Raven's Bride (8 page)

He had bought her the horse, of course, but that had been on a whim—a reaction to the clear affection she had shown the animal in the horse market. An apology, too, for the shame and humiliation that had ended the day for her. He ought to have kept a closer eye on his pretty, young cousin. Melcott was insufficient as an escort. He was too old and infirm to protect Anna as she needed to be protected.

He would never make that mistake again. He would keep as close a watch on her as he did on his own sister. Closer, in fact, as Charlotte was more wise to the ways of the world and better able to look after herself than Anna was. He would keep as close an eye on her as her father, a strict Calvanist minister, would have done.

He’d never met his late uncle, but he’d always assumed that he was a forbidding, beetle-browed Puritan with a stentorian voice and an unhealthy obsession with hellfire and damnation. He couldn’t reconcile that image of his uncle with the fact that his fun-loving Aunt Lydia had fallen deeply in love and eloped with him. His uncle must have differed from the general mould.

Come to think of it, he wondered how strict Calvanists ever managed to get married at all. The ones he knew were so dour and unromantic. Or how the daughters ever escaped their father’s watchful eyes for long enough to be courted. He would wager a thousand pounds that Anna hadn’t been courted before. Mr. Woodleigh must have been a real terror to have kept her suitors away. He owed her father his thanks for keeping the local lads at a distance, until he had the chance to woo her for himself.

Of course, he didn’t want to marry Anna, or even to seriously court her. He just wanted her to look on him with some favor. Maybe even to have her fall just a little bit in love with him. Enough so he could steal a kiss or two from her sweet lips…

They had reached the river now, and he turned their horses to head upstream. After a couple more minutes walking he reached the place he had been heading for, where a grassy bank dotted with wildflowers sloped gently up from a quiet pool in the river.

As a boy, he had come here often with his father to fish. Fat eels lurked under the bank, sliding their slippery bodies through the shallows to be caught in his net. Brown speckled trout hid by the rocks, and could often be tempted out with the lure of a fat worm wriggling on a hook. It was still his favorite place on the whole of the estate, and the spot he came to whenever he wanted some peace from the hustle of the world outside.

He slipped down from his horse, flung the reins over the branch of a weeping willow, and held out his arms to Anna. “Come. I will lift you down for a bit.”

Anna slipped her leg off the pommel of her saddle and slipped into his arms.

In his effort to avoid the temptation of touching her, he set her down so quickly she lost her balance and sat on the grass with a cry of pain.

Instantly he fell to his knees at her side. “Anna, are you hurt?”

She took his arm and clambered awkwardly to her feet again. “Yes, I
am
hurt,” she muttered, as she rubbed her backside, a rueful expression on her face. “If I had known what riding a horse really felt like, I would have stayed abed this morning like Charlotte. My cousin has more sense than the two of us together.”

He couldn’t help grinning at the pained look on her face. “It gets easier.”

She hobbled gingerly a few steps towards a patch of shade and lowered herself gently to the ground, grimacing as she did so. “Good. Or I fear that you would have wasted your money on Beauty. I do not know if I shall ever be able to walk properly again, let alone get on top of that beast of torture.”

“You’ll get used to it.” He tossed Beauty’s reins over another branch of the willow, before taking a package of food out of his saddlebag. “I had Cook pack us a bite to eat. Are you hungry?”

Her stomach growled in response to his question, and the tips of her ears turned pink with embarrassment. “I didn’t stop to break my fast,” she confessed. “I wanted to learn how to ride Beauty as soon as ever I could.”

He swung his legs over a fallen log and unwrapped the parcel. “Bread, cheese, a hunk of cold beef and some of my favorite sweet orange cakes. What do you want?”

“Everything.”

He tore a hunk off the loaf of bread, cut a wedge of cheese and a large slice of beef, placed them all on a large leaf he plucked from a nearby bush, added a sprinkling of daisies for decoration, and handed the makeshift plate to her with a flourish. “My lady’s meal is served.”

The bread was fresh-baked and the cheese moist and full-flavored. The both ate without speaking for some minutes. When they had finished, he gathered the remnants of their feast and stowed it away in the saddlebag.

“Are you ready to ride back again?”

Anna groaned audibly and lay back on the grass. “I don’t want to move. I hurt all over.”

He could always offer to rub her legs to make them feel better, but he wasn’t sure that he could bear it if she were to accept.

Instead of courting danger, he lay back on the soft cushion of grass in his turn, a safe distance from his cousin. “I’m in no hurry.”

The warmth of the sun was starting to make itself felt. Lying there, listening to the soft murmur of the water as it flowed by and the melancholy chirping of crickets as they sang to each other, and watching the clouds change shape over head, he felt truly at peace with the world. He needed only a fishing rod and a handful of worms to make his happiness complete.

Lulled by the serenity of the scene, and no doubt tired from her early start and the unaccustomed exercise, Anna lay quietly in the grass. He listened as her breathing became softer and more regular, until she fell quite asleep. Turning on his side, he watched her as her breast rose and fell with each breath.

He gave a wry grin. No woman had ever fallen asleep on him before. Not unless he had previously tired her out in a much more pleasurable form of exercise than horseback riding…

He felt his body tightening and forced his mind to think of other matters. Crop rotation, he decided desperately, his eyes still glued to her breasts. He would plan out next year’s crop rotation. The fields growing peas he would leave fallow next year, and instead he’d grow barley in the wheat field and rye in the fields that he’d left fallow this season. Or should he plant the seed for a root crop there instead…

It was no use. Even thinking about his crops wouldn’t work to turn his mind away from thoughts of his cousin. He knew what kind of seed he ached to be planting, and it didn’t have anything to do with root crops.

The sound of footsteps on the riverbank forced him to drag his eyes away from his cousin. Hurriedly he stood up, brushing away the grass from the back of his breeches and jacket. His uncle, Melcott, armed with a fishing rod, had settled down on the bank. He looked up at Lord Ravensbourne’s hallo.

“Tom, what brings you out of bed so early in the morning?” Then his gaze fell on the pair of horses tethered to the branches of the weeping willow, and his eyes narrowed and his face grew grim. “Or should I say
who
brings you out of bed this early? Tom, Tom, I had thought better of you. Remember, you are not in the City now. You should leave your whorish ways behind you in that pit of filth and corruption.”

Lord Ravensbourne clenched his fists in anger at his uncle’s words, then slowly forced himself to unclench them again. His uncle tried his best to be a Godly man, no doubt, and meant well. It wasn’t Melcott’s fault Lord Ravensbourne found his hectoring tones patronizing and offensive.

“I have been teaching my cousin how to ride,” he said, looking down at his uncle and spitting out the words between his clenched teeth.

If anything, Melcott’s face grew blacker. “Without any escort?”

“Why should I need an escort? Did you think I would harm her in any way?”

“She is a woman, and you are but a man. All women are temptresses by nature. They are born of Eve, and inherit Eve’s tendencies to prove the ruin of all mankind.”

“She is but a girl…”

“And you are but a man. But where is she?”

Ravensbourne gestured behind him. “Asleep on the bank.”

Melcott clambered stiffly up the bank. His face softened when he saw the sleeping figure. “She is indeed beautiful,” he whispered, more to himself than to Lord Ravensbourne. “Who would believe that in such an innocent form lies a serpent with fangs ready to strike? Who would believe that such beauty is made by the Devil as snare to catch the souls of men? And what man,” he said, more loudly this time, and fixing his nephew with a baleful glare, “would rush headlong into that snare, his eyes open, knowing full well the Devil is after him, but, like a moth to a flame, too weak in mind and body to resist the lure that will shrivel him to his very soul?”

And with one parting glance at Anna’s sleeping form, he picked up his rod and stomped away up the river.

Anna woke, feeling stiffer and more sore than she ever had in her life before. She was lying on the cold, lumpy ground, a rock was poking into the small of her back, and her backside and thighs felt as though they had been beaten black and blue.

Suddenly a shadow came between her and the sun. “Feeling refreshed from your little nap?”

Lord Ravensbourne was standing above her, his brown eyes laughing at her.

“Perfectly,” she lied, as she forced herself to sit. Her thigh muscles screamed in protest, and she had to bite down hard on her lip to stop herself whimpering from the pain.

“Then I think it is time we returned home again, so your mother doesn’t worry about you.” Lord Ravensbourne brought Beauty around to her side. “Now, to repeat your first lesson. Do you remember how to mount?”

Anna looked at the stirrup and willed her leg to lift itself, but it was no good. She couldn’t manage to move it more than a hand’s breadth above the ground. “I can’t get on.”

“Right foot in the stirrup and then swing your body over,” he instructed her in a helpful tone.

She tried again. Her legs simply refused to move. “I can’t do it,” she wailed in dismay. “My legs won’t move.”

“Then, my dear cousin, there is no help for it. We will have to practice lesson number two. How to look graceful and prettily give thanks to your cousin for lifting you onto your horse.”

Anna felt herself swung in the air and held there for a moment. Her chest was pressed against Lord Ravensbourne’s. Their eyes met and held. She saw his need for her in his gaze, but to her surprise, it no longer frightened her. He was her guardian angel. She wanted him to see her as a woman. As a beautiful woman.

His gaze was hot and steady. She didn’t look away. Slowly, he bent his head towards her. She held her breath and waited for the touch of his mouth on hers.

His lips approached hers, and a small moan of anticipation escaped her.

That small sound broke the spell that held them both captive. The moment, which had seemed to last forever, was gone as quickly as it had come.

Before she knew what had happened, she was sitting on Beauty, with nothing but the dark look in Lord Ravensbourne’s eyes to remind her of what had passed between them.

“Can you ride?” His voice was curt, and he avoided her eyes.

She nodded her head, not trusting her voice to stay steady.

Lord Ravensbourne didn’t speak again until they were back at the stables. He lifted her off her horse again, taking painful care not to touch her for a moment longer than necessary. She refused his offer of an escort back to the dower house. He bid her goodbye with a nod and strode into the stables to see to the horses, whistling as he went.

Anna was glad of the pain in her aching muscles as she limped back to the dower house. It took her mind away from the confusing sensations in her heart.

Her cousin had nearly succumbed to a impulse planted in his mind by the Devil—that snarer of men’s souls—and kissed her. What was worse was that she had wanted him to yield to temptation.

He had drawn back into safety the moment before their lips would have met. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Lord Ravensbourne drove his fist into the stable wall and heard his knuckles crack before the pain reached him. He slammed his fist into the wall a second time, and a third, taking a perverse pleasure in the agony it caused him. He deserved to hurt. He should be cracking open his head, not just bruising his knuckles.

Anna was his cousin and under his protection. His behavior towards her was inexcusable. Instead of protecting her, he was preying on her.

If she hadn’t made that noise of protest, he would have kissed her, taking her frightened immobility and shock for consent.

His actions made him no better than the men in the marketplace. The thought disgusted him.

He would be a proper guardian to her, he vowed to himself, and treat her as he would his own sister. Living at court, as Charlotte had done for a time, might be the best for Anna’s prospects, but he would not petition the king to make her one of Queen Catharine’s waiting women, as Charlotte had been. Charlotte had been happy there for a season, but her wealth commanded respect in a court in which gold reigned supreme, and she was plenty bold enough to discourage those who would have taken advantage of her youth and inexperience. Anna was a different matter. She was too innocent to survive among the gloriously-plumaged but vicious birds of prey who inhabited the court.