‘I am sorry. Fox has slobbered all over your sleeve.’ Adam gulped hot coffee. ‘Don’t stay out here, you will get cold.’
‘Not if I do some work.’ She reached up, took the dandy brush and curry comb off the beam above the manger and slapped Fox on the shoulder. ‘Get over now.’
‘You cannot groom my horses!’
‘Why ever not? Papa always insisted I groomed mine at least once a week, otherwise you do not know all about them, however good your grooms are. I still do it.’ She was passing the brush over Fox’s neck in long, hard sweeps, dragging it across the teeth of the curry comb after each stroke. Adam watched, mesmerised. She was strong; those were no mere pats with the brush, but good firm strokes, massaging the skin and muscles beneath it. With her height she had all the reach she needed, except to brush Fox’s poll, and there she simply grabbed his forelock and pulled until the big horse obediently lowered his head for her.
Strong, confident, tall—she should have seemed unfeminine, but instead Adam thought her like some goddess, or an Amazon, magnificently female with her long limbs and her mane of hair.
‘His legs are cool.’ She looked up from her bent position, running her hands down Fox’s legs. ‘He doesn’t seem to have strained anything yesterday.’
‘Good.’ Adam did not seem to be able to find anything else to say. All the words that occurred to him were either banal or would get his face slapped. Instead, he leaned on the half-door and watched.
‘Have you finished the others? Only I want my breakfast.’ It was not a complaint, he realised, just a cheerful observation. Decima would quite obviously work away until the horses were looked after, however hungry she was.
‘No, a horse and a half left to go.’ He strode back to finish the grey and found the hoof pick, praying that by some miracle Mrs Chitty would appear out of the snowdrifts before he found something else about Decima to attract him.
‘I will race you,’ she called. ‘What is your other hunter called?’
‘Ajax.’
‘First one to Ajax’s tail gets the egg, then.’
‘Which egg?’
‘The one and only hen’s egg left in the larder!’
Laughing, Adam pressed on. They met at the door into Ajax’s stall, Decima diving in first to seize the brushes so he was forced to rummage for those in the stall next door.
‘Cheat,’ he grumbled. ‘Look, you’ve left me with all of his mane.’
‘I will do his face.’ She sounded breathless now, half with effort, half with laughter at this ridiculous race. ‘Loser gets the tail.’
‘Where’s the leather?’
‘What leather?’ For a moment he was deceived, but only for a moment. He was getting to know Decima.
‘The one you are hiding.’ He ducked right under the hunter’s belly, surprising her so that she jumped back with a squeak, but not before he saw the yellow chamois leather flick behind her. ‘Come on, you’ve finished with it.’
‘Find your own.’ She was laughing at him, her generous mouth wide to show even white teeth.
‘No, you’ve got what I want,’ and he lunged for it.
Decima found herself pressed against Ajax’s shoulder, the solid bulk of the horse unyielding at her back. Adam was right in front of her, a laughing challenge in his eyes. ‘Come on, hand it over.’
His shirt was open at the neck, showing a tantalising glimpse of dark hair, the sleeves were rolled up, exposing strong forearms with elegantly long muscles, his hands were raised in mock menace and he was smiling with absolute confidence that she would yield. His body heat seemed to wash over her, bringing the startlingly arousing scent of fresh sweat, hot man and leather.
Decima thought wildly that she had never seen anything more male in her life, and that included the stallion in the next stall. Suddenly she knew she could not deal with this; she was out of her depth, playing with forces she did not understand, and whatever happened next she was about to make an utter fool of herself.
‘Here.’ She thrust the leather into his hands and slid down, under the horse and up the other side where, thank God, it seemed possible to breathe. ‘You win. I’ll go and cook breakfast.’ Her exit from the stables was, she was certain, anything but dignified.
Any fool could cook bacon and eggs, surely? Even a fool who let herself be entranced by a virile man who had nothing else on his mind other than passing a few days’ isolation by flirting with an old maid. Decima peered miserably into the mirror that hung in the scullery above the small basin where she was scrubbing her hands.
‘Look at you,’ she muttered angrily. Her nose was pink, her cheeks flushed. The beastly freckles stood out as though each one had been individually touched in with sepia ink. Her hair was all over the place and she looked positively haggard from lack of sleep. In fact, she looked every one of her twenty-seven years, if not more. She pulled a face at herself, then winced at the way it widened her mouth. Her wide mouth was not the worst of her faults, she had been given to understand, just one of many, but it did not help. Fishy lips, her unkind young cousins had called her when they were children.
She realised that she was having to stoop in order to look in the mirror that the housekeeper and the maid used every day. Doubtless they were normal-sized women, not fairground oddities.
Fool, fool, fool. How did she think she could turn herself from the passive, quiet freak of an unmarried sister into an independent, assured woman who experienced life on her own terms? Possibly it was achievable, but not in the space of a day and a night, not in the company of an experienced man of the world who was just too much of a gentleman to laugh at her.
He laughs with me, the pathetic little inner voice mumbled, he finds me amusing. The old, cynical destructive voice snapped back, Just like you’d find a child aping its elders amusing, no doubt. It hadn’t needed that brandy last night to turn her head, she had been drunk on freedom and excitement and the edge of danger and she had behaved like…like a fool. Why search for another word when that one summed it up so neatly?
Decima scrubbed her hands viciously on a towel, threw off her shawl and found an apron. Bacon, bread, the one egg. Enough for three, for Bates must surely be awake and hungry by now.
Knife, bread board, toasting fork. What do you cook bacon in? A frying pan, presumably. Fat.
She moved around the larder, gathering things up, forcing herself to work out timings to keep the apprehension at bay. He would be back in a minute, wondering why she had fled in that idiotic way.
In the event there was a pile of only slightly charred toast on the table and the bacon was sizzling nicely—provided one had a fancy for it crispy—by the time the back door opened.
Decima kept her back to the door, busying herself pouring hot water over the coffee grounds.
‘All done,’ Adam said cheerfully, as though she had not just fled in disarray from a game she had initiated. ‘That bacon smells good.’
Hastily, Decima flipped it onto a platter before it went any blacker. How did one fry eggs? Tentatively, she cracked it on the edge of the frying pan, then leapt backwards as the contents landed on the fat in an explosion of spitting droplets.
‘Too hot.’ Adam leaned across her and lifted the pan off the heat while the egg spluttered and went white with an uneven frill of brown around the edges.
‘It’s spoilt,’ Decima said, alarmed to find that her voice trembled.
‘No,