Dreaming

Chapter 1 Devon, England, 1815The earl of Downe was known for his horsemanship -- which was fortunate because it was harder than hell to stay on a horse when one was drunk. It was even harder at night, and this night was darker than a rake's past.But Richard Lennox and his mount knew these dank moors. Over the years, they had ridden hell and hounds to the cliffs and on to the small cove below, where he'd found solace away from a house that had never been a home.He rode across those moors now, away from his estate, until he couldn't taste the stale air of the past, only the briny scent of the sea. He could breathe again.Horse and rider slowed as they neared the cliffs, and Richard relaxed. Two years before things had been different along this coast. England had been at war with France. Yet now all appeared quiet on the Channel. No storm-swept seas, no dark clouds, no French navy lurking off the opposite shore, nor the frequent sight of British blockade ships zigzagging through the water.Until a month before he, like everyone else, had thought the war was over. Then Napoleon had escaped Elba. Most recent rumors had the Emperor marching through the French countryside on a campaign to gather support.Richard stared out at the Channel until it dawned on him that he was behaving like some idiotic dreamer who fancied for one instant that he could see what was happening on the opposite shore.He saw only black -- an expanse of dark water and the night sky. It was that one time of the month when the moon turned coward and its back was all one could see. A smuggler's moon.He shook his head in derision and guided his mount along the cliff. Smugglers' moons and French armies. He must be bloody drunk, prattling on like one of those superstitious old fishermen from the village. He gave a humorless laugh. Dreamers and fools, the whole lot of them.He stared off at the southern cliffs, where lights glimmered dimly from the neighboring Hornsby estate. An instant later his mind flashed with the image of a young woman's face framed in a wild mane of curly brown hair.Letitia Hornsby.God...there was a thought. He blanched slightly and rolled his shoulder, the same one she'd accidentally dislocated. Instinctively his hand rose to his right eye, the one she'd once blackened with a cricket ball. His foot twitched as if it suddenly remembered the pain she'd inflicted dancing on it, and more recently when she'd driven over it with his curricle. After that incident he'd been forced to use a cane for two months.Leaning on his saddle pommel, he watched the manor lights flicker and wondered if she was rusticating in one of those lit rooms. No sooner had the notion crossed his mind than he felt a powerful, instinctive, and self-preserving urge to put a vast number of miles between them.No, he thought. Not miles...continents.The Hornsby hellion -- his recompense for every black sin he'd ever committed. Her London season had been one of the most disastrous in recent history, and her unflagging infatuation with him had been partly to blame.As vividly as if it were yesterday, he could see her standing in a corner during the first ball of the season, trying to look comfortable and failing miserably.Gallantry was one of those moral attributes Richard usually eschewed. With good reason. Being gallant, civil, or moral hadn't lit a fire under his father. Through years of rebellion, he had acquired a certain expertise at patrimonial arson.But the night of that ball, he'd asked the hellion to dance. The motive for his doing so still escaped him. Logic had naturally dictated that, by the age of seventeen, the chit would have outgrown her childhood affection for him. But she hadn't. If anything, that one dance had only made matters worse. Every time they met, at every social event they both attended, some catastrophe happened.It didn't take long for malicious word to come of her baBarnett, Jill is the author of 'Dreaming' with ISBN 9780671778682 and ISBN 0671778684.