Improper Advances by Margaret Evans Porter Page B

expected, but on his horse. Trotting beside Envoy was a dark pony, a sidesaddle strapped to its back.
    “Meet Glistree,” he called. “In English, Glitter.”
    “She lives up to her name.” Oriana ran her hands over the animal’s coat, then pried open her jaws to examine the rows of teeth. “Five years old?”
    “Close to it. She works up at the mine, but for the next few days her stablemate will be in harness. I need to pasture her close by, and didn’t think you’d mind the use of a docile hack—if your very crowded stable has room for one more beast.”
    “How did you acquire the saddle?”
    “I borrowed it from one of my Gilchrist cousins, whose husband won’t permit her to go riding while she’s—until she safely delivers his firstborn. I’m taking you to the mine, and afterward we can visit Ned.
    Mrs. Lace doesn’t coddle and spoil him as you and Mrs. Stowell did. She makes him stir her porridge and soups with his good arm, and he’s responsible for a variety of simple tasks.”
    “I miss him,” she confessed. “When you brought him here that day, I thought of my husband.” She laid her cheek against Glistree’s shiny neck. “If only I’d gone with Henry to India, I could have nursed him back to health.”
    “Did he die of a fever?” asked Dare.
    “He was wounded in a skirmish with natives, and never regained consciousness. Or so I was told. I received a long letter from Henry’s commanding officer, extolling his bravery and assuring me that his men respected and mourned him. Every soldier’s widow has read those identical phrases, I’m sure. When Henry and I first met, at Newmarket races, he seemed infinitely older. Yet he was only twenty—the same age as Ned Crowe.”
    “What the devil were you doing at Newmarket?”
    “Watching the horses run,” she said matter-of-factly. “As I’ve done since I was a little girl, and used the Racing Calendar for my reading primer. My cousin Burford owns several racehorses, and—” She clamped her lips firmly together. Unwittingly, she had disclosed too much.
    “Burford,” he repeated. “Not Bumfold. This earl is your cousin?”
    “Distant cousin.” She cursed her carelessness, and was tempted to excuse herself from the excursion lest she compound her mistake.
    Before she could, Dare’s hands settled on her waist. She tried to tell him she could use the mounting block. Ignoring her tangled words, he vaulted her into the leather sidesaddle. His hands disappeared under her skirt, gripped her ankle—dear heaven, how he tortured her-and guided her foot to the stirrup.
    Her flesh tingled; her lashes fluttered. Busying herself with the reins, she threaded them through unsteady fingers.
    They forded the stream together, their horses splashing through the rushing water, clipping the stones with their metaled hooves.
    The lead mine was composed of stone buildings, an elaborate system of water troughs, and a series of entrances leading deep into the earth. Glistree’s stablemate plodded a circular path around the horse-wheel. Dare explained that it powered a pump that drew accumulated water from the levels below, where the lead was mined. A chimney stack belching smoke and sparks marked the location of the forge.

    “Can we go down inside the mine?” she asked.
    “Definitely not.”
    “But I want to see veins of ore, and the scaffolds, and everything else Ned described.”
    “I’m sorry, I can’t let you. Too dangerous for a female.”
    “I’d be careful.”
    “You couldn’t make it safely down the ladder in that long skirt.” His hand clenched on her forearm.
    “I’ve suffered enough guilt since Ned’s accident.”
    “For no good reason,” she told him earnestly.
    “So says the lady who blames herself because her soldier husband had the misfortune to get killed in India.”
    “If not for me, Henry would still be alive,” she confessed.
    “What would you have done differently, Oriana?”
    She couldn’t tell him without