Pleasure for Pleasure

Page 49

There was a spade leaning against the wall and a mound of ordure as high as her knees. It was the act of a second to dig the spade into the heaping brown mess and swing around in his direction. She couldn’t lift it over her waist, but she didn’t need to. As the shovel swung about it gained momentum, and just as Mr. Thurman raised his head, doubtless to say something despicable, the steaming, dripping pile of horse dung flew off the shovel and slammed against his face. The last glimpse Josie got before she turned and ran through the door into the stables was his wide-open eyes and his even wider open red mouth, both obscured a moment later by a mass of wet, brown muck.
She darted into the stables and started running down the long aisle. It was the noon hour, and no races were scheduled until the afternoon. Even the stable boys must be loitering in front of the building. There was no one to help. He would see her; he would catch her. Any moment she would feel his beefy powerful hand on her shoulder.
Then she caught sight of red blankets with Mayne’s crest, slung over the side of a stall. She glanced behind her, and the wide aisle of the stables lay clear, with nothing more ominous than particles of straw dancing in the sunlight. Without pausing for breath, she unlatched the door of Gigue’s stall, darted around her sleek side and threw herself down in the yellow straw at the back of the stall. And held her breath.
She couldn’t hear anything. No sound of steps. Nothing but the snorting breath of the filly as she stamped uneasily.
“Hush,” Josie whispered. “Hush, please.”
The horse whickered a little in response and switched her tail so it lashed Josie’s face with stings like a flock of tiny wasps. Josie’s eyes filled with tears. She’d lost her reticule somewhere, her bodice was ripped, and when she pushed herself into the corner of the stall, she discovered that her bare back was against the boards. That rip she heard had gone straight through her chemise and gown.
Once she started crying, she sobbed so hard that her body shook all over. Finally, she collected herself, ripped off a section of her chemise and used it as a handkerchief and began thinking about how to leave the stable. She could hear the voices of stable boys filtering down the aisle. It was only a matter of minutes, a half hour at most, before someone would be along to check on Gigue. Billy would return from his midday meal.
There was a wooden ladder nailed to the wall, leading up to the hay loft. She could climb the ladder and simply wait until everyone went home for the day.
Gigue, meanwhile, had managed to turn herself around in the narrow space of her stall and was snuffling at Josie’s face in a comforting sort of way. “I’m so glad you won today,” Josie whispered to her. “Oh, how am I to get out of here?”
The enormity of her situation was growing on her. Obviously, Mr. Thurman had decided to make the best of a bad situation and taken his malodorous self off to his lodgings to change. Of course he hadn’t followed her. She knew now that she had been safe the moment she darted through that open door: the last thing Thurman would want was to marry her. He was the horrid friend of Darlington who had made fun of her at Imogen’s wedding ball. And yet if anyone—particularly Rafe—ever found out what just happened, she would be forced to marry Thurman.
She was ruined, and the only solution for ruination that Josie had ever heard of was marriage. Well, she wasn’t precisely ruined. But the memory of Thurman’s clutching hands brought on another shuddering fit and she had to tear off more of her chemise to mop up her tears.
Why was it that her sisters managed to get themselves ruined with handsome gentlemen who were poised to fall in love with them? Whereas she had to wander off with a disgusting turnip of a man whom she’d kill before she’d agree to marry. It just wasn’t fair.
Gigue suddenly raised her head, pricking up her ears. Likely, Billy was coming. He would send for Mayne, and Mayne could pull his carriage around the back of the stables, or perhaps he could just throw a blanket over her and pretend she had fainted.
Except he wouldn’t be able to carry her out of the stables, given her weight. If she were covered up by the blanket, she wouldn’t have to see his face grow red with the exertion, or hear him panting. Tears started to slip down her face again, and Josie wiped them away impatiently.
She sat up in the corner, brushing off some straw. Gigue had turned about again and was reaching her head out of the stall and whickering. Josie took one look down at her gown. If she were seen in this situation, explanations would have to be made. And if those explanations were made, she would have to marry Thurman.
A second later Josie was clambering up the ladder into the hayloft. It was a huge, open space that stretched above all the stalls. Golden straw was heaped in large forkfuls on the floor. She would be safe here until she could find her way home later.
Unless she told Mayne? For that was surely Mayne’s voice. She knelt next to the hole and tried to peer down and sideways, but all she could see was Gigue’s twitching coat. Mayne was crooning to her in his deep voice, and to Josie’s horror, the very sound of his voice made warmth prickle over her body.
The last thing she wanted was to develop a tendre for Mayne! He was so far above her reach that it was as if he were the god Apollo himself. What’s more, he was in love with another woman.
Even as she told herself all these things, Josie laid herself flat so she could better peer through the hole. Yes, there was Mayne. It was comforting just to see him: his careless elegance that must have taken hours to achieve. His hair fell over his brow in a sleek and shining curl that fell in a perfect tumble. From the angle of the hayloft, she could just see his shoulders as he caressed Gigue. His coat sat on his broad shoulders as if a wrinkle wouldn’t dare to alight.
What a contrast to herself! Her clothes were ripped and soiled; she had been half mangled by a loathsome man. It would give her a great deal of pleasure to see Mayne mussed. Crumpled. Muddy. Perhaps dressed in rags. A little smile curled her lips. Perhaps in a loincloth!
But then she suddenly realized that she wasn’t thinking about a dandy’s comeuppance, but the dandy’s legs. Below her, his back moved down. He was bowing.
“She’s not here,” he said. “Damn it, I wish Griselda hadn’t succumbed to the heat.” He must have come to the stables to look for her, Josie. And Josie knew instantly Mayne was accompanied by Sylvie. There was no mistaking the change in Mayne’s voice. It made her feel palpably ill, the way his voice got syrupy and lovesick when he spoke to his fiancée.
“She has very large teeth,” Sylvie was saying. “And they are so yellow.”
“Not for a horse,” Mayne replied.
“You should arrange for one of your persons to wash her teeth. I am certain she would be more comfortable.”
Mayne didn’t even laugh, which Josie took to be a sign of his smittenness. She could just glimpse the top of Sylvie’s turban. It was as alluring as Sylvie herself.
“Sylvie,” Mayne was saying, and there was something about the tone in his voice that made Josie swallow. “You’re so beautiful. Do you know that?”
If Sylvie didn’t have a precise understanding of her own worth, Josie would eat her hat. Not that she had a hat, for she’d lost her bonnet with her reticule.
“Thank you,” Sylvie said, without a trace of the abject pleasure that Josie would have felt at that compliment.