Page 14 of My Rogue, My Ruin
Chapter Four
Archer walked silently through the woods near Pierce Cottage. It was early morning, and the trilling of birds was his only company as he tracked the animal that had spooked his horse the evening of the Bradburne Ball. It hadn’t been a fox as he’d first suspected, but a wild boar. He and Brandt had spent the next morning tracking it while the house party guests, including a still slightly inebriated Lord Bradburne, had started to leak slowly from the sprawling estate and bleed back toward London. The double rounded hoof indentations in the soft dirt had led Archer and Brandt to the boar’s wallowing hole by a stream, but for the last couple of mornings the two had been unsuccessful in finding the beast while it was there, rolling lazily in the muddy banking.
Archer didn’t enjoy the hunt. He never had. However, if the boar was coming in close enough to Pierce Cottage to spook the animals or put the tenants of the estate in danger, it had to be taken care of. There were some men, though—like his father and his ilk—who treated the hunt with a disturbing lightheartedness. To these men, the hunt was mere sport. Something Archer held such distaste for, it had colored his opinion of the men who did enjoy it. Because there were other men who hunted for true purpose. To them, the hunt meant food for themselves and for their families. To them, the hunt included a respect for the quarry that never so much as crossed the minds of those well-heeled sporting men who viewed their kills as trophies.
Archer had been born into the ranks of the first sort of man, but he had been raised by the second. Brandt’s father, Montgomery Pierce, the former stable master at Worthington Abbey, had been more of a father to Archer than the Duke of Bradburne had been. It was Montgomery who taught him that though he was noble-born, true nobility came from one’s deeds. It was a lesson Archer never forgot, and one that fed his distaste for such privileged men, including his own sire, who lived lives of wanton excess while others at their doorsteps died from hunger and disease. They disgusted him.
As he threaded his way through the forests now, the morning sun not yet having crested the tops of the elms and firs, he was glad to be alone. Brandt had noticed Archer’s distraction the last couple of mornings they’d spent tracking together, and though he hadn’t yet said a word, Archer knew him well enough to anticipate that he’d have his questions ready today. He could lie to most anyone, but not to Brandt, and he wasn’t prepared to tell his oldest friend about the two things that had been weighing on his mind since the ball. First, the anonymous note declaring his secret was known. And second, the utterly irrational and idiotic thing he’d done for Lady Briannon Findlay.
For the first, Brandt would likely call for a cessation of any future raids. Excessively practical, he would insist they hunker down and wait for things to blow over. Something Archer was not in the least disposed to do. And for the second, he would have accused Archer of feeling guilty for the raid on Dinsmore’s carriage. Guilt, however, had nothing to do with the ruby and diamond necklace Archer had sent to Ferndale the afternoon before. He did not regret the robbery, nor the spirited exchanges he’d shared with Briannon both during the robbery and at the ball. Hedidregret insulting her dress and causing her to run off, cheeks burning with humiliation, though neither of those were the reason he’d sent her the rubies.
He sent her the rubies because he was a complete fool.
And because he hadn’t spent a single moment since the night of the ball without the memory of her slim neck in the forefront of his mind. Of the warmth of her skin when he’d removed the old-fashioned pearls, her bright, clean linen scent, and the barely contained fire smoldering in her direct glare.
A smile twitched at the corner of his lips as he stepped carefully through the shadowed brush, his bow at the ready, so as not to startle any concealed creatures. He wished he’d been able to see her expression when she opened the box. He grinned into the woods, imagining her perfectly bowed lips parting in soft surprise, furious color rising to her cheeks and ear tips. Archer would have wagered good English coin that she’d even stomped her foot in frustration.
As planned, Brandt had directed his cousin to take the booty from the raid on Dinsmore’s carriage up to Scotland’s borderlands the day after the house party guests had quit Worthington Abbey. Before departing, Archer had given Brandt another pouch of silver—his own money, not plundered, and set aside for much needed repairs to the pump house. Repairs that would now have to wait. He’d told Brandt to find a ruby necklace fit for a duchess instead. Brandt had pressed one of his dark brows in response but had only nodded at this extra duty.
Archer crouched and ran his gloved fingers over the muddy swath of bark on a sapling elm. Still wet. The boar had come through here, rubbing against the bark, not long ago. Tracking he enjoyed. Taking down the targeted prey, not so much.
He stood up and shouldered the bow once again. An indistinct rustling jerked his attention in the direction from whence he’d come, and Archer ducked behind a tree. His prey was close. He slid the bow off his arm in a precise, carefully honed movement. He nocked an arrow to the string, pulling it back so that the feathers brushed his cheek, and rounded the tree.
There it was, all five hundred pounds of it, and not a stone’s throw from the stream. Archer braced his body against the tree, hunching so he could get a better shot. His thumb twitched on the shaft and released—just as a loud yell cut through the early morning air, startling both him and the beast. The arrow thumped into the wet earth as the beast took off charging into the dense underbrush and toward the sound of the shout. He frowned. Normally, wild animals would run away from potential threats. It had to be defending something. Its young, perhaps.
“Damnation.” Archer took off at a fast run. Whoever had screamed would be in danger. The shout had sounded like it had come from near the river. Leaping over some boulders, he skidded through the mud as the icy rushing water came into view. There was no sign of the beast, but he could see someone in the distance, a young boy it appeared, floundering up the steep banking of the rushing river.
“Boy!” he shouted, but the sound of the water took his voice downstream. He swung around as a crashing noise in the woods surrounding him, and the short grunt of a creature that wasn’t too far off. His eyes caught movement through the dense trees. The beast was close,tooclose. If the boar felt threatened, it would attack, and that young boy wouldn’t have a chance in hell of escaping. Archer was too far away, and he couldn’t quite tell if the boar was closer to him or the boy.
He’d take his chances. He scrambled down to the bank in case the boar decided to charge, and Archer had to make a hasty leap into the frigid water. He then started to make his way quickly upstream. As he drew closer to the boy, who was still struggling up the sloped banking, he could hear him shouting a slew of colorful curses that would have made any bawdy sailor proud.
Archer squinted, the rising sun nearly blinding him. The boy slipped, and his hair came loose of its cap. It tumbled in long, sun-scorched tresses down his back, and it was at that moment Archer realized it wasn’t a boy at all. His breath wadded up in his throat. It was the earlier object of this thoughts…Lady Briannon herself, climbing the side of the gulch. And wearing men’s breeches! He ignored his immediate and visceral response at the shape of her slim thighs in the form-fitting attire, and focused on his brewing anger instead.
What the devil was she thinking?
He bit back a shout, his cooling anger turning to worry at the sight of the raging boar twenty paces ahead of him. It stood at the top of the embankment, directly in her path. She could not see it, not with her chin tucked, and her eyes pinned to the earth at her feet as she continued to climb. Archer nocked another arrow, but with the curve of the river and the interspersed trees and shrubbery, he didn’t have a clear shot. He started running and shouting, trying to draw the boar’s attention and gesticulating madly for her to stay down.
“Lady Briannon! Stop!”
Briannon’s face turned up to see him. Her eyes went round with recognition and then shock, and she started scrambling hard up the gulch as if he posed a greater threat than the wild animal still out of her view.
Archer ran harder, his heels kicking up clumps of dirt, his boots and clothes soaked from the mist of the river. His ankle twisted as a protruding root nearly made him fall headfirst into the reeds. Righting himself, he ignored the sharp pain and kept her in his sights. He didn’t miss the terrified look she threw him over her shoulder. She was running straight into the creature’s path, but if she would only stop. Onlylisten. Archer wanted to throttle her almost as much as he wanted to shield her.
Time slowed and came to a standstill as Briannon finished her climb and came face to face with a crazed mother boar defending, Archer could now see, the three piglets behind her. Her mouth froze open with shock—and the sow rushed her with an angry grunt. But what shockedhimwas the way she stood fierce, her back ramrod straight, and then pulled something from the belt tied around those indecent breeches. A cracking shot rang out. The sow crumpled to a dead stop not five yards in front of her.
Archer felt his breath leave his body in a wild rush of astonishment. A pistol. The woman had been carrying apistol. He stared at her, half impressed. The other half, surprisingly aroused.
Briannon, though covered in mud, seemed to be unharmed. The fury he’d felt before returned in full force as he made it to her side in several brisk, painful strides. His ankle throbbed something fierce.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” he demanded, grasping her arm. “Are you injured?”
“Unhand me,” she responded, not meeting his eyes. “I am fine. My horse spooked, probably by that beast, and threw me.”
“Where is your horse?” Archer asked, searching for anything to distract him from the sight of her covered in dirt. Oddly enough, even with his vast experience with women dressed in sumptuous ball gowns to transparent peignoirs, the sight of Lady Briannon in a mud-splattered white cotton shirt and men’s breeches, pistol in hand, made his pulse accelerate and his groin tighten. Archer swore under his breath, furious at his body’s unexpected—and unwelcome—response.
“Apollo! Where are you?” Briannon whistled a short note, and within moments a fine-looking Hanoverian trotted out of the bushes. “Oh, you sweet thing,” Briannon murmured, dropping her pistol to the ground and running her hands down the horse’s flanks, checking for signs of injury. The horse’s ears flicked nervously toward Archer, but it dipped its velvet nose into its mistress’s palm. Unmindful of her present company, Briannon bent over to check Apollo’s hooves. Archer’s breath ground to a pained halt as her breeches pulled tight over her backside.
Archer looked away and swallowed hard, focusing on the corpse of the boar she had so luckily dispatched. His brows shot to his hairline as he studied the bullet wound. It was right between the boar’s eyes. A precise shot, not a lucky one at all. Once more, she’d surprised him.
