Page 5

In fact, his life had been positively charmed since he had had the good sense to liberate himself from all that nonsense, and he was beyond fulfilled as a result.

Content in his own skin.

In control of all aspects of his life.

Master of his own destiny.

Happier than he had ever been.

Which, if true, was doubtless why he was still skulking in and out of the city of his birth nine years after he had left it heartbroken and humiliated.

And why he knew he wasn’t really that happy at all.

Wasn’t, in fact, anywhere near close. Not even in Kent but especially not here.

Because here was where all the memories were strongest and always held the power to make him feel ashamed, and he loathed that almost as much as he loathed this place.

This place that suffocated him.

This place that shrunk him.

This place that had weighed him, measured him, and found him sadly wanting.

Even now, all alone in this pretty park after a full year of avoiding this place, the weight of London this fine morning was almost too much to bear. Somehow worse than usual and sadly, he knew why.

It had been that stupid snigger.

The one Guy had heard after he had reluctantly tipped his hat to an old acquaintance and his new wife whom he had collided with yesterday as he had left the infuriating grain merchant’s office.

An intimate bubble of laughter which, arguably, had had nothing to do with him whatsoever.

It could have simply been a shared joke between a husband and a wife about absolutely anything.

The sorts of jokes he had used to swap with his own family once upon a time, back when he’d still possessed a sense of humor.

But in his cynical mind nowadays, not ten yards clear of them, the joke had been about him.

Or at least the old him. The gullible, na?ve, fresh-faced, keen-to-impress, and much too impetuous him that had foolishly allowed himself to be a pawn in a chess game where he had romantically fancied himself the knight.

The him that had made such a catastrophic error of judgment and had made himself both a laughingstock and an object of pity.

Nine years on and he still wasn’t sure what was worse.

Unless it was his own flabbergasted fury at his staggering idiocy that infamous season, which still lingered to torment him. Whichever it was, it still held the power to make him need to flee from the god-awful place with his tail between his legs as fast as he could.

Suddenly keen to escape it even quicker, Guy nudged Zeus into a gallop, sucking in deep, calming breaths as his horse flew effortlessly across the dewy grass like the wind. So fast, the morning mist blurred the wall of trees rushing beside him into a watercolor smudge of green and brown.

Yet still that wasn’t fast enough today, so he pushed Zeus harder.

Gave the powerful horse permission to have his legs because he sensed they both needed to let off some steam.

The sheer exhilaration making him throw back his head, close his eyes, and gulp in more air in the hope that it would cleanse all that pent-up shame which just one day in London had made new again.

Because he understood that he needed to forget it. That the only person he was hurting by holding on to all that festering self-contempt was himself. Knew he needed to leave his unfortunate but mortifying misstep in the past fully if he was ever going to find himself again and—

The second horse burst out of a gap in the trees scant feet before him, shocking him into an unmanly yelp. A similarly startled Zeus reared with such abrupt force that the next thing Guy knew, he was flying backward in the air.

Weightless.

Powerless.

Flailing.

Until the earth smacked into him with a thud, knocking every bit of air out of his lungs and causing a million stars to explode behind his eyes. The impact making his ears ring so loudly he could hear nothing else but their chime.

In an oddly silent haze, he saw the idiot who had unseated him struggle to remain in his saddle as he fought his own rearing horse into submission.

A battle which only took moments before a fuzzy silhouette stared down at him.

Mouthed something that the church bells ringing within his head totally drowned out, then stayed him with a raised palm when Guy tried and failed to sit thanks to the spinning ground he lay upon.

It was only when the other rider kicked his horse back into a gallop and left him there that Guy realized that Zeus had bolted too.

Marvelous.

There was fat chance of catching him now!

Zeus was as temperamental and skittish as he was fast, and when spooked would likely run frantic rings around this park for the next hour before he calmed down.

Which also meant that Guy no longer had a hope in hell of reaching the Kent Road in twenty minutes.

Or of leaving London and its unpleasant memories behind in a cloud of dust before the residents of this cesspit awoke to start their day.

Thanks to the recklessness of that other rider, he was well and truly stuck here, in this dreadful place he despised, for goodness knew how long now. A prospect that made him feel sick.

The last time the blasted horse had done a runner, it had taken three hours to find the brute.

But that had been at home, on his own quiet acres, not here in the capital.

It was quiet now but in another hour or so, the streets surrounding this park would be busy and his nervous stallion wasn’t used to that sort of city chaos at all.

Worse, if Zeus decided to bolt out of the sanctuary of the park, then the consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

Guy had to get up and search for him.

He groaned in frustration and pain as he gingerly reinflated his lungs.

As the whirling stars behind his eyeballs began to subside, he tested his limbs.

Rotated his ankles, flexed his knees. Stretched out his arms. Twisted his upper torso and neck.

Nothing seemed to be broken beyond his pride, and as he had none left here anyway, he supposed that shouldn’t really count—yet it did.

His poor arse, however, was a very different story.

It had taken the full brunt of his fall and it throbbed as he pushed himself to sit on it.

The morning dew seeping into his breeches did little to relieve the pain in his pelvis.

The base of his spine screaming in protest at being made to move at any speed faster than a snail’s.

It took a couple of minutes, but he managed to creak himself upright and began to massage his aching buttocks while he waited for the dizziness to subside, all the while scanning the park for any sign of Zeus. At full tilt, the brute could be halfway to Paddington already. Then what?

As hours and hours of futile searching loomed on the horizon, the other rider suddenly emerged from a clump of trees several yards away.

By some miracle, trotting along beside him, bucking and fighting the taut reins all the way, was a less-than-impressed Zeus.

Yet despite the horse’s obvious temper tantrum, to add insult to injury, the other rider still managed to control him from atop their own saddle on a black stallion so huge it made Zeus look like a child’s pony by comparison.

Guy limped to meet them, simultaneously relieved that his horse was unharmed and furious that he had been separated from him in the first place. But then pride always came before a fall, and once fallen, pride was the only thing you had left to cling to that might get you through it.

“Do you always ride so recklessly in a public place?” He reached for Zeus’s reins and wound them tightly around his gloved fist in case the damned horse tried to bolt again, and glared up at the idiot.

Squinting against the sunlight that pierced his retinas and rendered the dangerous fool faceless.

“They make bridle paths for a reason! So that everyone knows where a bloody horse is going to be! You could have killed someone going at that ludicrous speed over ground you had no place riding on!”

He could see enough of the surprisingly lithe and slight rider’s work-worn attire to know that this wasn’t a gentleman—more a stable lad out exercising his master’s best horse. “You could have killed me with your unbelievable carelessness, idiot!”

“You were hardly cantering sedately yourself, sir.” The shock at hearing the curt but unmistakably female voice made Guy squint some more. “In fact, I would counter that you were galloping even faster than I was else you’d have been able to stop in time.”

“But I was on the bridle path, madam!” Not that he could yet discern if this hellion was a madam or a miss. “And you weren’t!”

“If you had been paying proper attention and had actually looked where you were going rather than staring straight up at the sky whilst galloping, you might have been able to control your horse before he threw you.”

“But I wouldn’t have been thrown if you had been on the bridle path like you were supposed to be!”

She brushed that outrage away with a regal flick of her wrist. “Arabians are notoriously difficult to handle and only a real idiot forgets that whilst on the back of one! Especially at the speed you were going.”

“Are you trying to say that this is all my fault? When I was riding my horse precisely where I was supposed to and you were not.” He flapped his hand toward the gap in the trees she had exploded through.

“Briefly, and for that I obviously apologize.” Although she didn’t look particularly sorry. Even shrouded in the rising sun’s piercing silhouette, he could see her chin tilted defiantly, and she was very definitely regarding him down her nose with disdain.

“Your recklessness almost killed me! I could have broken my neck when you unseated me!”

Using just her trim thighs—thighs showcased outrageously in a tight buff pair of men’s breeches and weathered riding boots— she maneuvered the fearsome and snorting black stallion out of the painful sunlight. Turned to face him and something odd happened to Guy’s innards.

They instantly bunched up inside him and then seemed to sigh in unison as they immediately relaxed, as if they had been waiting his entire life for this moment. For this woman. Even the muscles in his jaw gave way and he felt it hang in bemused wonderment.

Bloody hell, but she was stunning!

Even with her golden curls tucked into a tatty brown cap and her rich, honey-colored brows furrowed as two striking big blue eyes glared at him in disgust, she fair took his breath away.

Not that he had much left to steal after his abrupt collision with the ground.

Which was probably why he felt so lightheaded again.

Why peculiar things were happening in his chest.

He was too world-weary and jaded to be irrevocably dazzled by a woman’s beauty anymore and after his fall, it was hardly a surprise that his heart kept skipping a beat either.

Thanks to her, he’d almost had a brush with death, so it wasn’t any wonder he was suddenly more off-kilter than he had ever felt in his life.

“You were unseated because you lacked the skills necessary to stay in your saddle, sir. Because you bought yourself a horse that you haven’t the first clue how to control.

If anything was at risk of dying this morning, it was that poor animal.

Spooked, and running wild like that he could have been severely injured on the back of your ineptness.

” She wagged her riding crop at him with such vigor it made him blink and take a step back.

“If he had been, I can assure you that you’d have felt the sting of this!

” The black stallion she sat astride— astride when all ladies rode sidesaddle—snorted his agreement and began to dance on the spot ominously as if he were about to lash out too.

Then instantly calmed when she smoothed his neck.

The taut, equine veins softening beneath her touch, almost as if she possessed magical horse-whispering powers.

It took Guy another moment of gaping at her elegant fingers stroking the now docile behemoth of a horse before he could haul his jaw back up. “I beg your pardon!”

Had she really just threatened to whip him? After insulting his prowess as a horseman and knocking him on his arse?

She waggled the whip at him some more. “An animal like that needs to be treated with care and respect, sir .” The respectful addition of “sir” couldn’t have been more disrespectful if she’d tried.

“Frankly, a grown man who can afford to purchase such a magnificent beast should also have the good sense to know how to handle one! Whoever sold you this horse should be shot because your lack of skill in the saddle just now was as shocking as your lack of concentration.”

Guy wanted to argue. Almost did—but that blasted whip sliced the air again before he could find the right words to convey his outrage.

“For the sake of your poor horse, and any pedestrians unfortunate enough to collide with you while you attempt to ride him, I suggest you immediately invest in some proper lessons. If you are too proud or too stupid to do that”—her expression left him in no doubt she believed he was the latter—“I genuinely think you should consider buying yourself a slow nag to ride instead—as a feisty, energetic Arabian is obviously beyond your inferior capabilities. While you are about it, you might also learn some manners, you rude oaf!”

“I-I… um…” It was on the tip of his tongue to apologize despite his outrage because there was something about this veritable Valkyrie that brooked no argument.

But the words wouldn’t come and he instead gaped at her like a fish.

Completely dumbfounded. Because he honestly could not remember the last time someone had spoken to him like that.

“I think the complicated sentence you are struggling to spit out, sir, is ‘Thank you for rescuing my horse.’” That defiant chin tilted again, drawing his gaze to the swanlike curve of her neck.

“I would say that it was my pleasure to fetch him for you—but it isn’t, because I am not sure that I have done your horse any favors in returning him! ”

With that terse admonishment issued, she turned her snorting stallion sideways with the merest nudge of a shapely, breeches-clad knee, and set off again at a gallop toward the Serpentine.

Slim shoulders lifted, graceful spine stiffened in righteous indignation, and without so much as a backward glance.

Forcing him to watch her delicious peach of an arse bouncing in the saddle in perfect synchronicity with the giant horse beneath it while he wondered what the holy hell had just happened.

And why it felt quite so profound.