“Ah, Duke, you have your hands full, I’ve heard—and now seen,” she said. She looked as though she would say more, but she only shook her head and laughed. Then she rode away.
Zoe dawdled, pretending to be enraptured by the view. She was probably catching her breath. Not on a horse in twelve years! She must be numb as well as exhausted.
He waited.
At last she trotted sedately to him. He would not be surprised if she pretended not to see him and trotted right past him, but she slowed and stopped.
“How beautiful it is,” she said. “Everywhere I look, there’s greenery. I cannot remember when last I saw so much green. In Egypt, you know—”
“Are you insane?” he broke in impatiently. “You haven’t ridden in twelve years. That gelding is too wide for you, and the saddle is too short. Yet you raced with a complete stranger on terrain you don’t know. I saw you gallop headlong down a hill. You could have been killed.”
She looked at him in the way most people looked at his aunt Sophronia when she made one of her dafter pronouncements.
“But of course I’ve ridden in recent years,” she said. “Many times. Sometimes we traveled up the Nile on holiday or to abuse the peasants. Then the men would let me ride in the desert. Sometimes a camel, sometimes a donkey, and sometimes a horse. They knew I couldn’t run away then. I tried, but it was no use. All the desert looks the same, and in no time I’d be lost. They had no trouble catching me, and it amused them. It was a game to them.”
She spoke of the Egyptian experience with less emotion than she’d employ to describe a pair of gloves or slippers. But he could see the scene too clearly and Zoe in it. The vision upset him, adding to the stew of fear and anger inside.
While he struggled to beat down emotion, she looked calmly about her.
“I like this place,” she said. “I did not realize it was so large.” Her gaze came back to him. “I must like her, too, though I find I’m very jealous.”
“I don’t care whether…” He paused, trying to think past the fear and rage he couldn’t quite command. “Jealous?”
“She’s so elegant,” Zoe said. “She knew who I was, I believe, but she did not snub me. That was generous. If I were your concubine, I would be very suspicious of protégées.”
“She is not my con—”
“Her seat is excellent. Better than mine.”
He would like to get his hands on the person who’d turned her mind to Lady Tarling. He ordered himself to becalm.
“Her saddle fits her,” he said. “Her mount fits her. She did not steal her mother’s—”
“No.” She held up her hand. “You willnotscold me. This was fun. I want fun. I want alife.In Egypt I was a toy, a game. I was a pet in a cage. I vowed never to endure such an existence again.”
He stared at her in outraged disbelief.
He told himself her English sounded well enough but her grasp of meaning was less than perfect. He told himself a great many sensible things, but his gut reacted to the accusation, the patently unfair accusation. She was equating him with the swine who’d caged her and treated her like a pet and a game.
“I drove you all about London yesterday,” he said. “I took you to buy dresses and underthings and shoes and stockings. And I told you I would take you for a drive today.”
“I needed to ride.”
“You might have said so.”
“I didn’t know it then. And even if I had known it, you would not give me a chance to say what I wanted. We’ll do this, you say. We’ll do that. I will collect you at two o’clock, Zoe. I will make you respectable, Zoe, whether I like it or not, for your father’s sake, and because I said I would, and I always keep my word.”
“I know the words are English,” he said, “but the thinking must be Arabic, because I cannot make heads or tails of it.”
She signaled her horse to walk on.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You will not utter cryptic remarks and dismiss me. I will not be dismissed.”
She ignored him.
He dismounted and stalked to her. He brought her horse to a halt.
“Get down,” he said.
