When he takes my hand for the supper waltz,she had written,I forget how to breathe properly. It is the most absurd sensation. I am not given to fits of vapours or feminine weakness, and yet his touch renders me quite the simpleton.
She was not a fool. She was the furthest thing from any fool he had ever encountered…and when he took her hand for the supper waltz, he felt precisely the same loss of rational function she described.
The difference was that he had learned to hide it.
***
Haberton appeared in the doorway, his expression arranged in lines of studied neutrality that Martin had come to recognise as disapproval. His valet was a man of middle years and impeccable discretion, possessed of an uncanny ability to communicate volumes while saying almost nothing at all.
"Your Grace. Might I enquire as to your plans for the morning?"
"You might."
"And might you deign to answer?"
Martin suppressed a smile. His valet had been with him since he came into the title, and the man had long since abandoned any pretense of servility. It was one of his more useful qualities, a willingness to speak plainly when other servants would merely bow and scrape.
"I thought I might ride."
"An excellent notion. Fresh air and exercise are much to be recommended when one has been brooding in one's study for several days."
"I have not been brooding."
"Of course not, Your Grace. My mistake. You have merely been sitting alone in a darkened room, staring at nothing, and sighing at irregular intervals. An entirely different activity."
"I do not sigh."
"As you say, Your Grace." Haberton's tone suggested he found this assertion dubious at best. "Shall I have your horse saddled?"
"If you would be so kind."
"At once, Your Grace." Haberton turned to leave, then paused in the doorway. "And might I suggest the blue coat? It brings out your eyes, and one never knows whom one might encounter on a morning ride."
Martin gave him a sharp look. "What precisely are you implying?"
"Nothing whatsoever, Your Grace. Merely that Hyde Park is a popular destination at this hour, and it would not do for the Duke of Montehood to appear anything less than his best." Haberton paused, his expression carefully bland. "Lady Vanessa Wayworth is known to ride most mornings, I believe. Between eight and nine on the hour, along the eastern paths."
"And how would you come by that information?"
"I make it my business to know things, Your Grace. It is part of my service." There was a glimmer of something in his eyes, amusement, perhaps, or knowing. "A well-informed valet is an invaluable asset."
Martin stared at his valet for a long moment. Haberton gazed back with an expression of perfect innocence that fooled neither of them.
"The grey coat will do," Martin said finally. "I have no need to impress anyone."
"Very well, Your Grace." If Haberton had an opinion about this choice, he kept it admirably concealed. "I shall have your horse ready in a quarter hour."
He withdrew, leaving Martin alone with the uncomfortable awareness that his valet had somehow divined his interest in Vanessa. If Haberton knew, who else might have noticed? Edward? Lady Wayworth? The entirety of polite Society?
The thought was not a comfortable one.
But it was not sufficient to keep him from riding to the park.
Chapter Nine
Hyde Park in the early morning possessed a quality of stillness that the afternoon crowds would soon dispel. The fashionable hour would bring carriages and riders in their dozens, all engaged in the elaborate theatre of seeing and being seen. But at this hour, the park belonged to those who actually wished to ride and feel the wind on their faces and the power of a good horse beneath them, rather than merely to parade their finery before an admiring audience.
Martin urged his horse to a canter, relishing the burn in his muscles and the rush of cool air against his skin. He had slept poorly yet again and the exercise was a welcome remedy to the restlessness that had been plaguing him relentlessly him since the letters' arrival.
