The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

Luther, nothing loath, stretched his neck, kicked back his hind legs, and shot forward. Lord Beecham laughed aloud, a good clean sound and he liked the feel of it. He leaned down close to Luther’s neck, breathing in his horse’s clean wild sweat. “I might enjoy watching you race,” he said. “You could have raced that damned Brutus into the ground. If you do ever race, I will ride you myself.”

He was thinking that perhaps he should give racing another chance when suddenly, without a hint of warning, a female body slammed into him from out of nowhere and sent him crashing to the ground.

He saw white bursts of light. He couldn’t breathe. A weight was crushing him.

The lights dimmed. He swallowed. He slit open his eyes, all he could manage. Miss Helen Mayberry was all in a heap on top of him. A thick blond braid was wrapped around his face. Her riding hat tipped over her right eye. Her nose wasn’t an inch above his.

“Oh, dear, are you all right, Lord Beecham? Please say something. Can you look at me?”

His wits were still on the jagged side, his brain hovered in the ether. He couldn’t quite breathe yet and he wondered if his leg was broken. But he was a man of strong parts, strong will, and he realized his leg wasn’t broken, thankfully, just twisted a bit. Finally, not two minutes later, he managed to blink a couple of times and focus on the lovely face above his.

“Did I not tell you that I wouldn’t care for the process of you bringing me down, Miss Mayberry? Just the end result?”

“But, sir, my horse threw me. I was riding happily along, saw you out of the corner of my eye, started to wave at you, and just in that split second, a bee stung my poor mare on the neck, she raced up close to you, and then tossed me right into you. It was all a ghastly accident. I haven’t broken anything, have I?”

“My leg was in question for a bit, but I think no bones are snapped in two. Please remove yourself, Miss Mayberry. If you remain where you are, then I will probably get myself back together well enough to start caressing you. My hands are very close to your hips as we speak. Do you want to be caressed in the park? Or would a lady from East Anglia shrink from that?”

“It would be a novel form of discipline,” Helen said slowly, still not an inch from his face. She felt all of him beneath her. He felt quite nice.

He lightly touched her chin with his fingertips. “Actually, I would call it discipline only if the pleasure you took from me was balanced by the imminent chance of discovery by one of society’s matrons, say, for example, Sally Jersey. Have you met Sally?”

“No, but I fancy that my father would like to meet her. I understand she adores champagne.”

“It’s true. I can even see them together. Yes, there he is, carrying her under his right arm, and she has a bottle of champagne tucked close. Now my body has recovered from its appalling shock, Miss Mayberry, and is more than eager to commence.”

“I had no choice, Lord Beecham. I had to act. You have kept your distance for three days. I suppose you were punishing me.”

He lightly touched his hands to her hips. She jumped, then didn’t move a muscle. “Not at all, Miss Mayberry. It is psychological discipline. I am a master at it.”

She felt him against her belly, felt his large hands now caressing her bottom, and quickly rolled off him. She imagined he was a master at many things. She came up, clasping her arms around her knees.

He took a very deep breath, then whistled. Luther, cropping grass some ten yards away, looked up an

d whinnied. “No, stay there, boy,” he called. “Where is your horse, Miss Mayberry?”

She whistled through her teeth, just like a boy, louder than he had whistled. A chestnut mare with a white star on her forehead and four white socks cantered over to within a foot of them and pulled up sharp.

He had never heard a woman do that before in his life. She had whistled louder, he thought, than he had been able to, even as a boy, when no one could best him at it.

No, surely that was impossible. She was a big girl with big lungs, but he was a man. He decided he would practice when he was alone. “Your hair is falling down,” he said, pulling up a spike of grass and chewing on it.

She calmly wound the thick braid of hair round and round her head, tucked it into itself, then smashed her riding hat down over it.

“My mare’s name is Eleanor, named after the wife of King Edward the First.”

“You are a historian, Miss Mayberry?”

“In a manner of speaking, sir.”

“I was lucky this time, Miss Mayberry. I don’t believe you broke anything when you landed on me. Come now, what did you really do, hurl yourself off Eleanor’s back?”

“Yes. It gave me a bit of a scare. I was surprised you didn’t hear me.”

“I was hunkered down against Luther’s neck, breathing in his sweat and thinking about my mistress and the many ways she teases me to distraction.”

Her voice was colder than the wooden floor beneath his bare feet in February when she said, “You don’t currently have a mistress.”

“Why don’t you give me a list of your sources and I can provide them accurate information for you?”