The Honorable Nobody (Heroines on Horseback Book 2)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  “Goodness!” Grainne said when they were alone at last in the bedchamber set aside for Lydia. “You’ve got it bad for Perry, haven’t you?”

  “Got — Perry — what?” Lydia sat down on the bed, utterly confused.

  “You’re in love.” Grainne clarified. “With Peregrin Fawkes.”

  Lydia gasped. “That’s not possible!” she said weakly. “I fear you are mistaken.”

  “And yet you blush and you shake and you gasp when I suggest it.” Grainne was kind but scornful. “Darling, I know about falling in love. I did it just a few years ago. Besides, I knew that you thought yourself in love with him. You told me so yourself. But the performance you just treated us all to? That’s decided it. You’re going to have to marry him.”

  Lydia supposed the only possible explanation was that Grainne had gone mad. Or she had, and was imagining this entire conversation. There was no possibility this was really happening.

  But she had forgotten just how frank and untraditional Grainne could be. Now Grainne was giving her a hard poke in her shoulder. “We’re going to make sure the two of you are well taken care of, don’t you worry about that! I love Peregrin too well to see him brought low by an imprudent marriage, and I’m that fond of you, as well, you know.” Grainne grinned wickedly, the sort of grin Lydia usually associated with stable-boys who had forgotten they were in polite company. Lydia could only gape. Grainne just shook her head knowingly.

  There was a knock on the door. Lydia turned her head in some relief. “Yes?”

  “It’s Mary, miss.”

  Well, Mary’s brusque judgements would hardly be more comforting than Grainne’s mad schemes, but at least Mary understood the necessity of marrying well. “Come in,” she called, and smiled apologetically at Grainne. “Mary has been with me many years. My mother trusts her utterly,” she added meaningfully, and Grainne narrowed her eyes, nodding.

  Mary came into the room with her usual efficiency, a basin and towel in her hands, and stopped abruptly when she saw the lady of the house sitting on the bed. “My lady,” she said woodenly, and dropped the smallest of curtseys. “I’ll come back.”

  “No, no, it is fine,” Grainne said airily, waving her hand to show Mary to carry on with her work. “I will leave you to freshen up our Miss Dean. And I will have tea sent up, as well. Take your time, Miss Dean.” And with a final squeeze of her hand, which ground Lydia’s bones together abominably, Grainne got up from the bed and went out of the room, clicking the door closed behind her.

  Mary looked Lydia over in a knowing assessment. “She’s upset you,” the maid said after a moment. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s nothing,” Lydia lied, shaking her head. It was pointless to lie to Mary, of course, but she was too worked up in her thoughts to want to try and talk about it. Mary was only going to put Grainne down if she knew that the countess was trying to convince Lydia to follow her heart and pursue her attachment to Mr. Fawkes, and Lydia felt too near tears for such a conversation to happen.

  Mary worked her jaw a little, clearly annoyed that she was being left out, and then handed Lydia a wet towel without ceremony. “Wash your face,” she commanded. “You can go down and have tea with the household.”

  Lydia took the towel without thinking. “I don’t want to go downstairs,” she protested weakly. “Lady Archwood is having tea sent up.”

  “Lord Sutton is down there, so that’s where you belong.” Mary said firmly. “I’ll just find you a dress… have your trunks been brought up?” Mary turned around in a circle, hands on her hips. There was a rap on the door and she bustled over and flung the door open. Lydia watched the proceedings as she rubbed the wet towel over her tired face: the way Mary scowled at the footman with the chest on his shoulder as if he were personally to blame for its lateness in being unloaded from the carriage; the look on his face as she harangued him; the extreme carefulness with which he set the trunk down precisely where she directed him; the way he backed out of the room in his scarlet and gold livery as if she were a princess. Mary would always rule the roost, Lydia thought wearily. And she’d have her way in Lydia’s life as she did in everything else, no doubt. If Mary announced that Lydia would marry Lord Sutton, then it was pretty certain, despite all the efforts of a countess, that the lady’s maid would get her way.

  “This dress will do just fine; it hasn’t crushed at all.” Mary announced, holding up a day gown of flowing muslin, dotted with pale blue. “And the blue will bring out your eyes.” She brought it over. “Should have had all your dresses done in blue.”

  Lydia sighed and gave herself over to Mary’s hard-handed ministrations. She might be exhausted with travel and worried to death over the two men that were waiting for her downstairs, but it didn’t matter once Mary had the bit between her teeth. The bit! Oh, what an unfortunate metaphor… Lydia shuddered involuntarily at the thought of a horse. She was going to have to ride, as well?

  Ride horses, avoid the man she was in love with, enchant the man who had walked out on her in London. Somehow, Lydia had always thought a stay in the country was supposed to be restful. Well, not this one, she thought grimly, wincing as Mary ripped a hair-brush through her travel-tossed ringlets. But come on top (assuming she wasn’t killed by a horse) and she’d be done with all these games, forever.

  Although forever without Peregrin Fawkes sounded rather dreary to her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Are you ready for your riding lesson, Miss Dean?”

  Lydia barely managed to stop herself from shrieking and running from the room.

  After all, she had only been at Tivington one night, and already this cursed riding experiment was being forced down her throat. Wasn’t she even to be allowed to settle in? To rest after her journey? Lydia supposed it was all Mary’s fault — everyone had remarked upon her impressive resilience when she had come down to join the party for tea instead of resting in her chamber after her journey’s end. And so Grainne had proposed that she start riding immediately, so as to get the most good out of her time here, and Lydia had barely stuttered an unhappy agreement when the countess had looked across the room to where a very quiet Mr. Fawkes was standing by the fire, and suggested that he give her lessons.

  And so here she was, and here he was. Mr. Fawkes, looking more handsome than she could have believed in his riding costume, waiting for her.

  She was ready for him, she thought, hardly believing she was capable of such a wicked idea. But the riding…

  She wasn’t ready for her riding lesson — she was dreading it, she was petrified, she had barely slept a wink the night before! Well, perhaps that last bit was over-done — she had certainly slept. But she fancied there had been nightmares about slavering jaws of great demonic horses to disturb her slumber. Surely that explained the dark shadows under her eyes, which Mary had not let her powder over this morning. Mary was really getting altogether too big for her boots, Lydia thought, and then she realized that Mr. Fawkes was watching her absorbed expression with something halfway between amusement and chagrin. She jumped up and shook out her skirts, embarrassed.

  “Oh! I am ready,” she said hastily. “Lady Archwood has even fitted me out with an old habit that she says I can get messy.” Lydia paused and ran her fingers over the thick dark cloth of the forest-green riding habit. “I’m not going to get messy though, am I?” She couldn’t think of anyway one could step from the front steps into the saddle of a waiting horse and get messy along the way.

  Unless…

  She fell off…

  Surely Grainne hadn’t meant she would fall from the horse! She gulped and looked up at Mr. Fawkes with round, worried eyes, and he reached out and took her hand.

  “No harm will come to you, Miss Dean,” he said gently, his expression tender. “Grainne only meant that we will be doing some work with the horses in the stables, and you will get a bit messy then. Horses are not tidy, you see — it’s our job to make them so shiny and clean before we take them out and parade th
em in front of our neighbors!”

  Lydia was so overcome by the touch of his hand, and the gentleness of his face, that she could scarcely voice an objection to the worrisome notion that they were going to do grooms’ work in the stables. If she had had her head on straight, she would have realized that her mother would never have allowed her to do anything so menial, but then again, her mother wasn’t there, and Mr. Fawkes was, and that, quite frankly, was the only thing that mattered to Lydia’s feverish brain right now.

  Mr. Fawkes, and his touch, and his gentle brown eyes — and the shivers of sensation flowing through Lydia’s skin. She felt as if she was going to catch fire.

  The stables at Tivington were as modern and up-to-date as a mews could be, and the horses had their heads over their stall doors, watching the doings in the cobbled yard with great interest. Grooms were strapping off horses with twisted rolls of straw, rolling off wheelbarrows of soiled straw and hay, and rubbing away at tack on stands set up in the warm spring sunlight. Lydia, who avoided the more utilitarian sides of her father’s estate, had never seen such industry. “It’s like a little town of its own!” she exclaimed.

  Mr. Fawkes eyed the scene with evident satisfaction. “The horses here are kept as well as princes and princesses,” he proclaimed. “Loose boxes, paddocks, the most scientific feeding procedures — no one takes care of their cattle like the Archwoods. That’s why I’ve brought my young prospect here.”

  “Oh, you have a young horse?” That sounded very charming. Lydia imagined a bandy-legged foal, its eyes large and round, dainty whiskers on a soft muzzle. She had never actually touched a foal, always refusing her father’s invitations to visit the young stock at their own estate, but she thought now, faced with all those monstrous long faces watching her from across the yard, that meeting a foal might be much easier for the first introduction to horses. “Might I see it?”

  “Him, and yes you may,” Mr. Fawkes agreed, beaming down at her.

  Lydia took a moment to admire his happy smile, the way his entire face lit up at the thought of his dear little foal, and then she tucked her elbow into his arm once more and let him lead her across the yard.

  The horses watched with great interest, a few throwing their heads up and down, and making rumbling noises from deep in their chests, as if they were greeting the pair, but Lydia tried very hard not to look at them. Already her chest was constricting and she could feel a little wobble in her knees. So many horses. Too many horses. Entirely too many teeth.

  But the stall door they were making for had no head poking out of it. No one watching them or shouting for them to come and visit. That was because it was a little foal, Lydia reasoned. It couldn’t see out of the stall. Poor thing — they should have cut the door lower. She started to stop thinking about how frightened she was and instead thought about how unfortunate the cunning little foal must be. She would have a word with Mr. Fawkes about its care. There was no reason for a baby animal to have to live in a dark stall without any fresh air! Quivering with indignation, she stepped right up to the stall door alongside Mr. Fawkes and peered into the stall.

  “Come along, then, Reynard,” Mr. Fawkes called pleadingly. “Don’t be such a sad sack.”

  “That’s not a foal!” Lydia was shocked. In the corner of the stall, his face shoved into the wall, was a tall red horse. True, his legs did seem improbably long, like a foal’s, but there was no doubt at all that this was no foal. He was as tall as the other horses in the yard — he was just acting terribly oddly, she thought. Everyone else had their heads out, nodding and neighing, but Mr. Fawkes’ horse was just standing in the corner, head down —

  Until he wasn’t —

  Mr. Fawkes had snatched her by the arm and wrenched her away quite before she knew what was happening. They stood well back from the door, where the horse was now leaning out, shaking its head like a villain. His ears were so flat to his head, he looked more like a snake than a horse.

  “I’d hoped he’d gotten over that,” Mr. Fawkes was saying breathlessly. “Damn.”

  “What on earth just happened?” Despite her terror, Lydia was rather enjoying how closely he was holding her. She could feel his heat through her riding costume, and was starting to find that her own body was heating up in response.

  “ ’e charge you again, Mr. Fawkes?” A groom had come running over, a brush still in one hand. “ ’e been chargin’ everybody since ’e get here. Always the same thing. Stands in the corner, won’t touch ’is ’ay, and then when you lean over to check on ’im — lunges at ya!”

  “Yes,” Mr. Fawkes said rather heavily. “That’s just what happened. He came at us like a lightning bolt.”

  “Sammy’s taken to callin’ ’im the Wild Dog,” the groom admitted.

  “That too,” Mr. Fawkes agreed, and watched as the horse retreated back into his stall.

  “I thought he’d be little,” Lydia contributed. “You said he was young.”

  “He is young — he’s two,” Mr. Fawkes sighed. “And he was the picture of a young racehorse until I brought him here. He’s been here four days and every day he grows more restless.”

  “’E wants turnin’ out,” the groom suggested. “Throw ’im out in a field for a month and let ’im get lonely.”

  “That’s terrible!” Lydia said indignantly. “Why, the poor thing needs friends, not to be made more unhappy. Look, he doesn’t like living alone in a stall!” She was so upset on the animal’s behalf, she didn’t even realize how odd it was for her to take up the cause of a horse, that most terrifying of creatures.

  “I think Todd might be right,” Mr. Fawkes said gently. “He thinks he doesn’t want companionship — well, let him go without, and he will soon see he has made a mistake.” He turned to the groom. “Inform Wilkes of the plan and ask him to find a suitable field for the horse. Shelter, and water, and good fence, but as distant from the yard as he can manage.” He gave Lydia’s arm a squeeze as Todd pulled his forelock and went to find the head hostler. “The grass is good and he’ll not lose any condition, and at the same time he’ll learn that human contact is better than being alone. It’s a good plan.”

  Lydia looked back at the empty stall-door as Mr. Fawkes led her away to another end of the yard. The poor horse! Surely, though, Mr. Fawkes wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t in his very best interests. He adored these mad beasts, after all.

  “And this is Tilly,” Mr. Fawkes said, stopping in front of a stall. Peering out at them was a very large head, shaped rather like a brick, crowned with two long ears more like a mule’s than a horses. Wide brown eyes blinked at her, a wild white blaze between them, and the brown nose, studded with long whiskers like a barn cat’s, was covered with drool and the remains of a wet porridge of a breakfast.

  Even Lydia could tell this was a very homely horse indeed. But she could not help wishing to make Mr. Fawkes admire her. What would he admire most? If she was courteous to the great creature, no doubt. He was slightly mad, lovely Mr. Fawkes was.“Good morning, Tilly,” she said gamely.

  Tilly nodded her massive head in response, letting fly some gobs of drool and breakfast. Lydia felt something wet spatter her face and stepped back immediately.

  But Mr. Fawkes was there, his hand at her back — she jumped at his touch. “No, no — this is part of working with horses. She is very old, with bad teeth, so she takes her grain wet, you see — and it sticks to her muzzle. It’s not her fault that she can’t clean her face — so we have to do it for her.” And from his pocket he produced a clean white towel. “With this.”

  Then he stepped away from her and grabbed at Tilly’s head-collar, stopping the horse from flinging her head. He took the towel and rubbed it all over the mare’s snout, wiping away the wet remnants of breakfast. Then he took a clean corner of it and wiped out her nostrils for good measure. Lydia saw what was on the towel when it came out of the mare’s nose and her eyes grew wide. If this was the price of coming to Tivington and beguiling Lord Sutton… well, one had to
wonder if catching a husband was worth all this.

  Then she eyed Mr. Fawkes a little while longer, watching him run his hands down the mare’s wide white blaze, and she knew catching a husband wasn’t worth all this.

  Unless the husband in question was Mr. Fawkes.

  ***

  “So now you’ve groomed the horse, you’ve picked out her hooves, and you’ve checked her eyes and her nose. What’s next?”

  Lydia was exhausted. She had never done so much work in all her life. “Go to bed?”

  Mr. Fawkes laughed. “It’s time to saddle up and ride, Miss Dean! This is the part we’ve been working towards!”

  Oh heavens. This man was cracked in the head. They were all cracked in the head, everyone at Tivington Abbey, everyone in the whole damn country who was so obsessed with horses — they were all just cracked in the head, that was all. There was no amount of pleasure in the world that could be worth so much work, Lydia thought decidedly, without considering in the least the number of hours she had spent immobilized at a modiste’s with her arms outspread, or in a chair wincing from the heat of the curling iron, so that she could be beautiful for a bit of pleasure at a ball. “I think I am too tired to ride today.”

  “Too tired to ride!” Mr. Fawkes shook his head. “I never heard such a thing. You’re never too tired to ride — especially such a nice quiet horse as this. Why, you won’t be doing a bit of work once you get up on her back — she’ll do everything for you. Tilly has been teaching children to ride for half her life. She never puts a foot wrong. I’ll just go and fetch us a saddle —” At this he ran his eyes up and down Lydia’s lower half until she felt a flush spread across her face. “I am sure I have one that will fit you. Wait right here. Talk to Tilly. Tell her how excited you are to ride her. And then we’ll get started.”