He caught her wrist and drew her away from the stall. “Look at me. I’m not as…easy with people as Lord Wrexley is, but if you’d tried to talk to me, I would have listened to you. Did you think I’d reproach you, or dismiss your wishes?”
“We’ll never know now, will we?”
“Why shouldn’t we? You have my undivided attention right now, Miss Somerset, so if you’ve something to say to me, then say it.”
She met his gaze with unflinching steadiness. “Very well, my lord. If I had told you about Typhon, if I’d said I wanted a beast of a horse just like him once we were married, what would you have said?”
Finn hesitated. Part of him wanted to insist he’d have been delighted to hear his future marchioness rode like a cavalry officer, but he’d asked for this, and he wasn’t going to lie to her. “I might not have liked it, but I wouldn’t have forbidden it. I would have insisted we get you a second horse, however.”
“Why should I need a second horse? Surely one horse is enough for any lady.”
“Not for a marchioness. Several horses, a carriage for your exclusive use—these things would have been yours as a matter of course, but a horse like Typhon or Chaos wouldn’t be appropriate for a ride in Hyde Park during the fashionable hour.”
She raised an eyebrow at that. “Oh? I don’t see why not.”
“Because a marchioness doesn’t get into a tussle with a headstrong mount in the middle of the promenade with all of thetonwatching.”
“Ah.” She smiled a little. “What if I told you I’ve never in my life gotten into a tussle withanyhorse, and even if I did, I wouldn’t care a thing what thetonthought of it? What would you have said to that?”
Finn opened his mouth, then snapped it shut without speaking.
Now she’d found her words at last they poured out of her, as if she’d kept them behind her lips for far too long, and a dam had suddenly given way. “What if I said I didn’t want to ride on the promenade at all, but preferred a hard ride in Richmond Park to a mindless simper with every other aristocrat in London riding on my heels? That even if I did take a gentle mare out for sedate rides along the promenade, and everyone who saw me thought me a proper marchioness, I would have been wishing I was flying over the open ground of Richmond Park the entire time? Somehow, Lord Huntington, I don’t think any of it would have pleased you.”
Finn stared at her. He wanted to argue with her, to deny her assumption, but he couldn’t say a word, because it was true. He wouldn’t have been at all pleased to hear that, not so much because he gave a damn if she paraded around Hyde Park on the mare, but because it was the last thing he would have expected her to say, or to feel.
A lie by omission.
He’d lied to her. The wager, his mistress, his past—he’d hidden it all from her, and those were lies of omission, and as devious as any other kind of lie. But she’d lied to him, too. She’d pretended to be someone she wasn’t, just as he had.
“Yesterday you accused me of not being the perfect gentleman I pretend to be, but neither are you the quiet, docile lady you pretended to be, Miss Somerset. A great many lies were hidden in our silences, weren’t they?”
She stiffened, going unnaturally still. “I think…I think we preferred each other’s silence. It’s easier that way—easier to be what you’re expected to be, rather than what you are. If we’d been honest with each other, we might not have made it as far as a betrothal. It’s a pity we did, but we can be thankful we escaped the marriage, at least.”
Anger pulsed through him, and his fingers tightened around her wrist. “We’ve escaped nothing. It’s much too late for that now. Wewillmarry, because people will be hurt if we don’t.”
You’ll be hurt.
“But we’ll be hurt if wedo.” She tugged to free herself from his grip. “Now, if you’d be so good as to tell the stableboy to saddle Chaos, I’d be grateful.”
Damn it, he’d forgotten all about the horse. “No, Miss Somerset. You can’t ride this horse. You’ll have to choose another.”
“I beg your pardon? Did Captain West say he couldn’t be ridden?”
“No, butI’msaying it. You need a safer mount. Chaos may look quiet now, but he’s as temperamental as they come, and he’s too much horse for you. Choose another, and then we can be off.”
She studied him for a moment with narrowed eyes, then, “You’ve never seen me ride anywhere but on the promenade, so you can’t have the faintest idea what I can or can’t manage, and I’m afraid this isn’t your decision to make, Lord Huntington. I can ride Chaos, and I will.”
She spoke politely enough, but the cool determination in her tone told him she wouldn’t give up easily, and it lit a spark inside Finn’s chest. He kept his temper under tight control at all times, but this wasn’t just anger. Oh, he was angry enough, but the anger was tangled up with other, more complicated emotions.
Admiration, disbelief, and a pulsing, restless excitement.
“No, Miss Somerset, you won’t. Not until Captain West approves it, and not until you’ve taken him out in the stable yard and convinced me you can manage a horse of that size.”
She stared up at him with mutiny in every line of her face. Her lips pressed into a thin, tight line, and…
Ah, yes. There it was, that stubborn chin.
“Convincedyou? I don’t think so, my lord. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll find the stableboy myself.”
