Page 24 of My Hellion, My Heart
“Ah,” she sighed. “Now I see.”
“See what?”
Her teasing smile caught him by surprise. “How you stay so physically fit if indeed you do eat your sorrows as you’ve confessed to doing.”
To his even greater surprise, Henry found himself smiling and bantering back. “And what is your secret, then?”
“Why dancing, of course.” She flung her head back, staring to the sky. “And riding. Though neither of those sound as exciting as this course of yours. Will you show it to me?”
He was about to say yes when reason latched onto the heels of his impulse.
“Perhaps,” he replied stiffly. Taking a woman on the course would be dangerous. He could not be responsible for broken bones or anyone’s death. Before his best friend, John’s, passing two years prior, he’d broken his arm on the first half mile of the course, narrowly missing breaking his neck instead. No, it would not be a place for anyone bar him, especially not any gently bred young woman, not even one as adventurous as the lady beside him.
Irina stayed quiet a moment, and when she spoke again, her tone had turned playful. “Do you see the curve in the road ahead? If I beat you to it, you will agree to show me the course.”
Henry couldn’t help smiling at her tenacity. And her competitive spirit. The curve was a good four hundred yards or more in the distance, the canopy overhead tangled with what appeared to be bare tree branches.
“And if you lose?” Henry asked, eyeing her sideways.
“Name the forfeit,” she said, meeting his glance and raising one brow in challenge.
He shifted in his saddle, trying not to sink to new depths while imagining all manner of things he might take from her. Her offering was innocent, but his thoughts were decidedly not.
“You’ll show me your skill with a sword,” he said, recalling her offer on the balcony moments before she’d kissed him. “Do you require a head start, my lady?”
Her full lips broke into a wide grin. It tugged at him, hard. Henry’s mouth was still slowly forming his return grin when Irina slapped her reins and took off in a lurch. “Head starts are for amateurs!”
Henry’s reflexes sprang into gear, and he dug his heels in, urging his mount forward. He shot past the barouche, the shades of which were drawn, his mother hopefully ignorant to their race, and quickly caught up with Irina’s horse. She was laughing, and when she saw him, gave a little squeal of delight before speeding up. She had skill on her side and the youth and speed of one of the finest riding horses from his stables, but he had the steady grace and strength of his trusted six-year-old Arabian—and an objective. He wanted to see her swinging a sword, and he most certainly did not want to share his dangerous obstacle course with her. Knowing her propensity for danger, she’d likely try to run it.
“I cannot wait to see your secret course,” she shouted breathlessly to him, leaning low over her mount’s neck, her thighs gripping the saddle.
He was distracted for an instant at the sight of her trim legs encased in those buckskin breeches as she rose in the stirrups, catching a healthy eyeful of the shapely backside he’d worried over earlier.Lucky horse, he thought and felt an immediate stirring of lust in his groin. Henry shook his head, uttering a growl of laughter. He’d lose the raceandhis dignity if he lost his concentration because of an ill-timed erection. Still, the sight of her braced on that horse was nothing short of spectacular.
His horse nosed past hers, the curve in the road fast approaching as their mounts rode hard toward it. Irina’s hat remained pinned to her head, though from the corner of his eye, he saw her hair streaming behind her in long, undulating waves. He’d lost his own hat somewhere, though he was certain Billings, his carriage driver, would stop to retrieve it.
Movement along the branches that crisscrossed above the curve in the road drew Henry’s eyes away from Irina’s flowing hair. Blurred streaks of reddish gray fur were scurrying along the branches—a pair of squirrels. They screeched violently in their mating chase, causing the bare, withered-looking branches to sway. A third squirrel dropped from a higher branch, landing upon the other two.
Henry heard the deep crack of wood above the panting horses and their pounding hooves. Somehow, it was louder than Irina’s laughter and the slap of her swallowtail riding coat in the wind. Time slowed as he saw the squirrels scattering fast, leaping upon a safe branch as the one they’d been on began to fall. The branch itself, so much larger now that he really saw it, seemed to fall at an impossibly slow speed. Henry’s eyes and mind quickly worked in tandem to calculate where he and Irina would be when the thick tree limb landed in the middle of the road.
The answer slammed into him:they would be directly below it.
“Stop!” he shouted, but knew the rushing wind coursing past her ears had muffled his shout.
There wasn’t time to reach for her reins and pull her to a stop. He pushed his mount forward just enough to come alongside hers as they crested the bend. And then he threw himself to the side, falling off his horse and into Irina’s. She screamed as he hooked her with his arm and pulled her from her saddle. He fell, back first, toward the hard-packed road and braced himself for the collision, cradling Irina best he could with his arms and chest. They hit, the ground pummeling the air from Henry’s lungs.
His head knocked off the dirt, and his ears started to ring. The world went dark and silent. The pain lancing through Henry’s back and ribs, along his arms and legs, cut through the high-pitched bells in his ears and became a horrendous cry of anguish.
The screaming continued, the caterwauling unbearable. Mean laughter, men shouting in his ear. Words he didn’t understand, and some he did. Threats he knew would be fulfilled. A gunshot. A bullet striking the cold, damp stone wall Henry was chained to. A piece of rock exploding and burrowing into his cheek. He couldn’t move. His hands were chained, his bare feet in pure agony from where they were weighted down in a bucket of ice and freezing water.
The images rushed at him, piling on top of him, drowning him. He’d never get away. He’d die here. He’d die a prisoner.
“Henry?”
A voice reached for him in the dark, dank cell where he lay, caught in the monstrous pit of his memories.
“Henry, open your eyes. It’s me.”
The voice grew louder, and he grasped for it. He heaved for air, and the rotten stink of excrement and blood was becoming the sweet scent of tea roses.
