Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

He regained his footing after they cleared the jump. Chloe inhaled as if she forgot how to breathe. Behind her, she heard Grace’s horse knock the log off-kilter. Chloe almost stopped to turn around and help, but then she heard the stream of obscenities that confirmed that Grace had to be okay.

Her blood pumping, Chloe urged Chestnut on and caught up to Sebastian, but up ahead, in a ravine, she saw a black riding hat floating in the water, and it wasn’t Sebastian’s. She spotted Henry’s horse rearing up, without anyone on him. Fear zigzagged through her. Henry was on the ground near his horse. He could get trampled. Was he hurt?

Sebastian mustn’t have seen him. He clipped right by his brother.

Closer now, Chloe slowed Chestnut. Time froze as she looked to her left at Henry, who was struggling to sit up and rubbing his leg, then at Sebastian, who was gal oping after the hunt master.

“Are you al right?” Chloe asked Henry.

“I’m fine! Go ahead!” Henry waved her on. “You’re winning! Go!” He sat up, but didn’t get up off the ground.

Chloe looked toward Sebastian. Clods of dirt flew from his horse’s hooves. She frowned and brought Chestnut to a halt. The cameramen on the ATV switched their focus to Grace, who careened past and cracked her riding crop hard on her horse, spinning after Sebastian. The ATV drove alongside Grace and disappeared into the woods.

It took Chloe a while to dismount with her unwieldy skirt and Henry had meanwhile hoisted himself to his feet. He grabbed his horse’s bit and calmed the horse.

Just then Julia gal oped up and slowed her horse to a trot.

“Go, Julia, go ahead! Don’t let Grace win!” Chloe said. “Hurry!”

Julia took off, with Gil ian and Kate close behind. Kate looked back, but never said anything.

Chloe hurriedly tied Chestnut to a tree and hustled over to Henry.

“Is your leg al right?” She could see he was favoring it.

“I’l be fine. It’s my horse’s leg that’s cut. No wonder he threw me. But it’s not bad. Don’t worry about me. If you go now, you stil have a chance.”

Blood was running from his horse’s front leg. It looked like a deep gash. Chloe wasn’t good with blood. The horse tossed his head up and down.

“I can’t just leave you here,” Chloe said. “You’re both hurt.”

“I can handle this. Go ahead or you’l lose! You want that money, don’t you? Or Sebastian? Or both?”

It al seemed so crass, the way he put it. He whipped off his riding jacket, tossed it aside, pul ed off his white muslin shirt, and ripped it into strips.

Chloe tried to avoid gaping at his abs, which also happened to be—ripped. She felt woozy, from the blood dripping down the horse’s leg to his hoof, then curdling on the dirt, no doubt.

Chloe snapped to. She did her best to push up her tight sleeves. “You can’t get rid of me that easily. Tel me what I can do.”

Henry gave her The Look. As in The Look Mr. Darcy gave Elizabeth Bennet in virtual y any film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice when he realized that he loved her. It was that Look along with the dive in the lake that typecast Colin Firth as romantic leading man for fifteen years, much to his chagrin. Chloe would know it anywhere, and it happened very quickly, but it was The Look.

She skipped a breath. Her riding jacket felt too tight and she stepped back.

“Here,” Henry said. “You hold the bit and steady him while I wrap him up.”

Henry expertly wrapped the strips of shirt like a bandage around the horse’s leg, the horse whinnying and stamping as he tied it off. Blood saturated the shirt and it turned blood brown. He coiled the strips, but the blood soaked through everything.

Henry worked so quickly, so confidently, it impressed Chloe unlike anything she had seen before. He was a man who took action and took care of things, and people, and animals.

What was she thinking?! Her instinct had been to stop and help Henry, but had she made the right choice? She’d just sacrificed Sebastian, not to mention the Accomplishment Points. She thought about Abigail, the business, and her head began to spin. If she’d eaten that cow’s tongue on toast for breakfast, she might have more strength—

“Miss Parker? Miss Parker?!” Henry was tapping water on her face with his hands, looking down on her from above, his face lit with a shaft of light coming through the canopy of trees. Her head was in his lap as he knelt on one knee. She heard the water lapping in the ravine. The bun of her hair rubbed right against his manhood, as they would say in the nineteenth century. Or was that just in romance novels? In a stupor, she turned toward his bare chest. His flesh felt warm against her cold, wet cheek. His pecs were impeccable. He had a pine scent about him. Or was that just the forest floor?

“Henry.”

He leaned into her, she lifted her head toward him, and he kissed her with a hunger and a force that both surprised and excited her.