The Major Meets His Match Read online

  ‘No, he would have carried you on to a public highway and ridden down some hapless milkmaid instead. And you would definitely have broken your neck if he’d thrown you on the cobbles.’

  ‘I might have known,’ he said with a plaintive sigh, ‘that you were too good to be true. You might look like an angel and kiss like a siren, and have a fine pair of legs, but you have the disposition of a harpy.’

  She gasped. Not at the insult, so much, but at the fact that he was gazing admiringly at her legs while saying it. Making her aware that far too much of them was on show.

  ‘Well, you’re an oaf. A drunken oaf at that!’ She finally managed to untangle her legs and get to her feet just as three more men came staggering into view.

  ‘Good God, just look at that,’ said the first of the trio to reach them, a slender, well-dressed man with cold grey eyes and a cruel mouth. ‘Even lying flat on his back in the middle of nowhere, Ulysses can find entertainment to round off the evening.’

  Since the man with the cruel mouth was looking at her as though she was about to become his entertainment, Harriet’s blood ran cold.

  ‘I have no intention of being anyone’s entertainment,’ she protested, inching towards Shadow, though how on earth she was to mount up and escape, she had no idea. ‘I only came over here to see if I could help.’

  ‘You can certainly help settle the b-bet,’ said the second young man to arrive, flicking his long, rather greasy fringe out of his eyes. ‘Did he reach the C-Cumberland Gate b-before Lucifer unseated him?’

  ‘It was a wager?’ She rounded on the one they’d referred to as Ulysses, the one who was still half-reclining, propped up on one arm, watching them all with a crooked grin on his face. ‘You risked injuring that magnificent beast for the sake of a wager?’

  ‘The only risk was to his own fool neck,’ said the man with the cold eyes. ‘Lucifer can take care of himself,’ he said, going across to the stallion and patting his neck proudly. From the way the stallion lowered his head and butted his chest, it was clear he was Lucifer’s master.

  Harriet stooped to gather her train over one arm, her heart hammering. At no point had she felt afraid of the man they called Ulysses, even when he’d been trying to roll her over on to her back. There was something about his square, good-natured face that put her at ease. Or perhaps it had been that twinkle in his eyes.

  But the way the one with the cruel mouth was looking at her was a different matter. There was something...dark about him. Predatory. Even if he was fond of his horse and the horse clearly adored him in return, that didn’t make him a decent man.

  He then confirmed all her suspicions about his nature by turning to her with a mocking smile on his face. ‘It is hardly fair of you to reward Ulysses with a kiss,’ he said, taking a purposeful step closer, ‘when it is I who won the wager.’

  She lashed out with her riding crop and would have caught him across his face had he not flinched out of her way with a dexterity that both amazed and alarmed her. Even in a state of inebriation, this man could still pose a very real threat to a lone female.

  Keeping her eyes on him, she inched sideways to where she’d tethered Shadow. And collided with what felt like a brick wall.

  ‘Oof!’ said the wall, which turned out to be the third of Ulysses’s companions, a veritable giant of a man.

  ‘You got off lightly,’ remarked Mr Cold-Eyes to the giant, who was rubbing his mid-section ruefully. ‘She made a deliberate attempt to injure me.’

  ‘That’s prob’ly ’cos you’re fright’ning her,’ slurred the giant. ‘Clearly not a lightskirt.’

  ‘Then what is she doing in the park, at this hour, kissing stray men she finds lying about the place?’ Cold-Eyes gave her a look of such derision it sent a flicker of shame coiling through her insides.

  ‘She couldn’t resist me,’ said Ulysses, grinning at her.

  ‘She d-don’t seem to like you, th-though, Zeus,’ said the one with the greasy, floppy fringe.

  ‘Archie, you wound me,’ said Zeus, as she got her fingers, finally, on Shadow’s reins. Though how on earth she was to mount up, she couldn’t think. There was no mounting block. No groom to help her reach the stirrup.

  Just as she’d resigned herself to walking home leading her mount, she felt a pair of hands fasten round her waist. On a reflex, she lashed out at her would-be assailant, catching him on the crown of his head.

  ‘Ouch,’ said the drunken giant of a man, as he launched her up and on to Shadow’s saddle. ‘There was no call for that.’ He backed away, rubbing his head with a puzzled air.

  No, there hadn’t been any call for it. But how could she have guessed the giant had only been intending to help her?

  ‘Then I beg your pardon,’ she said through gritted teeth as she fumbled her foot into the stirrup.

  ‘As for the rest of you,’ she said as she got her knee over the pommel and adjusted her skirts, ‘you ought...all of you...to be ashamed of yourselves.’

  She did her best to toss her head as though she held them all in disdain. As though her heart wasn’t hammering like a wild, frightened bird within the bars of her rib cage. To ride off with dignity, rather than hammering her heels into Shadow’s flank, and urging her mare to head for home at a full gallop.

  She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  Chapter Two

  Harriet urged Shadow into a gallop, as soon as she was out of their sight. They’d thought she was a lightskirt. That was why Ulysses had kissed her, and the one with the cold eyes—Zeus—had looked at her as though she was nothing.

  That was why the giant had lifted her on to the horse without asking her permission, too. Even though he’d meant well, he hadn’t treated her with the respect due to a lady.

  Because she’d stepped outside the bounds set for the behaviour of ladies.

  Damn her aunt for being right! She dashed a tear away from her cheek. A tear humiliation had wrung from her. She wasn’t afraid. Just angry. So angry. At the men, for treating her so...casually. For manhandling her, and mocking her and insinuating she was...

  Oh, how she wished she’d struck them all with her crop. Men who went about the park, getting drunk and frightening decent females...

  Although they hadn’t thought she was decent, had they? They’d thought she was out there drumming up custom.

  She shuddered.

  And no wonder. She’d melted into Ulysses’s kiss like butter on to toasted bread. And then been so flustered she’d forgotten to conceal her legs when untangling them from her skirts, giving him a view of them right up to her knees, like as not.

  Oh, but she wished she could hit something now. Though she was more to blame than anyone and she couldn’t hit herself. Because it turned out that sometimes, just sometimes, Aunt Susan might just be right. Ladies couldn’t go about on their own, in London. Because if they did, drunken idiots assumed they were fair game.

  Why hadn’t Aunt Susan explained that some of the rules were for her own good, though? If she’d only warned Harriet that men could behave that badly, when they were intoxicated, then...

  Honesty compelled her to admit that she knew how idiotic men became when they drank too much. Didn’t she see it every week back home in Donnywich? By the end of market day, men came rolling out of the tavern, wits so addled with drink they had to rely on their horses to find their way home.

  And men were men, whether they lived in the country and wore smocks, or in Town and dressed in the height of fashion. So she should have known. Because the rules were made by men, for the convenience of men. So, rather than expect men to behave properly, at all times, women just had to stay out of their way, or go around with guards, just in case they felt like being beastly.

  She slowed Shadow to a walk as she left the park via the Stanhope Gate, her heart sinking. She’d so enj
oyed escaping to the park at first light. It had been the only thing making her stay in London bearable of late. But now, because men rolled home from their clubs in drunken packs and...and pounced on any female foolish enough to cross their path, she would never be able to do so again. She’d have to take a groom. Which would mean waiting until one was awake and willing to take her without first checking with Aunt Susan that she had permission.

  And Aunt Susan wouldn’t give it, like as not.

  Oh, it was all so...vexing!

  London was turning out to be such a disappointment that she was even starting to see the advantages of the kind of life she’d lived at home. At least nobody there had ever so much as raised an eyebrow if she’d gone out riding on her own. Not even when she’d worn some of her brothers’ cast-offs, for comfort. Even the times she’d stayed out all day, nobody had ever appeared to notice. Mama was always too engrossed in some scientific tome or other to bother about what her only daughter was getting up to. And Papa had never once criticised her, no matter how bitterly Aunt Susan might complain she was turning into a hoyden.

  Nobody who lived for miles around Stone Court would ever have dreamed of molesting her, either, since everyone knew she was Lord and Lady Balderstone’s youngest child.

  She sighed as Shadow picked her way daintily along Curzon Street. She’d been in the habit of feeling aggrieved when nobody commented on her absence, or even appeared to care if she missed meals. But the alternative, of having her aunt watching her like a hawk, practically every waking moment, was beginning to feel like being laced into someone else’s corset, then shut in a room with no windows.

  She reached the end of Curzon Street and crossed Charles Street, her heart sinking still further. The nearer she got to Tarbrook House, the more it felt as though she was putting her head under a velvet cushion and inviting her aunt and uncle to smother her with it.

  If only she’d known what a London Season would be like, she would have thanked Aunt Susan politely for offering her the chance to make her debut alongside her younger cousin, Kitty, and made some excuse to stay away. She could easily have said that Papa relied on her to keep the household running smoothly, what with Mama being mostly too preoccupied to bother with anything so mundane as paying servants or ordering meals. Aunt Susan would have understood and accepted the excuse that somebody had to approve the menus and go over the household accounts on a regular basis. For it was one of the things that had always caused dissension between the sisters, whenever Aunt Susan had come on a visit. Mama had resented the notion that she ought to entertain visitors, saying that it interfered with her studies. Aunt Susan would retort that she ought to venture out of her workshop at least once a day, to enquire how her guests were faring, even if she didn’t really care. The sniping would escalate until, in the end, everyone was very relieved when the family duty visit came to an end.

  Except for Harriet. For it was only when Aunt Susan was paying one of her annual visits, en route to her own country estate after yet another glittering London Season, that she felt as if anyone saw her. Really saw her. And had the temerity to raise concerns about the way her own mother and father neglected her.

  But, oh, what Harriet wouldn’t give for a little of that sort of neglect right now. For, from the moment she’d arrived, Aunt Susan hadn’t ceased complaining about her behaviour, her posture, her hair, her clothes, and even the expression on her face from time to time. Even shopping for clothes, which Harriet had been looking forward to with such high hopes, had not lived up to her expectations. She didn’t know why it was, but though she bought exactly the same sorts of things as Kitty, she never looked as good in them. To be honest, she suspected she looked a perfect fright in one or two of the fussier dresses, to judge from the way men eyed her up and down with looks verging from disbelief to amusement. She couldn’t understand why Aunt Susan had let her out in public in one of them, when she’d gone home and looked at herself, with critical eyes, in the mirror. At herself, rather than the delicacy of the lace, or the sparkle of the spangled trimmings.

  Worse, on the few occasions she’d attended balls so far, Aunt Susan had not granted any of the men who’d asked her to dance the permission to do so. The first few refusals had stemmed from Aunt Susan’s conviction that Harriet had not fully mastered the complexities of the steps. And after that, she simply found fault with the men who were then doing the asking. But what did it matter if her dance partners were not good ton? Surely it would be more fun to skip round the room with somebody, even if he was a desperate fortune-hunter, rather than sit wilting on the sidelines? Every blessed night.

  Yes, she sighed, catching her first glimpse of Tarbrook House, the longer she stayed in Town, the more appealing Stone Court was beginning to look. At least at home she’d started to carve out a niche for herself. After being of no consequence for so many years, she’d found a great deal of consolation in taking over the duties her mother habitually neglected.

  But in Town she was truly a fish out of water, she reflected glumly as Shadow trotted through the arch leading to the mews at the back of Tarbrook House. Instead of dancing every night at glittering balls, with a succession of handsome men, one of whom was going to fall madly in love with her and whisk her away to his estate where he’d treat her like a queen, she was actually turning out to be a social failure.

  The only time she felt like herself recently had been on these secret forays into the park, before anyone else was awake. And now, because of those...beasts, she wasn’t even going to be able to have that any longer.

  She dismounted, and led Shadow to her stall, where a groom darted forward with a scowl on his face.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I should not have gone out riding on my own. But you need not report this to Lady Tarbrook. For I shall not be doing so again, you may be certain.’

  The groom ran his eyes over her. His gaze paused once or twice. Over the grass stains on her riding habit, for example. At which his mouth twisted in derision.

  He thought she’d taken a tumble and had now lost her nerve, the fool. She gripped her crop tightly as she warred with the urge to defend her skill as a horsewoman. But if she admitted she’d dismounted through choice, he’d wonder where the grass stains had come from. And since she was not in the habit of telling lies, she’d probably blush and stammer, and look so guilty that he’d go straight to Aunt Susan and tell her that her hoyden of a niece had been up to no good.

  And Aunt Susan would extract the truth out of her in no time flat.

  And she would die rather than have to confess she’d let a man kiss her. A strange man. A strange drunken man.

  And worse, that she’d liked it. Because, for a few brief moments, he’d made her feel attractive. Interesting. When for most of her life—until she’d taken to giving the servants directions, that was—nobody had thought her of any value at all. She’d just been an afterthought. A girl, what was worse. A girl that nobody knew quite what to do with.

  So she lifted her chin and simply stalked away, her reputation as a horsewoman ruined in the eyes of the head groom.

  * * *

  Jack Hesketh sat up slowly, his head spinning, and watched the virago galloping away.

  ‘Do you know,’ he mused, ‘I think we may have just insulted a lady.’

  Zeus snorted. ‘If she were a lady, she would not have been out here unattended at this hour, flirting with a pack of drunken bucks.’

  Jack shook his head. He couldn’t believe Zeus—who’d pursued women with such fervour and conquered so many of them while he, and Archie, and Atlas had still been too pimply and awkward to do anything but stand back in awe—had become the kind of man who could now speak of such a lovely one with so much contempt.

  If he were to meet Zeus now, for the first time, he didn’t think he’d want to be his friend.

  In fact, after the way he’d behaved tonight, he’d steer well
clear of such a man. Zeus had always been a bit full of himself, which was only to be expected when he was of such high rank and swimming in lard to boot. But there had been a basic sort of decency about him, too. He’d had a sense of humour, anyway.

  But now...it was as if a sort of malaise had infected him, rendering him incapable of seeing any good in anyone or anything.

  And Archie—well, he’d turned into a sort of...tame hound, trotting along behind Zeus like a spaniel at his master’s heels.

  While Atlas...oh, dear God, Atlas. He winced as he turned his head rather too quickly, to peer into the gloom at the wreck of the man who’d been his boyhood idol.

  Though, hadn’t they all been his heroes, one way or another? Which was, perhaps, where he’d gone wrong. In keeping his schoolboy reverence for them firm in his heart during all his years of active service, like a talisman, he’d sort of pickled their images, like flies set in amber. That would certainly explain why it had come as such a shock to see how much they’d all changed.

  Especially Atlas. Imprisonment at the hands of the French, and illness, had reduced him to an emaciated ruin of his former self. In fact, he looked such a wreck that Jack had been a bit surprised he’d managed to lift the virago on to her horse at all. Though at least it proved he was still the same man, inside, where it mattered. They hadn’t given him the nickname of Atlas only because of his immense size and strength compared to the rest of them, but because of his habit of always trying to take everyone else’s burdens on his own shoulders. Rescuing that girl from Zeus was exactly the kind of thing he’d always been doing. Atlas had always hated seeing anyone weak or vulnerable being tormented.

  Which was what they’d been doing to that poor girl, Jack thought, his stomach turning over in shame. The four of them, making sport of her. No—make that three. Atlas had been the only one of them to behave like a perfect gentleman even though he was as drunk as the rest of them.

  Or was he? He’d barely touched any of the drink Zeus had so lavishly supplied, at what was supposed to be a celebration of not only the Peace, but also his return to England. Of the fact that for the first time in years, all four of them had the liberty to meet up. As though the poor fellow felt he couldn’t trust himself to hold it down. Nobody had said anything, though. They’d all been too shocked at the sight of him to do more than squirm a bit as they drank his health. Health? Hah! The best that anyone could say of the gaunt and yellow-skinned Atlas was that he was alive.