Page 26

Chapter

THIRTEEN

A grinning Bill deposited a second saddle next to Guy’s in the middle of the training yard. “Others around here might think it’s telling that you’re suddenly taking Lottie’s advice, but I don’t.”

“Of course you don’t.” Guy tossed the heavy bundle of bridles and reins next to the saddles while biting his tongue.

He had decided that trying to argue against his head groom’s constant teasing was counterproductive days ago, because denial had only made things worse.

As a day of stony silence hadn’t improved things either, he now planned to blandly agree with everything the riling wretch said and spoil Bill’s fun.

Except Bill was nothing if not tenacious and had redoubled his efforts.

As Guy stalked back to the stables to fetch the last of the equipment, his dog-with-a-bone groom skipped like a crab beside him so he could better watch his reactions.

“I told them all that any interest you have in her is mutually and exclusively equine at its heart and not an expression of your heart in any way, as the gossips around this estate are suggesting.”

“Thank you, Bill.” Guy marched into the tack room and tried not to scream as his tormentor followed.

“I also told them that there is a big difference in being friendly with a woman and wooing her. Just because you smile more when she happens by doesn’t mean you fancy her.”

Guy agreed to that lie with a disinterested nod as he grabbed a few apples and shoved them in a saddlebag that he looped over his shoulder. Furious at himself for the bad case of unwelcome lust that he was inflicted with that was so strong, it was hardly a surprise Bill had noticed.

“And to all those who accuse you of hanging on her every word, I tell them that I think it’s lovely that you hold her in such high esteem. Professionally, that is. For Lottie knows her horses. Nobody could deny that.”

Guy nodded his agreement again rather than mutter all the obscenities lined up in his throat while he rolled his eyes in frustration.

Frustrated at the lust. Frustrated at the minx who had caused it and frustrated—most of all—by the fact that Bill got to call her Lottie while he hadn’t yet been invited to.

“Miss Travers does have a unique way with them.” And with people. Everybody liked her. Including him.

Not that he would ever admit that aloud.

“Horses aside.” His head groom was closer than his shadow now that they were indoors and Guy had nowhere to escape, hovering like a bird of prey waiting for some chink in the armor that would allow him to swoop in for the kill.

“I’m glad the pair of you seem to be getting on so well.

Aside from the mismatch in your temperaments…

” How had she described that? The ray of sunshine and the storm cloud.

Guy couldn’t deny her summation was likely as apt as it was galling.

“You and Lottie have a great deal in common.”

Bill loved to list things on his fingers, so he had shoved them in Guy’s face.

“You love horses, she loves horses. You’re both happiest when in the great outdoors.

Obviously, we know the fact that she is also a vivacious and beautiful woman to boot is by the by and that you are immune to her physical charms, so pay all those gossips no mind.

It would take a special sort of woman to tempt you back into the courting arena and she isn’t it.

She’s too pretty. Too clever. Too funny.

Too”—Bill rolled his hand as if pondering the conundrum—“vivacious for a staid fellow like you. I know that it is coincidence and coincidence alone that you’ve collided here every day this week at the exact same times as she sets off for her morning ride… ”

Because of course his wily head groom had clocked that small shift in Guy’s routine after he’d gone out of his way to avoid her beforehand.

Why wasn’t he avoiding the menace now? More importantly, why was he doing the exact opposite and doing his utmost to collide with her?

It made no sense when she was everything in a woman he feared.

Pretty, funny, clever, and vivacious were all adjectives that could be used to describe Florinda and she had used those attributes ruthlessly to make a fool out of him.

But a niggling voice in his head kept reassuring him that his mother was probably right and lightning never struck in the same way twice and this was different.

She was different.

And he was likely an idiot for thinking it.

“… I know that you’ve had genuine business here at the stable and it’s not her that draws you like a moth to a flame.

The gossips are simply imagining things because we’ve suddenly got a pretty and feisty young woman here and you’re a single fellow who happens to enjoy her company occasionally.

There’s no harm in that and people shouldn’t try to speculate as to your intentions.

Let one of them dare say to me that when you think nobody is watching, you gaze at her like the first sunrise after a long, cold winter, and I’ll give them slanderous scandalmongers both barrels. ”

“I cannot tell you what a comfort it is that you’ve got my back, Bill.” He had to choke out that insincerity because they both knew the wretch had painted a target on it and wanted to be the first one of those scandalmongers to fire the bull’s-eye.

Guy grabbed a pair of horse blankets and strode out again, determined to take control of the conversation before he gave in to the urge to strangle the observant bastard. Except the second he stepped back into the stable yard he almost walked smack-bang into Miss Travers.

Just like the ray of sunshine she had claimed to be, she beamed and the world was a better place. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” He tried not to sound as stiff and awkward as he felt with Bill watching while the lust caused an unwelcome twitch in his breeches.

“It’s always a good morning when it starts with you in it.

” Bill, of course, didn’t feel the slightest bit awkward and flirted with her as usual.

No doubt to rile Guy some more. “And might I add that while you are always a sight for sore eyes, you are looking particularly lovely this morning, Lottie?”

“You might.” Miss Travers gave the rascal a flirty smile back, clearly pleased at the compliment enough to do a little twirl while she patted one of her loose blond curls.

“What’s different?” The groom swept the length of her with an appreciative gaze. “A new dress? A new bonnet perhaps?”

“Just eight solid hours of glorious, uninterrupted beauty sleep.”

“That’s what his lordship needs—but alas, sleep eluded him last night.” How Bill knew that was a mystery. “Apparently, you lit a flame within him last night at dinner,” he added, grinning like an idiot, “and it’s been burning ever since.”

“I did?” Miss Travers’s bemused gaze darted from Bill’s back to Guy’s as guilty heat rose beneath his collar.

There was no way his groom could truly know how the vixen had haunted his dreams. A snippet of the most vivid instantly sprang to mind to aggravate the twitch in his breeches further.

It involved long legs, bare skin, thrusting, raspberry-tipped breasts, and Miss Travers’s lithe, tight body pulsing around his as she rode him with the same reckless abandon as she had that stallion in Hyde Park. “How?”

In case Bill could actually read his filthy mind, Guy tossed the blankets at him, hitting the devil’s grinning face before he steered her away.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said about Hercules, and how both of his parents influence his behavior but how his mother, especially, always manages to calm him down. That got me thinking—”

“He’s lain awake all night because of you,” said an unrepentant Bill from right behind. “Tossing and turning. Just look at the shadows under his eyes.”

“I actually slept like the dead too…” Guy was going to torture bloody Bill before he wrung his neck!

With a red-hot poker as he pulled each of his fingernails out with pliers!

“But as the sun came up it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps we are trying to train Hercules all wrong and that maybe we could literally rope in his parents to help break him.” Nerves had him chuckling lamely at his pathetic pun as he tried to be less of the storm cloud, and when Miss Travers paused by one of the stalls to idly pet a horse, he shot Bill warning daggers.

The sort that he hoped said he would dismiss the devil on the spot if he continued.

“I thought I’d try to train Hercules alongside his parents as an experiment. ”

She pondered that for a second, then nodded. “It’s definitely worth a try. Hercules is a lot like his father in his character, but Juno has as much of a calming effect on Zeus as she does on their son.”

“The right woman can tame even the most savage beast—and they enjoy being tamed,” said Bill, staring straight at him with suggestively wiggling brows.

Before Miss Travers noticed, Guy sandwiched himself between her and his head groom as they filtered out of the stable door, then made sure to slam it shut on the nuisance.

“I was thinking that to begin with, to ease Hercules’s fear of the saddle, it might be a good idea to take him out without one—alongside Juno and Zeus—so that he can see for himself that being ridden isn’t such a bad thing. He’ll watch them both be saddled, then watch us mount them and—”

“Us?” She stopped dead as Bill reappeared.

“As in you and me ? You are going to entrust me with riding one of your prized Arabians?” Guy had never witnessed a smile quite like the one that bloomed on her face and had certainly never experienced the ripple of delight which shot through him as a result.