She walked through the gate into the yard, and was looking about, wondering if there was a horse for her, when a large, warm nose nudged her neck, bringing with it the smell of fresh straw and clean horse.
“Your mount,” said a deep voice.
Her heart leapt to her throat.
Alaric held the reins of a raw-boned black steed and a sweet-faced mare with a patch over her right eye. “I wasn’t certain of your prowess in the saddle,” he said. “This is Buttercup. She’s not as young as she was, but she has a lovely seat.”
He transferred the reins to a groom and put his hands on Willa’s waist. She felt a surge of gratitude for her French corset.
“Do you have a whip?” Alaric asked, not yet lifting her onto her horse. He was standing entirely too close. And smiling down at her.
“Yes,” she said with a little gasp. “I mean, no, I don’t use a whip.”
“Right.” He effortlessly swung her into the air, placing her on the saddle. He turned away to help another lady onto her mount.
As Willa adjusted her leg over the pommel, Lavinia pranced over, riding a lovely sorrel mare.
“Thank goodness you’re here!” she called. She gestured behind her. “These gentlemen simply won’t accept that I have no need for an escort. They can escort the both of us.”
Willa greeted two young lords and a future earl with a smile, and the five of them joined the rest as they all moved onto the road at an easy amble.
It was a perfectly splendid early-July day, and at least twenty-five gentlemen and ladies, laughing and talking, made up the riding party. Alaric was somewhere behind Willa’s and Lavinia’s small group. They set out at a walk, on a road bounded by hedges entangled with wild roses. The ditches were starred with great wheels of cow parsley.
After a few minutes, Mr. Sterling caught up, and his horse paced alongside Willa’s. Lavinia kept flitting past and making inane remarks to him that made a pulse beat in his jaw.
“You must stop that,” Willa said later, when their two horses were walking side by side. “You’re teasing Mr. Sterling unnecessarily.”
Lavinia bestowed a smile on her nearest swain. “What on earth do you mean?”
“You know he hates empty-headed society chitchat, and you’re willfully inundating him with it.”
Lavinia laughed. The merry peal made all the men around them turn to look at her—except Mr. Sterling, whose eyes remained fixed straight ahead.
“Like that,” Willa said. “I don’t know why you bother.”
“He’s such an ass,” Lavinia said, sotto voce. “By the way, Prudence doesn’t know how to ride, so she’s in one of those carriages that went ahead. Oh, and look! Fiendish Sterling is getting in another argument.”
Sure enough, Mr. Sterling—who did seem to be a trifle irritable—had started trading insults with Lord Roland.
“Where is Diana?”
Lavinia wrinkled her nose. “At the last minute, she told my mother that she was indisposed.”
They were silent. There was no need to voice their shared opinion that Diana was doing herself no favors by fibbing.
“We’re stopping for luncheon at that inn,” Lavinia said, nodding toward a large building a short distance ahead. Men in the Duke of Lindow’s livery were spilling out, waiting to take their mounts.
Behind the inn, a grassy bank shaded by huge willow trees led down to a river that ran flat and wide before winding out of sight. Snowy cloths and soft pillows had been set on the ground, and a picnic lunch was being laid out.
“I’m positively famished,” Lavinia said. “Do you know what Despicable Sterling said to me at breakfast?”
“If you would stop taunting him, he’d probably let you be,” Willa said.
“He said I was double-chinned!”
“I doubt that,” Willa said. “For one thing, he wouldn’t insult you, and for another, you aren’t.”
“In as many words,” Lavinia retorted. “He said I ate like a horse and that I’d have a double chin by next week.”
“What did you say to him to provoke it?”
Lavinia turned her mare at the gate of the inn. “I merely noted that if he ate all the bacon he had on his plate he’d end up looking like a poke pudding. I said ‘if.’ Whereas he as much as called me a lumpish hag.”
Before Willa could answer, Alaric drew up beside her. In one smooth movement, he dismounted, tossed his reins to a waiting groom, and raised his arms to help her down.
He had removed his coat at some point and slung it over his saddle’s pommel. Gentlemen never did that … but here he was, his white shirt tight against the planes of his chest.
“If you think I’m going to allow one of those fribbles to put his hands on you, you’re wrong,” he said, in a conversational tone. The three men didn’t even try to compete; they turned to cluster about Lavinia instead.
Willa felt her cheeks growing hot. “You’re making a show of me.”
“The better to thwart Prudence,” he said, grinning as he scratched Buttercup’s nose. “How did you do with this darling?”
“She’s lovely,” Willa said. And then she leaned forward into his hands because what else could she do?
A moment later her feet were on the ground, except he was standing entirely too close for propriety, crowding her against Buttercup’s broad, warm side.
Willa wasn’t used to feeling lightheaded and happy. Giddy, almost.
“You don’t have Sweetpea stowed in a pocket, do you?” he asked. His hands slid down her back.
“Certainly not,” Willa managed. “What if I dropped her? Or if I fell from the horse?”
“Are you likely to fall?”
Willa had the sudden conviction that if she said yes, he would forbid her to ride home. She could see it in his eyes. “No,” she admitted. And then she smiled, because it was just so … heady to see that ferociously protective look in Alaric Wilde’s eyes. She hadn’t fallen off a horse since …
Actually, she’d never fallen off a horse.
“Willa!” Lavinia called.
Alaric stepped back, and she took a deep breath. He smelled of mint, and leather, and horsehair.
“Are you going to put your coat back on?” she inquired.
He reached out and grabbed it from the pommel just before a groom led his mount away. “If you wish me to.”
“It’s proper.”
“You are not a proper young lady, Evie,” he said in a low voice. “We both know that.”
Had she thought his eyes protective? Now they were greedy. Willa wanted to take a gulp of air, but that would be too revealing. She tried to ignore her trembling knees.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
His answer was tense, low. “Yes.”
Willa made a face. “Stop that!”
“I can’t.” He stepped forward and brought his mouth to her ear. “I rode behind you all the way here. Your waist is enough to make me cry. But when Buttercup trotted and you bent forward, bottom in the air?”
He pulled back and met her eyes. His had turned smoky and dark. For a second, she had a sense of vertigo. Was this Lord Wilde—the man whom most of the female half of England adored—looking at her? Like that?
“You drive me mad,” he said, his voice rasping.
Willa turned and marched toward the inn; it was either that, or yield, as she had last night, and kiss him.
“I stayed behind you on the road first, so that I could enjoy the view, and second, so that no other man could,” Alaric said at her back, keeping pace with her. They were ushered around the side of the building. “The meal isn’t ready,” he observed. Sure enough, serving people were still dashing in and out of the inn. “Are you hungry?”
She nodded. She’d risen so late that she hadn’t had time for breakfast. “Wait for me,” he said, striding forward.
Willa never obeyed men who gave orders; it set a bad precedent. But she stood as if her feet were rooted to the ground, watching as Alaric snatched up a loaf of bread and block of cheese. A bottle of wine and a couple of glasses.
Whatever he had in mind, it would not be proper. Willa was certain of it.
A voice inside was shrieking about her reputation. If Lady Gray even dreamed that Willa had allowed a man into her bedchamber last night, Lavinia’s mother—her guardian—would quickly declare her ruined. Ruined.
Which translated to soon to be married.
Willa—docile perfect Willa—had been shoved to the side, and the girl who stood under the eaves of the inn, waiting for the absolutely wrong man to return to her …
Evie was waiting, not Willa.
Lavinia appeared at her side. “Do you know what that man just said to me?” she demanded.
“I said nothing importune,” Parth Sterling snarled from behind her. His eyes were furious.
Lavinia wheeled around and pointed a finger, which was so impolite Willa could scarcely believe she was seeing it. “You said I was an ill-tempered harpy.”
He folded his arms over his chest. Quite a broad chest, Willa couldn’t help noticing. “If you don’t want to be insulted, you shouldn’t work so hard at making a nuisance of yourself.”
Alaric was coming toward them, with Prudence—whose gown had a snowy-white collar that seemed to Willa ostentatiously Puritan—in hot pursuit. “Good morning, Lord Alaric,” Prudence cried, reaching them and dropping a curtsy so deep that her knee nearly brushed the ground.