Eli would love to feel those bare hands skim across his naked flesh.
“So you’ll wear the riding outfit?” Her voice was gentle, inviting.
The words were a pail of ice.
Eli dropped her hand.
She wanted to help him do the one thing that terrified him most. A gentleman would say yes. Her happiness was worth his discomfort.
“All right.” His voice was thick, his heart hammering now for a different reason. “We can try.”
Every part of him rebelled against the idea.
The trunk contained a week’s worth of riding wear, as well as myriad daywear options in full dress and half dress, and a three-caped greatcoat that would keep the wearer deliciously warm on an outdoor stroll.
Eli chose a smart wool suit with quilted waistcoat to go with his buckskins, and forced himself to join Miss Harper at the stables.
Despite the misgivings in his stomach—and the scars marring his skin—he had complete faith in her ability to command her beasts. Her fame as a trainer of horses had reached every corner of England. She would not allow harm to befall one of her prized bloods, nor would an animal she’d trained harm a rider.
He hoped.
“We’ll start with Rudolph,” she told him. “He pulled a sleigh, but is now retired. He’s used to the terrain and the weather, as well as maintaining a slow, plodding pace.”
“I adore slow and plodding.”
Thus began the most embarrassing hour and a half of recent memory. It took longer than he’d like to admit to work up the courage to mount the beast, only for Eli to freeze once seated in the saddle.
Rudolph, for his part, did not seem to mind the presence of a rider, if indeed one could use that term to refer to Eli.
The sleek brown horse ambled when Miss Harper indicated, halted when she lifted a hand, and moved at a pace that could best be described as glacial. All without tossing his rider from the saddle.
Eli felt like a warrior who had conquered new worlds.
By the time Miss Harper declared the lesson over, Eli was almost willing to voluntarily undertake the experiment again.
“You are incredibly patient.” He gave a lopsided grin. “I’m aware I make a poor student.”
The corners of her lips twitched. “Have you forgot that I break horses? It’s literally my job to be patient with ill-trained beasts.”
“I choose not to be offended by your sly insult,” he informed her. “I am instead grateful to Rudolph for being even more timid than I am.”
“Timid?” She widened her eyes. “Rudolph?”
At the sound of his name on her lips, the horse trotted to her side and held still as a tree trunk.
She adjusted the stirrups and launched herself into the saddle.
Rudolph took off like a bullet, streaking over the snow with such speed he seemed capable of taking flight.
Eli was horrified.
That could’ve happened to him.
With his luck, he’d have slid from the saddle and been dragged along by one foot stuck in the stirrup, his head bouncing over the snow-covered hills.
Miss Harper made it look easy. This time, she did not disappear from view, but rather tore around the stables in a wide circle, with Rudolph leaping over logs and finishing the lap with his front two legs held rampant in the air.
She wasn’t reckless after all, Eli realized. She was really, really good.
His chest fluttered.
It was difficult not to fall in love with her all over again, when he’d never actually fallen out of love to start with.
What had begun as a schoolboy infatuation had only blossomed over the years with each new headline or gossip column mentioning her name. Father obsessively followed news of the Harpers for opposite reasons, but Eli had cherished each word as though witnessing a legend unfold before him.
He delighted in every one of Miss Harper’s stunning accomplishments. She was on his mind from dawn to dusk. For years, he’d dreaded the day he’d spy her name in a marriage announcement, whilst simultaneously hoping for it to happen, because at least then the waiting would be over.
Now he was here. She was not a schoolboy fantasy; some rose-colored memory whose ending had been rewritten a thousand times in his mind. She was larger than life and right in front of him. Every bit the Athena the papers proclaimed, and so much more besides.
“I’m never riding Rudolph again,” he informed her. “His ‘plodding’ speed is appallingly inconsistent.”
She lifted her hand to hide a smirk. “I’ve a hobby-horse you can borrow.”
He pulled her hand away from her lips and placed it on his chest instead. Her eyes widened. He did not want her to hide her delectable mouth. He wanted to kiss it.
He was going to kiss her. Self-preservation be damned.
She almost let him.
At the last moment, she jerked her hand from his chest and turned away, her beautiful mouth twisted into a snarl of disgust.
“No.” Her voice shook. “Not a second time.”
Her voice wasn’t the only thing shaking. Her breath shook. Her fingers shook. The goddess who feared nothing was frightened of Eli’s kiss.
He had done this to her. He was still doing it. There did not exist a bigger cad.
His heart twisted. “I am so—”
She held up a palm, stopping him as effectively as she’d halted her horse.
“You were horrid to me.” Her shoulders were curved, her voice much too small. “You, your father, all of your little friends. I did not deserve your cruelty. I did not deserve a year full of nightmares, followed by a lifetime of flinching at my own reflection.”
His stomach twisted. “You’re right. You didn’t deserve any of that.”
Every time Eli remembered that day, he felt like he deserved every one of his scars.
“They whinnied at me,” she whispered. “You let them.”
Worse than that.
He had started it.
When the marquess had prompted, A Harper what? Eli had known precisely what had been expected of him. He was expected to think of her as a thing to be despised, not as a person to be admired.
Eli had not wanted to wound her.
He also knew the price of disobedience.
When he looked in the mirror, he had to live with the fact that he gave the punishment to him more weight than the undeserved consequences to her.
So he’d said it. Those fateful three words. A Harper horse.
The children whinnied and neighed.
And Miss Harper never appeared at a competition again.
“I beg your forgiveness.” His throat was almost too tight to force out the words.
She shook her head. “You shan’t have it.”
Eli knew that, of course. He didn’t deserve her forgiveness, then or now. Obeying my father’s commands excused nothing.
After that day, he had never again made a comment so crass, but what good did that do her? No amount of turning over new leaves could erase the casual cruelty in his past.
Back then, he’d been forbidden to speak to her. That was the command Eli should have heeded. After yet another humiliating loss in the boys’ races, he’d hidden behind the stables to escape his father’s inevitable wrath, if only for a few moments.
And then she was there. His opposite in every way. The girl he was supposed to hate.
It was love at first sight.
She was so talented, so clever, so funny. Everything about her was perfect. He couldn’t believe she was standing there, talking to him. When he realized the only logical reason was because she didn’t know who he was... he knew it was his only chance.