“You presume a great deal for a stable hand.”
“And you for a lady who has wandered away from where she belongs.”
That earned him a glare and a curt toss of her head. “And where would that be, good sir?”
“Spoken like a true Scot,” the man laughed, the sound like the tumbling of rocks down a mountainside.
“Wid ye hae me blether tae ye like this then? And wit makes you think I’m no anything but a true Scot?” Isla replied, emphasizing the dialect she had learned from stable hands and which numerous governesses’ had failed to stamp out of her.
The man grunted, continuing his work. Then said,
“Paréceme que la dama protesta en demasía.”
Isla stared with mouth open.
A man does not hide behind a foreign language unless he wishes to say something insulting and not be understood. That is rude and … and … what did he just say to me?!
She fumed, refusing to ask but unable to turn away without knowing. She had spoken in understandable English. Well,English that could be understood with a moment’s thought. She had not been so rude as to hide her meaning entirely. He did not look at her. He did not acknowledge her anger or even glance to see if his supposed insult had landed, if insult it was.
“I note you did not answer my question. Well, I will take my leave and return to where you think I belong. Your technique leaves something to be desired by the way. Goodnight.”
His currying technique was perfect but it was all Isla could think of in the moment. The man chuckled which was like a lighted taper thrust into the smoldering tinder of her temper. She pivoted toward the door, skirts swishing indignantly and her foot caught a coiled rope on the floor.
There was a sharp tug, a startled cry, and the world tilted. She struck her head against a stout beam that ran from ceiling to floor. Within her head there was a sound like a cracked bell. Stars burst behind her eyes.
The last thing she saw was the dark figure lunging forward, his face suddenly stripped of mockery, calling her name. Or perhaps she was dreaming for she had not given it. Darkness swept him to a point of light. Then it drowned her.
Chapter 2
He had fled the music of the ballroom for the music of contented horses. The stables, the only place in Ravenscroft House that smelled of work rather than perfume. Hay, leather, lamp oil. Honest things. Edward Ravenscroft, formerly Lieutenant Edward Ravenscroft of HMS Argus, now Duke Edward of Wexford and unwilling to feel like it, brushed down the black mare with the calm economy the navy had burned into him.
It was habit as much as refuge. Eight years at sea had built a man who counted by bells and watches, who trusted what he could tie, trim, or test. The ballroom sharpened every edge in him.
Too many eyes. Too much talk of heirs and duty.
He could still hear his mother’s hectoring words earlier.
“You owe the name what you stole from it.”
And what did it steal from me, mother?
Then a slice of ballroom brightness had cut across the straw. A lady in green stepped in. She spoke to the dappled mare at the other end of the stables with a Scottish lilt and the gentle confidence of one who had grown up around horses. Too easy toimagine his mother arranging such a creature to tease him back to duty.
Sending her to me like a brood mare to a stallion. The devil!
Such was his anger at the notion that he forgot the prejudice his mother held which would not allow her to propose a Scot as a potential bride for her son. He had met the stranger with boldness and cool insolence. Wishing her away even while he found his eyes drawn to her beauty as though they were iron and she a magnet. Then she turned to go, caught a rope, and struck her head with a hollow sound that emptied his lungs.
Edward moved before thought. The training of an eight year Navy man leaped to the forefront of his mind, action driving out thought. He ran to her, dropping to his knees beside her and placing fingers at her wrist.
Her heart beats and I can see the rise and fall of her chest. She breathes.
He reached up for the lantern, bringing it down to the floor to better shed light on her. Apart from the marring of a rising bump on her forehead, she was beautiful. Exceedingly beautiful. Her bronze hair and pale skin put him in mind of a girl he had met in Newfoundland when the Argus had put in to lick wounds to hull and pride after an insulting defeat at the hands of a French privateer. She had been Irish.
This girl was definitely a Scot though he could not place the location.
Proud of it and prickly as a porcupine at even the hint of insult.
He touched gently at the swelling under the lamplight. No blood. Relief hit hard, like a wave over the bow. Her skirt had snagged on a nail and the silk was torn from hip to knee. It showed a stocking dusted with straw. Above the top of that stocking he caught a tantalizing glimpse of creamy skin, a bare thigh.
