“That’s quite a question to ask, Lawrence,” the earl rebuffed him. “The lady’s father opened his manor to me for discussions of matters relating to courtship, and the disposition of his estate when he passes. I should expect any sudden arrival of myself upon the premises to be met with courtesy, not… well, not whatever it is this virago of a woman has to offer,” Martin said with a look of disdain drawn in Anne’s direction. “She ought to learn where she belongs.”
“She is already quite where she belongs, is she not? This is her family’s estate, after all,” Lawrence laughed. The earl resented the sly remark, his gaze burning in to Lawrence.
“And what are you doing here, then? Were you invited?” he asked harshly.
“In fact I was,” Lawrence said with a smile, though beneath the smile smoldered a sick sense of satisfaction. Anne mirrored his feelings with a surprised little look of joy reaching through her visage, full of scorn. “The viscount and I had quite a nice meal and a discussion on the state of affairs here upon the Roxborough estate.”
“You’re bluffing,” the earl growled. “He and I spoke of an agreement.”
“Kindly see yourself off of the estate property, lest I summon assistance,” Anne’s voice coiled like a snake ready to strike as she exchanged another tense glance with the earl. In a huff, she started towards the stable, sunlight left to bear down upon the two remaining noblemen.
“You think yourself quite clever, don’t you, Lawrence?” the earl said, voice on the edge of threatening.
“I think of myself as a simple man who cares for the autonomy of a woman, and she has little need for a man like yourself in her life, Martin,” Lawrence answered simply.
“She needs precisely someone like myself in her life. Her father has let her run ragged across his estate for who knows quite how long. He’s allowed her to conjure these ideas of some manner of self-determination, as if she has a say in her current position. She does not,” the earl warned.
“And you think yourself the cure for her nature, do you?” Lawrence responded.
“I think of myself as helping her realize she needs me, and my help. Women do not know themselves well enough to realize their own good, much less do they know what’s best for family, for wealth or for the future of their families. And you, Lawrence - I beg a thousand pardons, but you’ve not the spine to stand up to her,” the earl continued.
“Your appraisal of my character is noted, m’lord, but the viscount seems to disagree,” Lawrence said with an unassuming shrug. “For some radical reason, he sees some sense of value in the unruly manner of his daughter. Who’d have thought?” Lawrence asked sarcastically. Nursing his wounds, the earl’s ever-present grin faded into a scowl.
“I’m a man who gets what he wants, Lawrence. I only warn you, and that harpy, once. I get, what I want,” he threatened. “Driver! Let’s be off,” he called to the chauffeur of his gaudy carriage, painted in popping pastel colors that glowed bright in what sunlight remained. A twinge of pride swelled in Lawrence’s chest; even if he could not cure the trouble brewed between himself and Anne, he at least felt some manner of redemption in thwarting the crass nature of the Earl of Carteret. He could not spend long savoring the sound of the earl’s carriage clopping away, though, as he knew it would not be long before the lady of Roxborough rode at a fevered pace out of the stable upon Midnight, carrying her far afield and away from his apologies and explanations.
“M’lady!” he called after her, stumbling with a sense of awkward urgency towards the stable. A simple building hewn of stone with a wooden roof suspended over the animals within, he reached its threshold and peered within, finding the stable hand at Anne’s side, saddling up a horse with skin and a mane colored jet-black; a curious rarity, indeed, and he could understand why the girl had named her steed ‘Midnight’. The seat latched upon the proud creature’s back, the stable hand wheeled a small set of wooden stairs up beside the creature, the rickety device creaking as Anne strode haughtily atop its height to throw herself side-saddle atop the animal.
“M’lady,” the duke repeated, stepping spirited through piles of hay strewn between the simple, spacious stalls, each housing a tall, proud - and certainly quite costly - courser of excellent breeding. His call this time sung out boisterous and convicted, and it caught the eye of both the young, blonde-haired boy tending the stables, and the proud woman atop Midnight, her eyes narrowed dangerous.
“Have you no sense for the emotions of women? Perhaps that’s the reason you’ve remained a bachelor for so long,” Anne spoke cuttingly. Lawrence winced; she had a cruelty about her, but he could sense she defended herself in good faith, and had every reason to do so - especially given the earl’s appearance. “I wish to be alone - and certainly not in your company, m’lord,” she spoke his title with pained sarcasm.
“M’lady, I have no wish of imposing upon you,” the duke insisted, pleading his case in his warm baritone as he approached closer to the midnight-colored horse, “but I feel I owe you an apology, and an explanation. Perhaps more than one,” he said.
“If you’ve no wish of imposing yourself upon me, m’lord, then why are you still here in the stables?” she replied flippantly. “I would think our prior encounter within my father’s domain would’ve reminded you precisely why I’d no wish of speaking with you.”
“I feel the explanation is quite important for you to hear,” the duke insisted.
“Do you? My father has invited every bachelor from across England in waves to this estate, to find one willing to deign to marry so wild and unmanageable woman as myself,” Anne concluded. “Perhaps he’s taken a shine to you on account of your pliability, but he has no interest in my own future, only in the future of his name. I love my father, but…” she wavered as the stable hand latched the reins upon the whinnying creature upon which she said, “…he does not understand me. I have no wish of seeing my family line extinguished, but…” she took a deep breath. “He does not understand precisely how I feel.”
“I think he does, m’lady, and I think I do, too,” the duke counters with a tempered confidence. Anne looked down upon him from her place upon the saddle, a curious shift of perspective given her place in society. “He knows precisely how you are - and precisely that you wish for the freedom a spirit like yours deserves,” the duke announced. “He understands. Which is why he put out an invitation to me - and not to the earl.”
“And do you again presume to understand me or my predicament?” Anne sneered.
“I try to refrain from making such crass assumptions, but in this case, I think I know you more than you like to admit,” the duke expressed, emotion laced frilly and warm in his tone.
“Know me? Pfeh! We spoke over dinner, and only for a few moments, before you folded beneath the pressure of the same world I abhor, spoken with so thick a disgust from that boorish man’s throat,” she howled in disdain.
“I know our exchange did not last long, m’lady, but there’s far more to it than that. I… I feel I do understand you, because like you yourself admitted, we are both chained - chained by the manacles of a world we had no wish of living within, but circumstance has seen us forced into prisons, like birds with wings clipped,” the duke spoke with a passion welling in his tone.
“What do you know of social disadvantage? Has anyone ever told you to do something you had no desire of doing?” Anne spat, gripping the reins of her steed tightly as she prepared to depart.
“They have,” he admitted with a sigh.
“When?” Anne asked derisively, expecting some manner of a silly answer.
“When the law forced me to inherit over my dear sister,” he said. Anne rolled her eyes, but listened nonetheless as the duke paced about the stables, gripped in savage memory.
“Wealth and title can be so burdensome,” she murmured.
“They can,” he called back, jagged as a sharpened sword. “They can. They can ruin your relationship with friends - with family. My sister was…” he sighed. “H
er heart burned like no man I have ever met. She could start a fire from dried lumber as well as she could recite passages from classic literature, or retell the history of a dozen battles, and with such fervor. She taught me to climb trees - and I would fall from their branches far more often than she,” the duke recalled with a lamenting laugh on his lips. “I loved my sister with clearest heart and conviction, m’lady. I had interests abroad - I had found love elsewhere, in exploring the world; in seeing its many worlds and its many peoples. I had wanted the same freedom you clamor for, in that sense, m’lady,” Lawrence admitted, shame burning on his cheeks. “But it was not meant to be for a man with only a single, older sister capable of inheriting. A sister who refused to take a hand in marriage out of want of privilege, or convenience,” he recalled, blustery, a tear biting at his eye. Surprise quieted Anne’s expression as she watched the duke recount his story.
“But you could have… done something, couldn’t you?” Anne pleaded, almost silently.
“I hope not to equivocate your burden with mine, as I know women bear the pain of expectation in their own way,” the duke said, “but we are not so different in our suffering, m’lady. My father expected me to inherit from him. He had no interest in passing the estate to his daughter, a woman far more capable of managing and impressing and socializing and fulfilling all the duty one would expect of a noble,” he lamented. “Yet he refused to consider the possibility, for expectation laid those responsibilities upon my shoulder. And when my sister knew I would fulfill those expectations, though I did not wish to, she turned away from me - from the family,” Lawrence recounted, gripping his fists tightly, so tight in painful memory that his knuckles burned white. Anne caught her breath awkwardly, her visage still spread wide in surprise at the tale.
“And… so…” she reasoned. “Your… your sister, she…”
“Love has eluded me for far longer than I wish to recount, given the expectations upon all of our shoulders as gentlemen and women of privilege in a system that favors marriage, but more than anything - more than love, or greed, or power - I’ve wanted only to see the world set right, so that what happened to my sister shall never happen again,” Lawrence admitted, looking away from the lady upon the horse, watching the sun through the stable window, cresting over a hill as cottony-dark clouds gathered in a cloak across its fiery orange-yellow surface. “I have no wish to dominate you, m’lady. I have no wish to force you to attend silly frippery like the earl’s extravagant dinners. I do not expect you to bear me seven children and knit stockings and clean up after each of them. I have no interest in the conventional. In that, I feel we can find some measure of common ground,” he breathed out, though he could not bring himself to look upon her face and see her response, which he certainly presumed to be rightfully scornful. Instead, silence fell between them, only the spit and whinny of Midnight filling the air. He broke the silence with one last admission. “I do not want that passion, that fire inside of your chest, to die away. I do not want the unconventional to fade.”
“I… m’lord,” Anne responded with a clearing of her throat. “Would… would you like to ride with me?” The question drew surprise across the duke’s expression, his dark-gray eyes narrowing and his brow furrowing in confusion as he turned to find Anne, her cheeks in a subtle blush. “I’m… I’m sure one of my father’s steeds would suit you, if… if you have a mind and a want for riding, that is,” she added with a smile.
“I’ve not much of a… talent for riding,” Lawrence admitted.
“You haven’t?” Anne said with a little smirk. “Perhaps I could show you how, then,” she chirped. Lawrence lamented that he had never spent much time around the stables; he had always preferred hiking, climbing, and traipsing through the wilds of the Amhurst estate by his own will and wherewithal, and not upon the back of a beast of burden.
“Which horse would you suggest then, m’lady?” Lawrence asked. He could see the smirk on Anne’s lips and winced; perhaps he ought not to have asked the delightfully impish woman to make that decision for him.
“Bertold,” she spoke to the stable hand, who looked to her dutifully. “Strap up a saddle for the duke, won’t you? I think he would do well upon Old Burnie, don’t you?” she commented, her words clearly laced with sly intention.
“Old Burnie?” the lord lofted his brow.
“I think Old Burnie would do quite well, indeed, m’lady,” the scoundrel of a stable boy responded as he hurried to the rear of the building.
“What have you got planned for me, then?” Lawrence probed - he smiled and laughed, though he held more fear for her devious decision than he perhaps offered to let on.
“Oh, nothing at all, m’lord, only the finest steed upon the Roxborough estate,” she said with a smile.
Chapter Eight
Fast - air rushing, breeze blowing, trees swaying; their colors a stunning, vibrant array of blazing autumn oranges, browns, and rich, sunny yellows. Clouds gathered dark at the edges of a pristine sky as Midnight’s hooves clamped and smashed and clobbered cobblestones and fallen leaves, until Anne, laughing at the freedom and the joy of being atop her horse’s back once again, with all the world before her to traipse upon as she saw fit, drew her horse’s reigns off-road and into the muddied mires and swaying grasses beyond the far forest.
Nothing in the world felt quite like the freedom of riding - Anne had always treasured the feeling of freedom, whether it be freedom from the frippery of common company or the silliness of domestic boredom; but riding, well… to Anne, even the flight of birds had little on the one thing that made her feel freer than she could anywhere else. The joy of riding across fields, cutting through forests, leaping over streams, with the worries of the world behind her and nothing but her dreams to contain her - the freedom, which she had enjoyed since her childhood, had helped shape that need for exploration; for pushing the limits. She laughed away the worry; she laughed away thoughts of her father, thoughts of the estate; the caging burdens of life that’d fallen onto her shoulder as father wasted away and expectation loomed as dark as the clouds on the horizon. To all of it she simply laughed and drove Midnight along, swerving through weeds; the jet-black steed pursued the wind heedlessly, trampling past an abandoned farmhouse, its thatched roof having rotted away and its stone foundation crumbling like some manner of ancient Grecian ruin, the sort a studious scholar would find in a history book.
Only after so joyously trotting upon Midnight for so long, longer than she could care to remember, well into the waning moments of the afternoon, did Anne of Roxborough remember that she had not galloped alone out onto the moors; worse yet she remembered that the curious man to whom she’d found herself oddly attracted was not, in fact, any good at all with horses, by his own dizzying and embarrassing admission. She looked back in worry from where she’d come and - not surprisingly - saw no sign at all of the charming duke, whom she had tricked quite coyly into mounting the ancient, deep-brown horse, famous Old Burnie, who had run far too many races to spend its twilight years running for quite anyone, much less an inexperienced rider like Lawrence. The smile washed from her expression, replaced with brief worry; she could hear little across the fields save for the soft sway of grass and leaves, tussled about by a worsening breeze. She searched the autumn-tinted trees and their bouncing leaves; she searched the dead farm field, and saw nor heard a single sign of the poor man. She bit her lip, sudden worry shocking her, and she began to scold herself for so thoughtlessly abandoning the duke. Is he okay, she wondered? Worse yet, has he turned from me for my impetuousness? As clouds drew in closer, her worry deepened; she had not noticed that storm clouds had begun to blot out the sun, muting its color and bringing fear to her spine, should she fail to find the duke amid this mire.
Suddenly, a faint gallop came to Anne’s ear, and like an alerted hawk her senses shot towards the edge of the trees. There, what she saw tilted her worrisome frown into a slow, warm smile; trotting pensively between muddied pile and swaying waves of gr
ass, Lawrence emerged from a line of orange-brown autumn trees, gripping onto Old Burnie’s reigns with all the terrified strength he could manage. She stifled another chuckle, as the horse stumbled and jaunted at a pace that could only be described as embarrassing. He looked up, his eyes crossed with an expression not unlike that of a child balancing precariously upon a tightrope, his gaze stricken with awed fear at the pace of the beast beneath him.
“It’s been such a pleasant ride, hasn’t it? Old Burnie never disappoints his prideful riders,” Anne called sarcastically across the field to Lord Strauss; the sound startled the poor man, whose grip on the horse’s reins tightened. Old Burnie responded to Anne’s voice, perhaps taking the words as a challenge. The horse picked up speed and began bounding towards the woman, and Lawrence’s gaze shifted from terrified to… well, to even more terrified, as the horse threatened to throw the poor lord off of his back with each awkwardly bucking burst of speed.
“This blasted creature—” the duke howled, bouncing with a bare grip on Old Burnie’s reins as the beast trotted across the dead field. “How do you tell it to slow down?!”
“Slow down? You could walk faster than Pierre is carrying you!” Anne laughed.
“Perhaps I sh-should!” Lawrence responded, squeezing the reins tightly as his horse finally began to slow, the sudden burst of tepid speed having drained its stamina. With a quiet yip Anne led Midnight along the field to meet the duke; she skillfully led Midnight to a quick, light-hoof trot in a wide circle around poor Burnie, and the even more unfortunate man upon the creature’s back; the beast snorted and trotted while Anne paced curious circles.
Desiring The Duke (Regency Romance: Strong Women Find True Love Book 4) Page 6