Page 20 of Win Me, My Lord (All’s Fair in Love and Racing #5)

CHAPTER TWELVE

SOMEWHERE ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD, A WEEK LATER

“ A baker’s dozen,” came a voice as gravelly and time-worn as the road they were presently traveling upon.

From her mount beside the wagon, Artemis squinted and began counting sheep. One … two … seven … ten …

Thirteen.

“Mr. Scunt, you have a gift,” she said, all ladylike generosity, when in reality her molars wanted to grind together in deepening frustration. She could be a gracious loser, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

From the other side of the wagon bench drifted a skeptical snort, which, over the three days since she’d caught up with the caravan, had been Bran’s mode of communication regarding most everything.

“Me mam always said it were a gift I had,” said Mr. Scunt, with a humility that didn’t quite match the roguish tilt of his wide-brimmed hat.

No matter.

He was good company.

Better company than the man sharing the driver’s bench with him.

The sky a wide, open blue above, it was a beautiful afternoon to be riding, unlike the previous two days of rain and slosh.

Still, she shouldn’t have insisted on being here.

She understood that.

Though it hadn’t been precisely wrong to insist on continuing the terms of her bargain with Sir Abstrupus, it wasn’t precisely right, either.

But when Bran had left her standing in the middle of the Doncaster racecourse with Rake and Gemma, a sudden screaming panic had raced through her. Without the bargain, nothing bound her and Bran. Sure, she would see him at the Race of the Century, then possibly at Rake’s house party at Somerton.

But nothing of substance tethered them together.

And she hadn’t been ready for that outcome.

She wasn’t sure what they needed to talk about, but something needed to be spoken between them.

So she would keep hanging around him until they happened upon the conversation they needed to have.

She would know it when they were having it.

She was certain.

Not that he’d given her the opportunity, as they hadn’t exchanged ten words these last three days.

The blasted man had been stone silent, sitting on the driver’s bench beside Mr. Scunt, keeping his own counsel, his gaze fixed ahead when riding or intent on tending to Radish’s needs when stopped for breaks.

No time for her, his focus and silence proclaimed loudly.

So, she’d struck up a friendship with Mr. Scunt as she rode alongside the wagon on her favorite hunter, Pixie.

Mr. Scunt knew everything there was to know about every inch of moor and dale they rode across.

Not only the geology of it, but the people, too, from the farmers who worked the land to the lords and ladies who owned it to the innkeepers and tradesmen who profited from it.

He seemed to accept it as his solemn duty to be a one-man conduit of gossip up and down the Great North Road.

When he’d learned Artemis’s name—with the Lady attached—he’d nodded slowly in the manner of one storing up a great juicy morsel of tattle.

However, Mr. Scunt wasn’t the only bit of company.

There were the farmers herding their sheep from one side of the road to the other; the stagecoach drivers with weather and road condition reports; and all sorts of folk in between, making their way from one point to another, all happy to stop and exchange a few pleasantries.

To pass the time, Artemis had begun counting the sheep.

Before long, Mr. Scunt had turned it into a game.

Each of them would scan the fields for flocks of sheep, which wasn’t all that difficult, as the sheep outnumbered the humans a good hundred to one.

Then they started counting. Whoever had the quickest count with the closest-to-correct number when they called it won that round and added the number to their tally.

At the end of the day’s ride, whoever had the highest number was the overall winner, and the loser had to buy the winner his supper that night.

Artemis had lost two days running, and was determined that today would be her day.

“Fifty-three,” came Mr. Scunt’s gravelly voice.

“What?” Artemis began frantically scanning the horizon until her gaze landed on a flock beneath a distant outcropping of rock. She tried to count, but the sheep looked like one amorphous mass of wool. “Mr. Scunt, your eyesight is keener than a raven’s,” she said, with no small amount of awe.

“Well,” he said, “ravens and me always did have an affinity.”

A snort sounded from the other side of the bench.

Artemis had about had it with Bran and his snorts.

She slowed Pixie’s trot to a walk so as to fall back a few yards and draw abreast with the caravan transporting Radish.

It was a truly ingenious invention, as the Thoroughbred appeared comfortable and content.

In the mornings and evenings, Bran saw Radish exercised to relieve the horse of his excess of energy before and after the twenty-five miles of enclosed travel.

She had to give Sir Abstrupus credit where it was due. He was ornery and obstructive and every bit her nemesis, but he was able to see the world in a way that had less to do with present circumstances than with future possibility.

“Did you feel that?” Bran asked of a sudden, his voice sharp and alert.

Artemis perked to as she glanced around, eyes and ears on high alert.

Mr. Scunt, however, didn’t appear too concerned. Utterly un concerned, more like. “A mere wee bump in the road, milord.”

Bran neither agreed nor disagreed, but held his counsel. He was waiting for something.

Artemis found herself waiting, too.

“ There ,” said Bran, assuredness in his tone. “ That. ”

Mr. Scunt shook his head with a smile that held no small amount of condescension. “Ah, no need to worry your lordly?—”

Of a sudden, a loud squealing sound rent the air, and the caravan began wobbling side to side.

As Mr. Scunt pulled the reins to slow the team of horses, a sudden crack sounded, then a thud .

As if events were transpiring at half the speed of usual time, Artemis watched as the team of four became entirely unhitched from the wagon, the drawbar slamming to the ground in that exact moment with a final and earth-shaking crash.

Now that the team of four was unyoked from the caravan, Mr. Scunt began shouting commands and scrambling off the driver’s bench to bring the horses under control.

The instant they came to a stop, Bran jumped to the ground on a pained grunt. There would have been no way to cushion his bad leg against the impact. But he didn’t hesitate. Rather, he made straight for the back of the caravan to check on Radish.

From her mounted position, Artemis was able to peer inside. “He’s all right,” she called out. “Shaken, but all right.”

With quick efficiency, Bran had the back door open and was hauling himself inside, expertly checking Radish over for injury.

“I could’ve told ye for a tuppence that contraption wouldn’t be making it all the way to Surrey.” Mr. Scunt pulled his pipe from his pocket. “Beasts of the field were meant to travel on their four feet, the way the good Lord intended.”

“Thank you, Mr. Scunt.” Artemis willed the driver to please stop talking.

Bran had a thunderstorm darkening his brow as he led Radish from the caravan. “Mr. Scunt,” he began in a voice Artemis had never heard from him. It was firm and direct and commanding . This was his soldier’s voice. A not-unpleasant shiver traced through her. “How far away is the next coaching inn?”

Mr. Scunt’s face scrunched in assessment. “About three or so miles, give or take three or so miles.”

Annoyance flashed behind Bran’s eyes. “Here is what you will do. You will ride the team there and speak to the smithy. Get him out here to repair the caravan so we can continue first thing in the morning.”

Mr. Scunt gave a smile that would have been apologetic, if it had held even the faintest sliver of remorse.

He puffed thrice on his pipe, then said, “Ah, but there ye see, the dark is creeping through the air just now. If I know Ben Scully—and I’ve had a few tangles with him over the years—he’ll be coming here in his own good time, which will be on the other side of this night. ”

Bran didn’t miss a beat. “Tell him there will be ten pounds in it for him, but only if the caravan is ready for transport by eight o’clock in the morning.”

Now, it was Mr. Scunt who wasn’t missing a beat. “And for the messenger?”

“One pound,” said Bran. He’d been expecting the question. “Not a penny more.”

Mr. Scunt’s smile broadened as he set about readying the team for departure with the energy of a man thirty years younger.

Bran’s gaze shifted and pinned Artemis in place. No mistaking the annoyance in those golden depths—and the determination, too. Here was a man who took the task at hand and saw it through to completion. Bran must have been incredibly skilled at soldiering.

“And you?” he asked, the question directed square at her.

Not too far away, Mr. Scunt had climbed onto the lead horse’s back. “Fare thee well, fellow travelers!”

The team of horses lurched into motion, and he was off.

Which left the two of them, a pair of horses, and a broken-down caravan—and that unanswered question.

“What about me?” The smile she turned on him had been known to disarm even her fiercest opponents.

He stood utterly unmoved.

Well, he lifted a single eyebrow.

“Shouldn’t you be moving along, too?”

Her smile didn’t slip a hair. “Are you planning to walk Radish the three to six miles to the coaching inn?”

“Aye,” he said, in the slow, deliberate manner of one who knew he was being led into a trap but hadn’t yet identified what the snare was.

Objectively, she was being infuriating.

She understood that.

But she couldn’t seem to stop, as he was, at last, speaking to her in vocabulary that extended beyond grunts and snorts.

She shifted her weight and slid from Pixie’s back.

The deep trench of Bran’s brow was likely to give him a megrim.

“I shall walk, too,” she said, delivering her fait accompli .

“Artemis—”

She glanced all around, as if she were only now noticing her surroundings. “The sun is, indeed, making its way toward the horizon. Since our walk will take somewhere around one to three hours, we should start moving.”

“There is no we , Artemis.” He stated each word all too clearly. “There is no us .”

Reflexively, she flinched, but remained undaunted as she tapped forefinger to mouth. “Unless …” She let the word hang in the air.

He exhaled a long-suffering sigh. “ Unless? ”

“Unless,” she said, “we rode. We do have two horses,” she added.

His face closed off to her. “I’m not riding.”

She had an argument armed with logic prepared for this objection. “A highwayman could come along and steal Radish from us.”

“Highwaymen vanished with the last century,” he said with equal, if not greater logic. “I’m not riding.”

An irritated huff escaped Artemis. She saw that she would have to address the obstacle head on—and come what may. “Your leg is not preventing you from riding.”

His jaw clenched and unclenched.

“Your limp isn’t all that bad.”

“Leave it, Artemis.”

She should heed the warning in his voice—if only she could. “You can swim.”

“You know nothing about it.”

“I’m just saying?—”

“It’s not my leg.”

She froze, then blinked. Not his leg? “Of course, it’s your leg. Or did you sustain a different injury that I’m unaware of?”

The bitter ghost of a laugh sounded through his nose. “You might say that.”

“I’m not following.”

As the inscrutability faded from his eyes, she wasn’t prepared for what she met there—a wound yet open and raw.

No longer was this a game.

This was real life— his real life.

A matter of life and death.

Death came in many forms.

And this man knew that fact well, his eyes told her.

He drew an unsteady breath. He was so utterly unlike the man she’d thought she’d known. This man was vulnerable and struggling.

This man might need a friend.

He ran his free hand through his thick hair. “It’s me .”

“ You? ”

“Something in me that I cannot explain—even to myself.”

He hesitated, as if weighing whether to go on.

He didn’t owe her an explanation.

Not really.

He didn’t owe her anything.

Her breath held as she awaited his decision. It was his choice, and she wouldn’t attempt to force it, but how she hoped he would keep talking. She wanted to understand this— him —better. To know something true of the man he was now.

“Every time I think about mounting a horse,” he continued, “a feeling comes over me as if I were standing on the edge of a very high cliff, and my body reacts. I go hot, then cold. My heart races. My chest constricts. My palms grow damp.” He shook his head. “I can’t seem to rid myself of it.”

“So, you no longer ride.”

The starkness in his eyes was all the answer she needed.

“I’m so sorry, Bran.”

What else could one say in the face of all this man had lost?

She wanted to reach out and touch some part of him. To let him know that in sharing this, he no longer labored alone with it.

But she recognized the old compulsion drove this feeling, too. The need to touch him.

She resisted.