The young woman on the white horse slowed from a canter to a trot as the Duke of Ravenhill watched her from the drawing room window. Rose’s riding abilities had improved immensely since her first arrival at Ravenhill when she had been too frightened to go out without Dorian or a groom to accompany her.
Now, Rose and Clio seemed to move together as almost one entity up the path that led back to the Ravenhill House from nearby woodland. As they came closer, Dorian could see blonde hair escaping from its bindings at Rose’s nape and swirling about her pink-cheeks in the January wind.
Her black riding habit was close fitting and Dorian’s throat caught as it always did on seeing that curve between bosom and waist. For a slender woman, Rose’s breasts were full and he could not help thinking of their warm weight in his hands. When he kissed their white-pink softness, he would taste the salt of her skin and smell the faint scent of violets that she wore…
“Look away,” he ordered himself aloud. “Think of something else. Anything else. You cannot give Rose what she wants. You cannotbewhat she wants. You are only hurting her more if you try.”
Despite this mantra, the duke continued to gaze and his mind refused to change direction. It was as though Rose lay at the centre of everything and could not be moved.
The Duchess of Ravenhill rode side-saddle today although she did not always. Dorian remembered the day he had taught Rose to ride astride. How shocked she had been at the notion at first… She had blushed only only slightly less in response to Dorian’s humorous assertion that as she could ride her husband astride so very competently, a horse should be child’s play.
Finally, reassured by the privacy of their own estate, Rose had allowed Dorian to lift her up and sit her before him on his saddle, sideways at first, but then, as they rode, letting her legs be stroked apart by his knowing hands as though they were in the bedroom.
Trotting around the lake with Rose in that position had excited them both so much that Dorian had steered them into the woodland and insisted that Rose mount him there, riding him on a log with her skirts awry about them both and her eyelids fluttering prettily as she obeyed her natural instincts.
Truly, no other woman had ever excited him and satisfied him as much as his sweet, artless wife. Dorian only closed his eyes for a few seconds but when he opened them again, the view fromthe window had changed. On seeing Clio trotting riderless up the path, reins and stirrups swinging, his heart seemed to jump into his throat and the fear in his blood was like nothing he had ever felt.
There was no sign of Rose.Had she fallen?! Please, God, no!
Yanking back the bolts on the French windows hard enough that the whole edifice shook, the Duke of Ravenhill flung the doors wide and raced across the grass, past the empty-saddled horse and towards the last spot he had seen his wife.
“Rose!” he shouted urgently. “Rose!”
Then he saw her sitting up in some bushes nearby with a surprised look on her face, that turned into a smile.
“Clio slipped,” she said breathlessly. “It was the ice.”
“Dear God!” Dorian exclaimed, falling to his knees on the semi-frozen ground and pulling her into his arms. “Rose! Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?”
She shook her head and gave a little laugh.
“I fell straight into the bushes and it was a soft landing,” Rose told him. “It wasn’t Clio’s fault. I should have paid more attention to the ice on the path. I suppose I was daydreaming.”
Dorian pulled his wife tightly to him and kissed her waves of loosened hair, smelling that faint scent of violets and letting his volcanic relief subside a little. What would he have done if anything had happened to her? Despite Rose’s protests that she could walk, the duke carried her into the drawing room, unresisting in the face of his determination.
Laid on the sofa there, Rose’s large blue eyes were wide and curious as the duke attended her, checking for injuries to her limbs and head and unfastening her riding habit for ease. It appeared that she spoke the truth and was entirely unharmed but Dorian saw that his own hands were still trembling.
“You are well,” he said eventually, taking a deep gulp of air and trying to calm his racing heart. “Thank God. Perhaps it is too soon for you to ride alone after all, especially in winter when the ground is so treacherous. I should speak to the grooms…”
“Are you well, Dorian?” Rose asked softly. “I am sorry if I gave you a fright. It was no great fall, I promise. I shall probably go back out on Clio again this afternoon.”
He forced himself to smile as though nothing was wrong and it felt like putting on a mask over his panic and dread.
“As you like,” he made himself say. “Still, it would be better to have someone with you…”
Here, Dorian stopped, the anxiety in his voice grating on him, even if it wasn’t obvious to Rose. What was happening to him? As Rose said herself, it had been a very minor fall. Yet he wasreacting to it as though to a peril of far greater dimensions. Why was he so troubled?
This was ridiculous and disproportionate. The Duchess of Ravenhill did not need a nursemaid. The duke made himself stand and walk from the sofa to the door.
“I will have Smithers summon Mabel and bring you some tea,” he said and walked out of the room.
On the other side of the door, Dorian groaned and closed his eyes, fists clenched at his side. Why could he not behave normally? It felt as though his life and mind were sliding out of control.
Briefly, he thought of his parents fretting and obsessing over the minutiae of one another’s behavior, whether in love or in hate, and flinched from it.
Pained, Dorian remembered looking through the bannisters at his mother physically clinging to his father’s arm and shouting abuse while trying to prevent her husband leaving the house in his carriage. His father’s face had been marked with the scratches of his mother’s nails.
Do not walk away me! I have not finished with you yet, you damned devil!
