“Then choose like a man,” she said crisply,
A young man from Morlich’s company who had been leading a horse over, heard and laughed like a braying donkey.
That does it. Beat to stations. Enemy in sight.
Pride, which he kept like a dog on a short lead, tugged hard enough to snap the rope.
“Very well,” Edward said, “if there must be a lesson, I prefer it given by a master. The race will be contested by three of us. That gives you another opportunity to lose, Morlich.”
He turned to the nearest groom.
“Bring me a gentleman’s saddle and a lady’s. The black gelding and the bay mare.”
Coin changed hands with a jingle. The mounts arrived breathing lightly, ears pricked.
“You will not,” Isla said, “ride the chestnut. He has a trick shoulder. I can handle him better.”
Edward knew horseflesh but he had not spotted that. He narrowed his eyes, watching the approaching animal.
“I will take your word for it and trust you are not deliberately giving me the slower mount.”
Isla’s grin brought dimples to her cheeks and melted Edward’s discipline. He had never craved a kiss more than at that moment.
She is wild. Too wild to be a Duchess. I must take care that our arrangement remains one of convenience only.
She gathered her skirts, swung into the side-saddle with the ease of a woman who had learned before she was tall enough to reach the stirrup leather. Edward mounted his own mount, settling as if he had grown there. The murmur round them lifted a key.
“To the rail,” someone called. “And back by the lime trees!”
“Once,” Edward said, “no more.”
His blood was rising, heart pounding. Morlich was also mounting, putting himself forward as the champion of the callow youths. Edward didn’t care. He was looking at Isla who had tossed her bonnet aside and unpinned her hair. He only wanted to beat her. Nothing else mattered.
She shook a mane of bronze curls free and gazed back at Edward, wild and free. Color rose in her cheeks and her eyes shone, crackled as though home to lightning.
“Once,” Isla agreed, breathless and as beautiful as the dawn.
They took the line together then moved off at a canter that turned to a gallop in a breath. Wind tore the neat edges ofLondon away. Edward felt the old taut joy, a body and a creature in single purpose, the ground coming fast and the heart steadier for it. Isla came level, then ahead, her back straight, hands quiet, the side-saddle no chain at all.
He gave the gelding his head and pressed on. The crowd’s cry thinned behind them to a ribbon of sound, the lime trees leapt forward. At the post Isla let the mare have one more length for the joke of it, then sat her back and brought her out easy, laughter in her breath. Edward pulled alongside a heartbeat later, chest rising. They turned together. Applause and cheers met them.
Isla won handily. Edward finished a half-length behind her. Morlich arrived a handful of seconds later. It might as well have been an hour. Edward sat on his horse, gazing at Isla who beamed at the bows and hat-doffing from Morlich’s companions. She slid to the ground lightly, triumph in every line of her. She looked to where Morlich had thrown his reins to a groom and was stalking away.
“I will be sure to take your card and suggest to my brother your expertise in home decoration, Your Lordship,” Isla called after him.
Edward dismounted, feeling the jubilance of victory already melting away.
We were fools. A race in the Row and this Morlich chap now with an even bigger grudge. What was I thinking?
Isla looked at him and his expression cooled her ardor.
“Half of London saw us,” he said.
“Half of London cannot ride,” she said, still breathless. “Perhaps they learned something.”
Edward did not smile. “They learned to talk. You are to be my wife in a fortnight; you will not give the town a new chapter before we close the last.”
The rebuke hit. She straightened, collected herself, let her glove settle over her palm like armor.
