The Duke's Bridle Path by Burrowes, Grace, Romain, Theresa (14)

 

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Colin should have learned his lesson from the on-demandes of The Gentleman’s Periodical: The questions to which he didn’t already know the answer were the truly troublesome ones.

How far could I possibly fall? was a troubling question, asked by a fool who’d thought his journey to Berkshire would be nothing but time to fill before he could return to the real life of London. To Bright’s publication, and reporting on whatever the long-nosed editor thought would sell copies. And above all, a life of trickery. Endless trickery, from a writer who could hardly write, but whose livelihood depended on words.

Each day with Ada unspooled with startling ease and rightness. It was easy for Colin to forget that his every moment here was pretense—until he returned to the White Hare to share his observations with Samuel. The brothers turned them into pithy prose, written in Samuel’s elegant hand.

Day by day, there was less that Colin wanted to tell Samuel, more that he wanted to hold back, to turn over in his mind and let it flourish there.

Much like a beetroot. Which, by the bye, he now fed daily to Equinox, who deigned to let Colin ride him when Ada deemed such pursuits necessary.

He still preferred to walk, though. As he went daily from the village to Theale Hall, sometimes he took the bridle path, which threaded alongside the Talbot horse farm for much of its length. Here, he indulged a bitter curiosity, peering over the hedges to spy upon—that is, observe—the noble visitors. Wrotham sat his horse with a skill Colin would never achieve. His wife looked at her husband with shining eyes such as had never looked upon Colin.

After several days of this, Colin could deny the truth no longer: He was jealous.

He was jealous not because he wanted Lady Wrotham, but because he wanted something as honest and sweet as she and her bridegroom possessed.

Everything Colin wore, said, did was some gradation of a lie. The only person who knew the full truth about Colin’s identity—the writer of the questions that had split Ada from Wrotham, the fake suitor for a fortnight, the writer who could hardly read or write—was his brother.

The devil of it was, Colin’s desire to be with Ada was honest. But that was the only bit that could be. She’d made a bad bargain with him, and he didn’t intend to free her from it. She had asked him for two weeks of devotion, and she was going to get every minute of it.

He was selfish like that.

After a particularly trying day in which Colin had been asked to read everything from the names on horses’ stalls to a soliloquy from Hamlet, he was out of reasons to demur and wanted nothing more than to walk away from words. He returned to the White Hare seething with frustration, and when Samuel asked for his daily report, Colin put him off.

“You recently arose, and it’s growing dark. Let’s get a lantern and go walking.”

Samuel must have sensed the edge in Colin’s mood, even if it didn’t sharpen his tone, for he agreed. The innkeeper at the White Hare was willing enough to lend them a lantern, since they were always current with their bill, and within a few minutes of Colin’s suggestion, the brothers were walking outdoors.

“Hardly needed a lantern,” Samuel observed, “with the moon full tonight.”

The full moon. That was right. He’d known it was coming up. “We ought to walk the bridle path,” Colin decided. “There’s a local legend about it. Might see a few young lovers doing their best to make that legend come true.”

He filled Samuel in on the legend as Ada had told it to him, true love and kisses and all, embellishing it with comic details of his own battle to stay on Equinox’s back as she had recounted the old tale to him.

Samuel laughed. “You didn’t tell me any of that when it happened. Just that she’d demanded you ride horseback.”

“I had my pride,” Colin said loftily. To be more truthful, he’d had his awkward hopes even then—hopes that had only grown stronger each day since. Hopes of kisses from Lady Ada Ellis, hopes that she’d see him as something more than the interloper who threatened her family with scandal once again.

The brothers found the path, wide and well-kept. Samuel swung the lantern breezily in one hand, looking around with some curiosity. He sometimes fell into a crouch, walking half-bent over for a few steps. Since he preferred it when one didn’t mention his twitches, Colin merely strode along at his side. He breathed deeply of the cool air.

“It hardly smells of anything here, have you noticed?” he asked Samuel. “Maybe horses, a little. No coal, no stink from the Thames, no fog. A night like this, with trees whispering alongside the path, is enough to make a man swear off London.”

“It’s too quiet.” Samuel kicked at a dry leaf. “And the moon is too bright.”

“Not hidden behind fog and smoke, you mean. It’s a strange look, I agree.” Certainly it was bright enough to spot giggling couples kissing by its light, if Ada’s legend was widely believed. For now, though, the path was deserted, the silence broken only by the rattle of autumn’s last leaves on mostly bare branches, the brothers’ footsteps, the occasional whicker of a restive horse on the Talbot lands.

And then another set of footsteps, barely audible on the soft surface of the path. The approaching figure was hardly more than a silhouette against moonlit trees—and then it drew closer, falling under a spill of silver light, and revealed itself to be Lady Ada Ellis.

The three people stilled upon seeing one another, like butterflies pinned under glass.

“Ada.” Colin spoke her name. He hesitated, caught between ought to and wish.

“Colin,” she replied. She was bare-headed and gloveless, as if she’d walked out in a hurry, though she wore a pelisse, long and warm, over her gown. “And Mr. Samuel Goddard, I presume?”

Samuel broke the stillness at once. “Happy to meet you, my lady. Ah—I must be off.” Half running in his crouch, he disappeared around a curve of the path. Taking the lantern with him.

And then it was just Ada and Colin and the moon. To Colin, woman and celestial object seemed equally lovely, far away, untouchable. How far apart were they? Maybe a half-dozen steps. Maybe fifty miles, the distance between where they each belonged.

“It’s not safe for you to be walking out here alone,” Colin said.

“It wouldn’t be if we were in London, probably. But we’re not.”

“Yes,” he said dryly. “Samuel and I were noting the differences. He did not find them to Berkshire’s advantage.”

“Did you?” She took a step closer. “Do you like it here?”

“Does it matter?”

Another step. “It matters to me. If you’re my devoted suitor for two weeks—”

“Half that, by now.” Too little time left.

“—I want you to be happy about it.”

“You needn’t worry about that,” he said. “I can handle it right enough. Is it helping you?”

“What, not to have to stand alone while a man who once swore he’d be mine until death puts his arm around another woman?”

“Yes. All of that.”

She closed the distance between them. “It is, actually. It gives me courage. I know if I were less prickly, I wouldn’t have to bribe or browbeat people into helping me.”

“Nonsense. If you’d like company walking back to your home, you may have mine.” He offered his arm.

“I have no particular destination,” Ada said, accepting his escort back toward Theale Hall.

“You didn’t put it as if you were browbeating me,” Colin added as they set off. “When we made the bargain, you called it just that. A win for each of us. It was very sensible.”

“Oh, good. Sensible Ada.” She sounded grim.

“If you’ll forgive me for mentioning it, you are in an odd mood.”

“I’ve forgiven you much worse than that. And yes, I am. I lost my eldest brother almost exactly four years ago, and today I visited his sons. They are twins, two of four he fathered on the wrong side of the blanket. During the carriage ride home, I did a bit of addition and realized that I could easily have had a child or two of my own by this time if Wrotham hadn’t jilted me.”

The words were like weights on his shoulders. Jilted because of what I wrote. Somehow, he spoke in a light and teasing tone. “It’s always maths with you, isn’t it? Would you like that, having little Adas running about?”

“God help me if they were anything like I was as a child.” She walked on a few more steps before she added, “It would certainly be a different sort of life. I don’t know if I’d like it. I’m sure I’d like the children, but it would only have been a matter of time before I displeased Wrotham. He’s so proper, have you noticed?”

Colin coughed. “Rather.”

“If I’d married him, I’d have to behave perfectly all the time, or my husband would be displeased.”

“He was never besotted with you,” Colin pointed out.

“No, he wasn’t,” she sighed. “It would have been nice to pierce a heart or two as I wended my way through life, but it’s a good life all the same.”

“Totting up numbers again, my mathematical genius?”

“If I am, I’m fortunate that they’re large numbers. My brother’s wealthy, I’m wealthy, etcetera. But no, not just the numbers. I love the village here and the path. The horse farm makes for fine neighbors, and my brother is happily wed, and—”

“You could go on listing marvelous things for some time as I turn green with envy. Fortunately, you can’t see my lovely color by night.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be a braggart. I was trying to convince myself that I have everything a woman could want.”

“Trying to convince oneself never works. I’ve tried it often.”

“Oh? Of what does a handsome and amoral reporter need to convince himself?”

“Amoral, you call me? What a flirt you are.” As she smiled, he considered his reply. A rush of wings in one of the trees lining the path made him look up. A bird tucked up for the night, chased away by their footsteps.

“I attempt to convince myself I have the nerve,” he went on, “to pursue a new story or idea when I’m footsore. When I’m tired and my skin is thin, and the editor of The Gentleman’s Periodical still won’t take me onto his staff.”

She tightened her grip on his arm, an annoyed reflex. “I will ignore your mention of the worst waste of rag since paper was invented. What helps you get your nerve back, if you can’t convince yourself that all is well?”

“Sometimes, someone I care about has to do it for me.”

“A woman?” Her voice was low, tentative.

He liked that she had asked. “There’s not been a woman in London I particularly cared about for a long time. No, my brother is usually the one to knock sense into me. And sense it is to count your blessings and then keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

“My brother isn’t here. Who will knock sense into me?” Now she sounded teasing. He’d have to be a fool to mistake the tone.

“Well. I could do it.” Obviously.

She slanted a look at him. “How would you do that? Would you recite another of your poems? Mangle a bit more Shakespeare?”

He had a good memory; once Samuel recited a poem or piece of prose, most of it stayed in Colin’s head. “Since you asked.

“Let me not to a bargain with Ada

Admit impediments. Besottedness is not besottedness—”

“It’s meant to be ‘love,’” she cut in. “A word of one syllable. You’re spoiling the meter.”

“I have to put my own stamp on it, or you won’t be impressed.”

She looked thoughtful. “I have been impressed. Not by the poems, but by much else about you.”

The air was cool and sweet and lovely. He drew in a deep breath of it, filling himself. “Have you? Yet you hardly know me.”

“Do I not? I have seen how you treat your brother, strangers above your station, servants, horses. I’ve seen how you deal with me. We thought we’d have to be enemies at first, but here we are getting along fairly well.”

He hadn’t been prepared for her to notice so much; he hadn’t expected her to be so generous. He wasn’t sure how to fight her kind words.

“It was the caramel candies,” said Colin. “I was yours from that moment.” After a silence, he added, “What penalty will you demand if I fail to uphold my part of our ruse?”

“I don’t know. I was sure I’d have you drummed from the county in disgrace.”

“But now?”

“Now I know you have a feeling heart. And you’re trying to help me. So if you do not succeed, it won’t be because you haven’t tried.”

He couldn’t have been more unsettled if she had arranged an audience for him with the queen. “I’m a real paragon,” he said flippantly. “Glad you’ve noticed.”

She made a little noise of exasperation. “If you were a paragon, I should never have managed a second conversation with you. And you’d never have wanted one. You’re far better than that. You are real.”

The simple words stung, sweetly. Words of one syllable, piercing his heart. He couldn’t be flippant in response to this. He could only reply in kind, the words thick and difficult to pronounce, as they were drawn from so deep within.

“You are all I could want, had I the right to ask.”

She slowed, digging the toe of her boot into the earth. “Don’t tease me.”

“I wouldn’t dare. Not with an old legend keeping watch over us and the moon so bright overhead.”

She gasped. “The full moon! I hadn’t even thought about it.”

“Really? You weren’t strolling out here to claim a kiss from your true love?”

The moonlight was sufficiently bright for him to note the roll of her eyes. “Hardly. I was trying to escape my thoughts.”

Funny, I was trying to do the same by walking out tonight. He decided to keep that to himself. “Anything in particular you want to share?”

“Most of them relate to you.”

Another spear of pleasure. She was killing him by inches, and he had no defense against her.

Halting, he drew her to the edge of the path. It was relatively unshielded here, hedged and fenced and open to the sky. Cool moonlight spilled down like a waterfall.

“Old legends be damned,” he said. “You know I have to kiss you now.”

“You mustn’t,” she said weakly.

“Because?”

“It seemed like the sort of thing I ought to say.” With her frank gray eyes, she looked straight through him. “But I think you must. As long as you don’t kiss me on the lips, we’ll be safe.”

Safe? He hadn’t been safe in years. Not since he first talked his way into a reporting job, betting his nerve and Samuel’s skill against the world. Not since they were orphaned, alone with no one to depend on but themselves.

And certainly not since he’d stepped from a stage coach onto the high street of Rushworth Green. Since he’d laid eyes on a woman with gilt-brown hair and the sort of mouth that made one want to listen, dream, sin.

But under the quiet moon, hemmed in by patient hedges and a slow autumn breeze, he took Ada’s hand in his. And for this moment, he felt safe.

He lifted her bare hand. Brought it to his lips. She smelled sweet and piquant, like a lemon tart.

Her eyes went wide. “You—”

“As you said, we’ll be safe if we don’t kiss on the lips. Surely the old legend didn’t mean people had to be bound together when they only kissed on the hand. Why, that’s just using good manners.”

He’d left his hat back at the inn, and a nighttime breeze ruffled his hair. It tugged at hers too, light brown wisps soft around her face and silvered by moonlight.

With his thumb, he traced the winging line of her brow. Gently, he kissed that too, then kissed the other and drew her into his arms to kiss the side of her neck. Up its heated length, he pressed with lips and tickled with the tip of his tongue. When he reached her ear, he drew the lobe into his mouth and nipped.

“None of this counts, Ada,” he murmured. “I know you don’t want it to count.”

Another spear, and not the pleasurable sort. She didn’t want to tie herself to him. Or maybe it was just that she didn’t want to tie herself to anyone. A jilted woman, a wealthy woman, a woman with so many blessings she’d practically walked a furlong while enumerating them—that sort of woman didn’t need a man like Colin, even if she found a speck of genuineness within him.

But she needed kisses just now, of the sort that would make her quake and quail and shiver. And he needed to give them to her, needed whatever pieces of her she would allow.

Her pelisse covered her, neck to wrist, then fastened down the front with little hooks. Colin made it his mission to undo them. Then he found the hollow at her collarbone—yes, a kiss belonged there. Since she moaned, he gave her a second one. Up the line of her throat, more, and one for the sharp line of her chin. She was warm and lovely and so right in his arms, yet there was something so proud and untouchable in her spirit that he could have sunk to his knees before her.

So he did, heedless of the leaf-littered earth. As he knelt, he trailed his hands down her sides. Over the curve of hip, the line of thigh, the calf, the ankle. He paused at the hems of her pelisse, her gown.

“There are so many more places I want to kiss you,” he told her. “And if we were not in the open, with moonlight like the light of a stage on it, I would try to persuade you. I’d draw up your gown and nip your ankles and tickle behind your knees until they went all loose and your eyes were dreamy—did you say something?”

“An incoherent noise of pleasure,” she said, looking down at him with wonder. “Go on, please. After the knees?”

“The thighs next. The skin of the inner thighs is sensitive. Perhaps I’d lick you there, then blow over the place I’d licked to give you prickles of cool and heat. You might like the sensation.”

“I might,” she said faintly. “Why isn’t there something I can lean against?”

“Lean against me.” He rose to his feet, took her in his arms, and whispered into her ear. What he would do, had he the right. Were they alone, and in private. Were he hers for good and all.

Which of them did he torment more? He couldn’t say. She was taut in his embrace, breathing harder than usual. He was erect in his trousers, which were uncomfortably tight. He could practically see her bared all over. If he shut his eyes, it could almost be real.

“You had best finish walking me home now,” she said in a voice that was not steady.

“I had best.” Reluctantly, he let her go. Formally, he offered his arm again. Determinedly, he forced down all that lust and longing—or tried to. They walked the remainder of the path in silence.

He bade her farewell before the door of Theale Hall.

“We’re not on the bridle path anymore,” Ada said. “So we’re not bound by the old legend. You can kiss me on the lips now.”

“Damned right,” he growled. Taking her face in his hands, he pressed his lips to hers. Oh, they were everything: soft and sweet and welcoming and warm and trusting, so trusting, that he would do as he’d promised and no more. Just a sip when he wanted to drown in her.

He was unsteady on his feet as he stepped back, leaving her to enter that great old ancestral home of hers alone. Almost untouched.

He couldn’t say the same for himself. Nothing was the same as he walked back to the White Hare, lost on the familiar route, seeing nothing of the silvery night. He was all in a whirl, off balance, and it was all due to her.

Somewhere along the path, he had lost his heart.

Ada wrapped herself in a dressing gown, then drew open the draperies, letting the pie-round moon shine into her bedchamber.

She curled up on the window seat, drawing her knees in. This was the sort of night she’d write about if she were a poetess.

The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees

And they did make no noise, In such a night

Colin Goddard found the bridle path

And Ada sighed her soul toward where he stood…

Colin wasn’t the only one who could contort Shakespeare for his own ends. The Merchant of Rushworth Green? It hardly had the ring of immortality to it.

Much as Ada loved words, she was no poetess. If she dug out one of her old diaries, she would fill it instead with wonderings. Was a kiss truly a kiss if it was not on the lips? What did it mean if it was?

At the end of the two weeks, how was she going to let him go? But what would he stay for? Much as he’d charmed the neighboring families, his life was in London.

One week left with Colin. He could leave anytime, really, with his ears full and pockets about to become so.

Maybe he would stay longer because he chose to.

Maybe he would stay until Philippe and Harriet returned? That would be another three weeks, if all went as planned. Where Harriet and horses were concerned, one must expect priorities to be shifted. But if there was anything Harriet loved more than horses, it was Philippe and home.

And what would there be for Ada to do, once His Grace and Her Grace returned from their travels and turned Theale Hall on its sleepy head?

She wouldn’t wait for that. The following day, she would dissolve the pact she made with Colin. Let him stay or go, as he wished. And let him know that he had won not only their bargain, but a feeling from her that was too deep to name.