The Wedding Dress

There’s nothing you like about this man, Emma, she told herself. Remember that. Not one thing.

Except that libido-blistering smile.

Damn. Butler was watching her as if he knew what she was thinking. Those penetrating eyes swept her from head to toe.

Emma fiddled with the small gilt dagger at her waist. “Don’t smirk at me,” she warned. “It’s irritating.”

“Give me a few hours and I promise you’ll be too tired to care. Let’s go saddle up the horses.” Butler leveled Emma an arrogant look. “You can ride horses, can’t you? In the paper-work you filled out for the audition, you said you were an experienced rider.”

“That depends.” Emma pressed her hand to her heart, delighting in pulling his chain. “Experience can mean so many different things to so many different people.”

“I’m keeping the question at a five-year-old’s level since I’m still not convinced you can read.” Butler kicked the metal sign with the toe of his boot. “Can you ride? Yes or no?”

“What do you think?” Emma challenged, hands on hips.

“I think I’m in hell.” Butler stepped over the chain with his long legs. “But by nightfall I’m going to make bloody sure you’re right there with me.”

Chapter Four

THE BARN WAS DESERTED. The rest of the horses boarded at the nearby stable dozed in the morning sun as Jared tacked up Falcon, the black Andalusian stallion he borrowed to ride in mock tournaments and the dainty gray mare the studio had leased to play Lady Aislinn’s beloved Morgan le Fay.

Jared regarded Emma with a mixture of smugness and irritation. Wary, she hung back just a little, struggling to mask her trepidation, acting nonchalant, but betraying her nervousness in tiny ways. Fidgeting with the end of her girdle, swallowing hard when she thought he wasn’t looking, nibbling at her rosy bottom lip as she thrust out a hand for the mare to sniff.

“Don’t let her bite you,” Jared said. “She’ll think you’ve brought her a carrot.”

“Why?”

“Because I…Because horses are forever hopeful and I can’t have her nipping off your fingers. The studio wouldn’t like it.”

“I wouldn’t like it either.” Emma curled her fingers back into her palm. “I faint at the sight of blood.”

“We’ll try not to spill any then.” He glanced over toward the long canvas-wrapped bundle he’d brought with him, then figured he’d deal with it once he got the duchess up on her horse. Emma would undoubtedly need a few minutes once she was up top to remember how to breathe. “Mount up,” Jared ordered.

“M-mount up. Right. I just put my foot in that metal thing and…”

“It’s called a stirrup. I’ve already got it set to about the right length for your legs.”

Emma sucked in a deep breath and then edged toward the mare.

“I’m playing the role of groom,” Jared said. “He’d help you get up on the horse.”

“I can—can do it myself.”

“Sure you can. But we’re going to pretend we’re in the fourteenth century.” He closed the space between them, too close for comfort. Her hair smelled delicious, like cinnamon. He linked his hands and crouched so she could put her foot into the cup his palms formed.

“Now just let me boost you up.”

Obviously uneasy, she did as she was told, gripping his shoulder in a fingers-of-death hold. Her breast was inches from his face, her hair brushing in silken strands across his stubbled cheek.

Damn good thing they hated each other. Because if they hadn’t, they might never leave the barn. “Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

“One, two, three.” He straightened, half suffocating in the folds of her gown as she tried to scramble onto the horse’s back.

She gave a nervous squeak as she fought for balance, the mare sidestepping as Emma’s arms and legs flailed like a snarl of Slinky toys, limp and useless, her body listing perilously. She seemed ready to slide off the opposite side as she grabbed the leather reins—completely by accident, Jared figured.

Smug as a cat with a mouse in its teeth, Jared started toward her to keep her from breaking her neck. But a split second before he could reach her arm, she nabbed the stirrups with her feet, leaned over the mare’s neck and took off at a dead run.

Flashing him a diabolical smile over one shoulder, she left him eating her dirt. Literally. That was the major problem with gaping like an eejit when a horse’s hooves were flinging bits of dirt and grass back at you.

Spitting out the grit and swiping the back of his hand across his mouth, Jared grabbed the long bundle, swiftly fastening it on the back of the suddenly restive Andalusian’s saddle. He swung up onto the black and gave chase, but Emma had won herself a fine head start.

Reluctant admiration sparked inside him. Emma McDaniel sat on the horse as if she’d been born on one. Her silvery laughter echoed back to him as she splashed through puddles, mud spattering her gown, her hair a wild tangle as she lifted her face to the wind.

She used the mare’s delicate legs to her advantage, flying above the ground like a fluff of dandelion seeds carried on the wind before a storm. Falcon thundered after her, the power that made him the terror of the recreated lists where Jared practiced with his lance doing little to close the last dozen meters between the two horses.

But maybe Falcon didn’t want to catch them any more than Jared did at the moment. Maybe he wanted to enjoy the sight of two breathtaking female creatures running free. Far enough to the right side to see Emma and her mount in profile, Jared surprised himself, drinking in the sight. For with each stretch of countryside the mare flew across, Emma’s smile glowed more luminous, the elegant curve of her cheek a deeper wind-stung pink.

When she’d bolted out of the barn fifteen minutes ago, she’d been showing off—elated to leave him in her dust and shatter his cynical doubt that she knew one end of a horse from the other. But the farther away from the stables they got, the more Emma and the mare seemed to bond, until they both looked as wild and ethereal as the magical creatures Jared’s father had told him about when he’d still been young enough to believe in them. Women made of mist and imagination, so exquisite a man only had to look at them to fall deathly in love and pine the rest of his life for the fairy queen far beyond a mortal’s reach.

Is that what happened to my mum? Jared remembered the night he’d finally dared to ask. Did she wander into the mist and vanish to Tir Nan Og just like the fairy queen?

Tears filled his father’s eyes, his callused fingertips tracing Jared’s cheek, scratching tender little-boy skin. She might have done just that, lad. So far above this hard world of mine she was.

Having a fairy queen for a mum was a lot easier on the heart than the truth his father had never been strong enough to face. But then, by the time Jared had been able to fathom the cold reality of his mother’s desertion, Mary Calloway Butler was easier for Jared to understand than any fairy ever could be. After all, hadn’t Jared proved that he was just like her?

Jared slammed his mind shut against the memories, drawing on his power to focus so intently on the task before him that his own past disappeared.

Within moments, he’d blocked out everything but the vast sweep of sky overhead and the green, boulder-strewn land below. And Emma McDaniel riding. In the distance he glimpsed an unruly burn, its winding length tumbling over one waterfall and then curving in an exquisite arc to dance down yet another.

The stream marked the end of the land they had permission to ride on.

Snib MacMurray, the farmer whose land abutted the opposite side of the burn, had told the studio to take the money they’d offered him to use his property as part of the set and cram it up their arse. He wasn’t about to have a pack of foreigners tramping around, upsetting his sheep and making the cows’ milk dry up.

But then, Snib had been surly for as long as Jared had known him. Don’t be taking Snib’s insults to heart, Angus Butler had soothed Jared as a boy. Snib’s the kind of man who took the defeat at Culloden Moor so personal he’s determined to make everyone he meets suffer for it two hundred and fifty-odd years later.

A roguish part of Jared would’ve loved to have seen Emma McDaniel meet the glen’s most cantankerous resident. But the sooner Jared got through the day’s training, the sooner he could get back to the dig. If he couldn’t wear Emma out on horseback, he’d just use another method.

Jared called out, but if she could hear him, she pretended not to. She and her mare only flew faster, as if the woman was trying to keep her mount as far from his as possible. He got the distinct feeling she was doing her best to pretend he was a tree. Or a rock. Or more likely still, something that had just crawled out from under one, he thought with a wry smile.

Not that he blamed her. If he’d behaved so badly Davey felt obliged to make excuses for him, he must have exuded all the charm of a moray eel. Most women he knew would have been appalled by his temper already, but Emma McDaniel gave as good as she got. He remembered how she’d refused to back down behind the castle that morning, challenging him with dark eyes, leaning into his space as if daring him to…to…what? Kill her?

Or kiss her?

Whoa, man. Where had that thought come from? Too many months without a woman beneath him—that’s where. A man could wall off his emotions, but defying biology was a tougher matter entirely. Any scientist knew that. The survival of the species depended on the male’s urge to mate. And mating was all about the chase.

He squeezed his heels into the big stallion’s sides, the animal surging in an effort to close the space between him and Emma’s mare. But of her own volition, Emma reined in at the stream. She dismounted and, reins in hand, peered up at the waterfalls, her creamy skin and lovely profile making Jared’s chest feel too small.