“But you’re not a member of the Jockey Club yourself? You don’t race any of the horses?”
“No.”
“Why not? You’re a stone’s throw from Newmarket.”
He shrugged. “Never wanted to. I don’t like attending the races.” When she looked as though she might question him further on the subject, he quickly added, “I’m not interested in the glory.”
“And you don’t really need the money. So why do it?”
“Because I’m good at it. And I enjoy it.”
She rested her chin on her hand, in an attitude of reflection. “Two ways of saying the same thing.”
“I suppose they are.”
As they watched the foals a minute longer, he warmed inside. Somehow he’d known, from the moment she pressed that meticulously embroidered handkerchief into his hands, that she would comprehend this. The deep satisfaction that came from doing something exceptionally well, with both care and skill, regardless of public acclaim. And he understood, suddenly, why she kept angling to plan meals, host guests, nurture everyone around her. These were the things she did well; the things that brought her true enjoyment.
“And Osiris?” she asked. “You’re so determined to have him for your own—or at least reduce the number of the club. That’s to protect the superiority of your breeding stock, I assume? If he’s too widely available, the demand for your horses could decrease.”
He loved how quickly her mind worked. She’d grasped the business rationale instinctively. Spencer often purchased retired racehorses he had no intention of breeding, just so their offspring wouldn’t dilute his own stock’s value. And he gave them an idyllic pension in open pasture, so it worked out well for the horses, too.
“Yes,” he said, “limiting his breeding will be one benefit.”
“But it’s not the real reason you want him. That benefit can’t be worth tens of thousands of pounds.”
Suddenly he realized how far this conversation had strayed, and how it was now on course to collide with some long-held secrets. His body stiffened, as though encased in armor. “How does this pertain to riding lessons?”
“It doesn’t. But I’m not truly here for the horses. I just want to know you, Spencer. I want to understand.”
She laid a hand next to his on the fence rail. Her little finger just barely grazed his, but the warmth in that touch went a long way toward melting his resistance. His conscience tore down the rest.
Long before his uncle died, he’d made a bargain with himself. Yes, he would assume the title and do his duty, but he’d do it on his own terms. To the devil with what people said or thought. He wasn’t going to explain himself to anyone. But cards aside, he had a keen sense of fairness. On their wedding night, he’d demanded her body, her loyalty, her trust. In return, she’d asked only some answers. Now that she’d given him everything so freely, it felt wrong to deny her this.
“Very well.” He offered his arm, and she took it. “I can better explain inside.” Keeping her close, he led her back into the horse barn and down to the farthest end. She tensed against his arm as they neared Juno’s stall, and he knew she was remembering his harsh words to her the night previous.
“I regret shouting at you,” he said, stopping a few feet from the mare’s stall, “but I was concerned for your safety. As I’ve said, Juno bites. And kicks, as you saw last night. She doesn’t like new people. Or most people, for that matter.” He sighed heavily. “She’s the devil’s own nag, is what she is.”
Amelia cast a wary glance at the mare, and Juno released a gruff snort, as if in confirmation. “Then why do you keep her?”
“Because no one else would. She’s the first horse I ever bought in this country. My father left me a small legacy, and when I came of age, I took the funds to an auction and came home with this creature. I was young and stupid—made my decision based on pedigree without taking temperament into account. She was four years old and had noble bloodlines and some modest racing success. Thought I’d made a fine bargain. What I didn’t know was that she’d always trotted the line between spirited and flat-out dangerous, depending on her rider, and she’d spent the previous year boarded at some country estate, in the care of an incompetent stable master. She’d been kept tethered in a dank stall, barely groomed, beaten often.”
He stopped and drew a deep breath. Even now, he felt the old fury rising in his chest. When he’d mastered his voice, he went on, “By the time I bought her, her trust in men had been completely destroyed. No one could saddle her. No one could even get near her without risking his fingers. Clearly we’d never be able to breed her. My uncle wanted to put her down, but I wouldn’t allow it.”
“You wouldn’t?” Amelia stroked his arm in a sympathetic manner.
“Oh, it wasn’t so noble as it sounds,” he told her. “Pride was my true motive. I’d bought the damned mare, and I didn’t want to lose the investment. Or admit defeat.” Releasing Amelia, he walked forward to offer his hand to Juno. She nosed his fingers with rough affection, then turned her head to offer him her favorite spot under her left ear. She liked to be rubbed there, so he humored her for a bit.
“I took personal responsibility for her and then turned her out to pasture for a full year,” he said. “Made no attempts to train her, asked nothing of her. I fed her, watered her, groomed her as much as she’d allow. Even once I’d gained her trust, it took a full year of slow training to ride her. With time, I was able to break her to halter, bridle, eventually saddle … Strangely enough, those rides were what finally improved her disposition. As if that’s what she’d been waiting for, been needing—the chance to carry a rider and gallop across an open park. So I began riding her regularly, and her mood improved. Now it’s our habit. She’ll let the stablehands feed and groom her, but to this day, I’m still the only rider she’ll allow.”
He looked to Amelia, and she gave him a slight, disarming smile. It occurred to him he’d been talking for an uncharacteristically long time, and she’d been standing there patiently for a long time, too—pointedly silent, unwilling to interrupt until he finished.“She’s getting old,” he went on. “Too old to be ridden by anyone, much less a man my size. I’ve always been more weight than she really ought to carry. But if I try tapering off the frequency of our rides, she grows touchy again. Starts refusing to eat, kicks at the stall. I hate to keep riding her, but I’m more concerned about what will happen if I stop altogether.” He rubbed the mare’s withers briskly, then stepped back and folded his arms. “That’s where Osiris comes in.”
“Osiris?” she asked, obviously baffled.
“It’s difficult to explain.”
Again, she gave him that patient, friendly silence.
So he explained, and found it wasn’t so difficult after all. “I’d been trying to learn more about Juno’s early years, to see if there might be something else to calm her, or someone else she once trusted. A groom, a jockey perhaps. It wasn’t easy, so many years after the fact. But I found the farm where she’d been bred to racing age, and the old stable master was pensioned but still living nearby. He remembered her, of course. He told me she’d always been difficult—no surprise—but that in her second year she’d formed a strong bond with an orphaned colt. Horses are much like people, you see. They form friendships and often remember one another, even if parted. We once had a pair of geldings who’d been separated for years, but once they …”
He stopped, absorbing the fact that her blue eyes had grown wide as shillings. God, he knew this would sound ridiculous spoken aloud.
“So this colt that she bonded with … it was Osiris?”
“Yes.” He tapped his heel defensively. “I know it sounds absurd, but it was the only possibility I could think of. Juno’s never socialized well with the other horses here. But I thought if she’d bonded with Osiris in her early years, before the horrific abuse she endured, perhaps she’d warm to him again and have some companionship to … to soothe her.”
They stared at one another for a while.
“So …” She pursed her lips around the drawn-out word. “This is why you’re pursuing Osiris. You’re willing to spend tens of thousands, rearrange your life, risk the fortunes of others—including my own brother—all so your ill-tempered mare can be reunited with her childhood friend?”
“Yes.”
The surprise in her expression suggested she’d been expecting him to protest, but really … Amelia was a clever woman. She had it pegged. He hadn’t anything else to say.
“Yes,” he repeated. “Yes, I put your brother in insurmountable debt just to buy my old, crotchety horse a consort. Make of it what you will.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you what I make of it.” She closed the distance between them, step by slow, deliberate step. “Spencer … Philip … St. Alban … Dumarque. You”—she jabbed a finger in the center of his chest—“are a romantic.”
The air left his lungs. Damned inconvenient, that—because bloody hell, if ever there was an accusation he needed the breath to refute …
“Oh, yes,” she said. “You are. I’ve seen your bookshelves, and all those stormy paintings. First Waverley, now this …”
“It’s not romanticism, for God’s sake. It’s … it’s simple gratitude.”
“Gratitude?”
“This horse saved me, as much as I saved her. I was nineteen, and my father had died. I’d spent my youth bashing about the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly I was here, preparing to inherit a dukedom. I was angry and unfocused and out of my element, and so was this horse, and … and we tamed one another, somehow. I owe her a debt for that.”
“You’re only making it worse, you know.” She smiled. “Keep talking, and I might just deem you a sentimental fool.”
He was about to object, but then her hand flattened and crept inside his coat. The bronze fringe of her eyelashes fluttered as she leaned forward. Her breasts pressed against his chest, soft velvet on the surface and softer still beneath. Perhaps he should rethink his disavowals. Really, he had no objection to this.
He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face to his. And then, because it suddenly seemed he should have had a reason to do that, he asked her, “You know all my names?”
“Yes, of course. From the parish register.”
He froze, recalling the image of her poised over that register, quill in hand, peering down at it for long, agonizing moments. He’d thought she was having misgivings, and she’d merely been memorizing his name. Some emotion ballooned inside him, hot and dizzying and much too vast for his chest to contain it. And for a moment, Spencer wondered if he just might be a sentimental fool after all.
“It was just …” Her voice broke as he slid his hand along the smooth, delicate flesh of her neck. “You already knew my middle name.”
“Claire,” he murmured.
Her pulse leapt against his palm.
Smiling a little, he lowered his lips to hers. “It’s Claire. Amelia Claire.”
Ah, the sweetness of this kiss. The softness, the warmth. The soul-shaking beauty of it. He took her mouth tenderly, and her arms slid around his chest under his coat, and … and oh, God. This was so, so different from any of their kisses since they’d wed. They hadn’t kissed standing up since they’d shared that first incendiary embrace in her brother’s study, and deuce if he knew why not. When they kissed like this, it emphasized how small she was against him. He had to bend his head to reach her lips, shore her up with his arms so his kiss wouldn’t send her stumbling back on her heels. When he held her this way, she felt delicate and breakable in his arms. And he knew Amelia was anything but fragile, but for some loutish, deeply male reason he liked pretending she was. Cradling her tight against him, giving her the heat of his body, inclining his head to cherish her lips with the softest, most tender of kisses … as though her mouth were a delicate blossom and those dewy pink petals would scatter if he dared breathe too hard. As though he needed to be very, very careful.