With This Kiss Part 17

"I'll have the parish constable on you!" Bunb.u.t.t cried, reeling backward, a dribble of blood coming from his mouth.

Colin took out a gold sovereign and tossed it, deliberately, so that it fell on the ground between them.

Bunb.u.t.t's eyes followed the flash of gold to where it lay on the cobblestones. "Yer trying to buy me horse for a measly-"

Another followed.

"That animal isn't worth more than two," the baker said, stepping forward. "The poor thing has been abused by this fool here for the past three years." He turned and poked Bunb.u.t.t in the chest. "And no saying where you got him from. He's too fine an animal for you to own, and we all said so from the first. You stole him!"

"I did not!" Bunb.u.t.t screamed.

Colin threw a third sovereign.

"That's too much," the baker said.

"I'll take another!" Bunb.u.t.t said greedily. "You want this horse, you have to pay for him. And pay good. He's a fine animal, of a championship pedigree."

Colin didn't give a d.a.m.n what pedigree the horse had. What he saw was a dumb beast, beaten and abused by a drunken, uncaring b.a.s.t.a.r.d. In fact, the world would be a better place without Bunb.u.t.t.

The man must have seen that thought in his eyes because he suddenly dropped to his knees and scrabbled for the sovereigns.

"He's yours, then!" he said shrilly, backing away so sharply that he struck the baker.

"Faugh, you smell!" the baker said, thrusting him aside.

"I hope that limb of Satan kicks you just as you kicked me. G.o.d will make sure of it."

"G.o.d!" the baker scoffed. "As if he'd know the difference between you and a common stone on the ground."

"Leave," Colin stated. "You no longer belong in Winkle."

Bunb.u.t.t leaned forward and spat. "That's what I think of you." Then he turned around and ran, with an odd stumbling gait, from the alley.

"You paid too much for that horse," the baker said. "Though it was an earthly kindness of you to rescue it. I doubt it's good for more than the rag-and-bones man."

"We'll see," Colin said. He unwound the reins from his hand. "I'm Sir Griffin Barry's son, and I just came to Arbor House last night with my wife. I need a woman to cook and clean, since there are no servants in residence at the moment."

"Mrs. Busbee does for Sir Griffin," the baker said immediately. "I'll send a boy and she'll be there in an hour or so."

Colin walked the horse back to Arbor House. When he arrived, he took it around to the stables, discovering that Grimble had already come back from the village to care for the carriage horses.

"I'll wash him down," Grimble said, eyeing the animal with a dubious expression. "He does have nice flanks for all he's too thin, and an excellent fetlock. It might be that you can sell him for a pretty penny once he's cleaned up, and those wounds have healed." He carefully felt the horse's shoulder while Colin held the reins tight. "Nothing broken. He's a lucky fellow."

"I'll groom him," Colin said, backing the horse into a stall. "You deal with the other horses, Grimble."

Then Colin leaned against the half door and waited. Long minutes pa.s.sed before the horse looked up.

"You're a mess," Colin said conversationally, making no move to touch him. "You're covered with sweat and dirt, there's dried blood on your right shoulder, your mane looks as if a bird shat in it, and even your eyelashes are tangled."

The horse lowered his head again, his head hanging so low that his nose touched the straw. Colin fetched a bucket of oats, but the moment he put an arm over the door to pour it in his trough, the horse's head whipped up and he reared straight into the air.

Colin ignored him and poured the oats. "You look as if you're trying to fly," he told the animal. "I believe I'll name you after my former ship, the Daedalus. The ship was named after a Greek man who flew too close to the sun for comfort, but made it back to earth."

The horse ignored him. He had all four hooves on the floor again, his sides heaving, a fresh coating of dark sweat on his neck. After a good four minutes, Daedalus lowered his head and began to eat.

"Grimble!" Colin called. "I've given him a name: Daedalus."

"That's a fancy one, sir," Grimble said, coming to stand at his side. "Foreign-like, isn't it? Shall we tie him close and I'll wash him down?"

Colin shook his head. "I don't think there's much chance of infection since the wound closed so quickly. We'll leave him for the night, Grimble."

"It don't seat right with me," the coachman said, staring at the horse. "Leaving a good horse in that condition."

"He doesn't care about dirt as much as he cares about not being struck again. Perhaps tomorrow. For now, let's just let him get used to us. Bring him some hay and mash, will you?"

He stood at the door for a few more minutes before telling Daedalus that he had to find his wife. The horse's ears twitched, although he didn't look up. "I'll be back tomorrow morning. And the morning after that. And no one will hit you ever again."

The horse lipped his oats, weary with fear and pain.

Colin walked back to the house, thinking about parallels that were too obvious to be ignored.

Mrs. Busbee was already in the house. She had made tea and was scrubbing the kitchen. She was disturbed by Colin's refusal to allow servants to stay in the house at night. But finally she laid out supper in the kitchen, and promised to return the following morning with some women to help her do a thorough cleaning.

"Though how you'll get along by yourselves, I don't know," she told him. "It isn't natural having Quality doing as such by themselves."

Colin just smiled. Once she left, he brought a silver tray down to the lakesh.o.r.e and served tea.

And then he seduced his wife under the shade of the willow.

Afterward, Grace lay on the gra.s.s, her head on Colin's leg, and watched the late afternoon sun cast shadows of thin spears over his dark limbs and her pale ones. In her opinion, it wasn't possible to be any happier than this.

That was before supper.

Colin put aside his plate after they finished Mrs. Busbee's pie. Then he took out a sheaf of paper.

"What is that?" Grace asked, made tipsy by the combination of an excellent wine and too much sun.

"A letter," he said. He looked up at her, his eyes glittering over the sheet. "Years ago, I received just such a letter."

She took a closer look and burst into laughter. "That's the one I sent you after Lily cut the fingers off my gloves."

"Your very first," he said, smoothing it on the table. "As you can probably see, it's been read two or three hundred times, Grace."

The laughter died in her throat.

"I never had the time or the courage to write you a proper response, though I might have jotted down a line or two. This afternoon I wrote you the letter I should have sent, had I been braver and you a bit older. G.o.d help me, I remember that week far too clearly."

He began to read.

Dearest Grace, I'm sorry about your gloves. I would love to buy you some more, but as a lowly midshipman, I'm not allowed to leave the ship when it docks. This last week was rather horrible for me, too, but for different reasons. We encountered a ship full of slavers. I think that we probably could have avoided an actual battle by boarding it in an orderly manner, but Captain Persticle is eager to sink ships. You see, the navy gives you a prize if you defeat an enemy ship. We did sink it, after a battle that seemed hours long, but turned out only to take forty minutes. Unfortunately, the quartermaster, Mr. Heath, who has two little boys at home, was caught by a bullet fired by one of our own sailors. And the slaves . . . the slavers threw them all overboard.

He took a drink of wine. Grace took a deep breath and held out her gla.s.s; he refilled it for her. She sipped wine that smelled like flowers, while Colin's steady voice told the story of how Mr. Heath died, and what he had said about his children the day before.

He paused, looked at her. "Are you all right?"

"Yes." Grace was holding his left hand tightly. "I am so glad to know of Mr. Heath, Colin. And to hear of his children. And those poor African people. It is important."

He didn't say anything, just nodded, but his voice lost a bit of its impa.s.siveness. Her letter had been one sheet; his was five sheets.

The next day he worked with Daedalus all morning and then, in the afternoon, he wrote a letter to Mr. Heath's wife and children. After that, he found Grace's next letter, and answered it. His was more than eight pages long, and much of it was difficult to hear. Grace cried, because Colin did not (but should, in her opinion).

The next night he did, though. Just a tear, but she thought it was a priceless tear. He told her, in that letter, what it was like to kill someone. The man had jerked upward as the bullet hit him, and then collapsed, falling to the ground, one leg twisted underneath him, staring at the sky. He had written about what it was like to know that someone-some mother's son, no matter how despicable-was dead by your own hand.

And he wrote about the ordinary moments when he would think he saw the man walking across the deck, shoulders hunched, walking somewhere fast, as if he had a place to be. A person to meet.

That night Colin didn't dream of blood.

A fortnight or so later, Grace woke in the night and propped herself on an elbow, looking at Colin's face by moonlight. It was shadowed and hollowed by all that had happened to him.

As she watched, a smile shaped his lips. "Come here," he murmured, pulling her down onto his chest.

The letters were helping, and so was she; she knew that truth deep in her bones. Death stood on one side, and she on the other. Every time they made love, every morning he spent taming Daedalus, every afternoon he spent writing, every evening when he read aloud another letter, every time he teased her or asked her a question about one of her paintings, she dragged him farther onto her side.

The side with life in it, not death.

She came out of that kiss a little breathless. Sometimes they just looked at each other and that was all it took. He would roll on top of her.

This night they didn't say a word, and yet he didn't tuck her underneath him. Instead, he lifted her so that she was poised above him. She fumbled, learning this new way of making love, thinking about the fact that he was not protecting her. Not afraid for her.

Colin thought about the same thing, though neither felt the need to say it aloud. He felt free to allow the person he loved most in the world to sit on him, pale, lovely b.r.e.a.s.t.s glazed by moonlight, her head thrown back.

He wasn't afraid.

Grace was his, and life was good.

And he wasn't afraid.

The Epilogue Before the Epilogue "I've had a letter from my mother," Grace called, walking into the stables. But she found her voice echoing through an empty building that smelled of horses and ripe hay. She stood for a few moments, mentally cataloguing the way peachy rose hawthorn leaves, blown inside by the wind, lay mingled with tobacco-brown hay thrown onto the dirt floor.

Finally she shook herself free of the spell and walked onward through the stables, letter in hand. The big back doors were open, and she found her husband-after ten days, she still loved the word-walking the poor battered horse he'd rescued around the corral.

The horse looked better. And Colin looked much better: clear-eyed, somehow taller, broader, more himself. The very sight of him sent a purr of desire through her. It was the way his worn breeches shaped a muscled behind and the way his body was precise and primitive at the same time, muscles lean, proportioned . . . beautiful. Rather unwillingly she felt the purr flare into something deeper, a kind of ache to be one with him again.

It was absurd. He'd woken her so early that the light had washed over their skin with a sheen of pearl, not yet yellow, not yet pink.

Colin rounded the corner of the corral, turning toward her, and she realized he was talking to the horse in a steady stream of conversation. He caught sight of her and his eyes lit up.

Then Grace had one of those hiccupping moments when the world comes near to stopping on its axis. He loved her. Colin Barry loved her. The grin that spread across her face was huge and sloppy and full of joy.

Colin moved closer, with the horse keeping pace, dropped the reins over the fencepost, and said, "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, you must have read my mind, darling. I've been thinking about nothing but you for the last hour." He pulled her to him, kissing her impatiently, his tongue demanding entry, his arms hard around her. She dropped her mother's letter to the ground and wound her arms around his neck. The fence was a barrier between them, but it didn't matter. He plundered her senses with hardly a touch.

"You smell like horse," she said a moment later, catching her breath. "And leather."

He laughed. "No, that's Daedalus."

Grace hardly heard him. She was dazed by his kiss, her whole body longing to be with him again. This feeling wasn't ladylike. Particularly because he wasn't as possessed by desire as she was, not at this exact moment. In fact, he was laughing because the horse had come up just behind him and was leaning his chin on Colin's shoulder.

"He's jealous," Colin said, the sentence warm with happiness.

Grace didn't care about Daedalus. She ran her hands into her husband's curls and met his eyes, making up her mind to be vulnerable before him. Be unladylike.

"Colin," she said. It wasn't a question. Her voice was shimmering with l.u.s.t-that was the word for it-l.u.s.t for her gorgeous young husband who had survived the wars, who was home with his sight and his limbs and his body intact.

An answering smile grew in his eyes and her breath caught in her throat, escaping in a kind of pant, but even then she wasn't embarra.s.sed. She couldn't be. Not with Colin.

"Yes," he whispered, bending his head and suddenly, shockingly, nipping her ear. She shivered all over with excitement. "I shall always tup my wife wherever she wants, Grace. Whenever she wants."

And then he was vaulting over the railing and picking her up, kissing her at the same time. They made it inside the stable, but no farther. Mr. Barry, lately of His Majesty's Navy, pulled up his wife's skirts and made love to her against the stable wall, with no more finesse than any of G.o.d's creatures.

It was shocking, forceful, abandoned . . . disgraceful.

Wonderful.

Afterward, they were both sweaty and panting. Grace's hair was hanging about her shoulders and she could feel that her lips were swollen, just as she could feel that her knees were weak.

"We're mad," she said with conviction, the words choppy because her breathing was still uneven.

Colin turned around and put his back against the wall, bringing her with him, his arms tight around her waist. "I'd rather be mad with you than sane in the house of a king."

For a few moments, Grace just lay against his chest, limp and spent, allowing his strength to hold her up.

"Please come to the stables every day, oh my wife," he said, dropping a kiss on the top of her head.

"I didn't come for that," she said, though inside she knew that she had come for precisely that. "My mother" -she pulled her head upright-"my mother's letter!"

After shaking out her skirts and trying fruitlessly to re-pin her hair, they walked back outside. The letter was still there, but Daedalus was standing on it as he waited patiently for Colin to re-emerge from the stable.

"What does he want?" Grace asked, when a low whicker broke from the horse as he caught sight of them.

"Affection," Colin said, walking over to give Daedalus a rub on his forehead before wrapping his arm around the horse's neck in a rough hug. "Love. Nothing more than that which all of us poor creatures long for."

"He's stepping on my mother's letter," she pointed out.

Colin glanced down. "Ripped in half. What did she say?"

"They're all coming tomorrow."

"All?"