No more time.
Gathering himself, Michael sprang from the saddle to the gig. He caught the seat, dragged himself half over it. Lunging across the lady, he grabbed the reins and yanked hard.
The lady screamed.
So did the horse.
Michael hung on with all his strength and hauled back. There was no time—no drive left—to worry about anything but halting the horse.
Hooves skidded; the horse screamed again, swung sideways—and halted. Michael grabbed the brake—too late. Momentum whipped the gig around; pure luck kept it upright.
The lady was flung out of the gig onto the grassy verge.
He was thrown after her.
She landed facedown; he sprawled half atop her.
For an instant, he couldn’t move—couldn’t draw breath, couldn’t think. Reactions—dozens—poured through him. The slender, fragile body trapped beneath his, delicate yet elementally womanly, sent protectiveness flaring—only to trigger horror and nascent fury over what had so nearly transpired. Over what had been risked.
Then fear welled, black, roiling, irrational and old, dark and deep. It swelled, gripped hard, strangled all else.
Hooves shifted on the gravel—he looked around. The horse, blowing hard, tried to walk, but the gig dragged; the horse stopped. Atlas had halted on the other side of the lawn and stood watching, ears pricked.
“Ooof!”
Beneath him, the lady struggled. His shoulder lay across her back, his hips anchoring her thighs; she couldn’t move until he did.
He rolled back, sat up. His gaze fell on the stone monument, two yards away.
The terror of screaming horses filled his mind.
Jaw setting, he drew in a tight breath and got to his feet. Watched, grim-faced, as the lady pushed back, then swung around to sit.
He reached down, grab
bed her hands, hauled her unceremoniously to her feet. “Of all the stupid, witless—” He broke off, fought to shackle his temper, soaring on the wings of that roiling, irrational fear. Lost the battle. Hands rising to his hips, he glared at its cause. “If you can’t handle the reins, you shouldn’t be driving.” He snapped the words out, didn’t care if they cut. “You came within yards of serious injury if not death!”
For an instant, he wondered if she was deaf; she gave no indication she’d heard him.
Caroline Sutcliffe dusted her gloved hands, and thanked her stars she’d worn gloves. Ignoring the solid lump of male reverberating with aggravation before her—she had no idea who he was; she hadn’t yet seen his face—she shook out her skirts, inwardly grimaced at the grass stains, then straightened the bodice, the sleeves, her gauzy scarf. And finally consented to look up.
And up—he was taller than she’d thought. Wider of shoulder, too…the physical shock when he’d appeared beside her in the gig, compounded when he’d landed atop her on the grass, flashed back into her mind; she thrust it out again. “Thank you, sir, whoever you are, for your rescue, however ungracious.” Her tone would have done a duchess credit—cool, confident, assured and haughty. Precisely the right tone to use on a presumptuous male. “However—”
Her rising gaze reached his face. She blinked. The sun was behind him; she stood in full light, but his face was shadowed.
Lifting her hand, she shaded her eyes and unabashedly peered. At a strong-featured face with a square jaw and the harsh, angular planes of her own class. A patrician face with a wide brow delimited by straight dark brows over eyes memory painted a soft blue. His hair was thick, dark brown; the silver tracery at his temples only made him more distinguished.
It was a face that held a great deal of character.
It was the face she’d come there to find.
She tilted her head. “Michael? It is Michael Anstruther-Wetherby, isn’t it?”
Michael stared—at a heart-shaped face surrounded by a nimbus of fine, sheening brown hair so light it was flyaway, puffed soft as a dandelion crown about her head, at eyes, silver-blue, slightly tip-tilted…“Caro.” The name came to his lips without real thought.
She smiled up at him, clearly delighted; for one instant, he—all of him—stilled.
The screaming horses abruptly fell silent.