Pounding hoofbeats echoed just behind and to the left. Amira’s occasional snorts let Geoffrey know Liliana was in lockstep with him still. Damn, she was a magnificent rider. He’d given no quarter, and she’d matched him the entire way. In fact, if she’d known the area, he’d lay odds she might even have been able to outride him.
In his mind’s eye, Geoffrey pictured Liliana leaned over her mare’s neck, her thighs tight as she rose in the stirrups, her derrière elevated from the saddle. In her boys’ pants, he would have an excellent view of her bottom—the shape of it, at any rate. He had half a mind to let her pull ahead, just so he could see his imaginings in real life.
Perhaps tomorrow he would let her lead.
Geoffrey sucked in a breath. Was he actually contemplating a tomorrow with Liliana Claremont?
Impossible. Yet, a mixture of longing and excitement tightened his chest. What was it about Liliana that put such dangerous thoughts in his head?
Desire pulsed through him in blaring answer to his question. Yes, that could be the reason. After all, he’d dreamed of her again last night, had awoken clutching his pillow in a desperate attempt to drag her from his dreamworld to his reality.
But that could never be. Aside from the madness that had gripped him in the library, he wasn’t the type to dally with an innocent young lady without being prepared to offer for her. As drawn as he was to Liliana—nay, because of how drawn he was to her—he could see no future with the woman. He never should have even suggested—
A flash of brown streaked past him. Liliana released an unladylike whoop as she and Amira deftly cut him off. How in the blazes? Geoffrey tried for some competitive indignation, but the rise and fall of Liliana’s delectable backside as she galloped past more than made up for any wounded pride.
Her laughter reached him as they slowed their horses near the edge of the valley. Burnished curls had slipped from beneath her cap, and her eyes sparkled an almost unnatural violet in the morning’s haze, as if she were some woodland nymph sent to entice him. Her vivacity swirled around him like the mist that rose off of the moist grass, touching a place inside of him that hadn’t smiled in long years…a young, innocent place, unspoiled by war and death, responsibilities and regrets.
“I’m sorry, my lord. You took off so quickly, I didn’t hear what you said about leading,” Liliana teased.
Geoffrey shook his head but couldn’t contain the half smile that spread his lips. “You have outdone me once again,” he said, giving her a nod. “And unlike last time, allow me to extend my sincerest congratulations.”
She shrugged nonchalantly, but the effect was ruined by her delighted smile. “Thank you.”
Good God. He would let her win at anything and everything to see that self-satisfied grin upon her face. Of course, he’d prefer to see satisfaction of a different kind overtake her features.
“This is becoming a rather annoying habit,” he added, knowing she’d take it to mean her besting him. But the truth of the matter was that she kept him in a constant state of arousal.
Her grin slid into a throaty chuckle that shot straight to his groin.
He was in serious trouble. Without even trying, she was luring him in like a fat trout.
He cleared his throat, striving to keep his voice normal. “As promised, the bogs lie just below. Shall we?”
He motioned her to follow down an ancient winding path, past two-hundred-year-old gnarled holly trees interspersed with rowan, birch, oak and crab apple.
Perhaps mucking around in the swampy undergrowth would get his mind out of places it shouldn’t be.
They rode companionably through the landscape, the rich flora proving a needed distraction from the disturbing undercurrents of desire. Geoffrey had forgotten how much he loved this part of Somerton Park…the sounds, the smells. The bluntly toothed petals of mountain pansy and the flowering stalks of heath speedwell that grew on the grassy verge looked exactly as he remembered. These pastures and the woods that surrounded them had been a favorite stomping ground of his as a boy—and a good place to avoid the countess. He wondered if Liliana had been drawn to similar places in an effort to avoid her interfering aunt.
He veered right as they reached the floor of the valley and dismounted. “The ground becomes quite spongy here,” he said. “We’ll need to go the rest of the way by foot.”
“Of course.” Liliana climbed down from Amira without his aid, and he couldn’t help but notice her long, long legs as she swung from her mount. His throat went dry and he stepped back.
He found a spot to rest the horses away from the crab apple trees. Grin nudged him in protest. “Much too much temptation over there,” Geoffrey mumbled, as much to himself as to the horse. “You, my friend, have an appalling lack of self-control.” As does your master. “And I have no desire”—to find myself married to a woman completely wrong for me—“to nurse a sick horse all the way home,” he said, patting Grin on the rump. Grin whinnied and flicked his tail, slapping Geoffrey with coarse, stinging hair.
Liliana did a poor job stifling her amusement. But as her laughter died, she regarded him with an evaluating look that made him wish he could see her thoughts. “You have great affection for him,” Liliana said after a moment. “And he, you. Did your love of horses lead you to the cavalry? Or the other way around?”
“My years in the regiment deepened my respect for horses,” he said as they secured their mounts to an ancient oak, “but I learned to love them here at Somerton Park.”
“Did you ride with your father then?” she asked as they picked their way down the path toward the marsh.
“No. Alone.” More hovered on his tongue, but he wouldn’t share that, even then, riding had been his escape—only he’d been running from his mother or his parents’ vicious fighting rather than his demons. A change of subject was in order. “Ah, here we are,” he said, gesturing to the largest of the valley’s bogs. “What think you? Is it all that I promised?”
Liliana pressed her lips together, and her brows dipped into a slight frown, but as she turned, her expression changed. Her head tilted ever so slightly to the side and her gaze fixed on the area, as if she were examining the landscape. Gauging it somehow, giving Geoffrey an intriguing glimpse of the chemist in her.
“It’s incredible,” she said, walking forward. She hesitated at the edge of the water only a moment before wading in with no missish qualms. She reached for a bunch of bright yellow starlike flowers with leafless stems and snapped a few. She held them up to the light, inspecting them, turning them in her hands. “You’ve a hearty patch of moor-golds,” she said.
“Moor-golds?”
“Narthecium ossifragum,” she murmured, her mind clearly on evaluating another stalk of the rather ordinary plant. A wry smile crossed her face and she looked up at him. “Bog asphodel,” she clarified. “I wish I’d brought my satchel. I’d love to collect some.”
“Pick whatever you wish. I’ll carry them back to the manor for you.” Geoffrey stepped into the marsh, venturing the few feet to join her. “But you must tell me why you want it.” He reached out and brushed his finger over the spiky petal. “It seems a rather ugly flower, as flowers go.”