Unless it was his own flabbergasted fury at his staggering idiocy that infamous season, which still lingered to torment him. Whichever it was, it still held the power to make him need to flee from the god-awful place with his tail between his legs as fast as he could.
Suddenly keen to escape it even quicker, Guy nudged Zeus into a gallop, sucking in deep, calming breaths as his horse flew effortlessly across the dewy grass like the wind. So fast, the morning mist blurred the wall of trees rushing beside him into a watercolor smudge of green and brown.
Yet still that wasn’t fast enough today, so he pushed Zeus harder. Gave the powerful horse permission to have his legs because he sensed they both needed to let off some steam. The sheer exhilaration making him throw back his head, close his eyes, and gulp in more air in the hope that it would cleanse all that pent-up shame which just one day in London had made new again.
Because he understood that he needed to forget it. That the only person he was hurting by holding on to all that festering self-contempt was himself. Knew he needed to leave his unfortunate but mortifying misstep in the past fully if he was ever going to find himself again and—
The second horse burst out of a gap in the trees scant feet before him, shocking him into an unmanly yelp. A similarly startled Zeus reared with such abrupt force that the next thing Guy knew, he was flying backward in the air.
Weightless.
Powerless.
Flailing.
Until the earth smacked into him with a thud, knocking every bit of air out of his lungs and causing a million stars to explode behind his eyes. The impact making his ears ring so loudly he could hear nothing else but their chime.
In an oddly silent haze, he saw the idiot who had unseated him struggle to remain in his saddle as he fought his own rearing horse into submission. A battle which only took moments before a fuzzy silhouette stared down at him. Mouthed something that the church bells ringing within his head totally drowned out, then stayed him with a raised palm when Guy tried and failed to sit thanks to the spinning ground he lay upon.
It was only when the other rider kicked his horse back into a gallop and left him there that Guy realized that Zeus had bolted too.
Marvelous.
There was fat chance of catching him now! Zeus was as temperamental and skittish as he was fast, and when spooked would likely run frantic rings around this park for the next hour before he calmed down. Which also meant that Guy no longer had a hope in hell of reaching the Kent Road in twenty minutes. Or of leaving London and its unpleasant memories behind in a cloud of dust before the residents of this cesspit awoke to start their day.
Thanks to the recklessness of that other rider, he was well and truly stuck here, in this dreadful place he despised, for goodness knew how long now. A prospect that made him feel sick.
The last time the blasted horse had done a runner, it had taken three hours to find the brute. But that had been at home, on his own quiet acres, not here in the capital. It was quiet now but in another hour or so, the streets surrounding this park would be busy and his nervous stallion wasn’t used to that sort of city chaos at all. Worse, if Zeus decided to bolt out of the sanctuary of the park, then the consequences didn’t bear thinking about.
Guy had to get up and search for him.
He groaned in frustration and pain as he gingerly reinflated his lungs. As the whirling stars behind his eyeballs began to subside, he tested his limbs. Rotated his ankles, flexed his knees. Stretched out his arms. Twisted his upper torso and neck. Nothing seemed to be broken beyond his pride, and as he had none left here anyway, he supposed that shouldn’t really count—yet it did.
His poor arse, however, was a very different story. It had taken thefull brunt of his fall and it throbbed as he pushed himself to sit on it. The morning dew seeping into his breeches did little to relieve the pain in his pelvis. The base of his spine screaming in protest at being made to move at any speed faster than a snail’s.
It took a couple of minutes, but he managed to creak himself upright and began to massage his aching buttocks while he waited for the dizziness to subside, all the while scanning the park for any sign of Zeus. At full tilt, the brute could be halfway to Paddington already. Then what?
As hours and hours of futile searching loomed on the horizon, the other rider suddenly emerged from a clump of trees several yards away. By some miracle, trotting along beside him, bucking and fighting the taut reins all the way, was a less-than-impressed Zeus. Yet despite the horse’s obvious temper tantrum, to add insult to injury, the other rider still managed to control him from atop their own saddle on a black stallion so huge it made Zeus look like a child’s pony by comparison.
Guy limped to meet them, simultaneously relieved that his horse was unharmed and furious that he had been separated from him in the first place. But then pride always came before a fall, and once fallen, pride was the only thing you had left to cling to that might get you through it.
“Do you always ride so recklessly in a public place?” He reached for Zeus’s reins and wound them tightly around his gloved fist in case the damned horse tried to bolt again, and glared up at the idiot. Squinting against the sunlight that pierced his retinas and rendered the dangerous fool faceless. “They make bridle paths for a reason! So that everyone knows where a bloody horse is going to be! You could have killed someone going at that ludicrous speed over ground you had no place riding on!”
He could see enough of the surprisingly lithe and slight rider’s work-worn attire to know that this wasn’t a gentleman—more a stable lad out exercising his master’s best horse. “You could have killed me with your unbelievable carelessness, idiot!”
“You were hardly cantering sedately yourself, sir.” The shock at hearing the curt but unmistakably female voice made Guy squint somemore. “In fact, I would counter that you were galloping even faster than I was else you’d have been able to stop in time.”
“But I was on the bridle path, madam!” Not that he could yet discern if this hellion was a madam or a miss. “And you weren’t!”
“If you had been paying proper attention and had actually looked where you were going rather than staring straight up at the sky whilst galloping, you might have been able to control your horse before he threw you.”
“But I wouldn’t have been thrown ifyouhad been on the bridle path like you were supposed to be!”
She brushed that outrage away with a regal flick of her wrist. “Arabians are notoriously difficult to handle and only a real idiot forgets that whilst on the back of one! Especially at the speed you were going.”
“Are you trying to say that this is all my fault? When I was riding my horse precisely where I was supposed to and you were not.” He flapped his hand toward the gap in the trees she had exploded through.
“Briefly, and for that I obviously apologize.” Although she didn’t look particularly sorry. Even shrouded in the rising sun’s piercing silhouette, he could see her chin tilted defiantly, and she was very definitely regarding him down her nose with disdain.
