“Damn.”
“What is it?” she asked, trying to twist around to see his face.
“Felix has gone lame,” he muttered, leaping down from the saddle.
“Is he all right?” she inquired, accepting his wordless offer to help her dismount as well.
“He’ll be fine,” Michael said, kneeling in the rain to inspect the gelding’s front left leg. His knees sank instantly into the muddy earth, ruining his riding breeches. “He can’t carry the both of us, however. Couldn’t even manage just you, I fear.” He stood, scanning the horizon, determining just where on the property they were. “We’ll have to make for the gardener’s cottage,” he said, impatiently pushing his sodden hair from his eyes. It slid right back over his brow.
“The gardener’s cottage?” Francesca echoed, even though she knew perfectly well what he was talking about. It was a small, one-room structure, uninhabited since the current gardener, whose wife had recently been delivered of twins, had moved into a larger dwelling on the other side of Kilmartin. “Can’t we go home?” she asked, a little desperately. She didn’t need to be alone with him, trapped in a cozy little cottage with, if she remembered correctly, a rather large bed.
“It will take us over an hour on foot,” he said grimly, “and the storm is growing worse.”
He was right, drat it all. The sky had taken on a queer, greenish hue, the clouds touched with that strange light that preceded a storm of exquisite violence. “Very well,” she said, trying to swallow her apprehension. She didn’t know which frightened her more—the thought of being stuck out of doors in the storm or trapped inside a small cottage with Michael.
“If we run, we can be there in just a few minutes,” Michael said. “Or rather, you can run. I’ll have to lead Felix. I don’t know how long it will take for him to make the journey.”
Francesca felt her eyes narrowing as she turned to him. “You didn’t do this on purpose, did you?”
He turned to her with a thunderous expression, matched rather terrifyingly by the streak of lightning that flashed through the sky.
“Sorry,” she said hastily, immediately regretting her words. There were certain things one never accused a British gentleman of, the foremost of which was deliberate injury to an animal, for any reason. “I apologize,” she added, just as a clap of thunder shook the earth. “Truly, I do.”
“Do you know how to get there?” he yelled over the storm.
She nodded.
“Can you start a fire while you wait for me?”
“I can try.”
“Go, then,” he said curtly. “Run and get yourself warm. I’ll be there soon enough.”
She did, although she wasn’t quite sure whether she was running to the cottage or away from him.
And considering the fact that he’d be mere minutes behind her, did it really matter?
But as she ran, her legs aching and her lungs burning, the answer to that question didn’t seem terribly important. The pain of the exertion took over, matched only by the sting of the rain against her face. But it all felt strangely appropriate, as if she deserved no more.
And, she thought miserably, she probably didn’t.
By the time Michael pushed open the door to the gardener’s cottage, he was soaked to the bone and shivering like a madman. It had taken far longer than he had anticipated to lead Felix to the gardener’s cottage, and then, of course, he’d been faced with the task of finding a decent spot to tie the injured gelding, since he couldn’t very well leave him under a tree in an electrical storm. He’d finally managed to fashion a makeshift stall in what used to be a chicken shed, but the end result was that by the time he made it into the cottage, his hands were bleeding and his boots were dotted with a foul substance that the rain had inexplicably not managed to wash off.
Francesca was kneeling by the fireplace, attempting to spark a flame. From the sound of her mutterings, she wasn’t meeting with much success.
“Dear heavens!” she exclaimed. “What happened to you?”
“I had trouble finding a place to tie Felix,” he explained gruffly. “I had to build him a shelter.”
“With your own two hands?”
“I had no other tools,” he said with a shrug.
She glanced nervously out the window. “Will he be all right?”
“I hope so,” Michael replied, sitting down on a three-legged stool to remove his boots. “I couldn’t very well slap his rump and send him home on that injured leg.”
“No,” she said, “of course not.” And then her face took on a horrified expression, and she jumped to her feet, exclaiming, “Will you be all right?”
Normally, he’d have welcomed her concern, but it would have been far easier to milk it if he knew what the devil she was talking about. “I beg your pardon?” he asked politely.
“The malaria,” she said, with a touch of urgency. “You’re soaked, and you’ve just had an attack. I don’t want you to—” She stopped, clearing her throat and visibly squaring her shoulders. “My concern does not mean that I am more charitably inclined to you than I was an hour ago, but I do not wish for you to suffer a relapse.”
He thought briefly about lying to gain her sympathies, but instead he just said, “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Are you certain?”
“Quite. Chills don’t bring on the disease.”
“Oh.” She took a bit of time to digest that information. “Well, in that case…” Her words trailed off, and her lips tightened unpleasantly. “Carry on, then,” she finally said.
Michael gave her an insolent salute and then went back to work on his boots, giving the second one a firm yank before gingerly picking up both by the tops and setting them down near the door. “Don’t touch those,” he said absently, moving over to the fireplace. “They’re filthy.”
“I couldn’t get the fire started,” she said, still standing awkwardly near the hearth. “I’m sorry. I haven’t much experience in that area, I’m afraid. I did find some dry wood in the corner, though.” She motioned to the grate, where she’d set down a couple of logs.
He set to work igniting a flame, his hands still stinging a bit from the scrapes he’d incurred clearing the bramble out of the chicken shed for Felix. He welcomed the pain, actually. Minor as it was, it still gave him something to think about other than the woman standing behind him.
She was angry.
He should have expected that. He did expect it, in truth, but what he didn’t expect was how much it would sting his pride, and, in all honesty, his heart. He had known, of course, that she wouldn’t suddenly declare her undying love for him after one episode of relentless passion, but he’d been just enough of a fool that a tiny little piece of him had hoped for such an outcome, all the same.
Who would have thought, after all his years of bad behavior, that he’d emerge such a hopeless romantic?
But Francesca would come around, he was fairly certain of that. She’d have to. She’d been compromised—quite thoroughly, he thought with some measure of satisfaction. And while she’d not been a virgin, that still meant something to a principled woman like Francesca.