Page 7 of Mounted By Her Officers

Tacitus. She had been outbid by a dead Roman. “He can’t even spare a care for me now,” she mumbled, taking a long drink of wine.

Denny pulled her closer by the waist. “Do you wish he’d put you over his knee?”

She let him pull her close. “Not like that.”

“We’ll discipline you, m’ girl.”

She waved them off, pressure building in her eyes. “I think I saw some kittens in the coaching yard.”

Behind her in the public room, her father was explaining the Roman Empire to a man who had tupped her three times that week. When Carter and Chamberlayne sent her father on his way, he’d not even remember to say goodbye to Lydia.

Chapter 4

Denny found Lydia in an empty stall within the barn, playing with a kitten that had curiously damp fur. Denny did not remark upon it, which was why she had always liked him best when she was crying.

“Your father’s horse is saddled,” said Denny, gesturing with his decorative cane as he surveyed her.

“I wouldn’t want to interrupt his conversation with Carter,” said Lydia. “Besides, he may not recall why he made the trip. Wouldn’t want to remind him.”

The ostlers were in the yard assisting a carriage. Denny flopped next to Lydia in some fresh straw.

“You can’t keep it,” he warned. “Carter will sneeze for the rest of our days.”

She laughed. “The major? No! When did you learn such a thing?”

“France. We were scouting, and he began to sniff and wheeze at precisely the moment we needed silence.”

“Denny,” she tapped his arm. “You knew this and kept it from me! Now this baby’s surely coming with us. Papa will never get off my hide if I insist on keeping him.”

He eased closer. “You like being spanked that much?”

“I…” She stroked between the kitten’s ears. “I don’t think it’s that. It’s that I don’t mind the spanking.”

“I’d be happy to whip your sweet bottom.”

She knocked against him playfully. “You each show concern in ways that make me…”

“Hot under the skirts?” he asked hopefully.

“I was thinking warm in my heart.”

“But you’re not not hot under the skirts as a result.”

“Denny!” Lydia brushed her shoulder on his. “Think of the little one’s ears.” She covered the kitten’s tiny head before allowing it to toddle away.

“Is that what you’ll be like as a mother?” he asked, tracing some gathers on her skirts. “Think of the children!”

Lydia giggled at his attempt to speak in a high-pitched voice. He was funny. She’d not realized that as a girl, when the only qualification that mattered was a finely turned leg in a scarlet uniform.

“I can’t imagine myself as a mother,” she confessed. She’d tried to, but it was over some wall that her mind had thrown up. She didn’t know whether the wall protected her from wanting what she shouldn’t, or from a truth too hard to hold. Lydia suspected that she’d be just as vivacious as her own mother, nary a harsh word for her children. But none of that, not when she’d declared her tears finished.

Denny shifted closer. “I can see it now. You clapping your hands as your son rides his pony for the first time. Or your daughter. Teaching them how to enjoy life, to eat the last of the teacakes shamelessly.”

“You all claimed I could have that cake!” cried Lydia.

“And you could have that cake. We like to see you happy and your hunger sated.”

“I sometimes wonder if I have the sort of hunger that’s ever sated,” she said, running her hand over the fresh straw. “I want so much.”