.

“And you can ride with me.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Fate, Lily mused as she took in her new
surroundings, was a complicated beast. Three hours ago she had been arguing
with her mother and sister in the cozy confines of a parlor and now she was
stranded with a man she barely knew in a small, forgotten caretaker’s cottage tucked
away in the middle of the forest.

Snow fell mercilessly outside the
small, two room cottage, covering everything in a thick blanket of white.
Standing on her tiptoes – the better to see beyond the drift that was
rapidly accumulating outside the kitchen window – Lily peered up at the
darkening sky, exposed in slivers of gray and angry blue through skeletal tree
branches that clicked and clacked with the wind. A quiet whine had her reaching
down to skim her hand across the top of Mr.
Betram’s
head.

They’d found the wayward hound sitting
in a thicket of brambles. He hadn’t barked when they approached; instead he
simply wagged his tail and tilted his head, as though to say:
what took you so long
?

Unfortunately, by the time they
retrieved Mr.
Betram
the winter storm had moved in
with enough force to make a return trip nigh on impossible, and they’d been
forced to seek shelter.

Lily had been the one to spot the
cottage through the trees.

Sitting in the midst of an overgrown
glen it was clearly abandoned, but the front door was unlocked and the
furniture from the last inhabitants still in place. Besides a round wooden
table with two mismatched chairs in the nook that served as the kitchen, there
was a small writing desk, a musty smelling sofa, and a
free
standing
bookcase stripped of books. Two wing chairs upholstered in
faded blue fabric flanked a stone hearth and curtains, heavy with dust, framed
the cottage’s four windows. There was a bedroom as well, complete with a bed,
which both Lily and James were resolutely ignoring although she’d caught his
gaze straying towards the partially open door on more than one occasion.

Mr.
Betram’s
fur was still damp from the snow and Lily wiped her palm on her skirt before
she turned and directed her attention across the room to where James was
kneeling in front of the stone hearth, attempting to start a fire.

His hand was cupped in front of his
mouth and he was coaxing the flames to life with his breath, summoning them up
from the depths of the kindling until they attacked the larger pieces of wood
with a ferocity Lily found quite impressive.

“Have you done that many times before?”
she asked, shuffling a few steps closer to the fire and extending her hands
towards the warmth now emanating from the hearth. The flames crackled merrily,
lighting the room in a soft glow. It was curiously cheerful, if she ignored the
fact that she was stranded a good furlong from home with only a strange man for
company. And yet, she did not feel ill at ease in James’ presence. In truth
he’d hardly said more than a dozen words to her since they began their journey,
and she certainly did not feel in danger of being ravished. If anything he’d
gone out of his way to avoid touching her, both on the horse and off, and Lily
was left with the distinct impression that he was far more uncomfortable with
the situation than she.

Her thought was proven correct when he
leapt to his feet and jumped warily to the side, as though she were some
carnivorous beast intent of devouring him whole instead of a tiny woman trying
to get
warm
.

“Have you done that before?” she asked.

“Have I done what before?”

“Started a fire without a tinderbox.”

For some reason, her clarification
prompted a scowl. “Yes,” he said shortly. “I have.”

Captain James Rigby, she decided, was a
man of few words. Which was perfectly fine, as she had more than enough for the
both of them. “How long do you think we will have to stay here?”

Another
innocent question, another scowl.
He was
standing to the side of the hearth, his countenance half in and half out of
shadow. It made him appear forbidding.
Ominous, even.
Lily knew she should have been afraid. Any woman in her right mind would be.
Instead she was… intrigued? Yes.
Intrigued
was as good a word as any to describe the fluttering sensation in her chest.

“When the snow stops and settles we can
leave,” he said.

Lily bit the inside of her cheek. “But
it may not stop snowing for hours, and by then it will be dark.”

James’ expression was unreadable. “Then
we will leave at first light.”

At first light…

First light meant dawn. Dawn meant
morning. Morning meant… She sucked in a breath. Morning meant spending the
night here.
With James.
Alone.

For the first time, Lily considered her
reputation and the possible repercussions that would follow if anyone found out
where she’d been. She would be ruined, completely and irrevocably. Society was
not kind to women who broke the unwritten rules; principle among them being one
did
not
spend the evening alone with
a gentleman without a proper chaperone. It hardly mattered if anything happened
between her and Captain Rigby. She would be considered spoiled goods, and men
seeking wives of high moral character did not want anything that was spoiled,
no matter that they were hardly coming to the marriage bed a virgin themselves.

“Are you certain there is no way we can
get home before nightfall?” Anxious now, she returned to the kitchen where her
cloak was drying on one of the chairs. The fabric was still damp, but it was
certainly wearable and all things considered she would much rather risk a chill
than condemnation from her peers.

James remained by the hearth but his
eyes followed her. When she turned with the cloak bundled tight in her arms he
was staring at her unabashedly, an odd expression on his face. “I am sorry, but
it does not seem likely. Biscuit will be unable to carry additional weight
through the drifts and your dog—”

“I can carry him!” Lily cried. Except
she couldn’t, not really, and the look James gave her said as much. He cleared
his throat.

“I will not… I will not do anything
untoward, if that is why you are concerned.”

“It’s not,” she muttered, looking away.

“You can sleep in the bedroom with the
door closed, and I will be quite comfortable in front of the fire. I fear there
is not any food, but hopefully we will be able to leave first thing in the
morning and you will be home before breakfast.”

Lily set her cloak aside and slumped
into one of the kitchen chairs. It wobbled to the right, but held firm.
Perching her elbow on the table, she adopted a scowl all her own. “And then
what?” she challenged.

James’ eyebrows darted together. “What
do you mean?”

“Of course you do not understand. You
are a
man
, and such things do not
concern you.” Her agitation increased, although whether it was at herself or
him or the male species in general she could not be certain.
Stupid
, she chided herself.
You are so very
stupid,
Lily, and now you are going to have to pay the consequences for your impulsive
actions. Unless…
She straightened in her chair.
Unless you really
do
become
spoiled goods, and the man doing the spoiling is forced to offer marriage.

She was grasping. She knew she was. Not
to mention being quite underhanded, scheming, and devious – three traits
she abhorred above all others. But with the deadline of Christmas breathing
down her neck, what other choice did she have?

Family had always been of utmost
importance to Lily. She would rather die than see her mother and sister be
turned into beggars… Or, in this case, trick a man into marrying her by the
worst means imaginable.

Her fingers began to thrum against the
table. James would hate her in the end, and she would hate herself. But her
mother and Elsa would have a future free from worry, and wasn’t that all that
mattered?

It really wasn’t so different from what
all the other women of her station did, she convinced herself as she watched
James stoke the fire from beneath her lashes. Flocking to eligible men like
pigeons to bread crumbs
, pecking away until the poor fellow
eventually gave up and gave in. She was simply being more up front about the
whole thing.
In a not-quite-telling-the-truth sort of way.

If her plan failed she would be no
better or worse off than before, the only exception being she really
would
be giving up her virginity, but
then everyone would think she had anyways so really, what was the point of
holding onto it?

With each day passing by quicker than
the last it really was her best chance at securing a husband. Her
only
chance, if truth
be
told. Again she wondered at the nuances of fate. What intricate threads of
destiny and happenstance had brought her to this very moment, with this very
man? Would her choices this eve create ripples of consequence that ultimately
destroy her future? Or was this somehow, someway, how things were supposed to
happen? Her fingers increased in tempo, striking the table hard enough to send
little jolts of pain shooting up into her wrist. 

“Can you stop that incessant tapping?”
Standing, James turned in a half circle and skewered her with a glare that
would have no doubt brought a weaker female to tears. Lily merely lifted her
chin and stared down her nose at him.

“They are my fingers,” she said, “and I
will do with them what I please.”

“Stubborn wench,” he growled under his
breath.

“Arrogant brute.”

“Spoiled brat.”

Lily sat up a little straighter. Two
could play at this game. “Caper witted bounder.”

“Featherbrained
peagoose
.”

“Bacon-brained
fatwit
!”

James choked out a laugh. It sounded
rusty, as though he hadn’t laughed at anything in a very, very long time.
“Bacon-brained
fatwit
?” he repeated, tilting his head
to the side.

Lily shrugged. “It was the only thing I
could think of.”

“Are you not in the habit of slinging
insults?”

“No,” she said, biting back a smile.
“Not precisely. I fear you bring out the worst in me.”
In more ways than you can possibly imagine
, she added silently.
 Guilt weighed heavily on her shoulders, but she shoved it aside. She
could not afford to feel guilty. Not if she wanted to do what needed to be
done.

But how?
Planning on losing her virginity was far different than
actually doing the deed. Lily was accustomed to doing things herself, but she
feared this was one of the few things she would be unable to accomplish solely
on her own. She would need James’ cooperation – his
willing
cooperation – if she wanted to set her plan in
motion. Which meant she needed to stop insulting the man and start seducing
him. Resolving herself to go through with the dirty deed, she did a quick
glance around the room, taking stock of her surroundings.

Mr.
Betram
was curled up beneath the kitchen table, his soft rhythmic snores indicating he
was sound asleep. Outside the small, cozy confines of the cottage snow
continued to fall, banking up against the door and windows. There was no doubt
about it. They would be stranded here for the remainder of the day and night…
with no hope of leaving until morning.

“I am cold,” she said abruptly.

Lifting up one of the heavy wing
chairs, James positioned it until it sat directly in front of the hearth.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing with his arm before he stepped back. “I have to go
find more firewood. There is not enough to get us through the night.”

Lily froze halfway to the chair. “You
are
leaving
?” she asked
incredulously.

“I should not be gone long. I noticed a
shed not far from here on our ride in. It most likely is part of the same
estate this cottage belongs to, and may have wood inside it. I will not be gone
long,” he repeated, frowning at her expression. “You needn’t be afraid.”

“I am not
afraid
. I… Well, I…” But of course she couldn’t give voice to the
real reason she wanted James to stay – just imagining it forced a
horrified chuckle past her lips.
Excuse
me, but you cannot go anywhere because I need to seduce you. Why? Well, because
I need you to take my virginity. Why? So you will feel obliged to marry me and
my inheritance stays with my mother and sister instead of going to horrible
Cousin Eustace. Oh, and by the by, all of this needs to be done before
Christmas.
Pressing the back of her hand to her mouth, Lily sank into the
wing chair and stared blindly into the fire. Another bubble of panicked
laughter threatened, but she swallowed it down. Out of the corner of her eye
she saw James hesitate at the door, twin lines of concern digging grooves into
the corners of his chin.