Ewan’s eyebrow shot up but he only said, “Excellent,” and turned back to Mac.
Annabel listened until she heard him making plans to bring several men to the village with them. Then she put a hand on his sleeve. “The men should go before us,” she said.
He looked rather confused but accepted her comment without question. Annabel stood and thought about that for a moment; it was a rare blessing to find a man who would accept a word of advice without querying it. Certainly her father had never seen the point of such a thing.
A few minutes later four outriders set off for the village at a good clip, directed to bring back more men and some sort of farm cart in case the carriage wasn’t immediately usable.
Annabel turned to the horses milling about the edge of the road, cropping grass with their blunt teeth. She walked among them, stopping to pat a rough dapple coat and scratch the ears of a twitchy job horse. Finally she found a red-brown gelding with a black mane and large, soft eyes. She held out her hand and he politely stopped eating grass and blew air into her palm with his velvety nose.
“What’s your name, beauty?” she crooned at him, but he just lipped her fingers and shook his bridle. “I’ll call you Ginger, then,” she said. “Ginger was my very first horse and you have a similar look about you.”
He accepted a gift of grass with courteous attention.
Ewan threw a saddle on Ginger and turned to her. “May I give you a hand up?”
“No, thank you,” Annabel said. Outriders and groomsmen were milling about the road, waiting to figure out precisely how Mac wanted to retrieve the carriage. Mac was prowling around and around the vehicle, splashing in the mud while he decided what would cause the frame the least damage. “I’ll just walk this sweet gentleman for a moment,” Annabel said.
Ginger liked walking and blew in her ear in a companionable sort of way. A second later Ewan caught up with her, his horse on a long rein. The sun felt warm on Annabel’s face. Its rays were catching Ewan’s hair and made it look as if prisms of ruby light were caught in its strands.
Slowly they drew away from the shouts of the men working on the coach, and then the road turned a corner. Annabel glanced back and saw that they were thoroughly out of sight.
“Will you give me a hand now?” she asked.
She swung up into the saddle and rearranged her skirts with some care. After a moment she realized that Ewan was still standing at her horse’s shoulder as if he were frozen. She cocked an eyebrow.
“Lovely stockings,” he said calmly enough, but there was a flare in his eyes.
Annabel looked down at her lacy, woolen stockings. They gleamed snowy white in the shadowy light, all the way from her slender ankles to just above her knees. “You can see why I didn’t wish to mount this horse in front of your men,” she said, grinning at Ewan.
He didn’t say anything immediately, just curled his hand around her ankle. “You have beautiful legs.” His voice had a deep, almost hoarse note.
Annabel grinned at him and hitched her skirts a little higher. His eyes wandered over her thighs, closely gripping the horse’s back, and he got such a strange expression on his face that she raised an eyebrow.
“Is there some problem, Ewan?”
“I may not be able to mount a saddle myself,” he said, and his voice was definitely hoarse now.
“Try,” she said impudently. With a slight movement of her knee she prompted Ginger to start walking down the road.
“You didn’t tell me you could ride!” Ewan called after her.
“You didn’t ask!” Annabel called back. She could feel swells of joy rising in her heart as Ginger gave a little tentative prance under her. He was stretching his legs, hoping that he wouldn’t be kept to the endless trot and walk maintained by the outriders.
So she leaned over his neck and loosed the reins. “Go!” she said, and he needed no encouragement.
She felt his great muscles bunch and leap forward as he gave a snort of satisfaction and threw up his head as if to smell the wind. And then they were whipping past the dark stands of fir trees, racing down the dirt road. Annabel sat up and laughed aloud, holding on to the reins with one hand, keeping Ginger at a gallop with a faint pressure of her knees.
From behind came a pounding of horse hooves. Annabel looked back and grinned. Apparently Ewan had managed to mount after all. He probably thought her horse was running away with her. No lady rode like this. If he leans over to grab my bridle, Annabel thought, I’ll—I’ll pull him off.
He caught up with her, of course. But he didn’t make a move toward her reins, just laughed, and even over the pounding of the horse’s hooves and the whipping of her hair around her ears, she heard the deep pleasure of it.
They rounded a curve and galloped down a shady bit of road, and around another corner and out into the brilliant sunshine again. When Ginger started to blow, Annabel pulled him up, took him to a canter and then to a walk. Ewan and his mount kept pace beside her.
Then Ewan nosed his horse over so that it was walking a hair’s breadth from Ginger and their shoulders were almost touching.
“The longer we spend together, the less I feel I know about you,” he said, shaking his head at her. “You’re so different from the woman I thought I met in London.”
“What did you think I was like?” Annabel asked, not quite sure that she really wanted to know the answer.
“A lady,” he said promptly. “A true lady.”
“I am a lady!” Annabel said, scowling at him.
“You know what I mean. I was shocked when you didn’t slap me after I kissed you in the May cart at Lady Mitford’s garden party. I finally decided you must have been suffering from the heat. There you were, all dressed in lace, and looking melting and soft—”
Annabel laughed at him. “I beat you at archery, if you remember. Was that a ladylike thing to do?”
“I forgot that,” he said. “You do have some very useful skills.”
“Nothing is more useful than looking melting, as you call it,” she said, giving him a little smile.
“Oh? Why?”
“Because if a woman looks fragile and melting, the men in her vicinity do errands. Plus, they think that she is helpless, and they defend her. They think that she is adorable, and so they want to cuddle her. Before they know it, they feel a desire to take her home and keep her safe forever.”
“I feel like taking you home, and you won’t be safe there,” he growled at her.
Annabel giggled. “Another useful skill.”
“What?”
“If I make you desire me, you’ll do my errands in the hope that I’ll pay you a favor in return. Or, to take a larger example, you’ll give me jewelry, specifically a wedding ring.”
“So make me desire you,” he said, watching her.
She looked at him over her shoulder and let her eyes drop to his lips, and her eyelids droop a little. Then a tiny smile curled her lips a smile she’d been practicing since she was fourteen years old and discovered that smiles occasionally inspired the butcher to give them free cuts of meat. That a smile would confuse the baker so that he would give them extra loaves of bread.
Ewan whistled. “I can see how that might be effective.”