“Your Grace?” Godwin asked dryly. “Shall I saddle t’other bay? Or do you mean to chase her on foot?”
Edward swore again. “Saddle anything that moves.”
“Yes, sir,” Godwin said with the serenity of a man enjoying God’s private theatre.
Edward vaulted into the saddle before the stirrup even settled and drove his horse forward, pulse pounding with a fury he could not afford to examine.
***
Isla rode like sin embodied. Not reckless but fast, daring and joyous. She cut across the south meadow. Edward urged his own horse harder, but Isla gained ground, slipping like a wisp of smoke through a gap in the old stone wall and into the east pasture. The wind tore at Edward’s hair. The estate blurred into streaks of green and gold. He wasn’t even wearing a hat. The thought of his tenants seeing their duke bareheaded and flying, galloped through his mind and was gone.
He could taste the sharpness of rain building over the moors. Isla looked over her shoulder once, eyes alight and triumphant. She teased him with her very existence. He pushed his mount harder. At the far edge of the pasture, a narrow stream cut the land in two. Isla slowed, angling her horse to a ford where the stones lay shallow. Edward did not slow.
I am the lord and master of this land. I do not follow like an obedient school boy.
He gave his horse its head, rose in the stirrups, and jumped. For a moment they were weightless, man and horse. Then they landed hard on the far bank. Isla hauled her horse to a stop, fury flaring bright as struck tinder.
“Are you mad?” she shouted. “You could have broken his leg!”
“He is fine,” Edward said, patting the bay’s sweating neck. “He is trained for it.”
“A horse is not a tool for masculine pride!”
“You have no right,” Edward shot back, “to complain about my horsemanship while you ride my land dressed like a …”
“A person?” she supplied.
“A scandal.”
She urged her mount through the ford and to Edward’s side. Dismount was a single fluid motion, boots hitting turf with controlled force. “I will not sit pretty and polite because the ton demands I pretend my legs do not exist!”
He swung down as well, temper meeting hers like flint.
“You are my wife,” he said. “The ton will watch you for any excuse to rip your reputation apart. And you handed them one!”
“And you,” she snapped, “risked an animal’s bones for the sake of getting ahead of me!”
A crack split the sky, thunder rolling up from the hills. The wind shifted, sharp with rain. They looked at the darkening clouds, then at each other.
“We need shelter,” he said begrudgingly breaking off the argument.
“We need to make sure your horse is well,” Isla insisted.
“Would you do that in the pouring rain?”
“Aye.”
Edward spied the little shepherd’s hut lay up the slope from where they had stopped. Little more than a lean-to with stone walls and timber supports holding up a roof of wood and turf. Large enough to crouch under in bad weather. As Isla bent to check his horse’s legs he set the animal moving, collecting her reins as he went.
He didn’t look back to see that she followed, feeling the first fat drops of rain.
If she doesn’t, let her get wet while I sit in the dry. It will serve her right.
Inside, the hut smelled of wool and old smoke from a blackened, stone-lined pit in the middle. The horses crowded in with difficulty, leaving barely enough room for him. Isla followed moments before splashing drops became a sheeting downpour.
The restrictive space meant that Isla and Edward ended up hip to hip on a small bench, shoulders brushing, legs touching from knee to thigh. Heat pooled in the contact. Edward tried to pretend he didn’t feel it. He failed. She folded her hands in her lap, breath easing.
“I grew up riding across the moors,” she said quietly. “Nothing feels more like … breathing.”
