And she didn’t intend to ride him today—she wasn’t daft. But she would. Soon. And the start would be getting him used to her presence. She halted a bit away from his stall, out of range of hooves but close enough for him to catch her scent. “He is well groomed for being unbroken.”
The man grunted. “It takes two of us to get him secured, and then we draw lots to see who risks getting bit or kicked. Stay clear of him, milady, I beg you. He’d better to have been named after the devil than darkness.”
Oscuro pawed the air again, showing off his musculature and powerful frame. “He wants to run free.”
“Aye, and he can never be off the tether, or he’ll be over the fence and gone. Leave him be, now. We have a mare, just as handsome, same coloring—share a sire, they do, but this one’s trained for the sidesaddle. Her name’s Tempesta, but she’s got patience to match her spirit.”
Brook turned to face the groom—slowly, so as not to startle Oscuro. “I don’t care for the sidesaddle. I will be riding astride.”
Temper flashed in his eyes. “The young ladies always ride sidesaddle, milady. Lady Melissa is a most excellent horsewoman too. I’ve accompanied her many a time. Let me saddle Tempesta for you and we can go. His lordship said we ought to show you all the estate.”
She tried on her sweetest smile. “I do appreciate the offer … what is your name?”
He heaved a sigh, but the fight didn’t leave his eyes. “Francis, milady.”
“Francis.” He seemed immune to her grin, but she brightened it anyway. “I am happy to take the horse you recommend—though with a traditional saddle. But much as I appreciate your offer, I don’t need an escort today. I’ll not go far.” Not too far.
Francis’s returning smile looked about as warm as last week’s unrelenting rain. “I’ll fetch the horses, milady.”
Horses, plural. She sighed as he strode away and then turned slowly back to Oscuro. He kicked at the stall. She nodded. “I know how you feel,” she said in Monegasque. “I have not been alone for over a week, save for when I sleep, and I am about to kick something too.”
She was enjoying the time with her family. Aunt Mary was welcoming, if a bit aloof, Regan sweet as could be, and Melissa’s offense on her sister’s behalf seemed to be fading. But Brook had not been so surrounded by people … ever. The prince had given her the run of the palace, and more often than he liked, she slipped out without a chaperone and took herself to ballet lessons or for a spicy salsiccia. Or to find Justin, if he was in Monaco.
Footsteps sounded behind her, along with a sigh she knew quite well already. “Naturally, you find the dangerous one.”
Her grin, she had discovered, worked quite well on her father. She flashed it at him now. “He is the handsomest. Are you the one who gave them Italian names?”
Whitby hummed, nodded, and held out his palm. Oscuro ignored him, but given his behavior otherwise, it was surely the equivalent of a whinny of greeting from any other horse. “Not all of them, of course, but it seemed to suit him and his sister. Francis said he is saddling Tempesta for you.”
“Oui. F—” Father, she almost said, but stopped herself. She had not called him such yet, and she would not now, when she was trying to wheedle him into something. “Francis said he must come with me.”
Her father lifted his brow. “This is a problem?”
She splayed her hands. “Do you always like company on your rides?”
“I am a man.” No doubt he tried to keep his expression clear—but she thought she detected amusement in it.
Now Brook planted those hands on her hips. “And I inherited your disposition.”
“You’ll never let me live that down.”
“You’d never want me to.”
Yes, definitely amusement. It made his lips twitch. “And you’ve only been home a week.”
She flashed her grin again. “Imagine when it’s been a year.”
He clasped his hands behind his back, sent his gaze over her shoulder, and rocked on his heels. “An hour, and you must stay on Whitby land.”
“Two hours.”
His brows lifted. “But the boundary?”
“Accepted.”
“Done.” He held out a hand.
She shook it, unable to stifle the laugh as she did. “You are an admirable negotiator.”
“Ha! You are an unabashed flatterer. Francis!”
Brook scurried to keep pace as he strode down the open space between the stalls. “He seems to think I need a sidesaddle, too, if we could correct him on that at the same time.”
Her father came to an abrupt halt and turned to her with that expression of fond disbelief he had given her at least forty times in the last seven days. “You ride astride?”
“Have you ever tried to ride sidesaddle?”
A short laugh slipped out. “The prince taught you?”
“Grand-père … allowed it.”
Whitby’s eyes went to slits again. “Let me guess …”
“Justin taught me.” A phrase she had uttered a matching forty times. “It is all his fault, really, every bit of unconventionalness … Is that a word?”
A snort was his only answer. He took two more steps, then halted again. Lifted a finger. “How, if you don’t mind me asking, do you ride astride in a skirt?”
Brook kicked a leg out a bit, revealing the split that was all but invisible when she stood still.
He pressed a hand to his brow and moved onward. “My daughter is wearing trousers.”
“Oh, there’s no need to sound so horrified. They are not trousers exactly.”
His grunt disagreed. “Your mother would kill me.”
“Nonsense. She wouldn’t have let a little thing like a split skirt upset her. Although now that you mention it, trousers would be far more efficient.”
“Heaven help me. Next thing I know you’ll be joining the suffragettes.”
She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and grinned up at him. “I’d rather learn to drive. Justin taught me a bit in his Rolls-Royce in Monaco.”
“Of course he did.”
“But not nearly enough. Have you learned how? You could teach me.”
He sent her another look she had already learned—one that said her grin had reached the limits of its powers. For now. “I employ a chauffeur.”
“So I should learn from him?” They reached the stall where Francis worked on another midnight-black horse. This one greeted them properly, to the point of snuffling at her father’s pockets. Apparently in search of sugar, since he produced a cube of it.
“Try it and I’ll lock you in your chamber as your Justin recommended. Francis—no sidesaddle for the baroness. And she has my permission to ride alone.” He raised a finger and leveled it at her nose. “Two hours. On our land. Or I dig up the key—it is surely around somewhere.”
“Mrs. Doyle no doubt knows where it is.” And, she suspected, would happily hand it over. Brook had yet to earn more than a polite turning of the lips from her. She held out a hand for Tempesta to sniff. Getting a damp snort of approval, she rubbed the mare’s ebony nose. “But about the driving.”
“No.”
Francis exited the stall with the sidesaddle in hand, shooting her a look that said quite simply she was not what he thought a baroness should be.
Brook focused on her father. “Another deal, then. If I can break Oscuro within two months’ time, you let me learn to drive.”
He was a master at the arched eyebrow, this father of hers. “You expect to convince me to let you learn one dangerous task by promising to do another?”
“He was born to race.” Her tone went more serious than she’d intended. Her fingers curled into her skirt. “Some creatures have a harder time obeying the standards put before them. But if you can inspire them to, they will outdo all the rest. You must simply learn their language.”
She expected him to ask if she had ever broken a horse before. She was prepared to tell him all about her favorite mount in Mona
co, how she had finally ridden him over the French hills after months of work.
He didn’t ask but studied her until Francis returned with a regular saddle and a stony countenance. Then he sighed. “Two months?”
“Well. Assuming I’m not forbidden from stepping out in the rain.” As she had been all last week. Granted, it had been abysmally chilly, but she would have suffered it for the sake of a horse. “And then the car.”
Whitby turned to face the end of the aisle again, where Oscuro still snorted and fumed. “This is certainly no life for him. If he can be trained—”
“Your lordship!” Aghast, Francis paused in his reach for the girth strap. “You’ve the best trainers in all Yorkshire. If they canna break him, then he canna be broken.”
“Or …” Whitby faced her again, met her gaze. “They did not speak his language. Sometimes when we think someone should understand English, they really only know … French.”
Brook’s heart swelled, warmed.
Francis looked ready to snort along with Oscuro. “You want we should speak French to him?”
Another twitch of his lips, but her father didn’t turn to the groom. “If you can do it, my dear, then I will not only allow you to learn to drive, I will learn with you.”
She held out her hand as he had done before. “Done.”
Rather than shaking, he clasped her hand in both of his and squeezed it. “Be careful. If you’re not back in precisely two hours, I’ll send out the hounds to find you.”
“Thank you.” She stretched up on her toes so she could kiss his left cheek, then his right. When she had said farewell to Justin that way a week ago, Aunt Mary had played her fainting trick again and had lectured her for a solid hour afterward.
Her father half-smiled, as if remembering the same thing. “The sea abuts our property on the east, of course. To the south, you may go so far as the copse of trees beyond the duck pond. To the west, so far as the road leading to the village, and to the north, all the way to the hedge dividing our land from Delmore.”
“Delmore?”
“Pratt’s estate. It’s a sprawling, mazelike monstrosity that has a strange charm I think you’ll enjoy seeing.”
She wrinkled her nose at the name. “I’d just as soon not.”
He chuckled. “Enjoy yourself. Perhaps tomorrow, if the weather holds, we can take a morning ride together.”
“I can think of no better way of starting the day than with a ride.”
He moved off, greeting a few of the horses with the same muted affection he gave his family. Muted, but sure. Solid.
Brook watched him step into the weak sunshine and turned to Tempesta. Francis led her out of the stall and handed Brook the reins with nary a word. He gave her the exact same flat stare her maid—whom she was apparently now to call O’Malley—had when she saw the split skirt. Silent, screaming disapproval.
And they all wondered why she needed a solitary ride.
She adjusted the stirrups and then swung up into the saddle. Its leather was supple, well worn and well cared for. She settled comfortably into it, gathered the reins, and patted the horse’s neck. “Allons-y, ma fille.”
Go she did, at a high-stepping walk from the stables, into a trot southward with the barest of whispers, and to a full gallop when Brook gave her rein. Tempesta’s hooves ate up the ground, raining clods of dirt down behind them.
Before they left the lawn, Brook reached up and unpinned her hat so she could toss it to the ground. She needed the wind to whip through her hair and blow away all the frustrations. She needed to be free, to discover, to find her place.
Find it she did, at the southeast corner, where the land rose before tumbling into the sea. The waves before her, a cliff under her, the moors rolling out behind … not exactly the seascape she had grown up with, but close enough. Beautiful enough. Enough.
For a moment after reining Tempesta to a halt, she merely closed her eyes and breathed it in. Whispered a thank-you to the Lord, and then a please. An outpouring. An in-taking. Then she slid down so her own feet could test the earth.
Were the wind not gusting off the ocean, she would have withdrawn from her pocket the two letters she had chosen to read today. One from her father, one from her mother. He had traveled a good deal, it seemed, in those days. And whenever they were apart, they would write.
Of love. Of family. Of yearning to be together again.
She had matched up the dates as best she could for the two stacks, which had taken most of one rainy afternoon … especially given how often she had to pause to laugh at something Regan or Melissa said as they all worked on their projects together in the upstairs salon. Reading them she was taking slowly as well. Familiarizing herself with each loop in her mother’s hand, in the quick dash of her father’s. Their favorite phrases, their nicknames for each other.
According to the dates, she was drawing near to the time when they would mention her, as in that first letter of her father’s she had spotted. Though she knew already there would not be many letters for her to read for that time—they had not been apart then. She had mentioned the gap in dates as she was correlating them, and Aunt Mary had given her an indulgent smile.
“When Ambrose found out Lizzie was expecting, he could not be dragged from her side,” she had said. “Not until necessity dictated it right before …”
Before that night. The night the carriage careened off the road and everything changed.
The wind shifted, and the warmth she had worked up on the ride went the way of the sunshine—swept away by the clouds. With a shiver, Brook pulled out her watch from her pocket. She still had time, but if the sun didn’t reemerge, she would be half frozen before she reached home.
After mounting again, she set a slower pace toward the house. By the time she had found her hat and gained the stables, she was shivering. She handed the reins back over to the brooding Francis.
Coffee. She needed coffee.
“Brook!” Regan waved to her from the terrace outside the library. She sat with her sister and mother, looking positively warm in her short-sleeved afternoon dress. “Tea?”
Striding their way, Brook chafed her hands together and smiled for her cousin. “Aren’t you cold out here?”
Regan laughed. “Are you jesting? It’s lovely.”
Aunt Mary reached for her teapot. “Strong or weak today, dear?”
She had tried both. She cared for neither. Grinning, she said, “Caffe espresso. Can your pot produce that? If I beg?”
Her aunt laughed and motioned toward the house. “No. But I daresay the chef’s can. Ask him for some and join us.”
Funny—the two times she had dared request coffee since Justin left, she had been delivered a cup of pale, watery stuff unfit for consumption. “I’ve been warned away from the kitchen—how, then, do I put in this request?”
“Oh, nonsense.” Aunt Mary sipped at her tea, her stern gaze belying her pleasant smile. “Don’t let the servants intimidate you, child, or you will never manage the house. You are mistress. Go where you will. Ask for what you want.”
Mistress. Not a role that seemed hers, with Aunt Mary presiding over teas and dinner and Whitby in control of all else.
But her aunt was right. If she ever hoped to be accepted by the household, she had to earn their respect. And she wouldn’t do that playing the mouse. With a smile, she nodded and made for the library door. “I shall return with caffe.”
The door opened noiselessly, shut with a click. A rustle of newspaper from the corner proved her presence had been noted though, and her father peered over the top of the page with smiling eyes. “With twenty minutes to spare, even. All in one piece, are you?”
“So long as you are not counting hairpins. Although I would like to lodge a complaint—your air here is too cold. Might we import some Mediterranean breezes?”
He chuckled and raised the paper again. “I’ll have some shipped, posthaste.”
The rows of books were tempting, as was the fire in
the grate. But the allure of coffee kept her feet moving through the room. She would settle into her leather chair after tea, before the dressing gong. It had become her favorite hour of the day.
The halls grew less familiar as she neared the stairs down to the kitchen. Her mother must have walked this path countless times, on her way to plan the menu with the old cook. Brook tried to picture her here, the true mistress about her duties. She would have been comfortable, in her element. Humming, perhaps. She would have smiled as she descended and the sound of laughter drifted up to her.
Brook felt like an interloper.
“Aw, come now, DeeDee. Have a cup with your lowly friends.” A male voice, though Brook couldn’t place it.
The answering laugh she knew, though Melissa and Regan had been the ones to draw it out before. “That’s O’Malley to you, Hiram. And sure and if I do, her ladyship will return the self-same moment all covered in mud and needing my assistance.”
Her cue. Clearing her throat in warning, Brook descended the last steps and turned the corner into the kitchen.
The servants all leaped to their feet or halted their work. Brook smiled at the group at large. “Don’t mind me. I only need a word with Monsieur Bisset.” Those about tasks resumed them. Those about their tea shifted from foot to foot without retaking their seats.
She had learned that the English took their teatime quite seriously—so she would hurry. She turned to the rotund man frowning from his place at the stove. “Bon après-midi, monsieur. Ça va?”
He turned back to the simmering pot. “I am busy,” he answered in French.
French … but not quite French. Hadn’t they said he was from Paris? Or was it only that he was schooled in Paris? She stuck to français. “And it smells delicious. I will trouble you only for a moment.” Her gaze went to the beautiful, miraculous, life-promising machine in the corner. How had he come by the exact model the prince had insisted on for the palace? They weren’t cheap, and she couldn’t think that Whitby had bought it, given that he never drank espresso. It must be the monsieur’s, and he must have spent years of savings on it. Was he simply unwilling to share with her? But if so, then why had he produced a pot when Justin was here?
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