Nocturne for a Widow (Sybil Ingram Book 1) by Amanda DeWees

Author:Amanda DeWees [DeWees, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2014-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

“Whoa,” I pleaded. “Whoa!”

But the mare Sand ignored my feeble tug at the reins and gathered speed, jouncing me mercilessly. My tenuous perch on the sidesaddle began to slip. The now-familiar feeling of doomed inevitability came to me as, once more, I fell to the ground.

“Wretched creature,” I muttered. After two hours of attempting to learn to ride, my entire body was aching so much I did not want to try to move again. Perhaps I should just stay here, lying on the ground, gazing up at the sky. I always ended up here anyway, and it would save time and trouble.

“Have you given up?” a masculine voice inquired, but it was not the voice of Tully, my purported teacher in this ill-fated enterprise. The hand extended to me was Roderick Brooke’s. He was gazing down at me with an expression of barely suppressed laughter.

Naturally he would find my predicament entertaining. I wondered how many times he had seen me fall. Since the circular front drive was the one place on the grounds relatively clear of snow, that was where Tully had insisted that I practice, which meant that I had been in clear view of anyone in the front part of the house.

“I have not given up,” I said, nettled, “but I think today’s riding lesson has gone on long enough.”

“Don’t you mean falling lesson?” he inquired. He was in fine fettle indeed.

Reluctantly I accepted his offered hand, but he was so much stronger than I anticipated that I misjudged how much effort I should put into getting to my feet, with the result that I was launched straight into him. For a moment he staggered, and perhaps reflexively, his arms closed around me.

“It may be jaded of me,” he said in a voice tinged with laughter, “but I had a feeling you’d throw yourself at me one day.”

For a moment, I confess, I made no move to free myself from his arms. For one thing, it was the warmest I had been all day. But that was not the only reason that it felt very good indeed to be exactly where I was. It had been so long since I had been embraced by a man, and I was caught off guard by how pleasurable it was. With the strength of his body against me, his breadth and height so far surpassing mine, I felt… protected.

Which was a dangerous illusion indeed, considering all that I knew—and did not know—about this man. Indeed, one of the reasons I had approached Tully for a riding lesson was so that I could question him about Roderick Brooke, but the manservant had been far more interested in making critical comments on my posture and handling of the reins than in parting with any morsels of information about the possibly homicidal history of his employer. So it was entirely possible that the arms that now held me—rather tightly, I thought—were those of a killer.

Somehow, though, that was not an urgent concern. Held against him, feeling his chest rise and fall with his breathing, I did not feel myself to be in danger.

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