about her? It made the anger she had been carrying for him these last three years more difficult to cling to. Undoubtedly, that was part of his plan.
“I will see to them myself.”
He said nothing, simply stood there, his hand extended, watching her calmly.
With a sigh, she relented, placing her hand in his. “You will likely dog me every step of the way.”
His fingers tangled lightly in hers, avoiding her injured palm. “You cannot shake me, Nellie. Surrender.”
“Never,” she vowed.
But some part of her could not help but to wonder if her resistance to him was not fading.
Jack had forgotten what an excellent horsewoman Nell was.
As he rode alongside her on the periphery of Needham Hall’s vast forest, he could not help but to admire her seat. It was miracle enough she had accepted his invitation to go riding, albeit with his reassurances he would do his utmost to behave himself. But the sight of her, too, was miraculous all on its own. The riding habit she had donned was scarlet. Her hat was jaunty, her golden curls trapped in a fat braid which ran down her back.
She looked like an invitation to sin, and he very much wanted to accept the offer.
Siege, he reminded himself once more. Slowly, surely, he would win this war between them. He merely needed to bide his time.
“Do you recall the last time we rode together?” he could not resist asking her.
She cast him a frown. “No.”
He was equally certain she did.
“It was here at Needham Hall,” he reminded her. “We raced, and you won. Afterward, we tethered the horses by the stream and I made you a coronet of forget-me-nots.”
The blue of the flowers had matched her eyes.
She had suspected him of allowing her to win, but he had not. In truth, her mount had outpaced his.
“I do not remember it,” she said coolly.
The expression on her lovely face said otherwise.
“Are your hands paining you?” he asked, changing the subject for the moment.
The Nell he knew would have been galloping across the field by now.
“I am not as reckless as I once was,” she said softly. “I took a fall from Thunder, and I was badly hurt.”
This was news to him.
“When?” he demanded. “Why was I not informed?”
“It was about two months after you left.” She kept her face trained forward, gaze fixed upon the copse of trees on the horizon. “I did not want you to know.”
“How badly were you injured?” he asked next, alarm flaring inside him.
“A broken wrist and a badly bruised back.” She cast him a quick look. “It was not as serious as it could have been. I was riding him too fast, and I had been drinking wine. The fault was mine.”
She had been drinking. Riding recklessly. She had not said it, but they both knew the reason why. Him.
He ground his molars. “Damn it, I would have returned. I would have wanted to know. You had no right to keep it from me.”
“I feared that if I wrote to you with what had happened, you would return.” Another glance in his direction, this one quite quelling. “And I wanted you to stay gone.”
Her words lodged their barbs firmly in his heart. She had preferred to suffer on her own rather than see him return. “You should not have mounted a horse in your cups, Nellie. You know better.”
“I did.” She was once again facing forward, her profile serene. “But I did not care. For a long time, I did not care about anyone or anything. Most especially not myself. But I did care for Thunder, and it was my fear I would injure him with my foolishness.”
“When I reached Paris, I drank enough wine to kill a man,” he told her. “I spent an entire day casting up my accounts and wishing myself to perdition.”
She slanted him a look. “I spent a great deal of time wishing you to perdition as well.”
And he had almost found himself there.
“I wished you there too,” he confessed. “I devoted a great deal of time to cursing the day I married you. To hating myself for loving you so much.”
Her brow furrowed. “You were angry with me? Forgive me for failing to see why.”
“I was furious with you.” His hands tightened on the reins as remembrance washed over him. “Your lack of faith in me was devastating then. It still is. But I have also had three years to ponder everything that happened and to realize I would have believed