Seduced in September Page 3

  There’s nothing untoward there. Nothing at all.

  Except that there was—horses moved toward the stall doors and nickered at her in greeting, their warm breaths moving across her hand, the whiskers on their muzzles sometime even tickling her fingers. She held herself very still and commanded herself not to flinch each time it happened. They were only horses and she mustn’t frighten them by jumping away. They wouldn’t hurt her and there was nothing else here.

  Nothing at all.

  “Who’s there?”

  She and the dog yelped in unison, she because she was so frightened and the dog because she’d squeezed it too tightly. Her heart jumped into her throat and her pulse slammed against her skin.

  There was something.

  Or someone.

  A low growl came from within the darkness.

  Oh God, had she stumbled on a thief?

  All of her went to stone as she prayed that the man would move on, wouldn’t notice her or the dog, wouldn’t grab her and—

  Light flared as a lamp was lit.

  Too late.

  The lamp was raised high, the beam of its light traveling across a lean, strong form to stop on a face she knew too well.

  Mr. Coyne.

  “Miss Vere?” He frowned. “What are you doing here?”

  She released every bit of breath in her lungs. It was only him.

  She stiffened again. It was him. Of all the people to be lurking in the stables in the dark…

  “Mr. Coyne.” Her voice still held a few tremors. “I only came to return the puppy.” She lifted the offending creature. “Thomas snuck it into his room and then forgot about it.”

  Jock growled as she lifted her arm, at his master’s side as usual.

  “Enough of that,” Mr. Coyne ordered his dog. He came forward and scooped the puppy out of her arms, brushing against her breasts as he did. Her nipples went as tight as the rest of her, her entire body standing at attention for him. Thank goodness for her heavy cloak.

  Mr. Coyne disappeared into the stall with the dogs, happy yips greeting him. He took the lamp, leaving her alone in the dark of the breezeway with his dog. She pulled her cloak about her, trying to school her body back to composure.

  He came back, shutting the stall behind him and raising the lamp to study her. “You ought to have sent a footman with the dog. It’s much too cold out for you.” He looked her up and down and her fingers twitched with the urge pull her cloak even tighter and seal herself from his gaze. “At least you’re bundled up.”

  He wasn’t though. His coat was off, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his neckcloth gone—just as undressed as he’d been earlier.

  And she was alone with him in the dark. She shivered, only partly from the cold.

  Time to leave, to escape to the safety of the house. “Thank you.” As brisk as the night air surrounding them. “And now I’ll—“

  “Why did you come?”

  She halted mid-turn, the heavy intent in his question making her stumble. “Because the dog couldn’t stay in the house.” Uncertainty threaded her words, although that was a perfectly legitimate reason.

  “No.” He pounced on her unease. “Why you? Why not hand the dog off to a footman?”

  Did he know? Could he see, behind her veneer of Englishness, the heat in her veins that thrummed whenever he touched her? Spoke to her?

  Of course he couldn’t. That was fancifulness.

  “It was simpler to do it myself. And the night air is very… bracing.” It was frigid actually—her breath made little puffs of white.

  “Huh.” Such a rude noise of disbelief from him.

  She really ought to be leaving. But she remained rooted where she was, the silence between them filled with her cold breaths.

  “Why are you out here?” Might as well turn the question back on him. “You must be frozen without a coat.” All that bare skin around his neck and wrists, exposed to the night air like that…

  His smile was slow and sly, the lamplight gilding his gleaming teeth. “Worried I’ll catch cold?”

  Her own skin broke out in gooseflesh. Thank God he couldn’t see. “Thomas would be most sad if you took ill and his lessons discontinued.” There, that was what she ought to be aiming for, that air of disdain.

  “And you, Miss Vere?” His voice went low, hot. Her disdain was nothing to him. Or a spur, perhaps. “Would you miss our lessons?”

  Her ears burned. He knew the answer to that, knew how much she despised the lessons and his mockery. She’d always been so cool, so correct—he had to know.

  He knows. He knows what’s in your secret heart, what you imagine when you’re alone, your hands running over your bare skin—

  Enough. She had to leave. “No. I wouldn’t.” The lift of her chin sliced through the darkness between them.

  He lowered the lamp, so she couldn’t see if he was disappointed by that. “I was going through the records in the stud book.”

  “You can read?” She set her hand across her mouth, but it was too late.

  “And write.” Oh, he was laughing at her, the wretch. She supposed she deserved it though. “A hedge school isn’t as fine as your schoolroom, but it did the trick.”

  “Oh.” It was unusual for a man like himself to be able to read, but not unheard of. “Do you have many records to keep?”

  He laughed out loud now. “Have you no idea of how a stable is run? We’ve more horses here than simply Dove. There are the pleasure mounts for the ladies, the hunters for the gentlemen, the cold bloods for the farm work, the carriage horses—and then there are the race horses.” He set the lamp on the hard packed dirt of the stable floor, so that she could only see his legs. “They all need to be fed, shod, bred when the mares are in season”—his voice went dark—“and with this failed harvest…”

  Lack of a summer meant a lack of a harvest. And no harvest meant no food… “But there are peas and barley and Cook tells me that beef is cheaper than she’s ever seen.” Which explained Cook serving them that beef stew as often as she could.

  “And does a horse eat beef? Beef is cheap because the hay crop is entirely spoilt and farmers won’t be able to feed their cattle this winter. All these horses must eat through the winter, same as all the people on this estate.” There was bitter melancholy in his tone, as if he were already seeing that hard winter on them, the people hollow cheeked, and the horses—

  “What will you do?” He was correct—a horse couldn’t eat beef. And if there was no hay, the horses would starve. Her heart twisted. For all that she disliked the creatures, she hated to think of them suffering.

  “Depends on what the new duke wishes. If he has the funds, we can buy hay from elsewhere, although it’ll be a pretty penny. But if he doesn’t want to spend that much, or doesn’t have the money…” She heard the rustle of his shrug in the darkness. “Well, if he doesn’t want to keep the racing stock, York might take them.”

  “The prince?”

  “The same.”

  He spoke as if he’d met the Duke of York, perhaps had even spoken with the man. “But you don’t wish to sell the racing stock.” He hadn’t mentioned any of the other horses, only the racing stock. Which meant they were foremost in his concerns.

  “Foolish of me, perhaps, but no, I don’t.” The melancholy was gone, replaced by resignation. She imagined those broad shoulders of his would be slumped, if she could have seen him. “We’ve bred some fine colts here, from the line of Eclipse himself. And trained them to win at any course you’d set them at, against any horse you’d put next to them. Be a shame to lose them.” He shifted his feet, one toe dragging across the dirt.

  “We?” There was something deeper in his tone, something more personal when he spoke of those colts.

  “Well…” His toe pulled backward, away from the circle of light and into the shadows. The motion reminded her of Thomas. “Perhaps I did more to breed those colts than the duke. But he put up the funds.”

  She didn’t know much about the
business. “I suppose breeding horses isn’t for those short of money.”

  He squared his stance. “No. Hay is dear. If prices rise again, the steward won’t have enough to buy hay for all these animals and we’ll have to sell. But if the new duke is wealthy enough and loves the horses enough, he’ll pay for hay to be shipped in. At any price.”

  The new duke. They were all pinning their hopes on him. Her, Thomas, Mr. Coyne, the horses, the entire estate: this unknown man held so many fates in his hands.

  “If you had to sell some horses? Which would you choose?” It would come to that if this duke remained missing. She didn’t want to think of what might happen to her or Thomas. Better to think of the horses going on to new homes.

  “That’s easy enough: that pair of gray carriage horses. Bought those for the duchess—a perfectly matched set of grays,” he said in an uncanny imitation of the old duke, “never mind that Castor is vicious as he is stupid and Pollux has problems with his stifles.”

  She didn’t know what stifles were, but they sounded bad. “I didn’t think that there were any horses you didn’t like.”

  “Horses are the same as people, with their own quirks and ways of doing things. Castor’s way of doing things involves biting anyone who comes within reach.”

  She covered her smile out of old habit. He mustn’t see that she found him amusing. “Can you break him of it?”

  “Been trying, but he’s stubborn. I’d imagine you’ve had a few students like that.”

  Thomas was her first student, and he wasn’t stubborn at all. “Thomas is well behaved,” she said. “He’s never bitten me.”

  His laugh was a rich heady thing, which put her in mind of the glasses of sherry she’d have after dinner with Mrs. Fairfield. Only one or two sips, just enough to warm Adele’s blood and make her head light on her neck.

  His laugh did that to her as well. A dangerous thing, his laugh. And it hit her—they were standing together in the dark, chatting companionably. Why, she almost liked him like this, when he wasn’t forcing her onto the back of a horse and making sly comments.

  She wouldn’t think about his hands running across her body. Not here in the dark with him, his laugh making her warm from the inside out.

  “Shall I show you my favorite horse?” he offered. “The last one I’d ever sell, although I’d be a sentimental fool to keep her.”

  “Yes.” It was his laugh that did it, kept her tipsy enough to agree to this fool thing. This most improper thing.

  “Come along.” He lifted the lamp, beckoned her forward.

  They went deeper into the dark of the breezeway, past a room with faint light coming from the open door. “My office,” he explained. She wondered why she hadn’t seen the light before—although it was very dim. How could he even see with the lamp that low?

  As they went past the stalls, the horses stretched their necks over the doors to greet Mr. Coyne, whuffling into his outstretched hand. He murmured to each and every one, taking a moment to touch them. He might prefer his racing steeds, but he clearly knew and loved them all.

  He lifted the lamp before a stall near the end of the breezeway, the moonlight silvering the air as it reached for them. He made a sweet chirping noise, and a delicate muzzle with flaring nostrils appeared, then a finely molded head with large, liquid eyes, set high on a noble neck.

  The horse breathed deeply into Mr. Coyne’s cupped hand, almost as if saying hello. The horse’s ears twitched, back, then forward, then back again, the tips of them as gently curved as the horse’s neck was.

  This was no plodding Dove. This creature was a desert wind made flesh.

  “Hello, Roxalena,” Mr. Coyne whispered to the horse. “I do wish I had an apple for you.”

  The apple crop had failed back in spring, the buds freezing on the trees before they’d flowered. Adele missed apples almost as much as she missed decent bread.

  “Roxalena? Did you name her that?” she asked.

  “Yes. She’s from the East—I thought she ought to have a name from there as well.”

  It suited the horse perfectly. She was definitely the mount an empress would ride.

  “Does she always wear such a thick blanket?” The other horses had been blanketed, but none so heavy as Roxalena’s.

  “In the winter, yes. She’s a creature of the desert. She’s never learned to grow a coat like our English horses.”

  Adele had learned to grow an English coat. She’d had no one putting a blanket on her in the cold—she’d had to survive for herself. “So that’s why it would be foolish to keep her,” she said. “She doesn’t belong here.”

  “No.” His hand made slow sweeps across the horse’s neck, Roxalena curving into his touch. “But she’s beautiful—a most beautiful creature—so I’ll do my damnedest to keep her.”

  He was a sentimental fool. No duke, no money for hay, and the possibility the horse might starve… and still, he’d save her. Because she was beautiful.

  Adele had had such sentiments sanded out of her character long ago. Too bad for him that he clung to them.

  She watched his hand slide along the mare’s neck, so gentle. So… adoring. Perhaps not so bad for the horse though, that he’d fight to save her.

  “Tell me, Miss Vere.” His tone was as softly caressing as the motion of his hand. “What will you try to save in the end?”

  “The end? What do you mean?” A stiffness began to creep through her limbs.

  His hand stilled. “I mean this summer that isn’t one at all. Don’t tell me you haven’t been paying any attention. The people going hungry, the marchers coming through.” The stiffness locked her joints, chilled her skin. “They’ll start rioting quick enough. Right about when they start to starve.” There was no more gentleness in him—only flinty resolve.

  She swallowed hard. This was radicalism. She could not hear this. She must not. What did he mean by saying such things to her? She… she was no radical. She wasn’t.

  “You shouldn’t say such things.” As cold as the puffs of white her breath made as it left her mouth.

  “Why not? They’re true.” Clearly he thought her protests blind foolishness.

  “You cannot say such things.” Her heart was loud in her ears as she backed away. He had to stop. She could not be tainted with such talk. Didn’t he understand? Didn’t he know?

  “Miss Vere.” Now he was chiding. “You see. You know.”

  No, she did not. She would not. That was radicalism, it was rebellion—and she was not those things.

  She must be a proper English governess. It was all she could be if she meant to survive alone.

  “I’ve seen it.” He went on, taking a step toward her, his gaze fervent. “In your eyes. Your eyes, they speak—they say—”

  “No.” She let her chin slice between them again, cutting off his protests. She clutched her cloak tighter to her, chills breaking out across her skin. “No.”

  She would not hear what her eyes said, because they said nothing. She’d made so sure that they said nothing, that none of her baser self shone through.

  If he tried to stop her headlong flight, she did not see. All she saw was darkness as she stumbled through the breezeway, smashing into a wall at one point and spooking the horse on the other side. Its hooves banged hard against the wall, louder than the pounding of her feet as she ran.

  The weak light of the moon greeted her as she burst out of the stables, the clouds mercifully cleared from its face.

  A sign. She ran the rest of the way toward the house, feet thudding, knees churning, lest her luck turn.

  She never once looked back to see if he pursued.

  Chapter Three

  Adele pushed open the door to her tiny room, her head heavy on her neck. It had been raining all day—no riding lessons for her or Thomas—and the boy had been nothing but nervous energy, trapped inside as they were. It had taken all her skill to keep him occupied.

  Which didn’t mean that she hadn’t spent a great deal of time
mulling over Mr. Coyne’s behavior. In addition to the hours she’d spent last night turning it over and over again in her mind after leaving him.

  No matter which facet she examined, his behavior didn’t make sense—which didn’t keep her from examining it once more, to see if there was something she’d missed.

  Dinner had been eaten—beef and peas and barley stew again, with that terrible bread—Thomas was asleep in his bed, and she had her time and her thoughts to herself as she made her way back to her room. She’d give no more of her attention to Mr. Coyne. Whatever he’d meant by his words, it must have been nothing good. She’d read something improving instead.

  She nodded her resolve as she opened the door and then froze.

  A package was on her bed, right in the middle of it, right where she could never miss it.

  She clutched at the doorknob, her palms going clammy. People didn’t leave her packages. She was friendly enough with the cook, and the housekeeper, and the maids, but not enough to receive surprise gifts.

  Adele stared at it for a long moment, but it didn’t move. It was probably perfectly innocuous. Although people didn’t secretly leave innocuous things on beds. They left illicit things.

  There was only one person who’d be leaving her illicit things: the same man who’d said illicit things to her last night.

  She’d told him that she wouldn’t miss their lessons, not a bit, but today had proved her a liar. Her ribs had tingled at odd moments, just as they did when his hands clasped them. And the blue of a robin’s egg in one of Thomas’s schoolbooks had reminded her of Mr. Coyne’s eyes.

  It only went to prove how defective her character remained, even after all of Mrs. Fairfield’s instruction, that she noted those bits of him when she didn’t see him.

  He’d meant to tempt her into something last night and perhaps now with this package. But what?

  If he meant to seduce her, he was going about it all wrong. A man didn’t speak of sedition and leave strange packages in secret to woo someone. He simply kissed the girl. At least, Adele thought that ought to happen in a proper seduction, since that was what happened in her imaginings of him. Kisses, not strange offerings.