Page 38 of A Lady Igniting Wicked Passions
The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was unopposed in it. The light through the window was gloriously warm. This weather was usually enough to draw her out as soon as she could wolf down breakfast.
Now though that brilliant sky seemed dull. The sun was an arid ball and the city around her, a prison. Aaron was out there somewhere. The thought of what he might be doing had filled her eyes as she had stared at words on a page. She had seen him regularly but he had become a stranger to her.
Each time they had met socially, he had positioned himself besides Helena and paid almost no attention to Arabella. She could only think that he blamed her for the situation that he found himself in, at the beck and call of Isabella and her politician husband. If it had not been for her, he would not have found himself in that particular snare. Now, as she feared he would, he resented her.
It was enough to bring tears to her eyes and she blinked them away furiously. But they simply returned. There was no escaping that feeling that engendered them or the thoughts that brought on that feeling. She was trapped. Her husband-to-be was equally trapped. A life of misery awaited them both, locked together in a marriage that neither wanted.
Both of them wishing for someone else but forced together by the ties of the society of which they were part. Bound by the need to protect honour and reputation. Arabella despaired; tears streamed from her eyes. Her father rode out. She watched him go until she had to close her eyes against the sting of the tears.
When she opened them again, he was gone. Rising from her seat, she pulled the curtains across, wanting to shut out the world which had caused her so much pain.
There came a knocking at the door which, at first, she ignored. But it continued. Then came the voice of a maid.
“My Lady Arabella? The stable boy has sent me to fetch you. There is something amiss with one of the horses.”
Arabella scrubbed at her cheeks as she dashed for the door and pulled it open. The maid dropped into a curtsy but Arabella waved it away.
“No time for that, Mable, I must see to this. Did he tell you what was wrong?” Arabella asked as she strode down the hallway, the maid hurrying to keep up.
“No, My Lady. Just that you needed to be sent for urgently.”
“Has a vet been sent for?”
“I don’t know, My Lady. He didn’t say.”
Arabella growled her exasperation at the lack of initiative. She had little tolerance when it came to the health and wellbeing of her horses. If a man who was paid to look after them believed one of them to be ill or injured, he should have sent for vet off his own recognizance. The vet could easily be sent away if it turned out to be nothing. And money was no object for her father.
Especially not when it came to his stables. She sent the maid back to her duties and hurried to the stables which lay behind the house by the most direct route. This involved breezing through the kitchens without a backward glance at astonished staff and out onto the cobbled yard that separated the house from its stables.
The stables themselves were surrounded by a tall, stone wall of brick with an archway facing the house. Within the walls were a number of stalls, arranged around a central square in which there was a pump, trough, and mounting block.
Her father had taken one of the horses, which left just one other. That was Achilles. The stable hands, having completed their daily duties had gone home and would return in the evening to settle the two horses for sleep. So, as Arabella strode into the square, she did not expect to meet anyone, except for the hand who had raised the alarm.
She made for Achilles stall. He put his head over the door to greet her. She examined him critically, studying eyes, ears, nose, and teeth and finding only a healthy, bemused horse staring back at her. Letting herself into the stall she made a thorough examination and could find nothing.
“Where is the dratted fellow?” Arabella said aloud.
“Up here,” Aaron replied.
Arabella started, looking up. Aaron was sitting on the edge of the loft, used for storing straw and bags of oats and reached by a ladder. She had not even realized that the ladder was out, instead of stored on hooks screwed into the wall as it should have been.
“What are you doing there?” Arabella demanded.
“Trying to see you. In private,” Aaron replied.
There was a curious expression on his face, a tension that could have been anger or desire. Arabella looked out of the stall but the stable yard was deserted. Helena was at the family’s London residence, making the florists of London grovel for her. She went to the ladder and climbed to the loft. Aaron rose and walked to the back of the loft, where the sloped roof joined the wall.
A wall of straw bales cut off this space from the rest of the loft. Anyone looking in would see only straw if they looked up. Arabella felt a surge of excitement. There was danger here, the danger of being caught, which she had never dreamed would be such an intoxicant.
Aaron sat and Arabella sat opposite him. For a moment there was silence. The space was warm, from the sun above and the warmth of the large animal below them.
Strips of sunlight came through gaps in the eaves and motes of golden dust danced in those beams. They passed through the air between Arabella and Aaron, separating them. Arabella bit her lip.
“I believed you had forsaken me,” she said.
“Never,” Aaron replied.
“You have been avoiding me,” Arabella said.
