Chapter 17

CHAPTER17

“Are you letting me win, or has it been an age since you have had a challenger?” Joanna shouted, her heart full with the freedom that riding her horse allowed. Her hair had come loose from the shackles of the pins and slides that held it in place, the strands whipping around her as she urged Pegasus onward.

Edwin said nothing, but he lowered his body, bending closer to the neck of his magnificent stallion. The horse’s powerful strides elongated, the beast charging toward Joanna.

She had to admit, Edwin looked even more handsome when seated in the saddle of his mount. Or, perhaps, that was merely the effect of his tight riding attire, which left almost nothing to her increasingly wild imagination.

His hands were rougher than I expected, she mused as she turned her attention ahead of her, refusing to be beaten by her husband in this race. Being a duke, she had assumed his hands would be soft when she had held them the previous night. Instead, they had the callouses of someone who was accustomed to toiling hard, and though that might have offended some ladies, she had found their roughness rather exciting.

“How would they feel upon my skin?” she whispered to the wind that buffeted her face, smiling shyly at the thought.

You will never find out, her mind swept in with a harsh reminder. He does not want you near him in that manner. The best you can hope for is a friendship.

She had not yet discovered if Edwin had a secret lover who fulfilled his physical needs, nor was she certain she wished to find out. For the time being, she had decided to believe that he was simply uninterested, for at least in that situation, she stood a chance of making him interested.

Not that I mean to encourage him, she told herself sternly, but neither would she be the injured party in the games of an unfaithful husband. No matter what, she would not become her mother or her father, and if that meant exploring the possibilities with her husband, one day in the distant future, then so be it.

Just then, she became aware of a shout on the wind.

“Halt, Joanna!” Edwin yelled, wild-eyed. “Halt!”

“You will not trick me!” she shouted back, grinning.

When the race had begun, she had pointed to a towering oak in the distance as their end point, and she could not have been far from victory. Concentrating on the rhythm of her horse, dipping her body as low as she could in a side-saddle, she looked ahead to the tree she had assigned, and squinted as she realized she no longer knew which tree she had pointed to. From a distance, it had been clearer. Either way, she could not slow now.

“Joanna!” Edwin called again, his voice almost drowned out by the drum of hooves thudding into the sunbaked earth.

But she pressed on, certain that the oak tree would make itself known, for it had been a good height taller than its surrounding trees.

“Joanna, please!” Edwin’s desperate cry sent a shiver down her spine.

She glanced back over her shoulder, wondering if she had mistaken the situation. He was riding like a madman, urging Bellerophon on as fast as the beast would go.

“Ahead of you!” Edwin bellowed.

Joanna twisted sharply around, just in time to see the ground ending abruptly. Dense thickets had hidden the sudden drop from view, and she was charging straight toward that perilous edge.

Thinking quickly, she pulled hard to the left. Pegasus followed the instruction, veering to the side with a soft nicker of irritation. Had he been a smaller, weaker horse, he might not have made the turn, but with his densely packed muscle, he managed it with relative ease, his thick hide grazing the deceptive bushes as they altered course.

A few moments later, Joanna pulled gently on the reins to slow her mount, giving Edwin time to catch up as she fought to steady her breathing.

“What were you thinking?” Edwin barked. “Did you not hear me calling to you? Are you so reckless that you would ignore me? Your father said you were wayward, but I thought you had some sense. Did you not realize you had strayed off course?”

Joanna glared at him, humiliated twofold. Firstly, by not realizing she was headed in the wrong direction. Secondly, by hearing her husband mention her father; the only person she was glad to be away from.

The color, such as it was, had drained from Edwin’s face as he brought his horse alongside hers. “Answer me!”

“What else did my father say about me?” she shot back, her lungs on fire.

Edwin frowned. “Pardon?”

“What else did you and my father discuss about me? Is that, perchance, why you told me that I would be free to do as I please, so that you could also? Did you exchange sordid tales of your exploits? Did you discuss the best ways to hoodwink your wives?” Joanna trembled with unbearable fury, hissing the words like a feral cat.

Meanwhile, Edwin blinked in confusion. “I have spoken no more than a handful of words with your father,” he said quietly. “The rest was arranged in correspondence.”

“What was arranged, exactly?” Heat rushed into Joanna’s cheeks, her eyes stinging with the threat of foolish tears.

“The marriage.”

She turned her face away from him, sucking in shaky breaths.

“Joanna?” He reached over and placed his fingertips beneath her chin, his thumb lightly pushing her to look back at him. “I am not your father, Joanna. I am nothing like him.”

“You do not have secret lovers in London?” she mumbled.

The faintest echo of a smile nudged his lips. “I have no secret lovers anywhere, nor any not-so-secret lovers. If I did, I would have told you. Absolute honesty, remember?”

It was Joanna’s turn to blink at him in confusion. “Do you not… favor women?”

“I do favor women.” He narrowed his eyes, clearly insulted, “but I see no reason for the distraction.”

She sniffed. “That is a shilling to me.”

“I did not say it was not necessary, I said I saw no reason for it,” he protested, his thumb gently caressing her jaw.

“That is the same thing.”

He seemed to realize what he was doing and quickly drew back his hand. “Very well. You can have your shilling.” He paused. “I do not profess to know what you have witnessed between your mother and father, but I am sorry that our fathers were not better. I do not wish to be like mine, either.”

Her skin tingled where he had caressed it, his eyes gleaming with that dark, dangerous hunger that she had seen before. But, this time, he did not look away or make excuses to leave; he gazed at her as if daring her to look away.

Are you not at least curious? She lacked the courage to ask, just as she lacked the courage to admit to herself that she had grown curious. It had begun the previous night after she had finally retired to her chambers. There, she had dreamed of him in a way that still shocked her, hours after awakening from that delirious fantasy of naked limbs entwined, eager mouths exploring, and the touch of his rough hands upon her soft, smooth skin.

“This was a mistake,” he said suddenly, shattering the brief daydream she had been enjoying.

“Marrying me?”

He very nearly laughed; she was sure of it. “No, not marrying you. This excursion was a mistake. Agreeing to race was a mistake,” he explained. “I should have guided you slowly around the estate or drawn you another map. You came much too close to the… river.” he choked on the last word, his throat straining.

“This is the river?” she cringed inwardly, cursing herself.

He nodded. “There are rough sections where you cannot see the current, but it will pull you under if you should fall into the water or swim into the wrong part.” He cleared his throat. “Be wary of that. In truth, I would prefer it if you did not swim.”

“Is that why you do not?”

“I suppose it is.”

Feeling as if the mood had grown all too gloomy, Joanna took it upon herself to cheer their spirits. After all, she had hoped they would share a contented morning together, and as she was the one who had steered them off course, it was only right that she should remedy it.

“Might you show me the rest of your paintings?” she asked brightly. “I have something of a scheme to decorate the manor with them, if they are as beautiful as the one in the library. Indeed, if you are not averse, I would like to replace all of those ghastly portraits in the hallway outside the library. I realize that they are likely your ancestors, so do forgive the insult, but that does not give them the right to watch me wherever I go with those ghoulish eyes of theirs.”

His expression softened. “They are not all worthy of hanging in plain sight, but I shall leave that to your discretion. As for the portraits, I consent for you to replace them as you see fit. But do not complain when you are haunted by them in due course.”

“Why would you say such a thing?” Joanna shuddered.

“It was a jest,” he replied stiffly.

Joanna arched an eyebrow. “It was?”

“I told you; I am not proficient with jokes.”

“No, no, that would have been an excellent jest if your manor did not resemble the very sort of place where ghosts would congregate,” she told him, feeling a peculiar sense of pride in the depths of her chest. “You do not really think they will haunt me, do you?”

He shook his head. “I doubt even they would be pleased with their likenesses. They will likely thank you for taking them down.”

Joanna clapped her hands together. “Another jest?”

“If you deemed it amusing…”

“That was exemplary!” she cheered, grateful that she had managed to set the morning on a more lighthearted course. Now, if he would just smile, she knew she could proceed with her day with a sense of victory.

Instead, he clicked his tongue and wheeled his stallion around. “Let us take our time in venturing back to the manor,” he said. “On the way, I shall inform you of any dangers I can think of.”

A touch disheartened, Joanna and Pegasus followed.

By the time we depart for Lord Rotherham’s ball, I will get him to smile, she vowed, gazing across at his strong jaw, his full lips, and his devastatingly handsome face, all the way down to his corded neck which moved as if he was in some discomfort. Perhaps, it really did pain him physically to be joyful, or maybe he was just afraid of letting himself feel that particular pleasure.

Her mother’s words drifted back to her, giving her pause: “Indeed, it has been said that he was… born wrong—a cursed child that took his mother’s life when he came into the world.”

Joanna did not know if she believed in curses, but she did know that he was not born wrong—he had been made that way by misfortune and a cruel father. If anyone could chase away the ghosts that plagued him, she figured it might as well be her.

I have a week, she considered. A week to make him smile.

As for the rest—all the things he had told her he did not want—that would be a far greater challenge. One that might well prove insurmountable, for if she had learned one thing from her mother, it was that a lady could not make a gentleman love her or desire her, no matter how hard she tried.