Page 21 of Ravished by the Beastly Duke (Regency Beasts #1)

CHAPTER 21

E veline worried as she emerged from the house dressed in her riding habit—a shirt, a red jacket, and a skirt of the same color. She imagined she looked like a fool in her outfit. However, it was a necessary part of horse riding.

She had just rounded the corner to the stables when William spotted her. He beamed as she approached.

“Only you can make a riding habit look ravishing, my Duchess,” he said.

Eveline could not help but blush. “I could be dressed in rags and you would still say the same,” she retorted.

“And that would be because you look good in everything you wear. And even more so when you wear nothing.” William winked at her.

Blood rushed to Eveline’s face, and she looked around to make sure that no one had heard him.

It had only been a couple of days since she and her husband had finally shared a bed, and while it had been absolutely magical, she did not imagine that he would now be referring to it in public.

“You are simply corrupt in every way,” she huffed, swatting at him playfully.

William, cunning as he was, caught her hands quite easily and pulled her towards him until she was in his arms.

“And I wonder who caused the corruption,” he breathed, before kissing her cheek.

“We are outside,” she protested, worried that the servants might have spotted them. “The servants can see us.”

“And what shall they do?” he asked daringly. “Be scandalized that the Duke and Duchess are kissing on their own property?”

“Yet…” Eveline started to protest, but she knew there was really no excuse. She was simply shy. “Fine!” she relented, before capturing his lips in a hot kiss without a care in the world.

When they finally broke apart, her steps faltered, and she felt rather dizzy.

“You simply cannot help but swoon at the sight of me,” William boasted.

Eveline could not argue with him. Of course, he was right. All he had to do was touch her, and she would swoon.

“The horses are ready, Your Grace,” the stable boy, who had apparently been standing nearby, waiting for them, called.

Hand in hand, Eveline and William made their way to the horses.

William’s horse was a brown-haired thoroughbred that was simply majestic.

“Longfoot was one of the few gifts my father got me,” William said as he patted the horse. “I had gotten him as a boy, when he was only a pony.”

Eveline’s horse was a sleek white Cleveland Bay.

“Do you like her?” William asked. “She is elegant, isn’t she?”

“I do not quite care for riding or horses, but if I were to pick a horse for myself, I would certainly have picked her,” Eveline responded.

Growing up with only sisters, they did not indulge in horse riding as most children did.

She only learned horse riding as a child because her father had insisted on it, and afterward, she could count the number of times she had been on a horse.

However, when her husband suggested horse riding, she readily accepted. After all, she might end up enjoying it if she was not forced and if she did it with someone she enjoyed being around.

With that, Eveline was helped onto the horse by two footmen.

“Are you certain you are sitting comfortably?” William asked as he fussed over her horse and her saddle.

Eveline nodded happily.

When William was convinced that her saddle was secure, he finally went to his horse. Eveline was excited. She knew how large his estate was, but she would finally be able to see it on this ride.

Eventually, they took off.

At first, the horses settled into a trot. However, when William turned to her with a wicked smile, she knew he was about to challenge her.

“Would you…” he started.

She, however, did not wait for him to finish. She leaned forward, and her horse responded immediately, galloping.

Eveline laughed as she looked back at her husband, who looked stunned.

Her horse was covering ground fast. However, she knew William would recover quickly, and he might soon try to catch up to her.

As the wind blew through her loose hair, she wondered briefly why she had given up horse riding. It felt positively exhilarating, and the scent of the woods had a rather calming effect on her.

Eveline could not help but close her eyes for just a moment to thoroughly enjoy the wind and the atmosphere. She sighed deeply. The feeling was immeasurable. She felt free, and as her horse’s hooves bounced off the ground, she felt at peace.

She was quick to snap out of her reverie when the sound of another galloping horse approached. William was near, and she could not let him overtake her. If she allowed him to, he would taunt her terribly.

Therefore, she nudged her horse to gallop faster, focusing only on leaving a significant distance between her and her husband.

This was why it took her a while to notice that she could no longer hear nor see his horse. She figured that she must have put a lot of distance between them and continued on her way.

She had only gone a small distance when William’s brown horse shot out of the woods and into the path in front of her.

Eveline’s eyes widened with shock at the betrayal.

Her husband turned back towards her, now laughing.

“You cheated,” she protested.

“Is it quite cheating if I am simply using my knowledge of the terrain to my advantage?” he asked, chuckling.

Eveline shook her head. “I should have known you were up to no good,” she said, now resolved to beat him at his own game.

She led her horse to a muddy path on the left, hoping she could cut across in front of him. She leaned forward, causing the horse to move faster so that she could beat her husband.

Soon enough, she saw a stream in the distance. She wanted to arrive at the stream before her husband. At that moment, nothing else mattered—she was focused only on that one goal.

That was why she was so startled when something hit her head from above. The object slid down her jacket—a cluster of feathers.

“Ahhhhh!” she yelped, momentarily closing her eyes.

All she heard was her horse neighing, and the next moment, the beast bucked, panicking.

Terrified, Eveline tried to jump off her horse. However, she landed face-first on the ground, with her feet still trapped in the stirrups.

Her horse, oblivious to her troubles, continued bucking, dragging her along. Her hair caught twigs and branches, but her horse did not stop. She tried to steady herself, but her arms and elbows hit the rocks. The sharp pain she felt told her that her skin had peeled.

Eveline’s panic turned into full-blown terror when she saw that they were now fast approaching the stream, and she still had not been able to get herself out of the saddle.

She could see the water clearly by the time she finally steadied herself and grabbed the saddle, even as her horse continued dragging her through the woods.

As a desperate last resort, she pulled herself up and kicked her feet out of the stirrups, so that she now dangled in the air. However, just when she freed her feet, her horse had gotten to the bank of the stream, and even though she scrambled to get out of the way of its hind hooves, she was not fast enough.

With a kick of her horse’s hind hooves, her right ankle slammed against a large rock at the bank of the stream.

“OWWWWWW!” Eveline screamed for the second time in a rather short while, this time in pain.

Even though the riding boot she was wearing protected her, the pain that still shot up her leg and splintered through her whole body was intense, and she could not move her feet for a moment.

She tried to sit up while she watched the horse gallop away, but it was difficult, as she could not even get her right ankle to move.

She gritted her teeth as she tried to lift her injured leg to sit down. She wondered for a moment how long it would take for someone to finally find her.

Dark thoughts began to creep in as she realized that in her bid to outrace her husband, she had not considered the fact that he might not venture to the area she was in.

She tried to remove her boot to properly inspect her ankle, but it was difficult, as every attempt sent another wave of intense pain through her.

She was wondering if she should crawl her way home when she heard the sound of hooves from afar.

“EVELINE!” William bellowed.

Eveline had never been so relieved in her life.

“William!” she called back, waving her arms.

Her husband seemed to have seen her because his horse galloped faster towards her until it finally stopped a few feet away from her.

William flew off his horse, his eyes wide in terror.

“Eveline!” he cried. “What happened?”

“Well, I won the race, at least,” Eveline quipped, in an attempt at levity.

William, however, did not seem to hear her, as he fell to his knees on the jagged rocks at the bank of the stream. His eyebrows drew together, and his jaw was tense as he looked her over as though to confirm that she did not have a fatal wound. She could feel his body shake when he finally pulled her to him.

William had been enjoying the challenge his wife had issued, and he had even been looking forward to getting to the river bank before her when he heard a sound that made his blood freeze in his veins.

It was his wife’s scream. A million thoughts raced through his mind for a moment.

Had she been kidnapped?

Was she thrown off her horse and trampled to death?

What if she had fallen off her horse and broken her neck?

William panicked, and his heart raced. He could not help but think the worst as his horse galloped harder towards the stream, where her scream had come from.

An image of Eveline lying by the stream, in a pool of her blood, flashed through his mind, but he shook it off. However, he could not help the dread that flooded him.

He wanted to protect her, to take her in his arms, and assure her that she was fine. However, the distance between him and the stream felt like an eternity no matter how fast his horse galloped.

When his horse finally broke out of the dense woods to the airy bank of the stream, he quickly looked around, hoping to find her.

It was when she called his name that he finally saw her sitting beside a large rock. Even though she had waved at him, he could not help the fear that shot through him.

William was not quite sure how he closed the distance between them or tethered his horse. All he could remember was falling to his knees and peering into her eyes for any sign of exhaustion or pain.

“Eveline, what happened?” he whispered.

“Well, I won the race, at least,” he heard her say faintly, but he did not quite understand the words.

“Where are you injured?” he asked, checking her for any sign of injury or blood.

His mouth went dry when he took her arm and saw that her skin had been scratched badly.

“Eveline,” he whispered, taking her other arm and seeing that it was bloody. “You are bleeding. We need to get you home right now.”

He made to lift her off the ground when she stopped him.

“That is not quite where my injury is,” she said.

“Oh no!” he groaned when she pointed at her foot.

He rushed forward and grabbed her right boot.

“Owwww!” She winced, her face contorted in pain.

William’s heart sank. “Oh, Eveline.”

His hands shook as he tried to pull her boot off her feet. For certain reasons, it was quite hard to get off.

“It hurts,” she said.

William pulled back and took a deep, steadying breath before trying once again.

When he finally got the boot off her, the sight that greeted him made his heart stutter.

Her ankle looked purple, and her foot was so swollen that it was no wonder he found it hard to pry the boot off.

“This does not look good,” he said.

Eveline simply shrugged. “Well, it could have been much worse. After all, I fell off the horse.”

“You fell off the horse?” William exclaimed.

In his panic, he had neither given a thought to how she got her injury nor wondered where the horse had disappeared to.

Now, having realized how she had gotten her injury, he could only imagine the other injuries she might already have.

“I need to inspect you properly,” William said, peering into her eyes before pulling her hair up to see if she had sustained any injury on the head.

“What are you doing?” Eveline enquired.

“I need to know whether you have sustained any other injury,” he explained, now fussing with her jacket in a bid to check her back.

“That is not quite necessary,” Eveline assured him.

“But it is,” William responded, trying to pry her jacket off her shoulders. “What if you have sustained a terrible injury to your spine and?——”

“If I have sustained an injury to my spine or my head, then I would feel it, would I not?” Eveline pointed out irritably, shrugging him off as she pulled her jacket tight around her.

William sighed, exasperated. How could she not see that she was in danger?

“Eveline, I must make sure that you are not in danger,” he said in an even tone, even though his heart was thundering with panic.

“I am not in danger, William,” Eveline insisted. “I have only sustained an injury to my ankle.”

“You do not know that,” he argued. “Falling off a horse can be deadly. I have seen?—”

“If anything is deadly, I would say it is the fact that I am still sitting here. You shall take me home this moment,” she snapped at him.

William opened his mouth to protest, but he quickly shut it again. He could not help but admit that she was right.

Therefore, he lifted her into his arms and lowered her onto his horse’s back. Securing her feet in the stirrups when one of them was swollen was a rather tricky task, but he was able to do it.

As they made their way back to the castle, Eveline winced every now and then as her injured foot moved in the stirrup.

William was relieved when the castle finally came into view, and when the stable boy and footmen tried to help his wife down the horse, he stopped them.

“The Duchess is terribly injured,” he said. “I shall help her down myself.”

With that, he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the castle.

“I enjoy being carried by you, but don’t you think that ‘terribly injured’ is a tad dramatic?” she asked.

“Dramatic?” William echoed. He could not believe his ears as he entered her chambers. “You could have hit your head or broken your neck.”

He finally set her down on her bed.

“And yet I have not,” she reminded him. “I only twisted my ankle.”

“There simply is no way of knowing that you only twisted your ankle,” he said, exasperated. “There might be other injuries that you simply do not know of yet.”

“I assure you, William,” she replied, “there is no other injury.”

“You do not know that. A captain said the same thing when he fell off his horse, and he ended up dying from the fall.”

“How could you say that?” Eveline gasped, genuinely hurt.

William, however, could not quite tell what he had said that was so wrong.

“I am not your captain, and I certainly am not dying,” she huffed.

“Isn’t it only right that we know for certain?” he pressed. “People die from the slightest injuries. I have seen a young teenager die from a simple cut on his leg. And my mother…”

Realizing where his words were going, he heaved a sigh. It was not appropriate to mention his mother’s death at this moment.

“Why are you being so difficult?” he asked, throwing his hands up in the air, his frustration growing.

“Perhaps because I do not wish to be treated like a fragile object that could break at the slightest touch,” Eveline shot back.

“But you are fragile, and what has happened to you is by no measure a slight ordeal. You do not seem to be taking this seriously.” William was frustrated with her.

Even now, as she regarded him with anger on her face, he did not quite understand why.

“Don’t you think I would take it seriously if I knew for certain that I was dying?”

“The only person who can say for certain whether you are dying is a physician,” William proclaimed.

“Then perhaps you should have called for one the moment we got back,” Eveline countered.

“But I…”

Once again, William had no choice but to swallow his words as he realized, yet again, that his wife was right.

The first thing he should have done the moment they arrived was tell the staff to summon the physician.

“You are right. I shall do that this moment,” he uttered, before leaving.