“Thank you.”I dropped to the ground, legs buzzing, and handed the reins over.Bryce was already out of the saddle, his gelding snorting once as if to say he objected to the sudden end of sport.
I nearly snorted too.
“We’ll cool them,” Pembroke said, reading the urgency in our faces.The lads led the horses away at once.
Bryce glanced at me, apology and adrenaline sharing space in his eyes.“I’m so—”
“Don’t,” I said, too fast, then softened it.“I know it isn’t you.”
It was the timing.It was the universe.It was the exact second before our mouths would have met, choosing to announce that I was, in fact, still a Windsor, and he was still inconveniently the United States’ representative.I felt the flare of temper I almost never let myself feel—hot, childish, ridiculous.If I’d been fifteen, I’d have stamped my boot.
We cut across the yard.Mummy’s Labrador Chico dozed on the warm flagstone and thumped his tail as we passed.Somewhere I heard a radio murmuring cricket scores.The sky had sharpened to that clear, late-afternoon blue, and I resented it for being beautiful when I wanted to be cross.
“This way,” I said, and we took the side path that slipped behind the service wing to the boot room entrance—what Americans call the mudroom, which is sensible but sounds as if it ought to be hosed down twice a day.The oak door was unlatched; I shouldered it with my hip and waved Bryce through.
Rows of Wellingtons stood to attention, riding boots polished to a quiet shine, sticks and crops and old tweed caps lined up like soldiers who’d gone soft but refused to admit it.A sink, a rack of brushes, and a peg with my childhood hacking jacket still hanging there like a ghost.
Bryce moved with purpose that did not quite hide the tremor underneath.His clothes lay folded on a bench, briefcase atop them like a period at the end of a sentence.
“I’ll return these clothes tomorrow,” he muttered breathlessly, slinging the strap of his briefcase over his shoulder.“If that’s all right.”
“Of course,” I said, then heard my voice come out too tight, and tried again.“Keep them as long as you need.”
He was already fishing out his phone, thumb moving with professional muscle memory.“Lewis,” he said into it, the word crisp as a salute, then met my eyes and winced in apology, already halfway to the next room.
I followed, because of course I did.We cut through the little passage where light fell in squares on old tile, into the service corridor that opened on a narrower hall—family photographs, dog portraits, a watercolour of Mummy on a grey mare clearing a brush fence.
Bryce walked and listened in the same breath.“I’m on my way,” he said into the phone, and then, listening again: “Understood.Ten minutes to the car, ninety to London, faster if we don’t encounter traffic.”A pause.“Tell Security to alert the gate.No statements until I’ve had eyes on the sitrep.Yes.I said no statements.”
His tone made me want to laugh and kiss him and push him up against the nearest panelled wall, which was inconvenient, since we were walking past the pantry and Mrs.Sumner was almost certainly within earshot.
We reached the small vestibule that gave onto the front hall.The main double doors stood open to the deep porch.Outside, the SUV idled, driver at attention, the sense ofnowrolling toward us like a tide.
Mummy entered from the morning room, a file in her hand, Benson hovering a respectable distance behind.She took in the tableau in one glance: Bryce with the phone at his ear, me with too much colour in my face, the driver shifting his weight on the gravel beyond.
“Oh, how dreadful,” she said, with genuine sympathy in her voice.“Must you fly?”
Bryce had one foot over the threshold already.He turned his head slightly, pressed the phone to his shoulder.“Ma’am—my apologies,” he said, breathless and composed all at once.“We had the loveliest time.”
I could have stood there forever with those five words ringing in the air like a bell.We had the loveliest time.As if it were already a memory.As if it had not been interrupted at the one point I most wished it would not be.
“I’ll call you later,” I said, and hoped it didn’t sound like a plea.
He looked at me—really looked—and bit his lower lip.It wasn’t coy.It was, for once, unguarded.“Please,” he said softly, then straightened, returned the phone to his ear, and stepped outside.
The driver had the rear door open before he reached it.He slid in, the door shut with that solid, expensive thunk, and in the same moment Benson moved to the bellpull as if to summon tea for a person who was no longer present.The SUV eased off the turning circle, tyres whispering over gravel, then found the drive and gathered speed.Through the trees, the black shape threaded away toward the gate.
I stood where I was, and my breath found its way out again, but my pulse hadn’t quite received the memo.
Mummy placed her hands on my shoulders—lightly, carefully, as one steadies a young horse without crowding it.She tilted her head, assessing, her mouth making that small thoughtful shape that meant she was deciding whether to be kind or truthful.
“That didn’t go the way you wanted it,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.
I stared at her, stunned.Mummy made a profession of not noticing anything she could not fix with a schedule and a set of rails.This—this—she noticed?
“How extraordinarily perceptive,” I said, which was my way of admitting the wound without showing it bleeding.
She smiled.“One does not need to be a genius,” she said.“One only needs to have been young once.”
