The Outrageous Debutante by Anne O'Brien Page A

lightning strikes in a summer storm—rapid, without warning, and possibly devastating. Nicholas was the first to break the contact.
    ‘Forgive me.’ He released her, cold now, all humour banished under the lash of her words and the shock of his reaction to her. ‘I thought you were in distress.’
    ‘No, I was not.’
    ‘My mistake.’ Reserve infiltrated his voice, but he still watched her carefully. There was some problem here of which he was unaware. ‘Next time I will allow you to fall and break your neck.’
    ‘Do so. There will not be a next time. I do not need your help. How dare you put your hands on a lady in this manner!’
    Any latent sympathy Nicholas might have felt promptly vanished. ‘You must excuse my concern, madam.’ He looked her over from head to foot, taking in the whole of her appearance. ‘I did not realise. I would not expect to see a
lady
galloping in Hyde Park. Please accept my apologies.’ The emphasis in his words was unmistakable and made Thea flush, angrier than ever.
    ‘Let go of my reins.’
    He did with alacrity and reined his own animal away from her. In that one moment he thought, although perhaps he was mistaken, that there was a hint of tears in those eyes, which still snapped with temper.
    The lady, if such she was, gathered up her own reins, kicked the still lively grey into action and set off in a canter towards the distant gate without a backward look.
    Leaving Nicholas to sit and stare after her.
    Thea arrived home, delivered The Zephyr into the hands of a sleepy groom who gazed at her in wordless astonishment, fled to her room and locked the door. There she stripped off her incriminating garments, folded them back into the chest and tied a ruffled, feminine muslin wrapper around her. Then, as the furious energy drained away, she sank on to the bed and covered her face with her hands.
    What had she done? Not the gallop in the park. She could never regret that. How the grey had flown, fast as a desert hawk towards its prey. But she had struck him. The man who had come to her rescue. However unnecessary it might have been, he had thought she had been in danger and had ridden to her rescue. And what had she done? She had marked him with her riding whip. And then she had been so rude. Unforgivably so. She could not remember her exact words, uttered in the heat and confusion of the moment, but knew that they had been ungracious. Vicious, even. What would he think of her? How could she have allowed herself to do that?
    But she knew why. And whatever the extenuating circumstances, she blamed herself totally.
    She relived the events in her mind as she curled on to the bed in that sunny room. She had been unaware of his approach, so lost in the unity of horse and rider, in the glorious speed. But then, in that moment when his horse had stretched beside hers, when he had leaned and grasped her reins, his strong hands forcing her to come to a halt, the past had rushed back with all its pain and fear. She had thought it was forgotten, or mostly so, pushed away, buried deep within her subconscious, only to emerge with infrequent intensity when nightmares troubled her sleep.
    She had been very young, hardly more than a child. On one of their journeys they had been beset by robbers in spite of thesize and strength of their entourage. Forced to halt, to dismount, to stand and watch as her mother’s jewellery was stripped from her, as her father was threatened at the point of a knife. The fear had been intense. They had been allowed to go free at the end, but the terror of that moment when they were held captive and in fear for their lives had not quite gone away.
    Thea shook her head, scrubbed her hands over her face as if to dislodge the thoughts. She should not be so fearful now—but she had been only a little girl, after all. And her arm had been broken when she had been pulled from her horse. She rubbed her forearm as if the pain, inflicted so long ago, still lingered, as the image