Untamed Rogue, Scandalous Mistress

He and Peyton swung up into their saddles, thanking the steward for his time and his conscientious adherence to every detail. They turned their horses towards home, riding in much-appreciated silence; Crispin’s head was full to bursting with all he’d learned.

Crispin was amazed Peyton had stayed quiet for as long as he did. He’d bet himself Peyton wouldn’t make it a mile before asking what he’d thought of the manor. Tessa’s influence must be powerful indeed, Crispin mused. But he could see the effort the restraint cost his brother. Peyton’s mouth was tense; on two occasions, Crispin felt Peyton was on the verge of bringing the subject up, but then thought better of it.

They reached the fork in the road, one turn leading to the Dursley Road and the other going on a short distance to the village. ‘I think I’ll stop in for a pint or two,’ Crispin said off-handedly.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Peyton offered, making a quick check of his pocket watch.

‘That’s all right. I’d prefer to do some thinking in private.’ Crispin hoped Peyton understood. He needed a kind of privacy he wouldn’t find at Dursley Park and he’d have no privacy if he turned up at the inn with the earl in tow.

‘And dinner?’ Peyton asked cautiously. ‘Shall I tell Tessa to expect you?’

Crispin nodded his head. ‘Probably not. I’m not sure how long I’ll sit and think.’

‘It’s no trouble to set an extra plate if you change your mind,’ Peyton said graciously. Crispin could see that his absence wasn’t what Peyton had hoped for, but that his brother guessed at how monumental the day had been, how many things needed thinking over.

Once inside the inn, Crispin lost himself in the crowd, taking a small table by the window. Word had not yet spread of his return and he was thankful for the anonymity. Around him, the work day was ending. Large groups of local workers filed in for a pint before heading home for the evening.

Crispin studied this crowd unobtrusively. These men worked the fields as hired labour or in various other occupations in the village. They were journeymen and artisans, a few apprentices among them. They would drink and go home to supper and wives. The rougher crowd, those without familial commitments, would come in later after the supper hour and stay until closing; drinking, wenching, perhaps brawling if it suited them.

The men here now, though, would be the men he’d fraternise with if he took the manor. They’d be the men who would work his stables. They’d be the men who he’d drink with on occasion. Their lives would be interwoven into his.

Crispin took a swallow of his ale, trying to imagine his life as a gentleman landowner. It seemed so far from the things he’d told Peyton over brandy the other night as to be laughable.

These men didn’t care about the nationalist revolutions sweeping Europe, about water-routes to faraway places they’d never visit, about fighting over lines on a map. Their lives were about wheat crops and sheep, cattle and corn. If he threw his lot in with them, his life would be too. Everything to which he’d devoted his life in the first twenty years of his adulthood would cease to matter—every nebulous peace he had brokered, every boundary dispute he had negotiated, would carry little weight in that new life. It would be tantamount to erasing who he was and remaking himself in a new image. The soldier, the warrior-diplomat, would not fit into this new world of quiet landownership.

The thought sat poorly with Crispin. He rather liked himself just as he was. Of course, there were plenty of people who didn’t. The ton didn’t know what to make of him. He was too bold, too loose with the rules of proper society for many of the matchmaking mamas to trust him with their daughters. Yet, he had a certain appeal with his brother’s connections, his brother’s wealth, and his brother’s affection behind him. Any woman who married him would be well looked after under the Dursley banner. Proxy polygamy, he called it. The only reason anyone would marry him would be because they were marrying Peyton by extension. If he stayed in England, he’d have to decide in whose world he fit.

Without appearing to eavesdrop, he listened in on snatches of nearby conversations, trying to put himself in the frame of their world. Could he come to care about the issues they cared about? Could he empathise with the problems that plagued their lives?

Snatches of one conversation rose over the rest. ‘The Calhoun woman was in today to buy some shovels. It’s not natural, a woman buying tools. There’s strange things going on out there,’ a beefy man said loudly, drawing all the room’s attention. Crispin tensed. In the silence of the inn, the man let his news fall on expectant ears. ‘I’ve found out that the girls in her stables ride in trousers and they ride astride.’

Shock and outrage exploded at the announcement; questions were shouted over the din. Crispin stifled a groan. That could hardly be what Aurora wanted. But what followed was worse. Crispin slouched anonymously in his chair and listened.

The big man, named Mackey from what Crispin could gather, hushed the upset crowd. ‘Aurora Calhoun needs to go. She’s no good for our village, teaching our womenfolk to ride astride. Who knows what kind of ideas she’ll plant in their heads next? We don’t want our women turning out like her.’ There was a loud roar of agreement. ‘One of her is enough. She’s had two years to prove she could fit in. We’ve left her alone and look how she’s repaid us! The only thing she’s proved is how out of place she is.’ There were other comments too. ‘We should have paid more attention…’ ‘Should have known it wasn’t natural from the start…’

Good lord, the man was creating a witch hunt. Crispin half-expected the men to pick up torches and march out to the stables then and there. Crispin had heard enough. He’d end up fighting with someone if he stayed. Crispin slapped a few coins on the table and made a quiet exit, opting to exercise his authority when cooler heads prevailed, including his.

Dusk was in its final throes when he swung up on Sheikh. He could still make dinner at Dursley Park, but he wasn’t ready to go home. More to the point, he wasn’t ready to go to Peyton’s home. He couldn’t expect Peyton to keep silent about the manor forever. But Crispin wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, at least not with his brother. He could only think of one place that might suit his needs. In the fading light of day, Crispin turned Sheikh towards Aurora’s stables.

The stable lanterns threw a welcoming light into the yard and the fresh smell of evening hay assailed his senses the moment Crispin led Sheikh through the stable doors. Horses neighed, acknowledging Sheikh’s presence among them as they passed stall doors. Crispin stopped outside Sheikh’s stall and removed the saddle. With one hand, he stroked Sheikh’s long neck, soothing the horse. With the other, Crispin groped for the kit holding the brushes. The kit should have been right behind him on the nail hook outside the stall where he’d left it that morning.

‘Are you looking for this?’ The voice startled him. Crispin whirled around; releasing a breath when he saw the voice belonged to Aurora.

She held the kit out to him. ‘I didn’t mean to give you a start,’ she apologised, taking one of the brushes and moving around to Sheikh’s other side. She began to curry the horse.

‘You’ve had a long day. I noticed Sheikh was gone when I came back this morning. You must have been here early and now it’s dinner time,’ Aurora commented.

‘Peyton and I rode over to see some property,’ Crispin said, surprising himself with the truth. He could have answered the question just as easily by saying he’d waited until lessons were done. Such an answer would not have given away any particular information about his whereabouts and it certainly wouldn’t have invited any further conversation. His chosen answer, on the other hand, invited all nature of possible comment, none of which Aurora opted for.

‘Your brother is eager to see you settled,’ she said, meeting his eyes for an instance over Sheikh’s back.

Of all the things she could have said, he’d not expected that. He’d expected the usual; ‘Do you mean to settle here?’ ‘Where is the property?’ ‘What do you plan to do with it?’

‘I suppose he is,’ Crispin replied, bending over and clicking to Sheikh to lift his hoof.

‘How do you feel about that?’

Crispin answered honestly. ‘The property is enticing, but I’m not the right man for that kind of life. I’ll sell the property outright and then I’ll be on my way.’ He finished picking the hoof and stood up, stretching his back. Aurora was nearly finished brushing Sheikh’s opposite flank.

‘I know what you mean,’ she said casually. ‘I’ve been here longer than I’ve been anywhere else. I’d always taught on a property owned by someone else. But Tessa talked me into leasing this one. Actually, in all truth, Tessa wanted me to buy it, but I couldn’t go that far. A lease was as permanent a commitment as I could make.’ Aurora stopped brushing and shook back her hair, which had fallen forwards over her shoulders as she worked. An awkward silence fell between them as if they both suddenly recognised they’d said too much to someone they didn’t know.

Crispin met her eyes over the back of Sheikh and nodded in the awkward quiet; a wealth of understanding passing between them in that single look. He could well imagine all the trappings of permanence to which she referred, trappings that went beyond owning the actual structure.

Buying the property would have meant applying for a loan. She wouldn’t have had any money of her own. She would have had to have relied on Peyton’s support. Support Peyton would have provided based on the comments Peyton had made at dinner, but she would have been indebted to him. She couldn’t have left until that obligation was fulfilled. Once again Crispin’s hypothesis proved true. Permanence bred obligation. It was odd to think how much this stranger’s situation paralleled his own in spite of its own unique circumstances. It begged several questions.

How had a strikingly beautiful woman come to own a riding academy in the unlikely middle of sheep country? How was it that a stranger he’d never met until yesterday could sum up in a sentence his precise feelings over the property? She could empathise with him on this issue while his brother, who knew him better than anyone, could not.

Aurora cleared her throat in the silence. ‘It’s late and I’m sure you haven’t eaten yet.’

Ah, the audacious woman was dismissing him. Of course. She’d want to get to her own meal. It had been a long day for her as well. She’d been up jumping before he’d even arrived that morning. It had been a long time since a woman had dismissed him.

‘I’m sorry to keep you. I’ll just see to Sheikh and be going.’ Crispin piled the brushes into the kit, disappointment unexpectedly swamping him. He hadn’t been ready to leave the stables. Or perhaps he hadn’t been ready to leave her. They’d got off on the wrong foot yesterday. This brief exchange had been a pleasant contrast, but perhaps that was too much to hope for. Perhaps she was merely being nice.

‘No, don’t go.’ Her words rushed out. ‘I was going to suggest, before you interrupted me, that you stay for dinner.’

There was that sharp tongue he remembered. Crispin stifled a laugh on behalf of the truce they seemed to have struck. But he noticed she couldn’t help sneaking that small rebuke in—‘before you interrupted’. What might have been an invitation had now been turned into a suggestion, which everyone knew was just a step below a command. He was very familiar with ‘suggestions’. Peyton made a lot of them.

But she wasn’t Peyton and Crispin found he’d like nothing more than to have dinner with the intriguing Aurora Calhoun, who was less like his brother and perhaps more like him; a wanderer, a straddler of worlds. A kindred spirit? It was far too early in their acquaintance to draw that conclusion. There was too much unknown about her for him to make such leaps of logic. Still, it couldn’t hurt to find out and Crispin intended to explore the potential.

Chapter Four

What was she thinking to invite the earl’s brother to dinner? Because that’s what he was, when all was said and done. Men with that kind of power were dangerous to her freedom. One word from him and Dursley could shut her down with a single sentence dropped at a dinner party.

She needed Crispin Ramsden to keep his distance. But, no, she’d invited a potential danger right to her dinner table. It didn’t matter that he wore plain clothes and didn’t put on aristocratic airs. It didn’t matter that she wanted to see if he was worthy of riding Kildare. He was still brother to the earl.

In retrospect, she was amazed she hadn’t seen the resemblance instantly. He had the earl’s raven-black hair, the earl’s dark-blue eyes, but not the earl’s urbane demeanour and that made all the difference, distinguishing them from one another in spite of their inherited physical similarities.

Dursley carried his confidence like one born to it. Everything Dursley did was done with a polished veneer of sophistication. Not Crispin. He exuded a rough worldliness. She was certain his blue eyes had seen things that would render most men cynical about the world they lived in. The tanned skin of his face and hands suggested he was a man who knew how to work. The rugged planes of his face and the breadth of his shoulders affirmed this was a man used to hard living. He was no pampered prince of the ton regardless of who his brother was.

That was why she’d invited him to dinner. Like her, he knew a world outside the circles of rarefied society, he’d lived in its milieu and, like her, he’d been a participant in that world beyond the drawing rooms. When their eyes had met across the back of his stallion, she’d felt a connection; two wayward souls contemplating the merits of landowning against the odds of their natural tendencies. It would be somewhat comedic if the connection hadn’t been so strong.

Aurora laid out the dinner things, setting the earthenware plates down on the plank table with a harder thud than she’d intended. She tried to remember anything, everything, Petra or Tessa might have mentioned in passing about Crispin. There was very little she could recall. She could hear his boots coming down the short hall from the stables. In moments he’d be there in her meagre rooms, thanks to her impetuous offer, and she would have to live with it.

‘Smells good.’ Crispin ducked into the room under the low-beamed door. He was all male, all six foot two and change of him. He positively radiated potent masculinity and Aurora wondered what other impetuous decisions she might be tempted to make before the night was over.

Crispin had taken time to wash off at the pump outside in the yard. Leftover droplets of water glistened at his neck where his shirt opened in a V, offering a small glimpse of his chest. She smiled at the interesting dichotomy he posed; a man who cared enough to wash before dinner, but had no use for the finer rules of gentlemanly dining that demanded he eat with a waistcoat and jacket on. Aurora doubted one ever caught Dursley dining in his shirt sleeves.

‘Stew and fresh bread,’ Aurora announced, placing a pewter plate laden with slices of dark country bread on the table. ‘Sit down, I’ll have the stew on in a minute.’ She was suddenly conscious of his eyes on her, following her movements. She told herself it was to be expected. Her quarters were small—where else was he supposed to look? It was only natural to be interested in the one moving object in the room. That object just happened to be her.