“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Now what do we do about the black?”
“He’ll come in by himself. If he hasn’t returned in an hour, Jacobs’ll send out a groom.” One arm locked about Francesca’s waist, Gyles set the grey cantering back to the escarpment.
They said nothing as they crossed the rolling downs, then headed down a track that joined the road close by the Castle’s gates. When they turned into the park and the trees closed about them, Gyles let the grey walk. Leaves crunched under its heavy hooves. Above them, bare branches formed a skeletal canopy against the grey sky.
He should have felt shaken to his core. Instead, he felt victorious, deeply content with his wife safe and warm in his arms. He glanced down at her face, studied her profile. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
She glanced up, emerald eyes wide, then she smiled. “I was frightened and shaken, but now…” Her smile deepened. Lifting a hand to his cheek, she turned in his arms and drew his lips to hers. She kissed him, gently, long and lingeringly. Then she drew back and looked into his eyes. “Thank you for saving me.”
He smiled. Looking ahead, he steered the grey toward the stable.
The next morning, Gyles went riding alone, leaving Francesca asleep, warm and sated in her bed. He rode along the river to the bridge, inspected the new trusses, then rode up to the downs.
Some called the landscape bleak, mile upon mile of emptiness with only the call of larks high above to puncture its loneliness. Today, that suited him-he needed time to think. Time to reflect on the changes in his life, to try to understand them.
He hadn’t imagined marriage would cause such change, such inner upheaval. Marriage to Francesca had. He’d known from first sight that she was potentially unsettling, yet unsettled was not what he felt. She spoke to him-the man not the earl, the barbarian not the gentleman-and he, most unexpectedly, had become accustomed to that. He wasn’t sure what having her in his life was doing to his wilder self. Perhaps she was taming the barbarian.
He inwardly snorted, and thought of the day before.
Thought of all he’d felt when he’d seen her bobbing wildly on the back of the runaway black. His old fear had risen, sharp, intense-the fear of having her fall and die like his father. Yet, along with the fear, this time had come resolution, the determination to save her, the conviction that he could, and would.
And he had.
Yesterday he’d lived the difference between being thirty-five and powerful, not seven and helpless. He felt as if old demons had been vanquished. Ironic that he owed Lancelot Gilmartin’s foolishness for that.
He slowed the grey as the escarpment drew near. He set the huge horse down the track to the Castle, cantering down the slope. Almost immediately he sensed an odd kick in the horse’s gait. Reining in, he dismounted. A quick inspection confirmed one rear shoe was loose.
Patting the horse’s neck, Gyles drew the reins over his head. “Come on, old son-let’s walk.” It wasn’t that far to the stables, and he still had plenty to ponder.
Like love, and loving.
Yesterday had demonstrated how deep were the waters into which he’d drifted, yet he still had his head above the waves. He cared for her, of course, and she seemed content with that, with the concessions he’d made. He’d let her into his life-he paused and reconsidered: bit by bit she’d won her way into his life, if truth be told. They’d come to an amicable ar
rangement, one that fell short of him committing to love.
Was that enough? Enough to keep her loving him?
Eyes on the ground, he walked down the track, and admitted he didn’t know. Her resolution on the battlements on the morning after their wedding still rang in his mind.
One thing he did know-he wanted her love, wanted her loving him, now and forever. The barbarian within had seized that prize and was not about to let go.
The image of the first time he’d seen her, the fact that he’d wanted her from that moment, led his mind to his mistake, to his initial perception of Franni-to the fact he’d been idiot enough to imagine she would make him a suitable wife to the point he’d thought it was she he was marrying.
God forbid. Thankfully, fate had.
He’d been as arrogantly foolish as Lancelot in his approach to finding his bride, but fate had taken pity on him, overriding his machinations to plant the right candidate at the altar beside him. And arrange matters so that, despite her temper, she’d been agreeable to marrying him. Agreeable to loving him.
He’d been so wrong about his bride-was he also wrong in refusing to love her? In not allowing what could be between them, what she wanted to be between them, to grow?
Fate had been so right over the matter of his wife. Did he dare to trust in fate again over the nature of their marriage?
Blowing out a long breath, he turned down the last stretch of track. Beside him, the grey slowed. Gyles looked up.
A yard ahead, a leather strap was stretched across the path just above knee height, secured around tree trunks on either side.
It was a leather rein from some carriage harness. Gyles halted before it. He tugged-it wasn’t taut, but didn’t have much give. He looked at the grey, judging where the strap would hit. He tested the leather, tested the knots securing it. Thought of what would have happened if he’d come down the path at a canter.