Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1. Louise Allen

hands were turning her into felt completely unnatural.

      ‘Is the habit smooth between you and the saddle? It will be uncomfortable otherwise. Just stand in the stirrup and let me tug at the skirt. Good.’ He broke off and looked at her face. ‘Kat, what is it? You are stiff as a board. Is it that I am touching you? I’m sorry, I did not mean to put you to the blush, only it is very difficult to explain without doing so.’

      ‘No, not that. Oh!’ The horse shifted, apparently taking the weight off one hind leg and Katherine lurched. Nick grabbed her and thumped the horse, which straightened up with an affronted snort. ‘It is so high up,’ she finished lamely.

      ‘High up? We’ve got beds that are higher up than this.’ Realisation dawned and Katherine saw his face relax into rueful apology. ‘Kat, are you scared of horses?’

      ‘Yes. I am very sorry.’

      ‘Why did you not say?’

      ‘I thought you would think me very feeble.’ If only he would stop looking like that: so understanding and gentle and …

      ‘I know how brave you are, Kat, I would never think you feeble. Would you like to get down now and I will have a carriage put to instead?’

      Suddenly that was the last thing she wanted. ‘No. Not if you think I can do this.’

      ‘Very well. Now sit up straight, hold the reins as I showed you, keep your heel down and off we go.’ He was leading the horse around the yard. Katherine held her breath, but it did not break into a gallop, rear, buck or do anything that the grey had done. In fact, it plodded. ‘Good. You see? Quite safe. Now just wait there and I’ll see what Durren has found for me.’ Nick let go of the bridle and strode off to where the head groom was waiting with a leggy black gelding.

      Katherine gave a squeak of alarm, but the misnamed Lightning merely stood where he had been left.

      ‘Lift your hands a little,’ Nick said, bringing the black up alongside. ‘Just so you can feel his mouth and he knows you are in charge.’ He spoke without any apparent irony. ‘Then press your heel back into his flank and say “walk on”.’

      Convinced that the horse was about to bolt, Katherine tentatively did as she was told and to her amazement the roan began to walk sedately forward. ‘Oh,’ she said, pleased, then ‘Oh!’ as she began to slip sideways.

      ‘Press down in the stirrup, sit up straight—there, good girl!’

      They walked out of the yard and down the carriage drive, Nick maintaining a steady flow of reassuring comment and instruction. Katherine had expected him to be demanding, perhaps critical of her lack of skill, but his good-humoured encouragement reminded her of the way he had dealt with her in the prison cell.

      She risked looking at him and met his eyes. He was smiling and it suddenly seemed the most natural thing in the world to smile back.

      ‘Enjoying yourself, Kat?’

      ‘Why, yes,’ she admitted, surprised. ‘I thought I would be terrified—for the three seconds it took me to fall off. We are not going to go any faster, are we?’

      ‘Not unless you want to,’ Nick said.

      ‘Doesn’t your horse want to?’ Katherine eyed the twitching ears and the playful sidle the black kept employing.

      ‘He wants to gallop and it will do him good to learn to walk when he’s told to.’

      Just how Nick was managing to stop the animal taking off and doing exactly what it wanted seemed a mystery. Katherine watched him, seeing the almost invisible shifts of leg, tightening of thigh muscle, movements of long fingers that appeared to work this magic. ‘Did you ride in the army?’ she asked, greatly daring.

      ‘Yes.’ He seemed to think better of his abruptness and added, ‘Yes, I was a trooper. You get all sorts to ride. On a battlefield you can pick up some good beasts whose owners have no further use for them.’

      Katherine shivered. ‘And you rode at Waterloo?’

      ‘Yes.’ This time he showed no inclination to expand on that curt response.

      ‘Your father will be very proud when he learns you fought there,’ Katherine ventured.

      ‘We have not discussed it. I mentioned it in passing, that is all.’ Nick’s voice was quite dispassionate, but his body betrayed him. The black tossed its head and broke into a trot for a few strides before its rider could rein back. Obediently the roan started to trot too. Katherine grabbed for the pommel, the mane, her reins, missed them all and found herself tumbling over the horse’s shoulder. It seemed a very long way down, and the ground, when she met it, much harder than she could have imagined.

      ‘Ough!’ she gasped inelegantly.

      ‘Well done!’ Nick had swung down and was kneeling beside her, helping her to sit up.

      Katherine took a painful whoop of breath. ‘Well done?’

      ‘You are still holding the reins. That is very important.’

      ‘It is?’

      ‘Of course. You don’t want to fall off miles from home and see your horse vanishing into the next county. Now, just wriggle everything, make sure nothing is strained—’

      He broke off. Katherine found herself supported against his knee. Nick had one arm around her shoulders, the other was resting on her ankle. She was cradled in such a way that their faces were very close, close enough for her to see the gold flecks in his eyes, the sweep of his lashes, the scar over his eye, the way his pupils contracted seconds before his mouth covered hers.

      The kiss was leisurely, exploratory, quite undemanding. Katherine was well aware that she only had to move away and to push against his chest for him to stop. But she did not want this to stop. She summoned all her small experience and kissed him back, fighting to keep herself from betraying everything she felt for him with the pressure of her mouth, the way her fingers moved restlessly through his hair. With a sigh she closed her fists on the linen of his shirt and surrendered to the heat that his knowing mouth was evoking.

      How long that sensuous caress would have gone on she had no idea. She had not the slightest idea how long it had already lasted when a wet, warm, soft muzzle pushed firmly against her ear.

       Chapter Eighteen

      ‘Ahh!’ Katherine struggled to sit up from what had become a shockingly prone position on the grass and met the reproachful eye of her mount.

      Nick rocked back on his heels and began to laugh. ‘I have never,’ he managed between gasps of mirth, ‘never, been chaperoned by a horse before. I have, however, seen uglier chaperons.’

      Katherine found herself giving way to giggles. ‘He looks so shocked,’ she managed to gasp, hugging her sides. Lightning gave her a disgusted look and began to crop the grass, apparently resigned to the stupidity of humans. She looked around her, finding that they were close to the lake and that tall red chimneys were rising over a small copse ahead of them.

      ‘Is that the Dower House?’

      ‘Yes. Kat, you wanted to talk, this is probably as private as we can be.’

      ‘What I really want to do,’ she said warmly, ‘is box your ears for deceiving me so! How could you not tell me you were a marquis, that your father was a duke?’

      ‘In Newgate? Would you have believed me?’ Nick sat up and clasped his arms round his knees. ‘This view—I would dream of it sometimes, when I actually managed to sleep.’

      ‘Of course I would not have believed you then.’

      ‘I did tell you my real name, you could have looked it up.’

      ‘Naturally, that should have