The Major Meets His Match

Just as she’d hoped, after only a few yards, the stallion did indeed notice their approach and veered off to the left.

It was just a shame for its rider that it did so rather abruptly, because the man, who’d clung on through all the stallion’s attempts to dislodge him thus far, shot over its shoulder and landed with a sickening thump on the grass.

Harriet briefly wondered whether she ought to go to the rider’s aid. But the man was lying crumpled like a bundle of washing, so there probably wasn’t much she could do for him. She could, however, prevent the magnificent stallion from injuring itself or others, if she could only prevent it from reaching the Gate. To that end, she repeated her manoeuvre, pulling sharply to the left as though about to cut across the stallion’s path. Once again, the stallion took evasive action. What was more, since it wasn’t anywhere near as angry now that it had unseated its hapless rider, it didn’t appear to feel the need to gallop flat out. By dint of continually urging it to veer left, Harriet made the stallion go round in a large, but ever-decreasing circle, with her on the outside. By the time they’d returned to the spot where the man still lay motionless, the stallion had slowed to a brisk trot. It curvetted past him, as though doing a little victory dance, shivered as though being attacked by a swarm of flies and then came to a complete standstill, snorting out clouds of steam.

Harriet dismounted, threw her reins over the nearest shrub and slowly approached the sweating, shivering, snorting stallion, crooning the kind of nonsense words that horses the country over always responded to, when spoken in a confident yet soothing tone. The beast tossed his head in a last act of defiance before permitting her to take its trailing reins.

‘There, there,’ she said, looping them over the same shrub which served as a tether for Shadow. ‘You’re safe now.’ After tossing his head and snorting again for good measure, the stallion appeared to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Only once she was pretty sure the stallion wouldn’t attempt to bolt again did Harriet turn to the man.

He was still lying spread out face down on the grass.

Harriet’s heart lurched in a way it hadn’t when she’d gone after the runaway horse. Horses she could deal with. She spent more time in the stables than anywhere else. People, especially injured people, were another kettle of fish.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t just leave him lying there. So she squared her shoulders, looped her train over her arm and walked over to where he lay.

Utterly still.

What did one do for a man who’d been tossed from his horse? A man who might have a broken neck?

Two answers sprang to mind, spoken in two very diverse voices. The first was that of her aunt, Lady Tarbrook.

‘Go and fetch help,’ it said plaintively, raising a vinaigrette to its nose. ‘Ladies do not kneel down on wet grass and touch persons to whom they have not been introduced.’

She gave a mental snort. According to Lady Tarbrook, Harriet shouldn’t be out here at all. Since she’d come to London, Harriet had learned there were hundreds, nay, thousands of things she ought never to do. If Lady Tarbrook had her way, Harriet would do nothing but sit on a sofa doing embroidery or reading fashion magazines all day.

The second voice, coming swiftly after, sounded very much like that of her mother. ‘Observe him more closely,’ it said, merely glancing up from the latest scientific journal, ‘and find out exactly what his injuries are.’

Which was the sensible thing to do. Then she could go and fetch help, if the man needed it. And what was more, she’d be able to say something to the point about him, rather than voice vague conjectures.

She ran her eyes over him swiftly as she knelt beside him. None of his limbs looked obviously broken. Nor was there any blood that she could see. If she hadn’t seen him take a tumble, she might have thought he’d just decided to take a nap there, so relaxed did his body look. His face, at least the part of it that wasn’t pressed into the grass, also looked as though he were asleep, rather than unconscious. There was even a slight smile playing about his lips.

She cleared her throat, and then, when he didn’t stir, reached out one gloved hand and shook his shoulder gently.

That elicited a mumbled protest.

Encouraged, she shook him again, a bit harder. And his eyes flew open. Eyes of a startlingly deep blue. With deep lines darting from the outer corners, as though he laughed often. Or screwed his eyes up against the sun, perhaps, because, now she came to think of it, the skin of his face was noticeably tanned. Unlike most of the men to whom she was being introduced, of late. He wasn’t handsome, in the rather soft way eligible Town-dwellers seemed to be, either. His face was a bit too square and his chin rather too forceful to fit the accepted patrician mould. And yet somehow it was a very attractive face all the same.

And then he smiled at her. As though he recognised her and was pleased to see her. Genuinely pleased. Which puzzled her. As did the funny little jolt that speared her stomach, making her heart lurch.

‘I have died and gone to heaven,’ he said, wreathing her in sweet fumes which she recognised as emanating, originally, from a brandy bottle.

She recoiled. But not fast enough. Oh, lord, in spite of appearing extremely foxed, he still managed to get his arms round her and tug her down so she lay sprawled half over him. She then only had time to gasp in shock before he got one hand round the back of her head and pulled her face down to his. At which point he kissed her.

Very masterfully.

Even though Harriet had never been kissed before and was shocked that this drunkard was the first man to want to do any such thing, she suspected he must have a lot of experience. Because instead of feeling disgusted, the sensations shooting through her entire body were rather intriguing. Which she was certain ought not to be the case.

‘Open your mouth, sweetheart,’ the man said, breaking the spell he’d woven round her.

Naturally, she pressed her lips firmly together and shook her head, remembering, all of a sudden, that she ought to be struggling.

Then he chuckled. And started rolling, as if to reverse their positions. Which changed everything. Allowing curiosity to hold her in place while an attractive man obliged her to taste his lips was one thing. Letting him pin her to the ground and render her powerless was quite another.

So she did what she should have done in the first place. She wriggled her right arm as free as she could and struck at him with her riding crop. Because he was holding her so close to him, it glanced harmlessly off the thick thatch of light brown curls protecting the back of his head. But she had at least succeeded in surprising him.

‘Let go of me, you beast,’ she said, interjecting as much affront in her voice as she could. And began to struggle.

To her chagrin, though he looked rather surprised by her demand, he let go of her at once. Even so, it was no easy matter to wriggle off him, hampered as she was by the train of her riding habit, which had become tangled round her legs.

‘Ooohh...’ he sighed. ‘That feels good.’ He half closed his eyes and sort of undulated under her. Indicating that all her frantic efforts to get up were only having a very basic effect on his body.

‘You...you beast,’ she said, swiping at him with her crop again.

He winced and rubbed at his arm where she’d managed to get in a decent hit before overbalancing and landing flat on his chest again.

‘I don’t enjoy those sorts of games,’ he protested. ‘I’d much rather we just kissed a bit more and then—’

She shoved her hands hard against his chest, using his rock-solid body as leverage so she could get to her hands and knees.

‘Then nothing,’ she said, shuffling back a bit before her trailing riding habit became so tangled she had to roll half over and sit on it. ‘You clearly aren’t injured after your fall from your horse, though you deserve,’ she said, kicking and plucking at her skirts until she got her legs free, ‘to have your neck broken.’

‘I say, that’s rather harsh,’ he objected, propping himself up on one elbow and watching her struggles sleepily.

‘No, it isn’t. You are drunk. And you were trying to ride the kind of horse that would be a handful for any man, sober. What were you thinking? You could have injured him!’

‘No, I couldn’t. I can ride any horse, drunk or sober—’

‘Well, clearly you can’t, or he wouldn’t have bolted and you wouldn’t be lying here—’

‘Lucifer wouldn’t have thrown me if you hadn’t dashed across in front of us and startled him.’

‘No, he would have carried you on to a public highway and ridden down some hapless milkmaid instead. And you would definitely have broken your neck if he’d thrown you on the cobbles.’

‘I might have known,’ he said with a plaintive sigh, ‘that you were too good to be true. You might look like an angel and kiss like a siren, and have a fine pair of legs, but you have the disposition of a harpy.’

She gasped. Not at the insult, so much, but at the fact that he was gazing admiringly at her legs while saying it. Making her aware that far too much of them was on show.

‘Well, you’re an oaf. A drunken oaf at that!’ She finally managed to untangle her legs and get to her feet just as three more men came staggering into view.

‘Good God, just look at that,’ said the first of the trio to reach them, a slender, well-dressed man with cold grey eyes and a cruel mouth. ‘Even lying flat on his back in the middle of nowhere, Ulysses can find entertainment to round off the evening.’

Since the man with the cruel mouth was looking at her as though she was about to become his entertainment, Harriet’s blood ran cold.

‘I have no intention of being anyone’s entertainment,’ she protested, inching towards Shadow, though how on earth she was to mount up and escape, she had no idea. ‘I only came over here to see if I could help.’

‘You can certainly help settle the b-bet,’ said the second young man to arrive, flicking his long, rather greasy fringe out of his eyes. ‘Did he reach the C-Cumberland Gate b-before Lucifer unseated him?’