“You will drive at a snail’s pace in your journey down, then?” she teased, even as she gripped the edges of the seat.
“Six years ago,” he began, carefully steering off of South Audley and into traffic. “I had just achieved my majority and was racing against my brother, Stone.”
Although the race had initially been exhilarating, the memory was not a pleasant one. “Idiots. We were both idiots. He went to pass, and I edged into the center of the road. Unfortunately, neither of us saw the farmer’s cart approaching from the opposite direction. I rolled to the right, into a harmless field, Stone veered to the left. If he’d rolled a few feet more, he would have fallen off a small cliff. Luckily for him, he only broke his arm, and I walked away with just a few scratches.”
“But it was enough to deter you from doing it again?”
“Along with knowing he could have been killed, seeing my brother unable to perform the simplest of tasks for nearly six months was a most effective deterrent. I realized how much damage an injury like that could do to my playing. Of course, my brothers teased me to no end, but I didn’t care. As exciting as a race can be, acting so recklessly isn’t worth the risk.” But he didn’t want to talk about himself. He wanted to know more about her. She was watching the horses and the road in front of them. “Would you like to drive?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Now is as good a time as any to learn… if you want to.”
He sensed her ennui waging with her curiosity. It pleased him when her curiosity won.
“I do.”
Peter placed the reins in her hands, still gripping the leather himself. Over the next few minutes, he explained how to stop and how to turn. After they turned onto one of the less-popular roads in the park, he demonstrated a few more techniques and then relinquished control.
“You have the makings of an excellent driver.” Better than that, she was laughing. It was a self-conscious sounding laugh, but it was also pleasing. How often had she laughed since her husband’s death?
With the fashionable driving route in sight, she relinquished the straps again and he felt, as well as heard, her sigh. This time, it was only two-thirds of an octave, sweet, though, starting at a high ‘C.’
“We can drive somewhere else,” he suggested.
She hesitated. “You wouldn’t mind?”
In answer to her question, he jerked the reins to the left and turned the horses in a full circle, heading them back toward the opposite end of the park. He’d rather talk with her than make nice for thetonany day of the week.
* * *
Rather than makedirectly for the hotel, as Miranda had half-expected, Mr. Spencer instead turned into a section of the park that she hadn’t realized existed. The road was barely wide enough for one vehicle, and it twisted between so many trees that she could almost imagine she was in the country, far away from the bustle of London.
“Tell me about your marriage.” He made his request casually, as if he wasn’t intent upon peering into wounds she was waiting to scar over.
“What do you mean?”
“Most of what I know of you is hearsay. I’d rather know you from… you.” He grimaced.
She blinked at that. Because of course, she knew the rumors. They ranged from lurid tales of depravity to some so horrid as to suggest that she’d murdered Baldwin.
“I cared for my husband very much,” she answered truthfully.
“Did you love him?”
“I’m not sure what love feels like. I do know that he made me very happy. He cared about me and, in turn, I did my best to keep him happy as well.”
“Love is a bit of a mystery,” he answered from beside her, paying particular attention to steer the pair of bays around a sharp corner. “I’ve yet to experience romantic love myself although my parents and three of my siblings seem to have discovered it. And I doubt they would feign it. I certainly love all of them.”
“I loved my father.” The words escaped before she could stop them. “Until I realized he did not love me. By the time he died, I believe I must have hated him.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think much is required of a man to garner his children’s love. If you hated him, Miranda, he must have been a horrid creature.”
“He wasn’t horrid to me.” She shrugged. Hate seemed too powerful to describe how she’d felt about the man who’d sired her. “He was nothing. And I was nothing to him. Nothing until, that was, he had use of me.”
Mr. Spencer nodded beside her, as though he already knew that her father had married her off in order to pay a debt. Thank god he had owed the debt to an honorable man.
“If love exists, I imagine I loved Baldwin,” she contemplated out loud. “And I do miss him dreadfully. And here I am being maudlin again. I’m not sure what it is about you, Mr. Spencer, but you have a dreadful knack for turning me into a self-pitying chatterbox.”
