Fleur curtsied and released her hold on Lady Pamela’s hand. She turned back to the house.
“May I ride with you on Hannibal, Papa?” the child asked.
“Nonsense,” he said impatiently. “You will never learn to ride that way, Pamela. You are five years old. It’s high time you could ride alone. Where are you going, Miss Hamilton?”
“To the house, your grace,” she said, turning back again. “Is there something else you wish me to do?”
He was frowning. “Where is your riding habit?” he asked, eyeing her cloak and the pale green cotton dress beneath.
“I don’t possess one, your grace,” she said.
His lips thinned. “Boots?”
“No, your grace.”
“You will have to manage without, then,” he said. “Call at Houghton’s office tomorrow morning. He will have madearrangements to send you into Wollaston to be measured for a habit and boots.”
There were two horses and a pony, all saddled, trotting around the paddock under a groom’s guidance, Fleur saw in a glance over his shoulder. She was to ride too? Suddenly the day of her temporary reprieve seemed like a very glorious new creation. Suddenly it seemed that the sun must have burst through the clouds.
“Don’t tell me that you are afraid of horses too,” he said, his frown turned to a scowl.
“No, your grace.” She could not repress her smile. She turned her face up to the clouds and felt that it must be bathed in sunlight. She would have twirled about if she had been alone. “No, I am not afraid of horses.”
“I will ride with you, Miss Hamilton,” Lady Pamela announced.
“You will ride alone,” her father said firmly. “That pony is too meek and mild to toss you even if it took it into its head to do something so startling. You will ride beside me and I will hold the leading rein. Miss Hamilton will ride at your other side. You will be as safe as you are in your own bed.”
Fleur stooped down and took the child’s cold hands in hers. “It is the most glorious feeling in the world to ride a horse,” she said. “To be high on the back of an animal who can move so much more surely and swiftly than we can. There is no greater sense of freedom and joy.”
“But Mama says I could break my neck,” Lady Pamela wailed. “I want to stay here with Tiny.”
“You can break your neck if you ride recklessly,” Fleur said. “That is why Papa is going to be with you to teach you to ride properly. He would not allow you to fall, would he? And I would not, would I?”
Lady Pamela still looked dubious, but she allowed the duke to lift her into his arms and carry her into the paddock and seat her on the little sidesaddle on the pony’s back. Fleursignaled the groom to help her onto the back of the sleek brown mare.
The three of them rode slowly across the back lawns for almost half an hour, Lady Pamela closely flanked by the duke on one side and Fleur on the other. Gradually the terror faded from the child’s face. She was even flushed with triumph by the time they returned to the stables, and loudly demanded to know whether the groom her father had summoned had seen her.
“That I did, my lady,” the groom said, lifting her to the ground. “You will be galloping to hounds before we know it.”
“I want a real horse next time,” she said, looking up to her father.
“Let Lady Pamela play with her dog for a while, Prewett,” the duke said, “and then escort her to the house and have her taken to her nurse.” He turned to Fleur and nodded his head curtly. “Let’s ride.”
Her eyes widened. Not even the fact that he was to be her riding companion could spoil the beauty and unexpected wonder of this particular morning. She had ridden very slowly with a child and her father. Now she was to ride free?
His grace had already turned his horse’s head toward the lawns of the park, which stretched for miles to the south of the house.
WAS IT ONLY TWO NIGHTSbefore that he had resolved to stop seeing her? the Duke of Ridgeway wondered, taking his horse to a canter and hearing the mare increase its pace behind him.
A number of the gentlemen had gone fishing. Most of the ladies were going into Wollaston. He had told Treadwell and Grantsham that he would probably join them in the billiard room after giving his daughter a short riding lesson.
How foolish of him to have expected to see her arrive at the stables in riding habit and boots. When he had hired her, he had given Houghton instructions to provide her with enoughmoney to buy herself some essential garments. Houghton would have seen to it that there was enough money to do just that. There would have been no extra for riding habits or boots.
It was hard to adjust his mind to some of the realities of poverty.
Would he be indulging in this stolen hour, he wondered, if she had not smiled at him? In reality, of course, she had not smiled at him at all, but at the prospect of riding. Clearly she had misunderstood him earlier and assumed that it was her task only to bring Pamela to the stables.
It was the first time he had seen her smile almost directly at him. And it had been a total smile, lighting up her face, making of its beauty a dazzling thing. He could have sworn that all the rays of the sun had been directed at her face when she had lifted it to the sky, even though the clouds had still been low and heavy.
