are always rabbit holes and uneven ground in the fields as a trap to the unwary.'
It was still morning, Freyja thought. Was he intending, then, to be back in Bath for the regular activities of the afternoon? And since when had this become his outing?
'At a leisurely pace?' she said. 'Along the road? For the mere pleasure of drinking tea? I came out for a ride.' She pointed to her right with her whip. 'I intend to ride that way, across the hills. Indeed, I intend to gallop across them.'
'Lady Freyja-' The earl sounded genuinely alarmed.
'Oh, I say!' Mr. Darwin's voice was bright with interest.
'Gerald,' Miss Hester Darwin said, 'Mama made you promise not to let us ride fast and not to go galloping on ahead of us.'
'I will see you all back in Bath, then,' Freyja said, turning her horse off the roadway and edging it through a gap in the hedgerow into the field beyond.
Already she felt more exhilarated. She nudged her horse into a canter and did not look back to see if anyone had the courage to follow her. But if no one else did, she guessed, the Earl of Willett probably would. He would feel duty-bound to escort her. Perhaps after all she had trapped herself into a tete-a-tete with him. She urged her mount to a faster pace. Ah, she could feel the air in her face at last.
She could hear hooves thudding behind her. She hoped that if he had come, he was not alone. She turned her head to look and felt instant relief. Of course! She might have known that the Marquess of Hallmere would be the one to take up the challenge. It was he, after all, who had suggested this ride-for just the two of them. And it was he who had winked at her-again!-when Miss Darwin had expressed her hope that the party would not ride too far or too fast.
He was grinning. That, of course, was no surprise.
'Do you see that white rock?' he asked, coming up alongside her as she slowed somewhat and pointing ahead with his whip.
There was a white speck in the distance. At least three fields lay between it and their present position. But from the rock, jutting out over the land below, there must be a splendid panorama that included the city of Bath.
'That is to be the finishing point of our race?' she asked, anticipating what he was about to say. 'Very well. I will wait for you there.' She spurred her horse and bent low over its neck.
It was not her own horse, of course, but it was no slug. It responded to her commands with a surge of power. She knew only a moment's apprehension as they approached the first hedge. But it would be ignominious indeed to turn aside to find a gate. The horse soared over with surely a foot to spare, and Freyja laughed. With her peripheral vision she could see the marquess not quite one length back from her. If he was holding back out of a gallant intention to allow a lady to win, she thought, he would learn his mistake. But he was not, of course, a man from whom she need fear undue gallantry. He got past her long before the next hedge loomed near and cleared it a full length and more ahead of her. He had a splendid seat, she noticed admiringly.
The race became everything after that. She had always been intensely competitive, perhaps the more so because she had always been small and the only girl among numerous boisterous boys-her brothers Aidan, Rannulf, and Alleyne, and the neighboring Butlers, Jerome, Kit, and Sydnam. She had never felt like a girl with a sister. Morgan was seven years younger than she. She had competed with the boys and made herself their equal.
She competed now, urging her mount on ever faster and faster, hearing the thunder of its hooves beneath her, feeling the wind whip at her hat and her hair and riding habit, watching the gap between her and the horse ahead getting narrower and narrower until by the time they jumped the final hedge, they were almost neck and neck.
The marquess made the mistake after they had landed of looking across at her, perhaps in some surprise to see that she had caught up since he was certainly not making allowances either for the fact that she was a woman or for the fact that she rode sidesaddle. As they converged on the huge white rock, she was in front of him by a whole head. She whooped in triumph and turned to laugh at him.
'I have not had so much fun in ages,' she cried.
'I am glad I allowed you to win, then,' he said.
He was incautiously close. She reached out with her whip and dug him in the ribs with it.
'Ouch!' he said. 'Where did you learn to ride like that? I expected to be fully rested and fast asleep here by the time you came trotting up.' He swung down from his horse's back and tethered it to a tree, and then he strode over to her and reached up his arms. 'Allow me.'
She set her hands on his shoulders and would have jumped down, but he lifted her with strong hands at her waist, slid her all-too-slowly down his front, and then, as soon as her feet were on firm ground, dipped his head and kissed her on the lips-as he had done on another memorable occasion.
His hands circled her wrists as he lifted his head. 'I graciously concede defeat with a kiss,' he said, grinning. 'And at the same time I protect my nose from having a fist collide with it.'
He was an enormously attractive man, she thought. That was no new discovery, of course. But what surprised her was that at this particular moment it was not just an intellectual realization. She could feel her body reacting to his attractiveness with a heightened awareness and slight shortness of breath. She had not reacted physically to any man since Kit.
But the Marquess of Hallmere was certainly not the man with whom to conceive any sort of passion. Would he not be delighted if he could bring her to such discomfiture? She smiled her feline grin at him, released her wrists, and turned away to climb up onto the white rock. The wind whipped at the heavy skirts of her riding habit and at her feathered hat. She pulled the latter off impatiently, pocketing the pins that had held it to her hair, and then she could not resist pulling out her hairpins too. It was sheer bliss to raise her head and feel the wind blowing through her hair. She drew a deep breath of air and expelled it slowly.
'A Viking maiden standing in the prow of a Viking ship,' he said from down below. 'You would have inspired a boatload of warriors into hacking their way ashore and conquering a new land for you.'
He had one booted foot up on the rock, one arm draped across his leg. In his other hand he held his hat. His hair blew about, gleaming very blond in the sunlight.
