Seduction on a Snowy Night Read online

  * * *

  The horses galloped down the hill. Caroline stopped the wagon. Guinevere, never one to hold back her speed, led them.

  Caroline climbed into the back of the wagon. She ached from yesterday’s chores and adventures, but this had to be done. She paused a moment and pictured her father and how being a gentleman never stopped him from lending a hand in the work if it was needed. Holding his memory in her heart, she lifted a bale and rolled it off the side of the wagon.

  She had managed two more of them when she sensed movement on the snow behind her a split second before a horse and rider charged across the white expanse. Not Jason, who had left early this morning. Not Mr. Hoover, whose bad leg had acted up last night and who rested now in the cottage he shared with his family. She knew how they both rode and would have recognized either one from a distance, even if she already knew neither would be riding here today.

  This rider sat on the horse differently. Expertly. She knew who he was.

  How had he escaped that barred room? Her heart sank at the evidence that he had managed it despite her precautions. Now he would ride to his cousin’s house, swear down information with a magistrate, and send them all to gaol. She wondered if she really would hang after all. The notion left a sick foreboding in the pit of her stomach.

  The horse and rider aimed for the trees to the right of the pasture. In a few moments they would be gone.

  Suddenly they pivoted, turned, thundered right toward her, and stopped twenty feet away.

  Lord Thornhill looked down on the wagon and her. One of his disarming smiles broke. “If you are the one man today, you must have been the third man yesterday.”

  She turned to address one of the bales. “How did you get out of that chamber?” Her mind spoke the same question but added a few curses.

  He dismounted and walked his horse to the wagon. He proceeded to tie it to the back. “If I tell you, you’ll make sure I can’t do it again.”

  She noticed he had found his boots, coat, and gloves. What a disaster. Not only had he escaped; he’d also proven she was hopelessly inept at executing her own scheme.

  “Where is the old man?” he asked.

  “He hurt his leg a week ago and it has taken a turn. He needs to rest it more.” Old Tom had returned to helping her before he should have and now paid the price.

  “And the young man?”

  “On errands.”

  Adam climbed onto the wagon. “Then it is just you and me. You take the reins and I’ll take care of the hay.”

  She swung one leg over the bench seat’s back, then paused. “Why didn’t you keep riding? You could be well away by now.”

  He lifted a bale and threw it out toward some horses. “I recalled that I gave you my word not to escape.” He turned that smile on her again. “I also wanted to see you in pantaloons.”

  Her position, straddling the back of the seat, showed how she looked in pantaloons rather too well, she realized. She tugged down on her coat and finished her move so those pantaloons would be hidden while she sat. She heard a soft laugh behind her.

  She moved the wagon and bales flew. “That should be enough,” he finally said.

  To her surprise, he climbed over and sat beside her.

  “How do you know what is enough?” she asked. “Have you taken care of horses?”

  “As a youth I dawdled around my uncle’s stables. Now I make good use of my cousin’s when I visit. I find horses excellent society, often better than that in the drawing room.”

  How well he put it. Few people understood what he meant, but Caroline did. She had always had an affinity with her father’s horses and had learned to care for them while still a girl. That had made that horrible day when the men came with muskets all the worse and a tragedy from which she had never really recovered.

  She turned the wagon and headed back to the house and outbuildings. Lord Thornhill did not try to take the reins from her, even though he wore his good gloves now. He must have found them where she set them near the door. There really wasn’t enough room for both her and Adam on the seat, which meant that they were pressed against each other. She inhaled the scent of the soap she had left him and noticed how those gloves fit his hands perfectly, as if molded to their strength with liquid leather.

  “I suggest we come to an understanding about my stay with you, Miss Dunham.”

  “I am listening.”

  “You now know I can get out. I propose you simply allow that and spare me the effort of getting that bar up again.”

  “Next time perhaps you will not stop before you disappear into the trees.”

  “I will swear my parole. In olden times, when a knight was taken in battle, and was being held for ransom, he was not imprisoned. If he swore his parole he had free movement in the house and grounds. He might join the household knights on hunts, and would eat at the high table.”

  “We don’t have a high table. Just one. If you dine at it, you will dine with servants.”

  “Which will save you and those servants the trouble of feeding me up in an attic.”

  Considering most of the servants, if she could even call her faithful retainers that, could not serve anyone at the moment, his proposal had some appeal.

  “What happened if one of those knights broke his parole?”

  “That rarely happened, because if it did the world would know that man had no honor.” To her shock, leather-encased fingers lightly touched her chin and turned her head until she was looking into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. “Whatever you have heard, whatever you think, I am a gentleman, Miss Dunham. When I say I will not escape, on my honor I will not.”

  Her chin and neck quivered under that touch. She could not pull her gaze away from his. Confusion swirled in her mind, and shock at her lack of will. She remained enthralled for a half minute until he released her, but that release was all his doing, not a matter of her demanding it.

  She snapped the reins to get the horse moving faster. She needed to get back so she would not feel his warmth against her side like this, and so she would stop stealing glances at that face of his. As stupid as she felt for again succumbing, she grasped the one good thing to come out of the encounter. She counted on his being a gentleman once he saw Amelia. If he kept insisting like this that he was one, it would be impossible for him to refuse to do the right thing when that happened.

  * * *

  Miss Dunham brought the wagon right to the stable yard. She hopped out with a quickness a dress would have denied her. The coat she wore had little length. It looked to be a boy’s coat, chosen so it would not drown her in fabric. That meant, however, that he had a fine view of how those pantaloons encased her legs and hips while she unhitched the horse.

  He climbed down himself and looked around. On the other side of the house, past the gardens, a cottage showed smoke rising from a chimney. Beyond that some livestock dotted two pens. He followed her into the stable, leading the horse he had ridden.

  A large structure, it had stalls for at least a dozen horses, all empty. The horse she now guided into one of those stalls was not the chestnut from yesterday. That horse was nowhere to be seen.

  Caroline came out to retrieve grooming supplies.

  “I will do it. Some activity will be welcomed,” he said.

  She stood speechless while he pried the pail’s handle from her grip and removed the brush from her other hand. He took them into the stall. After a hesitation, she followed him.

  “It is a fine little herd you have there,” he said while he worked. “That bay mare is magnificent.”

  “You know horses well.”

  “I would not be a Prescott if I did not.”

  “I suppose not.”

  He glanced over at her. She still wore the man’s hat that had obscured her identity when he watched the wagon yesterday. Low-crowned and wide-brimmed, it cast her lovely face in a shadow, but her eyes’ brightness would not be defeated.

  “Even so, I perhaps know them better th
an most Prescotts,” he added. “I advise my cousin sometimes. He would not request that if he did not think my judgment better than his. Which he does, grudgingly.”

  “Did you advise him to buy Galahad?”

  “He did not need me to tell him that Galahad was one of the finest horses England had seen in years. Your father’s eye was unsurpassed, and his patience finally rewarded.”

  Adam thought it a compliment. She did not react that way. “Galahad has been put out to stud now,” she said. “The fee is enormous.”

  “That is the true value of a champion.”

  “The bay you admired is from the same stock, only a different line.”

  “Is she fast?”

  “Not only fast, she has the heart for it.”

  He might be discussing a horse with a member of the Jockey Club, so easily did they fall into the language of racing. She was saying that the mare had speed, and also the desire to win and the strength to stay the race.

  “I asked your cousin to allow us to breed them. The mare and Galahad. I asked him to give us a lower fee, or to allow us to pay over several years.”

  He kept the brush moving over the horse’s flank, but he knew what Nigel had said to that. Nigel was not famous for his generosity. “He refused?”

  She nodded. “After what had happened, I thought—”

  She thought there should be enough guilt, or enough justice, that the owner of Galahad would help the farm that bred him rebuild.

  Adam picked up the pail and moved to the next stall and the other horse. He was pleased to see her follow him. “That was wrong of him,” he said while he used the brush. “However, if you think taking me will force him to change his mind, if you expect to see Galahad coming home over that hill, you will be disappointed.”

  She turned up her face to him. A playful belligerence showed in her eyes and half smile. “I do not think I will be disappointed at all in abducting you.”

  He regarded her while his mind tried to tease the meaning of her confident statement. It didn’t get far in such considerations because she appeared so lovely there in the most unconventional way. Those pantaloons, probably a youth’s, fit her nicely and showed the shape of her legs and most of her hips. The coat nipped at her waist and bulged higher where it buttoned over her breasts. His mind started removing that coat, then more.

  Her expression changed. Softened. She knew what he was thinking, and she was not running away.

  He needed no more encouragement than that. He followed his inclinations, as was the habit of his life. He strode across the space separating them, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her.

  Chapter 5

  She should have turned and run, but she didn’t. Watching him groom the horses had mesmerized her. His hand, unsheathed from that glove, looked so masculine while it held the brush. The horse appeared in a state of bliss, as if she knew that a seductive man handled her.

  Even so, when he came toward Caroline with his face firm and his eyes determined, she should have known what would happen and run. He was not for her, and she was not for him, and the last thing anyone needed was for this kiss to happen.

  Yet it did happen, and she found herself breathless with astonishment, shock, and delight. The last was very bad of her. She had no business enjoying that kiss. None at all, for many reasons. Yet she did, too much, and his embrace warmed her inside and outside. His arms became a shelter, an enclave of comfort, intimacy, and excitement.

  The kiss itself seared her heart. It had been years. Forever. Her memories of girlhood kisses had grown so dusty from age that she might have been untouched. Nor had the mouth that claimed her then belonged to a man. Certainly not this man who had kissed too often and knew too well how to do it.

  She had no defenses. She had not even realized she needed any. So she permitted it too long, submerged in happy confusion that blocked any intrusion from her conscience.

  He pulled her closer yet. His hand fussed at a button on her coat. Her better sense reasserted itself and saw what she was doing. Indignation met a wall of sadness, but she still pushed away from him and staggered back.

  Nothing about him apologized. Not words from that mouth or regret in those eyes. If anything, he appeared as if he would follow her steps and embrace her again.

  She backed up more, lest he try. “You should not have done that. You know it, too.”

  “I am not well schooled in self-denial, especially when it comes to an intriguing, lovely woman like you.”

  “I am not a woman to be a plaything to a rake. I am insulted you thought I might be.”

  “It was an honest expression of honest desire, Caroline, not a search for a plaything.”

  “I think it was a calculated strategy to have me drop my guard in other ways, and to petition for release. A man like you does not have any need of a woman like me.” She strode away. “Do not do it again,” she said furiously over her shoulder. “Good heavens, wasn’t one Dunham daughter enough for you?”

  * * *

  Since Caroline did not march him back to his attic chamber at the point of a gun, Adam decided that meant she had agreed to the terms of his parole. Since her departure indicated she would not want company he chose to remain outside and investigate the property further.

  He walked closer to the cottage beyond the garden. Smoke still rose in a ribbon from the chimney. He thought he saw Mrs. Smith’s face peer out a window at him. Perhaps the old couple lived here, rather than in the big house. It was the kind of privilege only afforded the married servants, and valued ones at that.

  He retraced his steps and walked around the stable. Beyond there lay a large paddock surrounded by sturdy fences. Fifty horses would fit in it easily, perhaps as many as seventy.

  This was where it must have happened. He pictured the space teeming with horses, all pacing and noisy because they sensed the danger. Within a half hour all of them were dead, shot by men at close range from behind the fence. Unable to defend themselves, they had stampeded around the paddock in a frenzy.

  He had been invited to participate in that carnage. As if anyone would want to shoot thoroughbreds like that, as sport. Too many had volunteered. Nigel had joined in. To add to the injury, they had left the remains for the Dunham family to deal with.

  He had assumed Caroline had abducted him as part of a plan of revenge for that day. From her parting words in the stable, however, it seemed he may have been wrong.

  Wasn’t one Dunham daughter enough for you? He propped his boot on the bottom rung of the paddock’s fence and looked into the enclosure while he considered the accusation embedded in her words. She believed that he had kissed her sister and perhaps done more than kiss.

  Hell, he didn’t even remember she had a sister.

  All the same he searched his memory for another Dunham. Calling up every female met at parties and assemblies would take too long, so he took the opposite approach and tried to remember all the women he had at least kissed in the last few years.

  That alone meant reviewing a good number of faces. Try as he might, he could not picture anyone with the last name of Dunham.

  It was possible she had used a different name. It was also possible that his memory failed him due to his being foxed when the meeting occurred. He often claimed that never happened, but the problem with drinking to the point of obliterated memories was that one did not remember what had and had not happened, including one’s state of inebriation.

  The wind had risen by the time he concluded he could not prove he had never kissed another Dunham sister. He made his way back to the house and entered through the kitchen door, where he shook the snow off his boots and hung his greatcoat on a peg next to the coat Caroline had donned earlier.

  He wandered into the kitchen. Mrs. Smith could not be found there, but something delicious smelling cooked in the hearth in a cauldron. He found the stairs and went above.

  His departure had been hasty. Now he took his time. Besides the large sitting room he visited a small li
brary and a chamber that served as a study or office. A morning room, long and narrow, stretched across the back of the house. A dining room could hold a decent party.

  It was an old house, and handsome in its way. More dark wood panels than was fashionable now. Dark papers on the walls, too, and a few floors paved in tiles instead of boards. He judged it to be a couple hundred years old at least.

  He settled into a stuffed chair in the library with a book on thoroughbred breeding. Since it was a topic of interest, he soon became engrossed. So it was that Miss Dunham arrived without his awareness. He only realized her presence when the scent of the household soap reached him.

  She had changed into a blue dress with little adornment.

  “I hope you did not give up the pantaloons on my account. There’s no reason to stand on ceremony with a prisoner.”

  “It had nothing to do with you.”

  “For whom then? From what I can tell no one else is here.”

  “Of course others are here. Mrs. Smith—”

  “Some food awaits in the kitchen, but she does not. I think she went home to her little cottage.”

  She made no retort to that. So they were alone here, as he thought.

  “You should be up in your chamber,” she said imperiously.

  Perhaps so, if they were alone. “This suits me better.”

  “It is not for you to say.”

  “I swore my parole and will do so again if you want. If you insist I live all day in that attic, go get your pistol, because I will not return there until I retire otherwise.”

  “If you give me cause, I will indeed get that pistol. Just so you know.”

  “It was one kiss, Caroline. I am not going to assault you. However, since you mention it, I apologize for succumbing to the impulse, small though the transgression was.”

  “Small? It was very, very wrong of you, and you know it.”

  “I know it was wrong. Not very wrong, let alone very, very wrong.”

  “I can’t believe you insist on that. Considering my sister—”

  “Ah yes, your sister. What is her name again?”

  She gasped. “You are a terrible, incorrigible, conceited man.” She gathered her composure. “I am having dinner at six o’clock. If you go down to the kitchen at seven o’clock, there will be a meal waiting for you. After you eat your meal, return to your chamber. You can carry your own water up. Since you have sworn your parole and have free movement, you don’t need us to serve you.”