the animal would have confidence in Charlotte rather than him. He wasn’t worried about Charlotte’s ability to do any necessary procedure. She had looked after her own father’s prize animals from childhood until her brother gambled the lot of them away. The woman worked as hard and was as reliable as any man that he knew when dealing with horses.
In the hope that she would save him money on a groom, her miserly and now dead father, had taught her many equestrian subjects. She was an accomplished rider who tested her skill and strength daily as she took the horses out, but her talents didn’t end there. The bruises were only just fading after he had foolishly offered to help her practice her remarkable oriental fighting skills that she had learned in her youth. Geoffrey rubbed his sore ribs where she had caught him with the short sticks and her lightning fast feet.
He had also seen the confident use of her mental skills in deciphering strange oriental symbols. Sweat broke out on his brow as he thought of the potion she had mixed that had sent her guardian into a seemingly lifeless coma thereby saving the man’s life. The woman was as fearless as she was beautiful, challenging herself as well as others at every turn.
He clenched his jaw as he directed his thoughts back to the array of buttons running down the length of her dress. The layered evening gown she wore must have cost a frightening sum of money. Of course she wouldn’t want the thing spoiled, but he wasn’t about to admit that taking it off was a perfectly good suggestion. The thought of her actually disrobing here in the stable was going to cost his already fragile equilibrium dearly. He doubted that there was a woman in the England more infuriating. Having Charlotte remove her dress in front of him was nothing short of torture and absolutely nothing like him revealing his chest to her. It wasn’t the same thing at all.
He noted that she had pulled back her shoulders in that obstinate way she did when she was about to win an argument, and he let out a long, defeated breath. There was no way around it; if Charlotte was going to help Star Gazer birth her foal, she was going to get dirty. If her frock was to remain wearable, it was going to have to come off.
Her shoulders relaxed the moment his fingertips began tugging at the tiny buttons and she realized that she had won her argument. A narrow slice of alabaster skin became visible to his eyes and he growled out his resentment as his manhood surged painfully. He could only thank the heavens that he hadn’t bothered to tuck the excess material of his shirt back into his breeches, and with a bit of luck, the maddening woman in front of him wouldn’t notice the state of his body or the agonized expression that surely must have been plastered all over his features.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he blew out a pent up breath. “If your guardian came in right now, he’d have me flogged,” he muttered miserably as he bent to his task and hoped to God that this situation would never find its way to Giles Denvers ears. He knew that he’d carry the secret to his grave and only hoped that Charlotte would too.
Charlotte turned her head slightly, narrowly avoiding his unshaven cheek and answered sweetly.
“Well, it’s lucky for you that he’s not here then. You know that he cannot leave Caithwell right now. Anne and baby Marcus Geoffrey have only just recovered from the fever. I doubt that he will let either of them out of his sight for many months to come.” She referred to the sickness that had struck down her guardian’s wife and newborn child so recently.
Giles Denvers, the new Lord Caithwell and not only Charlotte’s cousin, but her guardian too, had spent endless days and nights at his wife and three-month-old son’s bedside, not knowing if either would be alive come morning. He had refused to let another member of his family become ill with the sickness, and had sent Charlotte to stay with his friends at Ormond even though she had dearly wanted to help her cousin with his wife and child.
The doctor had given them the all clear only days beforehand, but he was still advocating that his patients should receive the minimum number of visitors to lessen the chance