Again, the Duke cleared his throat, this time pushing away from the paddock fence. “I shall leave you to your lesson.” He took Isabel’s hand and kissed it. “It’s wonderful seeing you settle into the family.” He directed one last parting reminder toward Percy. “Consider what we discussed. The time has arrived for us to make the transfer.”
Percy watched his father stroll away with an added layer of guilt. Now that he was a settled married man, the Duke wished to gift him Gardencourt Manor. Percy had always known it would be his. But that day had ever been somewhere in the hazy future, if he survived that long. Well, he’d managed to survive, and the day had arrived.
Last night was gaining a momentum of its own and barreling down his mountain of lies and sweeping everyone along with it. He met the eye of the woman who had somehow become his co-conspirator. He caught a flicker of nerves in there now that they were alone. Good.
“Lord Percival—” she began.
“We’ve shot past such formality, don’t you think? Percy will do.”
“Percy, if you would rather not—”
“Oh, you’ll be learning to ride today. I don’t welsh on my promises.”
She’d lost her nerve and was offering him the opportunity to beg off. Why was he insisting on the lesson? Could it be because she now looked like she’d rather not?
Perhaps he would teach her to be careful what she asked for, she might get it.
“Meet me inside,” he commanded as he gave a light squeeze of his knees. The gelding responded with a well-disciplined pivot and began trotting toward the interior of the stable. Immediately, Percy questioned his decision. He wasn’t sure he could trust himself alone with Isabel. Something about her sparked parts of him alight that he’d rather starve in the cold dark.
He’d just dismounted and handed the reins over to a groom when he heard at his back, “This must be the most magnificent stable in the world.”
Head tipped back, Isabel’s eyes roved across the vaulted thirty-foot ceiling that hung high above their heads. “I don’t think I could get my arms around those timbers,” she said of the massive exposed support beams.
“They have a heavy slate roof to support,” Percy supplied.
Her gaze met his. Her eyes . . . Emeralds had nothing on them for jewel green. “Was this structure built at the same time as the manor house?”
Percy found himself warming to her interest. “The stables were built about a hundred years after Rosebud Cottage when it was Gardencourt’s main house. Horses began making their way to England from Marrakesh and Arabia, and a good many lords went horse mad with this new stock.” He spread his arms wide. “And they had to build stables worthy of those splendid beasts.”
“Was something wrong with English stock?”
“Not particularly, but if one wants to win a horse race, one’s odds steeply improve if one’s mount has Eastern blood.”
“And Gardencourt owns such horses?”
Percy nodded. “When Oliver Cromwell was attempting to rid England of its aristocracy during the Great Rebellion, he and his Parliamentary soldiers sacked the royal studs at Eltham and Woodstock, but it was when he set his sights on Tutbury that the Council of State decided he’d gone too far.”
“What was special about Tutbury?”
“It had assembled the best, and most important, stable of horses in England through breeding and acquisition. It would have decimated the future of English stock to break up. So it remained largely intact, save a handful that were shipped off to Ireland and another handful that landed in Sir Arthur Hazelrigg’s stable, a man who just so happened to be good friends with a Duke of Arundel. On the sly, Gardencourt was gifted a Barb stallion named Paragon. That duke built a stable worthy of him and his issue, which is what you see around you.”
“His issue?”
“Paragon lives on to this day in his successors, one of which you’ll ride today.”
Isabel’s face lit up in genuine delight, and Percy’s gut did a nifty, little flip. Upbraiding his traitorous insides, he pivoted on one heel. “Follow me,” he tossed gruffly over his shoulder. Why had he given that woman a history of the Gardencourt stable?
He felt Isabel at his back as they made their way down the wide center aisle, stalls to either side, herringbone bricks below their boots, the hustle and bustle of a vibrant stable buzzing all around. A few of the bolder lads gave him deferential nods, while others kept their heads down, attentive to their work, as they took his measure from a distance.
“There are so many stalls and horses,” she said to his back.
“Thirty stalls.”
“And the horses, do you know them all?”
“I did.” One couldn’t miss the bitterness in his use of the past tense and all it implied. Soon, however, he would know every horse by name, lineage, and personality, just as he would the stable lads and grooms.
Gardencourt was where he belonged.
He took in a deep gulp of air, musky with the scents of earth, hay, and horse. All these years he hadn’t allowed himself to consider, even once, how much he’d missed this place.
They reached the stall he sought. Isabel read the mare’s name off a brass plaque. “Lady Daisy?”
“Father let me name her.”
“You named her.”
Percy couldn’t help it. He smiled. “I was ten.”
“That is quite simply”—her eyes glittered with surprise—“sweet.”
“I’ve known her since she was a newborn foal. I was a boy besotted.” And she was the last of the stable he’d known before he’d sped off to the Continent on a wave of misguided glory-seeking. He would keep that last part to himself.
“How old is she?”
Percy’s eyes screwed up to the ceiling. “Four and twenty.”
Isabel’s brow lifted. “My age.”
Percy fell back to earth before he realized he’d left it. How easy it was to talk to this woman. Too easy. He’d just seen her strolling arm in arm with Montfort. It was time to swing this conversation in a more useful, less personal, direction. “Montfort is returning to London.”
Lady Daisy extended her head over the gate, and Isabel stroked her velvety muzzle. “It seems so.”