Still, she had to be strong. Otherwise, Ren would think she was soft. Men exploited softness.
Horses were indeed waiting outside and Ren gave her a leg up, tossing her into the saddle with ease as he had done yesterday. He adjusted her stirrup and checked her girth one last time. It was either quite gallant of him, or quite patronising. Emma shot him a wry look, assuming the latter. ‘You should know, Ren Dryden, I don’t like high-handed men.’
Ren gave her stirrup a final tug and looked up, blue eyes sparking with amusement. ‘You should know I don’t like scheming females. I think that makes us even.’
He swung up into his saddle with athletic grace, the heels of his boots automatically going down in the irons, his thighs naturally gripping the stallion, a bay Merry had bought from an officer who was returning to England. She felt a sharp stab of heat at the memory from yesterday of those thighs gripping her.
‘You’re a horseman,’ Emma said as they turned their mounts out behind the house to begin the tour.
‘I love to ride. My family prides themselves on their stable. We all grew up in the saddle.’ Ren drew his horse alongside hers, his tone easy, inviting conversation as the path widened to easily accommodate two riders abreast.
‘Do you have a large family?’ The way he’d said ‘all’ implied that he did. She’d not imagined him having siblings. She’d spent her time planning for the arrival of an old man with few ties.
‘Big enough. Not as large as some,’ Ren answered. ‘I have two younger sisters and a younger brother. How about yourself, do you have siblings?’
She shook her head. ‘I barely had parents, let alone brothers and sisters. It was mostly my father and me. He was in the military and we travelled.’
‘That must have been exciting.’ Ren was studying her, giving her the full attention of his gaze. It was warming and unnerving all at once. This was supposed to have been a safe conversation but it was proving contrary to her intentions. Was it real or was it merely his brand of superficial politeness? Worse, was it the beginning of a seduction? Was he being nice to capitalise on the truce they’d established over breakfast? She’d seen such niceness often enough from those who had something to gain. If he thought to kiss the plantation out of her, he wouldn’t be the first to try and he wouldn’t be the last to fail.
This was where seduction, if that was what he was up to, became tricky. One had to be careful not to forget the game, no matter how appealing the fantasy. She wouldn’t make it easy for him or for herself. Neither could she appear to be entirely resistant. Resistance would not convince him she’d rethought her position on his presence. Still, things didn’t have to go too far.
Emma decided to put a halt to the moment before she had herself imagining he cared about something other than his fifty-one per cent. ‘It was lonely. My father’s career was all consuming. He lived for it and the adventure of always moving can be something of a burden when one is craving the stability of a normal home and friends. There was no one to fall back on when my father died.’ They reached a fork in the rough trail. She gestured they should go right.
‘There was my cousin,’ Ren answered, swiftly coming to Merry’s defence.
‘Yes, there was Merry and I will always be grateful. He was all that was generous and kind to a lonely sixteen-year-old girl.’ The trail narrowed and Emma pushed ahead of him. They were climbing now. Emma was glad for a reason to proceed single file. Even after four months, her grief over Merry remained raw. Too much sincerity, feigned or not from Ren Dryden, and she’d be a gusher.
They reached the top of the incline and dismounted. Emma went to stand at the edge, using the time to gather her emotions. But Ren did not give her long. He came up behind her, his boots giving fair warning as they rustled the grass. He was close, close enough for her to smell the scent of honest sweat mixed with the scents of horse and morning soap. The combination was decidedly male and not at all unpleasing. There was power to it and strength.
‘This is the highest point on Sugarland, from here you can see everything.’ It was one of her favourite places to visit. She and Merry had come up often when he was well. The last time had been two days before he died. The trip had taken all of his strength. She remembered worrying that he would die on the hilltop, that it had been his reason for coming; he’d wanted to depart the earth where he could see his legacy spread before him. It was the day he’d warned her of his suspicions about Gridley. She wished he’d warned her about Ren Dryden, too.
Ren let out a low whistle of appreciation. ‘That’s an amazing view. I can see why you’d want to come. A man could be a king here, surveying his domain.’
‘Or a queen surveying hers,’ Emma amended. This was her kingdom, a reminder of all she fought for, of all she defended. A reminder, too, of what she stood to lose if she was not a vigilant guardian. Gridley would wrest this place from her if she gave him half a chance. Perhaps Ren Dryden would, too.
‘Tell me about it, tell me everything we see.’ Ren’s voice was quiet, intimate at her ear. It sent an unlooked-for trill of awareness down her spine, so unlike the prickles of hatred, even fear, that Gridley’s presence roused.
Ren pointed in the distance. ‘What’s that building over there?’
‘That’s our sugar mill. Once we harvest the cane, it will be refined there. We’re big enough to support our own mill. We’re lucky. We mill the cane for some of the smaller plantations, too, who don’t have their own,’ Emma explained.
She moved their gaze to the east. ‘That’s the main house. Then there’s the cane fields.’ They were black beneath the sky, the recent firing causing them to stand out stark and naked against the lush background. ‘There are the vegetable fields and the home farm.’ She paused to glance over her shoulder, taking in Ren’s expression. ‘You’re surprised. We’re self-sufficient here. The trick is to balance the land between what we need to feed ourselves and what we can afford to grow for cane. Sugar cane is our money crop, but it won’t do us any good if we starve or if we have to spend our profits on food. Already, so much of what we need has to be imported from England. It would be a shame to have to import food, too.’
Ren nodded slowly. She could almost see the wheels of his mind turning behind those eyes of his. He was interested in the plantation. Well, she’d see how interested he was in the middle of a sweltering summer when there was work to be done, although he’d done well yesterday with the fire. He hadn’t hesitated.
‘Is cane difficult to grow?’ he asked, his gaze going back to the charred fields. ‘From my reading, it doesn’t seem to be.’
‘Not too difficult. The cane regenerates itself.’ She started to explain the process, acutely aware of the potent male presence behind her. Ren was making it difficult to talk about ratoon crops and he wasn’t even touching her. He was just standing there. Only he wasn’t. He was flirting silently with his body.
No, flirting was too superficial of a word. Flirting required witty banter and gay repartee, not an agricultural discussion. This wasn’t flirting, this was sampling. He was letting her sample his physicality—the smell of him, the heat, the sensuality of him as he turned even the most mundane comment erotic by murmuring it near her ear.
There was no doubt he was a man who understood precisely how to use the nuances of space and touch to create a certain appeal. The bigger question was why? She had yet to meet a man who didn’t have ulterior motives when it came to women or when it came to her. She didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what Dryden
