Silverbridge (10 page)

It was like coming home.

For a long while she stood perfectly still, and then she leaned against him, her arms encircled his waist, and she spread her hands flat against his back. The intensity of her response was dizzying. Everything inside her was quivering, and she could feel the liquid heat gushing through her loins. He could have carried her to the sofa and taken her, and she would have let him do it.

It was he who finally broke the kiss. He placed his hands on her shoulders and put her away from him. Tracy had to force herself to let him go.

“Christ.” His voice sounded as shaken as she felt. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

She was incapable of saying a word.

“I apologize, Miss Collins,” he said. “You must have had your fill of the Olivers tonight. I’ll leave you to return to your bedroom. Good night.”

Tracy watched him walk away in dumbfounded astonishment. No man had ever kissed her and walked away. Yet there he was, the mighty Lord Silverbridge, walking with measured steps toward his room.

Even though he was moving without haste, it suddenly occurred to Tracy that he had the look of a man who is running away.

T
o her great surprise, Tracy fell instantly asleep and did not awaken until just after sunup the following morning. The world outside her window looked fresh and new. The delicate, lacy canopies of new-budded trees cast their shade over the spring green lawn, and the sound of birds floated to her ears.

The impulse was irresistible.
I’m going out.

She dressed in a pair of jeans from her suitcase, pulled on a sweater, and went along the corridor to the staircase. As she reached the ground floor, she met Harry emerging from the kitchen staircase. He was dressed in high black boots, fawn-colored breeches, and a gray sweater. His dogs were with him.

They stared at each other in shocked surprise. Tracy could feel her face color, which annoyed her no end.

He recovered first. “Miss Collins! What are you doing up so early?”

“I’m going for a walk,” she said. Her voice was huskier than usual, and this annoyed her as well.

The dogs had sat on either side of their master and were regarding Tracy with peaceful brown eyes.

“It is a lovely morning,” he agreed. “In fact, I was just going for a ride.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Would you care to join me?”

The less time I spend in the company of this man, the safer I will be,
Tracy thought.

“I’d love to,” she heard herself saying. “I’ll have to ride in jeans, though.”

He looked down at the lace-up boots she had put on to protect her feet from the dew. “Jeans are fine, and your boots have a heel, so they’re all right too.”

“Great.”

“Come along then,” he said. “We’ll have to get to the stable before the horses are grained, or you won’t have anything to ride.”

10

W
hy the hell did I ask her to ride with me ?

Harry strode furiously along the path to the stable, his long legs eating up the ground, completely unaware that Tracy was having to half run to keep up with him.

She’s trouble. The last thing in the world I need is to get involved with another high-profile diva.

He was not paying attention to her but knew instantly when she was no longer beside him. He stopped and turned to look for her.

She was standing on the path, her arms folded across her chest, her expression mutinous. “I’ll meet you down there,” she said. “I’m not in the mood for a race.”

The gold streaks in her glorious hair glinted in the bright light of early morning. Her skin was flawless, and her dark blue crewneck sweater exactly matched her eyes. The curve of her mouth held a suggestion of great sweetness. Every time he looked at her he felt profoundly stirred.

They stood on the path, regarding each other, and all he could think about was kissing her. He cleared his throat, and said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’ll walk slower.”

She nodded, and they once more began to walk toward the stable. The spaniels, who had been scampering ahead of him and who had stopped when he did, started up again as well.

When they reached the stable most of the horses were chewing their breakfast hay in their stalls and Peter, one of his grooms, was saddling Pendleton up in the aisle. “Who hasn’t been grained yet?” Harry asked the boy.

“None of them, my lord. I was waiting for them to finish half of their hay.”

“Good.” Harry called to one of the young girls scrubbing water buckets. “Gloria, will you saddle up Maestro, please? Put Lady Margaret’s saddle on him.”

“Sure thing, my lord,” came the cheerful reply and the tall, skinny teenager put down her bucket and went to bring a second horse out into the aisle.

He turned to Tracy. “Maestro is my hunter. He’s very comfortable. He’ll give you an easy ride.”

“That’s good,” she replied with a crinkle of her charmingly tilted nose. “I’
m afraid that my riding mus
cles are badly out of shape.”

He nodded. “It’s amazing, isn’t it, how you can be in terrific shape in every way, but if you haven’t ridden in a while, you’ll still be sore. Riding just uses muscles that you don’t use in any other activity.”

“Don’t remind me. Dave would have a heart attack if he knew I was doing this.”

He said stiffly, “In that case, perhaps you oughtn’t to come.”

For the first time ever, she smiled at him. “But I want to. I have missed riding very much.”

His stomach clenched.
Christ,
he thought.
What is going on here?

At that moment, Peter led Pendleton into the stable yard, and Harry gratefully went to take his reins. He looked into his horse’s soft, intelligent eyes and stroked his nose. “Good morning, little fellow.”

Pen whuffled through his nose in response.

Tracy came to stand at his shoulder. “He’s beautiful.” She sounded as if she meant it.

Harry continued to stroke Pen’s nose. “He’s the smartest horse I’ve
ever known. Everything he’s ac
complished he’s done because of his brain. Once he understands what you want, he’ll kill himself to get it right.”

“He looks very happy.”

She had said exactly the thing that he liked most to hear. “He deserves to be,” he replied a little gruffly, and patted his beloved horse’s satiny seal brown neck.

There was the
clap clap
sound of shod hooves on cobblestones, and Gloria brought Maestro to stand next to Pen. “My,” Tracy said to the big gelding, “Aren’t you handsome?”

Maestro pricked his ears forward and regarded his admirer regally. Tracy laughed and glanced at Harry. “He seems to be well accustomed to compliments.”

He smiled in return. “That coat of his has always attracted attention.”

Maestro was a chestnut with a particularly bright, almost copper-colored coat that gleaned with good health and good grooming. “You’re a good match,” Harry heard himself saying.
“
Two redheads.”

She gave him a startled look, and he was annoyed with himself.
Why the hell did I say that? Now she’ll think I’m flirting with her.

She put her foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle—not an easy feat as Maestro was almost seventeen hands high. She picked up her reins and moved her leg out of the way for Gloria to adjust the stirrups from Meg’s length to hers. Harry watched while she okayed the new length, approving of the way she sat, with her shoulders, hips, and knees all lined up correctly. Then he mounted Pendleton, who was a much smaller horse than Maestro, barely sixteen hands in height.

Tracy commented on this as they walked out of the stable yard, “somehow, I pictured Pendleton as being bigger.”

“I know. It’s always been a problem in the show ring because the judges like big horses. But the Lipizzaners of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna are not even as tall as he is.”

“Really? I didn’t know that. I’ve seen them in performance, and they look quite large.”

“They have enormous presence—and so does Pen when he’s in the ring.” He leaned forward to pat his mount’s arched neck.

They walked along for perhaps five minutes, Harry carefully checking to see how she handled Maestro, who had a tender mouth. By the time they reached the home woods he was satisfied that he could trust her not to inflict pain. As the horses stepped onto the familiar
terrain of the bridle path, their ears pricked forward, and their pace quickened.

“What about a brisk trot to warm up?” Harry asked.

“I’d love it.”

The dogs had already disappeared into the woods in search of fun, and now Pen began to trot along the dirt path, which was only wide enough for one horse. The way was clear, however. Harry always had the trees alongside the bridle paths pruned, so there was no danger of a rider being hit in the head by an overhanging branch.

The woodland flowers were everywhere, the bluebells and windflowers and cowslips splashing their bright colors across the green-brown forest floor. The air smelled fresh and new. It was Harry’s favorite time of day, and he felt happy.

He pulled up at a place where the path turned down a sharp incline and turned to regard Tracy. Her hair was a windblown mass of curls, her eyes were sparkling, and her cheeks were flushed to an exquisite rose. “He’s fabulous,” she said, enthusiastically patting Maestro’s neck. “Even out in the woods, he goes perfectly straight.”

Harry felt a rush of pleasure. So she really did know something about horses. “All of my horses go straight. You can’t achieve anything with a horse unless he goes forward and goes straight.”

She regarded him ironically. “I told you I’ve read Podhajsky, my lord.”

My God,
he thought.
She really has read Podhajsky.
He said as matter-of-factly as he could, “We’ll walk
them down this hill and at the bottom there’s a nice open stretch where we can canter.”

“Great.”

He whistled, and they waited for the dogs to join them, which they did with bright eyes, swishing tails, and coats tangled with burrs. Marshal and Millie charged down the hill, and the horses followed more slowly. At the bottom Harry turned right and entered into what appeared to be a long, broad alleyway, enclosed by arching green branches and dappled with sunlight. He heard Tracy’s breath catch. “Oh,” she said. “How beautiful.”

“Are you ready to canter?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

This path was wide enough to accommodate two horses, and Maestro cantered easily next to Pendleton. Out of the side of his eye, Harry could see that Tracy rode beautifully, her hands in contact with Maestro’s mouth, reassuring him that she was there, but never pulling.

A feeling of wild exaltation shot through him.
She can ride,
he thought.
She can really ride.

He pulled up to a walk a short way before he knew the path would end, and Masetro slowed with Pen. Tracy turned around to look back down the long, tree-enclosed ride, and said fervently, “How wonderful to have access to a place like this. A private place where there are none of those ghastly all-terrain vehicles to scare the horses and the wildlife.”

As she finished speaking the horses emerged from the woods onto the shore of a small lake, upon which two majestic swans and their family glided serenely. The
dew on the meadow grass around the lake twinkled like
diamonds in the sunlight, and a pair of thrushes were calling to each other from the woods on the other side. Tracy let out her breath in a long, satisfied sigh.

He firmly squelched the smile that curved his mouth at her appreciative reaction.

“Does the lake belong to you, too, my lord?”

“Yes.” He deliberately wasn’t looking at her; instead he kept his eyes on the swans.

Her next question made him jerk his head around in surprise. “Is this part of the land that that Mauley person wants to make into a golf course?”

Every time he thought about the golf course, he felt grim. “I don’t know if Mauley wants the lake or not,” he replied. “I haven’t bothered to look that closely at his proposal. I have no plans to sell any part of Silverbridge, and I wish he would get that through his head and leave me alone.” He was sitting straight as a lance in his saddle and gestured to a dirt track that cut a swath through the marsh grass. “That path encircles the entire lake. Would you be up to a gallop?”

“Sure,” she replied.

He whistled to the dogs, and they appeared from the woods and came running to stand by Pen’s legs. “They love to run around the lake,” Harry said, “and it’s good exercise for them.”

Without another word, he asked Pen for a gallop and the seal bay responded with a burst of speed. Maestro followed, and after him, the dogs. They galloped around the entire lake, with the scent of the May morning in their nostrils and the sound of birdsong in their ears. Harry finally pulled up at a place where a different path
led off into the woods, turned to Tracy, and said, “This will take us home.”

They walked single file for perhaps five minutes, with the dogs trailing after Tracy, then the path widened. “You can bring him up beside me now,” Harry said over his shoulder.

When she had pulled alongside of him, and both horses were walking on a long rein, he heard himself say in an abrupt voice, “Everyone in my family thinks I’m crazy not to sell to Mauley. He’s offered me an enormous sum of money.”

She was looking between Maestro’s ears, and her profile was one of the loveliest sights he had ever seen. She said, “As the old saying goes, money isn’t everything.”

“In today’s day and age it is,” he returned bitterly. They walked on in silence until at last he could no longer stop himself from asking, “Do you think I’m crazy not to sell?”

“No.” Her reply was immediate and definite. “If I had a place like this that had been in my family for centuries, I’d never sell it. I’d feel as if it was a sacred trust or something.”

That was exactly how he felt himself. To test her he threw out one of the arguments he kept hearing from his family. “People don’t live like this anymore. Well, perhaps they do in Saudi Arabia—or in Beverly Hills—but they don’t here in Britain. We have the welfare state now.”

She lifted a hand to smooth her hair back from her face. “There isn’t anyplace like this in Saudi Arabia or Beverly Hills. What’s so wonderful about Silverbridge
is its sense of always having been here. I think it’s something very special, that generation after generation of your family has grown up here and added their own bit of history to the house and the land.”

He was surprised and profoundly moved that she should have such an insight. He said sternly, “That’s what I think, too.”

She shot him a questioning look. “After all, it’s not as if you hoard all this beauty just for yourself. You open the house to the public, don’t you?”

“Yes. It’s part of the deal I made with the Inland Revenue when my father died. I turned over most of our valuable pictures to the National Trust to pay the death duties, and they allowed them to stay here at Silverbridge if I would open the house to the public. So for two months out of the year parties of day-trippers and Germans and Japanese and Americans come trooping through Silverbridge, oohing and aahing at the paintings and the furniture.”

“My, my, my.” She sounded amused. “You
are
a snob.”

He set his mouth in a hard line. “If it’s snobbish not to want to open a tea shop and a gift shop and sell postcards with pictures of the house, then I plead guilty.” Something rustled in the trees, and Marshal and Millie shot off in pursuit.

“The question is, can you afford to maintain your heritage without commercializing it?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then thought with horror,
Good God, was I really going to discuss my finances with this movie actress?
“Of course I can,” he answered shortly.

At that moment they emerged from the woods, and in the distance he saw the stone stable, which to him was far more beautiful than any modem dwelling could ever be. His feelings momentarily breaking through his wall of reserve, he said, “My family doesn’t understand. Silverbridge doesn’t belong to them; it belongs to
me.
And I intend to keep it.”