Page 29 of In the Prince's Bed
—Anonymous,A Rake’s Rhetorick
Now I’ll have to make the one be worth all my trouble.
The words rang in Katherine’s ears as they set off for the Freeman Assembly Rooms. Lord preserve her, how would she endure an entire afternoon wondering when Alec would claim his “reward”? Wondering if he would taste the same as before, if he’d do that strange thing with his tongue, if he…
With a curse, Katherine slanted a glance over at him. He rode his powerful mount with an ease that proved he hadn’t lied about spending a lot of time on horseback.
What an intriguing scoundrel. He sat a horse better than any member of the Jockey Club. Just look at those leather-clad hips settled so perfectly into the saddle, those muscular thighs gripping the mare’s flanks and controlling the animal with mere nudges, those gloved hands effortlessly manipulating the reins.
Even his choice of breed was unusual. “What sort of horse is that?” she ventured, as they trotted down the street with Molly lagging several lengths behind.
“A Lusitano. I obtained Beleza in Portugal.” He reached forward to scratch behind the horse’s ear, and she nickered softly. “We’ve been through thick and thin together, haven’t we, girl?”
“Did she cavort her way through the Continent, too?” Katherine teased.
He shot her a sidelong glance. “You seem awfully interested in my cavorting. Do you wish you could do some yourself?”
She smiled. “Not the cavorting exactly, but the traveling. I should love to see Italy and Portugal and…oh, all of the Continent.”
He shifted his gaze back to the road, his smile fading. “There’s not much to see these days, I’m afraid.”
Oh, yes, the war. Which reminded her…
“I’ve been wondering what a young man can possibly do for fun abroad if he has to avoid Napoleon’s armies.”
“Life goes on even in wartime,” he said dismissively. “People still gamble, drink…cavort.” As they approached an intersection, he slowed his horse to a walk. “Which way?”
“Left, I think.”
He glanced behind them with a frown. “Perhaps we should wait for your maid.”
Katherine looked back. For goodness sake, when had Molly fallen so far behind? And why was she letting the pony rattle her teeth right out of her head when all she had to do was post through the trot?
“Are you sure your maid knows how to ride?” he asked.
“She said she did,” Katherine told him, “but she’s a kitchen maid, and I’m afraid they don’t ride much.”
He eyed her closely. “Why didn’t your mother send your lady’s maid?”
Too mortified to admit the real reason, she shrugged. “We left most of our servants in Cornwall.”
Though he looked skeptical, he merely shifted in the saddle to gaze back at Molly. “One of us should make sure she’s all right.”
“I’ll go,” Katherine said quickly. The last thing she wanted was Molly explaining why the dire financial situation of the Merivale family necessitated a kitchen maid filling in as lady’s maid.
As he reined in, Katherine wheeled her horse round and cantered back to where Molly bounced atop the pony, her face frozen in fear. Katherine pulled up beside her, noting the girl’s death grip on the pommel. “Are you all right?”
The maid gave a jerky nod. When that made her horse veer to the left and she grabbed for the edge of the sidesaddle, Katherine grew alarmed. Molly clearly had no idea how to control a horse. Right now he was blindly following the other two, but once they reached the busier streets…
“Molly, perhaps you should—”
The blare of a tin horn cut her off. Seemingly from out of nowhere, a coach thundered down the street behind them. Seeing the two of them half-blocking the road, the coachman blared his tin horn again, this time more loudly. Spooked by the horn and possessed of a fearful rider, Molly’s pony bolted.
At Molly’s shriek, Katherine spurred her horse into a gallop. As the pony barreled past Alec with a screaming Molly clinging to the saddle’s far edge, he set his mare after it at a run.
The coach roared past Katherine with the coachman sawing on the reins and shouting a warning to the pair ahead, but it wasn’t the coach that sent Katherine’s heart plummeting into her stomach. She could see the pony’s reins dragging the ground, and what was worse, Molly’s right leg had slipped off the sidesaddle horn. Only her death grip on the saddle’s edge was preventing her falling. With the coach hot on her heels and the intersection ahead, if she fell, she would surely be crushed beneath it or another approaching carriage.
Helplessly, Katherine watched as Alec’s horse gained on the pony. In sheer astonishment, she saw him shift his body until he rode almost perpendicular to his mount. He came abreast of the pony just as Molly lost her grip on the sidesaddle.
