“I can see how it would appear so.”
He would do them both a favor and shoot straight to the point. “Does he know we are not married?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
A lie. Montfortknew.
It was time to address another matter. “Your father is ahidalgo de privilegio.”
Isabel nodded, her lips pressed tight together. Lady Daisy gave a soft whicker, sensing Isabel’s distress.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that a title that can only be given by the king?”
“It is.”
“Would you care to elaborate?”
“Not particularly.”
He decided now was the time to jolt the conversation with a quick left turn. “Is it that you and your family have fallen on hard times?” It happened to any number of women and girls, particularly immigrants.
Isabel’s breath audibly caught in her throat. Tension twisted the air taut. Percy sensed an advantage and pressed it. “Montfort is holding something over you, isn’t he?”
She flinched. He almost had her.
As the next question formed on his lips, a throat cleared behind him. “Lord Percival?”
Percy twisted around. It took a moment for his brain to register the man before him. “Stanhope?” Half a beat later, he was greeting the aged, but still spry, stable master and clapping his back.
“I’m just back from Tattersall’s to get a look at that stallion everyone was goin’ on about.”
“Anything worthwhile?” Percy asked, marveling at how easily their conversation fell into place, as if they’d last spoken yesterday, instead of a decade ago.
Stanhope sucked his teeth. “Shoulda known better than to go to London for horseflesh.” He gave Percy a quick onceover. “Turned yourself into a man while you were hieing about frog territory all those years. It’s good to lay eyes on you, and that’s no lie. Now, what are you and your lady needing?”
“A sidesaddle for Lady Daisy, unless she’s already been exercised?”
“Ach, no, it would do the old girl some good. I’ll saddle her myself.”
Stanhope set to his task, and yet again Percy found himself alone with Isabel. Or as alone as one could be in the center of an active stable. He glanced up and found her watching him with interest.
“Stanhope was my childhood idol,” Percy found himself explaining. “He’d ranked one slender notch below only the Duke.”
“Yours was a happy childhood.”
Percy was rescued from having to address her observation when Stanhope called out, “She’s ready, Lord Percival.”
He only just restrained himself from telling Stanhope to address him as Percy. It didn’t seem fitting for a good man such as Stanhope to defer to the likes of him as his superior. But Percy was soon to be the man’s employer, and it wouldn’t do. He was forever Lord Percival, as was right in the tiered world the English had constructed for themselves. “My thanks, Stanhope.”
“Will that be all, sir?”
Percy nodded his dismissal, and Stanhope continued on with his day, calling out orders and instructions to his stable lads and grooms as he receded into the distance. Percy dug into his pocket and produced a handful of sugar cubes. Without thinking, he’d grabbed them on his way out of the breakfast room. He never entered a stable without a sweet for the horses.
He motioned for Isabel to come closer, deciding to let their interrupted conversation lie for now. It needed a little time to brew in his mind.
He held out his hand, palm up, sugar cubes glittering pure white. “Here, take a few. Let her get a sense of you.”
Lady Daisy’s head extended forward, eager for her sweet. Before Percy could tell her to hold the treat with a flat palm, Isabel had already done so with one hand. With the other, she was stroking Lady Daisy’s velvety muzzle as she leaned in, uttering the soothing nonsense one spoke to one’s horse. Except she wasn’t muttering nonsense. She was speaking Spanish to Lady Daisy.¿Cómo estás? Belleza. Dulce.
