Her fire was not gone.
“How long have you been there?” she asked in English, taking a step back, pressing herself against the side of the horse, who sidestepped once and gave a little, distraught nicker.
He stilled, as though moving closer to her would scare her off. “Long enough.”
Her gaze darted around the stall, as though she were looking for an escape route. As though she were terrified of him. And then she seemed to remember that she wasn’t terrified of anything.
Her eyes narrowed on him, blue and beautiful. “Eavesdropping is a terrible habit.”
He leaned against the doorjamb, giving her space. “You may add it to my list of unpleasant traits.”
“There isn’t enough paper in England to list them all.”
He raised a brow. “You wound me.”
She scowled, turning back to the horse. “If only it were so. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
So it was to be this way. She did not want to discuss the events of the evening. He watched as she resumed the long, firm strokes of the horse’s flanks. “I was invited to a dinner party, but it ended early.”
“It sounds like it was a terrible bore,” she said, her voice dry as sand. “Shouldn’t you be at your club? Recounting the devastating blow to our reputation to other arrogant aristocrats in a cloud of cheroot smoke as you drink scotch stolen from the North Country?”
“What do you know about cheroot smoke?”
She tossed him a look over her shoulder. “We do not have such restrictive rules in Italy.”
It was his turn for dryness. “Really? I had not noticed.”
“I am quite serious. Surely you have something better to do than stand in the stables and watch me groom my horse.”
“In an evening gown.”
The most incredible gown he’d ever seen.
She gave one of her little shrugs. “Don’t tell me there’s a rule about that, too.”
“A rule about ladies wearing evening gowns to groom horses?”
“Yes.”
“Not in so many words, no.”
“Excellent.” She did not stop her movements.
“That said, I must say I have never witnessed a lady so well attired grooming a horse.”
“You still haven’t.”
He paused. “I beg your pardon?”
“You still haven’t witnessed a lady doing so. I think tonight has made it quite clear that I am no lady, don’t you?” She leaned down and tapped the mare’s forelock, inspecting one hoof. “I don’t have the kind of stock required for the honor.”
And with that, the conversation turned, and the air in the room grew heavy.
She turned back to him, meeting his gaze with complete seriousness. “Why did you come looking for me?”
Damned if he knew.
“Did you think that now that our mother is back, you could come to me in the stables, and I would behave the way she always did?” The words hung between them, brash and unpleasant, and Simon wanted to shake her for saying them. For cheapening his concern. For suggesting that she was nothing better than her mother had been.
She pressed on. “Or perhaps you could not resist the opportunity to enumerate the additional ways that I am damaged goods after tonight? I assure you, there is nothing you could say that I have not already considered myself.”
He deserved it, he supposed, but he could not help but defend himself. Did she really think that he would take this opportunity—this night—to set her down? “Juliana, I—” He took a step toward her, and she put up a hand to stay his movement.
“Don’t tell me this has changed everything, Leighton.”
She had never called him that. Your Grace, in that mocking tone that set him instantly on edge. Or Simon. But now, in all seriousness, she used his title. The shift unsettled him.
She laughed, the sound cold and brittle and altogether unlike her. “Of course it hasn’t. This has merely underscored all that you already know. All that you’ve known since the beginning. How is it you say it? I am a scandal waiting to happen?” She tilted her head, feigning deep thought. “Perhaps I have already happened. But, if there were any doubt, the woman standing in that dining room is more than enough, isn’t she?” There was a long silence before she added, in Italian, so softly that he was almost unsure he heard it, “She’s ruined everything. Again.”
There was a devastating sadness in the words, a sadness that echoed around them until he could not bear it. “She’s not you,” he said in her language, as though speaking it in Italian could make her believe it.
She wouldn’t believe it, of course.
But he did.
“Sciocchezze!” Her eyes glistened with angry tears as she resisted his words, calling them nonsense as she turned away, presenting him with her back. He almost didn’t hear the rest of the statement, lost in the harsh hiss of the brush. “She is what I come from. She is what I shall become, isn’t that how it goes?”
The words sliced through him, making him unreasonably furious with her for thinking them, and he reached for her, unable to stop himself. Turned her toward him, met her wide eyes. “Why would you say that?” He heard the roughness in his tone. Tried to clear it. Failed. “Why would you think that?”
She laughed, the sound harsh and without humor. “I’m not the only one. Isn’t that what you believe? Aren’t those the words by which aristocrats like you live? Come now, Your Grace. I’ve met your mother.” Then, in English, “Blood will out, will it not?”