Ernest just sat…quiet and content.
The view from here was sublime, the castle like a floating stone barge upon the moat. As a child, he’d taken all this for granted, had not thought on the estate’s upkeep, why the roof tiles leaked or the gardens were unkempt.
Despite their father’s neglect, the castle had silently waited for the next owner, for Casper, to bring it back to life. The Rothwells – good and bad – were written all over this landscape and the place was rooted in Ernest’s own bones and blood.
He breathed the fragrant air. “I’ll be absent for dinner again, I believe. My apologies.”
“Lydia?” Mrs Locke snarled. “Or her sister?”
“Both.”
She blinked at her sketchpad.
“I know. I find it exhausting but cannot resist their soft brown eyes and fluttering lashes.”
Mrs Locke tightened her lips and he curved near, plucked a chicory flower from the meadow bed and fluttered it against the back of her hand.
Her fingers twitched.
“I can’t stay away from them. Lydia in particular has such a silken rump and tight–”
“Lord Ernest!” She glared, their faces so very close. He could scent honey with the rosemary, wished he could lean just that further fingerbreadth and kiss her, taste her snippy lips. “I do not know why you feel a need to impart all this on me.”
“Fetlock,” he said.
“Fetlock?”
“Hmm. Tight fetlock.”
She closed her eyes. Inhaled.
Ernest simply watched her slender throat swallow.
“I’ve…been in error, haven’t I? Or perhaps misled. Lydia is a horse.”
“It was not my intention, and well, to be fair to yourself, Mrs Locke, the…phrasing has been unfortunate.”
She opened her eyes, pressed her lips together, but Ernest winked and she…laughed, head thrown back. It took his breath away, pure and true.
“You are a scoundrel, Lord Ernest. A deceiving…” Then those eyes narrowed. “Would you… Would you be so kind as to grant me a favour?”
At this moment, she could ask him to swim the cesspit or clear the oubliette of rats and he would.
“Anything.”
“Would you…could you remove your gloves?”
A strange appeal and she wasn’t going to be impressed with what she viewed but…
With his teeth, he tugged at the fingers of his right glove and presented his paw. “Not at its best, I’m afraid. Lydia and her sister haul the ale carts at the tavern and they’ve caught some kind of infection in the fetlock. I’ve been rubbing in ointment every night and morning after their shifts – they kick out at their owner and the village farrier – but it’s a devil for my skin.”
No doubt Mrs Locke would cringe at his coarse knuckles and calloused palms from grasping reins without gloves, and there was more than a smidgeon of dirt stuck under his nails, but he’d always enjoyed being close to the horses and had spent the last three months engaged in every aspect so he could issue orders with knowledge – mucking out, brushing down and banking up the stable walls.
He’d caught the askew glances between the stable lads at a nobleman undertaking such work but his innate sense with the horses had soon gained their respect.
His guts and…lower clenched as Mrs Locke brushed a bare silken finger against a line of rough skin. “You’re not perfectly golden,” she whispered.
“No one is.” Normally he’d jest, but her tone was so serious.
