Page 86 of Rogue of My Heart

The sisters stopped perusing their bicycles and snapped straight. Marie had been right to sense a trap earlier. That trap had closed around her as certainly as if she were a rodent who had just had its neck snapped.

“Do we have an agreement?” Fergus asked. “Those bicycles in exchange for your residence at the castle?”

The sisters exchanged looks. Marie knew immediately they’d all been had. The problem was, Fergus had chosen exactly the right bait for his trap.

“All right,” Marie answered first. “You win this time, dear brother. I agree to move back into the castle for the purpose of marrying me off. As long as whatever man you find who might be willing to marry me accepts Lucifer along with my hand.”

“Lucifer?” Henrietta asked, still having a difficult time not laughing.

Marie smiled at her bicycle. “That’s what I’m going to call it.”

Her sisters laughed. Lady Coyle looked as though she might faint.

“Let’s take them outside and see if we can ride them,” Shannon said, wheeling her bicycle toward the door.

“Yes, I’m determined to master this,” Colleen agreed and followed her.

They all turned their bicycles around and pushed them toward the hall. Before leaving, Marie called over her shoulder, “Thank you, Fergus. You’re going to regret this.”

“Don’t you mean I’m not going to regret this?” Fergus asked.

Marie laughed mischievously. “No, you will absolutely regret it.”

Judging by the sound Lady Coyle made as the sisters left, taking their bicycles out to the front drive, she believed Fergus had made un unforgivably grave mistake.

It was the perfect day to learn how to ride a bicycle. As soon as the four of them reached the front drive, they leapt into the task. The bicycles were clearly designed for ladies with skirts, though perhaps not as many petticoats as they all wore. Marie solved that problem by hitching up her skirt and removing the frilly petticoat she’d donned when the four of them were called to their audience with Fergus. She managed to make poor Sean blanch in the process. But immediately she discovered that it was far easier to mount and pedal a bicycle without a copious amount of fabric around her legs.

“It’s not as difficult as I thought it would be,” she called to her sisters as she propelled herself forward, making a large circuit of the front drive. “As long as you can keep your balance, the faster you go, the easier it is.”

“I’ve heard that about a few other things,” Shannon said with a wicked wink, pedaling her bicycle shakily.

The others were getting the hang of things, but slowly. Chloe didn’t seem comfortable sitting on the seat. Shannon stopped what she was doing to examine the bicycle to see if there was a way to make the seat lower. Colleen looked as though she could balance, but she wasn’t moving fast enough, and her bicycle kept careening to the side. By contrast, the more Marie rode around in the circle of the drive, the more confident she felt.

“Well, I’m off,” she said with a spritely air as she made a final loop around the drive. “I’ll see you lot back at the cottage.”

If her sisters protested over the way she broke free and pedaled away from the castle, Marie didn’t hear them. She shot down the long stretch of the drive that led to the front gate and the road, then picked up speed, flying on down the slight incline of the road.

It felt very much like flying as well, or what she imagined flying might be like. The wind whipped through her hair, pulling ginger strands out of the careless style she’d pushed it into earlier. She should have been wearing a hat, but she hadn’t bothered to fetch hers before rushing outside with her bicycle, and she was glad for it. There was something magical about speeding along the road, sunlight glowing down on her, the green of the landscape around her meeting the blue of the summer sky. She could smell grass, wildflowers, and the salt of the sea. Sunlight baked her, and the more she pedaled, the warmer she became. Her heart thundered against her ribs with the effort of riding, but she loved every moment of it. If Fergus had given them the bicycles as a peace offering for taking away their freedom, he had the bad end of the bargain. Marie had never felt so free in her life.

The feeling lasted all the way until she reached the cliffs and sheltered coves of the sea. That was when she realized that, as beautiful as the world was and as joy-filled as her heart felt, stopping a bicycle was more of a challenge than starting one.

“Oh, dear,” she muttered to herself as she stiffened, staring down at the bicycle under her and wondering if there were some sort of braking mechanism. She should have checked before pedaling into high speed. The handlebar seemed to have something of a brake on it, but she was too afraid of crashing to squeeze it with any enthusiasm.

In the end, she did the only thing she could think to do. She steered off the road toward a stretch of sandy beach. At the very least, the sand would cushion her fall if she ended up flying over the handlebars in her efforts to stop.

The grass dividing the road from the cove went a long way to slow the bicycle, and by the time she rolled out onto the sand, she’d lost enough speed to risk squeezing what she thought was a handbrake. Sure enough, the bicycle stopped completely. Marie let out a yelp as she jerked forward, then crumpled to the side as she lost her balance. She and the bicycle fell in a tumble of metal and skirts.

“Are you all right?” a rich, tenor voice called from the direction of the water.

Marie yelped again, embarrassed to have been caught crashing, and glanced around furtively. She saw no one close by on the sandy beach or near the small cliff that sheltered half of the beach from the road. The road was clearly empty, which meant the voice could only be coming from the water itself.

Sure enough, as she scrambled into a crouch, ready to stand, she spotted a man, just over waist-deep in the sea. He must have been kneeling, as he wasn’t far out enough for the water to be that deep. His bare chest glistened in the sunlight, highlighting lean, toned muscles and whorls of dark hair that stuck damply to his skin. He had dark, curly hair on his head to match, dancing eyes, and a broad smile with surprisingly straight, white teeth. The sight of him thrilled Marie more than the bicycle.

She stood straight as quickly as she could, brushing sand from her skirt. “I am quite all right,” she said, her own smile growing. “Just taking Lucifer for a turn about the countryside.”

“I take it Lucifer is your bicycle,” he said, his grin more mischievous than ever.

“Not that it’s anything to you, but yes,” she said, crossing her arms and striking a bold pose as she ogled his bare chest. The man knelt there in the water, fine as you please, not seeming to care that she was taking in the full sight of him.