Sophia James - Christmas Betrothals

‘I ca … aaa … aan’t.’ At least some advice seemed to be getting through even though she chose to ignore it, lying across her horse in a position that suggested pure and frozen terror.

Luc was at her side, leaning down wide from his own horse in a way that made Lillian’s heart flutter. Goodness, if he were to fall in this position he would be under the hooves of both mounts and the jagged upstanding stones that scattered the field were not helping his cause either.

She shouted to him to be careful, sheer muscle and strength now keeping him in his seat, his centre of gravity so tilted as he tried unsuccessfully to rein in Lady Shelby’s horse.

Freeing his feet from his stirrups as the edge of the copse bore down upon them, in a daring leap of faith he jumped from his horse to the other and grabbed on the reins, the bridle pulling at the horse’s mouth and bringing its head back in a jerk.

The leafy green branches of the first oaks swiped him as he stopped, Caroline Shelby’s crying now at a fever pitch as she clung to him, arms entwined about his neck as though she would never let him go.

Lillian drew her own horse up a second or so later and slid off.

‘Are you hurt, Lady Shelby?’ she asked anxiously, and caught the golden glance of Luc Clairmont.

‘Not as badly as I am,’ he drawled and extricated himself from the woman’s grasp, jumping down from the horse. Touching a bloodied cheek he smiled, but after the fear of the last few moments any humour was lost on Lillian. She almost lifted her riding crop and hit him.

‘Hurt? You could have been killed!’ She made no attempt at all to curb her shout. ‘You could have fallen and broken your head open on the stones or been trampled by the hooves of these frightened horses.’

Caroline Shelby’s cornflower-blue eyes were now upon her, her terrified shrieks silenced. Gracious, Lillian thought, I have become exactly like her with such an outpouring of words. She clamped her mouth shut and turned away, bringing her whip down against a tree branch, liking the way the brown leaves fell at the action.

She was shaking, she felt it first in her hands and then in her stomach and as she took another step in the direction of her horse, a light-headed strangeness suddenly overcame her, a dry-mouthed fear that was overwhelming. Then the ground was swallowed by blackness and she could not stop her fall.

Luc caught her as she staggered the last few paces, her soft smallness easy to lift, her pale hair undone from its tight chignon as her hat fell to the ground. Her hair tumbled silver across his chest as he placed her gently on the grass.

‘Lilly. Lilly.’ He tapped her cheek and was rewarded by her eyes opening, shadow-bruised in uncertainty as she tried to sit up.

‘Stay still. You fainted.’

‘I … never … faint,’ she returned, though a frown deepened as she realised that indeed she just had. ‘It was your foolishness that made me …’

‘I’m not hurt.’

Her thumb reached up to touch the blood on his cheek. He turned into the contact.

‘From the branches,’ he qualified, ‘and just a scratch.’

Sweat marked her upper lip now and made her skin clammy. God, he could see Wilcox-Rice bearing down and he did not look happy. Behind him came the Hammonds. Nat was last and Luc could have sworn he had a smile on his face.

‘I wanted to tell you that I felt something, too.’ Her words were softly whispered, just before John claimed her and Lady Hammond bent to his side.

The kiss. She spoke of that? He knew she did. The words on the card he had sent said the same thing. Caroline Shelby stood behind him now, looking at them strangely, gratitude mixed with shock. Had she heard? Would she say? He made much of picking his hat up and wiping it against his riding breeches.

‘It seems the world is full of damsels in distress today,’ he quipped and stepped away, hating to leave Lilly behind him with a fear of everything in her ashen face and pale eyes.

Everybody fussed over her, made her comfortable, tucked in her blankets and fluffed her pillows. Aunt Jean, Lady Hammond and Caroline Shelby. Even Cassandra St Auburn with her red hair floating about her face, and looking the picture of glowing good health. Why had she not joined her guests and could she get her alone for five minutes to ask the questions that she wanted to?

Lillian was glad in a way for this bed, glad to be sequestered in a room far away from the chance of meeting Lucas Clairmont again after her last whispered and most unwise remark.

‘I wanted to tell you that I felt something, too.’

What had she been thinking? She shut her eyes against the horror of it all and Aunt Jean’s voice was worried as she shook her arm.

‘Are you feeling poorly again, my dear? Should I send for your father?’ Her query was accompanied by a hacking cough that made Lillian draw the sheet further over her face for fear of catching it.

‘No, I am perfectly all right, Aunt.’ And perfectly stupid , she added beneath her breath.

Could she just stay hidden, pleading some illness that was inexplicable? But how then could she journey home? Gracious, if she had been in London this would have been a whole lot easier, but she was here at a country house an hour’s drive away and in close proximity to a man to whom her reaction gave her a lot to be concerned over.

She could not trust herself, she decided, doom spreading at the conclusion.

She was now a feckless and insubstantial woman who did not trust her own mind and whose opinion was forever yo-yoing between this idea and that one.

To love him!

To love him not!

A man can smile and smile and be a villain!

Lucas had said so as he had spoken of his own shadows and mirrors and alluded that she might have her secrets too. Well, she did, and it was a secret that she could never tell anybody.

She … loved … him .

And she had done from the very first second of laying her eyes upon him outside the retiring room at the Lenningtons’ ball. Loved a man with a smile in his eyes and a voice that held the promise of every single thing that she was not.

Brave. Free. Wild. Untethered.

And today with the chance of death dogging his bravery she had recognised it, her very heart pierced with the impossibility.

‘Oh, Lord God, help me, please …’

The prayer circled in her head, another petition to smite from her soul the horrible recognition of what was there.

Cassie St Auburn now sat on a chair near her bed, all the other women gone for the moment, and yet in her newly found revelation she did not dare to ask anything about Lucas Clairmont. What if he was a villain? What if he truly did inhabit the underworld of crime and gambling? What if she as a friend who knew him well warned her off?

‘I am glad to see you better, Cassandra,’ she began, at least filling the silence with something.

‘Oh, I am only ever sick at mid-day. After that I am always much recovered.’

Lillian could not quite get the gist of her illness.

‘I am pregnant,’ Cassandra St Auburn laughed. ‘Already halfway along.’

A great surge of envy overcame puzzlement. Cassie had a husband who loved her and was now awaiting her first child. With her smiles and happiness she had a life that Lillian suddenly felt was very far from her own. A solitary quiet life, her father’s daughter, and burdened with a stalwart code of behaviour that was beginning to look faintly ludicrous and infinitely lonely.

‘Lord Wilcox-Rice has been asking after you almost hourly,’ Cassie continued, ‘though I have made it clear to him that you need your rest.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Nat also had the doctor look at Mr Clairmont’s injuries, but apart from a torn nail and a cut that has needed to be stitched across his cheek he is in fine form. He also asked after your health.’