Candice Hern (70 page)

"It is your trick, my lord," Meg said, returning her concentration to the game.

Lord Sedgewick leaned back against his pillows and sighed. He did not pick up his cards. "Would you mind very much if we called it a game?" he asked.

"I beg your pardon, my lord." Meg removed the lap tray they had used as a card table and placed it on a side chair. "You must be tired. I shall leave you to your rest."

Lord Sedgewick reached out and grabbed her hand just as she turned to leave. "No, no," he said, "I am not in the least tired. It is just that I have played enough piquet to last a lifetime. Don't go, Miss Ashburton. Please."

He squeezed her hand slightly and her heart did a somersault. She really must not allow him to do this to her. She was acting like a schoolgirl. He was just being friendly. Nothing more. She gently removed her hand from his grasp and looked down at him with questioning brows.

"Just sit and talk with me for a while, if you do not mind." His voice was soft and mellow, and his blue eyes darkened and held hers with an odd, intense expression that made her feel warm all over.

She reminded herself that beneath all that boyish charm the man was something of a rake. She must be careful here. She must be very, very careful.

She returned to the chair she had used during their game of piquet, inching it ever so slightly away from the bed. She sat up straight and folded her hands in her lap in a manner that would have made Gram proud. "What would you like to talk about, my lord?"

The intense expression disappeared as his eyes crinkled up with the famous grin. "For one thing," he said, "I think it is time we dispensed with such formalities. After all, it is more than six years since we first met."

Meg chuckled at that absurdity.

"It feels like forever, you know," he continued. "You, and your brother, have been such good friends to me during my time here that I feel as if I had known you all my life. It seems somehow ... well, wrong to hear you call me 'my lord.'"

"What would you like me to call you, then?"

"Ah, let us consider the possibilities," he said. He chewed slightly on his lower lip, but his eyes still crinkled with amusement. "You could call me 'darling.'"

Meg laughed and tried not to look as nonplussed as his words made her feel. He is a rake, she repeated to herself. He is a rake, just having a bit of fun with the only woman under sixty available to him at the moment. "I think not," she said.

"No?" He shook his head in mock disappointment. "Well, my name is Colin, you know. But no one, except m'mother, ever calls me that. Most people just call me Sedge."

"Sedge? Why not Colin?"

"I inherited my father's title when still a young boy," he said. "At Harrow, the masters insisted that those of us with titles be addressed by our titles, you see, and never by our Christian names. So I was to be 'Sedgewick' to my betters or equals, and 'Lord Sedgewick' to everyone else. But it was not long before it had become shortened to 'Sedge.' And so I have been called ever since."

"Then 'Sedge' it shall be," Meg said.

"And what shall I call you, Miss Ashburton?" he asked.

"Ah, let us consider the possibilities." She watched him chuckle at having his words thrown back in his face. "Since my name is Margaret, I have been used to hearing myself called any number of variations on that name over the years. I suppose the most common was 'Long Meg."'

He let out a crack of laughter. "Indeed?"

"Yes. I reached my present stature at a very young age, you see."

Sedge chuckled softly, and then said, "I trust that sobriquet has been retired?"

"Yes, for the most part. Terrence will occasionally tease me with it, but no one else. Since I can glare down—literally down—at most people of my acquaintance, they are generally too intimidated to risk offending me."

"I can almost promise you," Sedge said, "that when I am able to stand once again you shall not have to look down at me."

"Oh, I know that. We danced together, remember."

"Ah, yes," he said, though Meg was fairly certain that he did not, in fact, remember.

"Anyway," Meg said, not wishing to dwell on that subject, "I would be pleased if you were to call me Meg."

"Meg it is," he said. "Though, I must confess, I should prefer to call you 'Angel.'"

"'Angel?'"

"Yes. You see, during a few brief moments of consciousness right after my accident, I remember you bending over me." He smiled. "I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and that you were an angel."

Meg threw back her head and laughed. "Me? An Angel? Ha! I trust you have since been disabused of that notion?"

Sedge flashed an enigmatic smile and shrugged.

"Well then, Sedge," Meg went on, "since we have settled on names, what would you now like to talk about?"

"Why don't you tell me more about your horses?" he said, knowing that was the one subject that should keep her at his side for hours. "Since I cannot have the pleasure of visiting the famous stables—yet—why not paint me word pictures so that I can at least imagine them."

And so Meg launched into an enthusiastic and very detailed description of the U-shaped grouping of pink brick buildings built by her great-grandfather. Those beautiful eyes lit up as she lovingly described the vaulted passageways inside, flanked with stalls for more than seventy horses.

Seventy horses?

Sedge was momentarily distracted from his study of the gold flecks in her eyes as he considered the size of such an operation. But he was soon enough captivated once again by the delicately arched, auburn brows, so mobile and expressive as she explained something about the separation of breeds within the buildings, and the pride of place in the older central building given to the thoroughbreds. His eyes traced the shape of her upper lip with its deep dip in the center between two sharp peaks while she told him of the central exercise yard used to put the horses through their paces for potential buyers. He was so completely spellbound as the tiny point of her tongue flicked out to moisten her soft, full lower lip that he lost much of what she told him of the small fenced pens and larger paddocks, as well as the various pastures and runs.

Time slipped by unnoticed as she regaled him with stories of the many finer horses she had had the privilege to know over the years. Sedge was simultaneously enchanted by her lively and colorful narrative while thoroughly bewitched by her beauty. He could not recall when he had so enjoyed a woman's company.

Sedge interrupted a lengthy discourse on bloodlines to ask about Blue Blazes. He was treated to a verbal re-creation of some of the more significant races the famous stallion had won at Newmarket. Meg even told him about Bristol Blue, a young roan she had trained from a colt, and all the plans she had for his future. Her enthusiasm was contagious. Had he not been confined to bed, he would have dashed outside to the stables with her at once.

In the excitement of discussing her favorite topic, Meg apparently had not noticed that she had unconsciously moved the chair closer and closer to the bed, so that at last she actually leaned her arms right on the counterpane. "I am going to take Bristol over the high jumps this week," she said with undisguised pride and excitement. "And then out to the north fields for some of the more difficult cross-country obstacles."

Sedge smiled and rested his hand lightly over hers. "Tell me more," he said.

And she did.

Chapter 8

Sedge gazed out the windows on the far side of the bedchamber and thought how much he missed his friends. He was lonely. At least that was how he explained to himself the obsession he had developed for Meg Ashburton. A reaction to loneliness. As he stared at a group of clouds looking like meringue puffs against a clear blue sky, he thought of Meg outside, probably riding her little blue roan, her eyes wide with excitement and her red hair coming loose of its ribbon and falling down her back. She was one of the most intriguing women he had ever met.

She was also one of the most beautiful. Just looking at her was a balm to his injuries. But what made Meg so special was that combination of mature, regal beauty with an almost girlish innocence. She was a continual surprise of fascinating incongruities. The curvaceous body and the schoolgirl blushes. The elegant bearing and the language peppered with stable boy cant. The distinctly feminine grace coupled with a strong, almost masculine stride. The quick, sometimes biting, wit and the open affection for the things and people she loved. The generally logical, practical turn of mind and the often impulsive, quixotic burst of ideas.

Meg Ashburton was quite simply the most extraordinary woman he had ever known.

She was completely without artifice, which made her unique among most of the women of Sedge's acquaintance. She had an open and trusting nature, and was thoroughly at ease with him, whether he flirted with her or just talked. Sedge suspected that growing up in the masculine world of the stables had made her less intimidated by men, more comfortable with them than might be true of other unmarried women of her age. He doubted, though, that she had any idea of the effect she had on men. Even Bertie, who was never known to be in the petticoat line, could not keep his eyes off her.

Sedge hesitated to admit that he might have actually fallen in love. He was fascinated, intrigued, charmed, perhaps even infatuated. But love was a condition about which he was ignorant He had never been in love before. And was not really in love now. No, he was not in love. It was just that she was here and he was lonely and missing his friends.

He watched the white clouds inch ever so slowly across the frame of the window, heaved a sigh, and wondered what Meg was doing.

Jack and Robert would adore her, he thought.

Robert, Lord Bradleigh and Jack, Lord Pemerton, were Sedge's closest friends. They had spent the better part of their adult lives together, lives of endless pleasure-seeking and self- indulgence. Each of them had wooed and won enough women between them to populate a small town. Though equally successful with women, Sedge's was not the smooth, seductive style of Robert, nor the cynical hedonism of Jack. Rather, he had always been cheerful and deceptively artless so as to make a woman thoroughly at ease in his company. He could then allow his lanky boyishness to weave its own spell, frequently causing women to want to mother him. Sedge had always been very happy to oblige.

Two years ago, the first of the trio of pleasure-seekers had decided to marry. Until Robert's betrothal, Sedge had never even considered the idea of marriage. If he thought about the future at all, he assumed he would continue in his contented bachelorhood and leave the succession to his cousin. Inspired by Robert's betrothal, however, Sedge began to think it was high time that he settled down as well. Since he had no romantic illusions about marriage, he has set about the thing in the practical, sensible manner in which he approached most aspects of his life. Much taken with the beauty and quiet sensibility of Miss Emily Townsend, the companion of Robert's grandmother, he had determined to court her. He had been on the verge of a formal declaration when Robert had abruptly ended his own betrothal and had married Emily himself.

As it was obviously a love match, Sedge could hardly object, and was in fact pleased to see his friend find such happiness. And since he had made no formal offer himself, there was no particular public embarrassment to endure. Nevertheless, he had experienced an unexpected sensation of relief, as though he had somehow managed a narrow escape. He had put aside any matrimonial plans without another thought.

Sedge had fallen back into his usual carefree ways, but found that he missed the companionship of Robert, who now spent most of his time with his wife in the country. And then poor Jack had suffered a family tragedy, and had removed himself from Society for almost a year. The few times Sedge had seen Jack during his mourning, he had seemed somber and distracted. Sedge began to miss the madcap days he had spent with Robert and Jack, both of whom seemed to have moved on to a more settled way of life, leaving Sedge behind.

Sedge traced the path of a sunbeam from the window to a corner of the bed frame. As he watched dust motes dance in the shaft of light, he realized that it was not long after Robert's marriage that he had first begun to feel lonely. The many casual affairs he had long preferred—variety having always been more appealing than constancy—no longer gave him the same satisfaction.

And recently Jack had, like Robert—though certainly more unexpected in one such as Jack—fallen into a love match and was now happily married to a delightful woman. The fact that Jack's wife was a close friend of Robert's wife meant that the two couples spent a great deal of time together. Sedge felt left out. With Jack's marriage, he had begun to feel even more strongly the emptiness in his own life, and as he watched his friends basking in connubial bliss, he understood the cause of that emptiness.

He wanted what they had.

Both gentlemen teased him often enough about finding the right woman, about how he would know when he found her.

They had both assured him that he should not expect an instantaneous explosion—no fireworks or bells or horns to announce the arrival of his true love. It was a gradual sort of realization, they had said. A quiet sort of thing. But there would be no doubt about it. He would know when he found her and she would change his life forever.

Their women had certainly changed Sedge's life.

He was missing his friends.

Lying in this blasted bed day in and day out left far too much time for such reflection. But watching the clouds roll by was not a very stimulating activity, to be sure. Never a contemplative man by any stretch of the imagination, Sedge was not given to bouts of deep soul-searching. He was uncomfortable with that sort of self-examination. He knew himself to be a basically simple man of no more than average intellect. He suspected that no matter how deeply he probed, there would be little of interest to discover.

Nevertheless, he thought as he drummed his fingers restlessly on the counterpane, there was nothing much else to do while stuck in this bed. He supposed he might read a book. But he had never been much of a reader. He needed company. He wished Meg would come by. He wished anyone would come by. Albert. Terrence. Even Pargeter would be welcome.