"Here, stop wiggling around." Alec's voice was close to her ear, low and shaded with amusement. "I've got you." One of his large arms was braced firmly around her waist, doing little to ease her flustered condition. Mira thought briefly of telling him that she had changed her mind and wanted to get down. But then he curved his other arm around her, and as the huge white horse started forward she was provided with the excuse to lean her back against the solid wall of Alec's chest. Suddenly this seemed like the most delightful place in the world to be, here in the hard shelter of his body with the breeze blowing through her hair."Where… where is your other horse?" she managed to ask breathlessly. It was hardly an inspired topic of conversation, but it would have to do.
"Sovereign? He's having a peaceful day in the stables. This is Requiem."
"Requiem? What a dreadful name."
She felt Falkner shrug lightly.
"An appropriate one. He's fond of mauling anyone he doesn't like, sometimes a little too roughly."
"And you invited me to ride on him with you?" Mira asked indignantly, her eyes widening.
"Relax," Alec replied, his warm breath caressing her temple. "He's perfectly safe now. Do you think I'd take chances with your pretty neck?" She shivered slightly at the pleasant touch of his breath on her skin, and his arms drew around her more securely. "Cold?" he asked.
"A little," she lied gamely. "The breeze is very cool for September…" it's a perfect day for the hunt. You shouldn't have missed it."
"The fox can do without my pursuit for one day."
"So could I," she said meaningfully, causing him to chuckle.
"At least admit that you're glad you don't have to walk."
"I admit it," she said ruefully, allowing herself to relax against him. He was so casually tender, his voice so caressing, his arms so warm and irresistible, that Mira felt like a blunt-winged moth that had flown so close to a flame its wings had been irreparably singed. There was no flying away now… and worse, she was too enraptured with the attraction she felt to be sorry for the mistake she had made.
"It's the first cottage we'll come to," she said eventually. "Mrs. Daniel is our housekeeper… her son has been taken ill with fever and cold."
"Have you always had this interest in tending sickness and learning about—?""Yes, especially in France. Wherever we… I went, there was something to learn about remedies and cures. Every place has its own traditions and recipes."
"You said 'we'… so there was someone else traveling with you in France?"
"No," she said quickly—too quickly. "It was a slip of the tongue."
"What about your family? You had to come from somewhere."
"I have no family."
"Who took care of you when you were younger?"
"Is this why you came riding by? To satisfy your curiosity with prying questions?" Mira demanded.
"Why the devil are you so defensive? You're right, they are prying questions, and I'll be damned if I ask you another one. Be mysterious if you like."
She was silent for a minute, so surprised by his unexpected retreat that she did something she had never anticipated doing. She told him a little about Guillaume.
"My brother took care of me. He and I went all over France, from place to place." At Alec's noncommittal silence, she even dared to say more. "My brother made friends easily… but they were always a dangerous kind of people, fighting and… I learned how to treat wounds, and how to set bones, and I found that I could feel how to make things right sometimes."
"Like you did with my shoulder."
"Yes. Sometimes it is not that easy. But I am able to help often, and it makes me feel useful… it is the only way that I have ever been ne…"
"Needed?" Alec asked softly, and she shook her head, horrified at the way she kept on making mistakes around him.
"No," she said, shaking her head firmly, "I don't know what I was going to say, I was just rambling."
"But doesn't Sackville need you?" he continued as if he hadn't heard her. "Doesn't being his woman make you feel useful and needed?"
"Of course it does."
"How could it?" Alec asked, a faintly savage note shading his voice. Mira stiffened, but he pulled her back against him with a slight motion of his arm. "He doesn't really need you, Mira, not like someone else could. He might enjoy you, he might receive pleasure from your delectable little body, but even when he waxes poetic about you, even when he chatters about the two of you together until I'd like to gag him, there is no passion in his voice. Just smugness. Why is that, Mira?"