Chapter 11

CHAPTER11

“This forest is very beautiful,” Emma said, swaying seductively with every motion of the mare beneath her.

Silas had done his best to concentrate on what lay ahead for the past twenty minutes, but now and then he could not resist casting her a sideways glance to appreciate that undulation of her exemplary figure. It was more painful not to look.

“Is it?” he replied.

With every clipped response, he could sense her becoming more infuriated. Secretly, he had placed a wager with himself as to when she would snap and yell at him, but she had already endured past the ten minutes upon which he had bet. It was not intended as an unkind game, but more of a test of her patience; she would need it if she was to be married to him.

“It is a wonder you invited me to ride with you at all, since you seem ill-inclined to actually converse with me,” she muttered, still not at breaking point, but edging nearer. “Is it because of the time you have been away from society? Did you lose your memory of how to behave in social situations?”

Ice shot up his spine, his body freezing rigid. “Pardon?”

“I suspect that is why you acted as you did by the stables,” she grumbled, flustered. “In your absence, you have forgotten what is proper and what is not.”

“What do you know of my absence?” he half-snarled in reply, too annoyed to take any pleasure in the embarrassed pink that dusted her cheeks.

“Did you think I had not heard? It is society’s greatest mystery. Indeed, even my godmother does not know where you went, and there is almost nothing she does not know. I am surprised she has not yet cornered you and interrogated you for the answer!” Irritation flared in Emma’s voice, but it was nothing compared to the anger simmering in Silas’s veins, thawing his locked bones and muscles.

He tightened his grip on the reins, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, just as Duncan had taught him. “I would not have expected you to be interested in gossip, Lady Emma.”

“Should I not know where you have been if I am to consider marrying you?” she taunted, and he could not deny that she made an excellent point.

Before Silas could conjure up a suitably vague response, a deafening crack shot through the forest, like a pistol firing. A moment later, a blur of bronze and white barreled through the trees to Emma’s opposite side, the deer leaping right in front of her mare.

The horse reared in fright and Silas forgot his grievance, turning his stallion sharply. Close enough to Emma, he lunged out of the saddle to grasp her mare’s reins with one hand, while his other hand seized the back of her riding jacket so she would not fall.

But as the mare set her hooves back on the mossy earth, her eyes wild and rolling, nickering frantically, Silas knew what was going to happen before it did. Thinking fast, he dropped the reins, slipped his arm all the way around Emma’s narrow waist, and hauled her over to the safety of his own saddle.

Not a moment too soon, either, as her mare bolted.

Legs draped over his, and seated in a rather precarious position between his thighs, Emma heaved out breath after breath. All the while, he held her tight, feeling the swelling and flattening of her ribs against his palm. She was drained of color in every part of her face save her lips, which had turned a bitten, berry red, as if all the blood had rushed there in her alarm.

He longed to kiss her again.

The poor thing is terrified. Stop staring at her like a wolf on the prowl. He gave a slight shake of his head, and his concentration had returned to where it was supposed to be—on Emma’s wellbeing.

“I thought… I was going to fall,” she gasped, her hand gripping his forearm.

“You were, but I caught you.”

She peered up at him, nearly as wild-eyed as the mare. “Thank you.”

“It is my pleasure, Emma.” He offered her a rare smile, hoping to soothe her so they would not have to return to the manor so soon. He had not yet shown her the lake, and it seemed a shame to waste the beautiful afternoon just because the horse Luke had bought for their mother was not fit for these forests.

“Did ye hear that?” Duncan’s voice sounded a fair distance behind, where he appeared to be in the midst of his own debacle.

Nora was struggling with the horse she had been given, the youthful, willful creature tossing her head and plodding backwards, generally refusing to obey its rider’s command.

Duncan was trying his best to help, but the horse had clearly decided it was not in the mood to be ridden. Soon enough, it would attempt to buck Nora off too; Silas could see it in the beast’s shuddering muscles and stomping gait.

“Just a deer,” Silas called back.

“Och, I thought it might’ve been a poacher.”

Silas glanced off into the shadows of the trees where the deer had emerged, squinting into the gloom. Was there a poacher hiding there? It would not have been the first time someone had tried to steal a meal or two from his land.

Before his disappearance, he would have pursued them and punished them severely for the brazenness of it. Now, he was more inclined to turn a blind eye, for he had learned what it felt like to be desperately, achingly hungry.

“I’m afraid Miss Jessop cannae continue on,” Duncan said, as they neared. “This mare isnae goin’ to cooperate for much longer.”

Nora pushed her spectacles back to the bridge of her nose. “I think only Peter will tolerate me.”

“Peter? Is that your husband?” Silas quipped.

Emma dared to roll her eyes at him. “Peter is her horse. The name is meant to be ironic.”

“I apologize for ruining the ride,” Nora said, red-cheeked with frustration and, likely, embarrassment.

Seeing the afternoon slipping away from him, Silas said, “It does not have to be the end, if Lady Emma does not wish it to be.” He cast a pointed look at Duncan. “My valet can return with you, Miss Jessop, and saddle you on a more… willing horse, before you rejoin us. In the meantime, Lady Emma and I can search for the mare that she has accidentally lost.”

Nora’s eyes pinched, her mouth pursing. “I do not think that would be appropriate, Your Grace, do you?”

“Whyever not? We are simply searching for a horse, and you will be riding back to us in no time at all. It ought to be a matter of fifteen minutes before you return, if you are quick,” Silas replied casually, knowing precisely what he could do in fifteen minutes. “Of course, it is Lady Emma’s choice.”

Emma’s breathing had not yet settled, her hand still clutched his forearm for dear life. The shock still had her in its pincers, and he knew of one way to get it to loosen its grip: distraction.

“Eyes on me,” he whispered, so quietly that only she would hear it.

She glanced up at him, relief washing across her beautiful face. “I think I would like to find the horse with His Grace,” she said, a moment later. “It is only fair that I recover what I lost.”

He had not been certain she would agree after he had stolen a kiss from her earlier. He found himself pleased by her reply. Very pleased.

“Very well, but we shall be back in fifteen minutes,” Nora grumbled, her spectacles fogging as she puffed a breath upward. It appeared that her desire to get off the willful horse before it threw her was more potent than her worry for her friend’s propriety.

Not that Silas had any intention of doing anything untoward. He was a gentleman, after all, with his most wicked years far, far behind him.

* * *

“I really am not a novice,” Emma said, her tone sullen.

Silas smiled which he was free to do so since she was facing away from him.

“Are we talking about horse riding or something else?”

He had not forgotten how she was almost about to kiss him back, before they had been rudely interrupted at the stables.

“Horse riding, of course!” She gripped the top edge of the saddle and pulled herself forward, as she had been doing for the past ten minutes of their solitary ride, every time the swell of her backside nudged too close to the apex of his thighs. She could not have known how tantalizing it was, to feel the brush of her buttocks, then to have that thrill taken away a moment later.

A marriage of convenience would not need to be dull…

Indeed, she was already proving to be a most welcome distraction. In the hours that she had been in his company, he had only thought of the year of his disappearance a handful of times, rather than every waking moment as he had grown accustomed.

“Could you not walk alongside the horse? I think that is what Nora expected you to do. If she had known you would be riding behind me, she would have insisted on staying,” Emma complained, as Silas’s stallion turned down a faint path through the ancient oaks, the motion sliding her backward despite her efforts.

Silas shrugged. “Nora is not here.”

“No, but I am.”

“It will be slower if I walk.”

“Are we in a hurry?”

Slowly but surely, he had noticed a combative flicker emerging from Emma’s previously shy character. A glimpse of the woman who had knocked into him on the street in Peverley, rather than the repentant, guilt-ridden pariah of society who measured and judged her every action and word.

He liked the livelier, more spirited version better. He preferred the woman who had chosen to flee from mediocrity rather than settling for it.

Your life with me would not be mediocre. It would be whatever you want it to be, for it would be your own.

He did not say this out loud, for he was biding his time. Laying all of his cards out on her first day at Hudson Court would be a novice’s mistake.

“I am in a hurry,” he replied coolly.

“Am I interrupting something more important?”

He smiled. There it was again, that bite in her voice. “No, but your friend did earlier.”

“If you will not behave, I will get down and walk!” she snapped.

“Apologies,” he said, not meaning it in the slightest. “It is my intention to reach the lake long before Duncan and Miss Jessop find their way back to us. That is my hurry.” He lowered his head and leaned forward, his cheek brushing against the soft curls of her raven dark hair. “I want to be the only one to see your reaction.”

“My… reaction?” Her voice faltered.

He slipped his arm around her waist, pulling her closer. “I doubt you will ever have seen a sight more beautiful. I would savor your awe, undisturbed.”

She smacked at his arm. “Unhand me, please.”

“It is safer if I do not,” he replied, inhaling the sweet citrus scent of her hair; the very essence of sun-warmed oranges he had once eaten in Spain. “We are about to gallop, Emma.”

“What do you—” A yelp severed her sentence, as Silas squeezed his thighs against Ajax’s sides and clicked his tongue.

The mighty stallion lurched into a canter that swiftly blurred into a gallop, the powerful beast charging along the barely visible path, kicking up dust and underbrush. Ajax knew these woods well, and as fallen logs and tangles of roots threatened to stall their progress, he sailed over the obstacles, surefooted and certain of where he was heading.

Meanwhile, Emma clung to the muscular forearm that had locked around her waist and settled back into the security of Silas’s chest. Either she no longer cared that her backside was bumping against that intimate part of him, or she was too scared to even think of it.

“I thought you said you were not a novice,” he whispered, gently squeezing the curve of her waist.

“I have… never ridden… so fast!” she gasped. “Certainly not… on a horse so… powerful.”

His mouth twitched, his lips burning with a need to graze the sweep of her neck. An impulse so potent that it took every shred of willpower he possessed not to indulge. “Do you like the way it feels?” he rasped instead.

“It is… it is… it is like… absolute freedom!” she cried out, the sentiment startling Silas. “I have never… experienced anything like it! I feel as if I am… flying!”

He held her tighter, that feverish desire to taste her neck fading into something gentler: a quiet awe of his own, watching Emma enjoy herself, watching that sense of liberation bristle through her and feeling it vibrate into him. And when she threw her arms out wide, tilted her chin up to the sky, and laughed with delirious abandon, he could not resist the smile that teased up the corners of his lips.

There you are—that wild girl who first captured my attention.

Ajax barreled on through the trees, weaving and leaping, until the towering oaks thinned, and a glitter of water could be seen through the trunks. Silas slowed the stallion, wanting Emma to get the full effect of seeing the lake for the first time.

Her gasp was every bit as satisfying as he had hoped.

“Are we still within the grounds of your estate?” she whispered reverently, like they were in a library or cathedral.

“We are.”

“But it is like another world!” she urged, leaning forward in the saddle as if she could not wait to reach those beautiful shores.

“I thought you might like it.”

She twisted around to face him, wide-eyed and grinning. “Like it? It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!”

“As I had guessed it might be.” Gently, he turned her head back toward the view, for his own emotions were too tangled and temperamental to risk gazing into her eyes for too long.

There was a reason that the lake was his favorite spot on the entire estate, if not the entire world. It was bordered by a beach of almost opalescent white pebbles, the water itself crystal clear and of the most beautiful turquoise.

A horseshoe of weeping willows surrounded the far side, trailing delicate fronds that tickled the surface, and the air was so warm and still that it truly felt like an oasis in the middle of the forest. A precious secret, now shared with Emma.

He had sought its calm many, many times since his return from hell.

“Nothing more to say?” he asked, amused.

“I… have no words,” she replied. “None that would do this place any justice.”

He nodded. “Shall we wander closer?”

“Yes, please!” she urged, and immediately sat back, twisting to look at him once more with wariness in her eyes. “Stealing kisses and showing me all of the pretty sights belonging to your estate and title does not mean I will accept your offer, though, Your Grace. You are aware of that, yes?”

He shrugged, parroting the words she had once whispered to him, “We shall see.” With a sly smile, he added, “you do owe me a debt, after all. Do not forget that.”