Chapter Four
Harriet had been on many a horse who at the last instant refused a jump. She’d sink her weight into the stirrups—or stirrup, if she was riding aside—fix her eye on the next obstacle and anticipate the magnificent rise of more than a half ton of muscle and might beneath her—
And find herself clinging to coarse mane and scrambling to regain her balance on a beast that had barely, barely managed to remain upright.
The duke’s question left her similarly disconcerted. Her momentum had all been in the direction of a kiss, not… not… What had he asked her?
“I beg your pardon?”
Harriet stood so close to him that she could see how agate and slate came together to put the silver glint in his eyes, so close she could feel his breath fanning across her cheek. Her fingers had gripped his sleeve, and his hand rested on her shoulder.
“Will you teach me to ride again?” he asked. “I needn’t qualify for the race meets. I simply want to acquit myself competently in the saddle of a morning in Hyde Park. I’d like to ride my acres as my father did. It’s time, Harriet. Your father was right about that.”
He brushed her hair back from her brow, and Harriet wanted to smack his hand. “Time for you to learn to ride again? You rode competently as a boy.” More than competently, he’d ridden joyously.
His lashes swept down. “That was before Jonas’s accident.”
Before Lord Chaddleworth had died. His horse had either refused or slipped at a stile, and his lordship had come off, straight into the wall. He’d never regained consciousness and taken less than two hours to expire.
Harriet’s ire slipped from her grasp, like wet reins in the hands of a beginner. “Oh, Philippe. Of course, I’ll help.”
He rested his forehead against her shoulder, and Harriet wrapped her arms around him.
“Thank you, Harriet. Your father refused me, after he’d been the one to goad me into trying. I thought perhaps…”
This was a conversation to have heart-to-heart rather than face-to-face. Harriet rested her cheek against Philippe’s chest and found the rhythm of his life’s blood steady but pronounced.
“You thought Papa judged the task impossible,” she said. “For him, it likely is. He can barely stand for ten minutes, and that’s with the aid of his cane. Trudging through deep footing is hell for him, and his pride pains him as badly as his joints.”
Philippe’s hand cradled the back of Harriet’s head, and thus they remained, embracing, for the time it took a golden leaf to twirl down through the afternoon sunshine. She willed him to understand that his request touched her—getting back on the horse was more than a metaphor for seizing one’s courage after a setback.
Getting back on the horse could be the defining challenge of a lifetime.
“My pride pains me as well,” Philippe said. “Might I further impose and request that our lessons take place here?”
“You will save me the time needed to hack over to the Hall,” Harriet said, “and Papa will likely watch from the porch or a handy window and pass along pointers to me at supper. I’ll swear the lads to secrecy, and nobody will be the wiser.”
For a time. No power on earth could permanently still the tongues that wagged in a stable yard.
Philippe’s embrace eased. “I should have asked you in the first place, but you have much to do already. You’ll tell me if I’m imposing?”
Never. “I enjoy teaching, and you used to enjoy riding. This will be easier than you anticipate.”
He brushed a kiss to her cheek. “I am in your debt. Shall we begin tomorrow afternoon?”
“Rain or shine, Your Grace. Two of the clock, and wear your oldest pair of boots.”
“I have my orders.” He bowed over her hand and then strode off down the path.
Harriet perched on a fallen log and sorted through her feelings as more leaves drifted to the golden carpet covering the grass.
She was proud of Philippe for taking this step.
She was proud of herself for being a good enough friend that he’d trust her to help.
She was happy that her stable would have the honor of reacquainting the Duke of Lavelle with his equestrian skills.
The next leaf smacked her in the mouth and refused to complete its descent. She brushed it aside and set it on the log.
Proud and happy weren’t the entire list. Harriet was also confident that she could help Philippe—she’d coached other riders past a loss of courage and worked through the same problem herself more than once.
She was also determined. Very, very determined.
The duke would get back on his horse, and Harriet would have more kisses.
* * *
“I am a very, very bad man,” Philippe informed Saturn.
The dog panted happily at his heels as they strode along the bridle path.
“There I stood, thinking untoward thoughts, while Harriet offered me her moral support and compassion. I am the lowest scoundrel ever to steal a kiss.” Though that’s all he’d stolen—a kiss, a hug, a tender embrace that for Harriet had likely been between old friends, and for Philippe had been the sweetest torment.
“I’m not nervous,” he went on. “Not about sitting on a horse again.”
He was, though, looking forward to time with Harriet more or less alone, but for the presence of an equine.
He reached the boundary between the ducal estate and Talbot’s property. Philippe hopped a stile rather than deal with the gate. Saturn wiggled under the gate, which was a bit of a squeeze for such a grand fellow.
“I should have made it apparent that Harriet will be compensated for her time.”
Saturn stuck his nose into the carpet of leaves and began snuffling intently.
“I will insist on paying her in good English coin, and she’ll have nothing to say to it. I’ll be quite the—”
Philippe tripped over a tree root hidden by the fallen leaves and nearly went sprawling. The dog regarded him pityingly, then went back to his investigations.
“I’ll be quite the duke,” Philippe finished. “Though I’m not quite the duke.” He was a spare pressed into service out of necessity, plain and simple. There were worse fates—bashing headfirst into a plank wall and expiring, for example.
He increased his stride. “Riding isn’t difficult. The horse goes on the bottom, as Talbot used to say. The rest of it—the hands, seat, legs, and whatnot—are details.”
Important details. Philippe had been on a runaway pony once. Amazing, how an equine who’d barely moved when pointed away from the barn could cover ground in the opposite direction.
“But I stayed on. The little fiend was utterly winded by the time we trotted into the stable yard. Had to walk him for an hour.”
An hour of ignominy, for all the lads had known exactly what had happened. Talbot had pretended Philippe had meant to go tearing hell-bent across field and furrow, but the stable hands, Philippe, and the demon pony—Butterball—had known differently.
“I got back on and learned to keep a firm hold of the reins. A simple enough concept.”
The break in the trees that led to the Talbot paddocks came into view, and Philippe’s belly did an odd leap. Saturn lifted his leg on an oak sapling, which gave Philippe an excuse to pause, reconnoiter, and say a prayer.
Let me not be put to shame.
“Watch over me, Jonas. If I follow your example and go early to my reward, the title ends up with dear cousin Oglethorpe, and the peerage will never recover from that abomination. Ada will kill us both all over again for abandoning her to his charming company.”
Saturn finished watering the hedge and went trotting forth as if he well knew Philippe’s destination, rotten beast. He’d been a puppy at the time of Jonas’s death—Jonas’s personal hound.
“I’m coming. We have plenty of time, and it’s not as if Harriet has nothing else to do.”
When Philippe emerged between the Talbot paddocks, Harriet was in fact striding along behind the two-year-old filly Jeremy had been working with the previous day. The filly was in long reins, Harriet marching smack up against the horse’s hip.
This was a step in the direction of carrying a rider, allowing the horse to learn how to go along in a bridle without having to carry a rider’s weight. Philippe had watched Talbot educate many a young horse in this manner. A surprising degree of fitness was required to manage the horse while marching about in deep footing, but Harriet managed it easily.
The horse turned, and Harriet came more fully into view.
“Gracious devils, have mercy upon me.”
She was wearing breeches and tall boots, only an oversized riding jacket preserving a modicum of modesty. She spoke to the horse as they halted between two jumps, for this was also the phase of training at which voice commands could be taught.
“Walk on, Rosie, there’s a girl.”
The filly minced forward as daintily as a cat. Harriet steered her all about the arena, around jumps, past stable boys grinning on the rail, down the middle, and over to the mounting block, all the while guiding, chiding, and encouraging.
“And ho, Rosie. Ho.”
The filly came to a smooth stop in the center of the arena, and after she’d stood quietly for half a minute, much patting and praising ensued. Jeremy left the rail to take the horse back to the stable, and Harriet waved at Philippe.
“Your Grace! Good day.”
So she had noticed him. “Harriet. Very nicely done.”
“She’s a good girl. Is it two of the clock already? How time flies when the weather’s fine. Come along, your mount should be ready.”
Philippe joined Harriet at the arena gate. “Before you start lessons, don’t you typically discuss compensation?”
Her coiffure was in good repair, which ought to have helped Philippe keep his mind on the business of the day. Instead, he wanted to take down her braid and bury his hands in her hair.
While he was kissing her.
While she was kissing him back and clutching him in that lovely firm grip of hers.
I have lost my mind.
“We can discuss remuneration once I’ve done something to earn it,” Harriet said as they reached the barn. “This is Matador.”
A mountain of gray horsehair stood in the middle of the aisle. An equine nose tipped with pink protruded from the hair—a nose about a yard long. Two big brown eyes regarded Philippe from beneath two hairy ears.
“Hello, Mastodon.”
The horse’s lower lip drooped, giving him an air of permanently injured dignity.
“I’ll need to use the ladies’ mounting block to board him,” Philippe said. “He does move without hoisting sail? Stops, turns, backs up—the whole lot?”
“He’ll do as you tell him,” Harriet said, unfastening the crossties. “Let’s see what you recall.”
“Now?”
Harriet went about disentangling the reins from the throatlatch, then had to hop to loop the reins over the beast’s great head.
“It’s two of the clock, Your Grace, and I have much to do.”
Whose ideas was this? “I’m a duke. I can’t be seen riding a plough horse.” Though dukes weren’t supposed to dither, fuss, or prevaricate either.
Harriet stroked the horse’s neck. “Matador is a retired drum horse. He’s attended more funerals of state than you have, and you should be honored to have the use of him. He would still be in work, except his partner succumbed to colic and nobody could find another to match Matador’s size and coloring.”
Shamed by an orphaned mastodon. “Very well,” Philippe said. “As I recall, one walks on the horse’s left.”
The equine cortege came along docilely, hooves the size of soup tureens clopping inches from Philippe’s boots. Though the animal was apparently well trained, Philippe was abruptly aware that he was about to entrust his well-being to a creature ten times his size who had no respect for the ducal succession.
And yet, the horse was a placid beast, handsome in its way, and Philippe was no longer a small boy with only a small boy’s strength.
“Let’s use the rail to get you into the saddle,” Harriet said. “The first thing you should know about Matador is that he’ll stand until Domesday. He’s stood for hours in the line of duty, put up with crowds, barking dogs, disrespectful children, and drunken fools. There isn’t much you can do to unnerve him.”
“His job sounds rather like being a duke,” Philippe said, swallowing back some inconvenient welter of emotion. Excitement to be taking on a challenge, impatience at the indignity of being a beginner, fear of mortal harm—might as well be honest—and also hope, that this adventure ended well for all concerned.
Then he was perched on the fence railing, making an awkward job of clambering into the saddle. The horse sighed as Philippe slipped his boots into the stirrups.
“Now what?”
Harriet led Matador a few feet from the rail. “Now we adjust your stirrups. You have longer legs than most stable boys.”
The next few minutes were taken up with Harriet handling her pupil. Philippe lifted his legs, sat tall, had his boots turned to rest nearly parallel to the horse’s sides, and generally endured fussing. When Harriet stepped back, Philippe’s stirrups were at the correct length, and his insides were in a muddle.
He’d made the mistake of looking down, thinking to feast his eyes on the sight of Harriet’s hands on his person. He’d instead seen the ground, miles and miles below where it should have been.
“Your stirrups are on the fourth hole,” Harriet said. “Remember that, because when we’re finished here in the arena, we’ll review saddling and unsaddling.”
“Right, fourth hole.” Not that Phillippe could count to four in his present state. With no warning, his heart had decided to take off at a gallop, his mouth had gone dry, and his wits were probably somewhere in the muck heap.
“Now, you follow me,” Harriet said. “Horses are herd animals. This shouldn’t be difficult.” She drew off her jacket—probably one of Talbot’s castoffs, judging from the poor fit—and slung it over the railing. “Follow the leader, Your Grace, and I’m the leader.”
She strode off. Matador swung his enormous head to sniff at the toe of Philippe’s boot.
Get on with it, mate.
“Keeping you from your oats, am I?” Philippe gave a scoot with his seat.
Nothing happened.
He tapped his heels ever so gently at the horse’s sides, and one hoof shuffled forward.
A firm tap produced a funereal toddle, which suited Philippe splendidly. The horse moved like an equine sea, rolling, rhythmic, and relentless, but also deliberate. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four…
“Are your eyes up?” Harriet called without looking back. “Look where you’re going. Don’t stare at his mane.”
Well, yes. Philippe tipped his chin up, and the rolling sea became a plodding horse. This was all in aid of the Talbots’ future. A secure old age for a man who’d worked long, hard years. Harriet swung left around a jump, and Philippe guided his mount in the same direction.
She didn’t even glance back, which Philippe suspected was her way of allowing him some privacy at an awkward moment. Two more turns, a halt, and onward… until Philippe realized that this game of follow the leader would be the undoing of him, for the leader, striding along in her breeches, had a very fetching derriere.
* * *
Harriet got an education while teaching the duke.
By the second lesson, she realized that His Grace was an athlete. Being unwilling to ride meant that he walked far more than most of his peers. He mentioned that on holidays he’d go for a twenty-mile jaunt over the hills and consider that a pleasant day. He fenced, he rowed, he swam—the Duke of Lavelle was an intensely physical man.
He had the muscles to show for it. As Harriet moved his leg—here for the signal to move forward, there for the signal to move sideways—she grew distracted.
Ye gods, his calves. His thighs.
As she adjusted his hands on the reins—black leather gloves notwithstanding—she grew muddled, for those hands had coaxed terrible longings from her.
As she watched his progress from behind—lest he be sitting subtly to one side or the other—she lost her train of thought entirely. Such broad shoulders, such excellent posture. Such…
“That’s enough for today,” Harriet said. “Posting the trot will leave you sore, regardless of your otherwise fine physical condition.”
Posting the trot—rising in the stirrups to the rhythm of the horse’s footfalls—made for a smoother ride than trying to match the horse’s movement with the seat in the saddle. Matador had a nicely cadenced trot, but his gaits were enormously springy.
Philippe had caught Matador’s rhythm easily, though this lesson would exact a toll in aching muscles tomorrow. Sunday he’d be uncomfortable in the extreme, if the duke’s tutelage followed the usual course.
“I had hoped we might canter today,” Philippe said, giving Matador a whacking great pat on the neck. “Two lessons and the whole business is already coming back to me.”
“We’ll canter soon enough,” Harriet said. “Today, you can take off his saddle and bridle and groom him yourself.”
Philippe kicked his feet out of the stirrups and hopped off as nimbly as any cavalry officer. He ran the stirrups up their leathers, loosened the girth, and looped the reins over Matador’s head.
“We have not discussed your compensation,” he said, leading the horse to the gate. “Come with me to the barn, and we can have that argument while I get horsehair all over my clothing.”
“As you wish.”
“You don’t fool me, Harriet Talbot. You’ll be agreeable until I put the HMS Mastodon into dry dock, and then you’ll turn up contrary. If we had children, you’d reserve all your ire for when the little ones were tucked up into their beds and then open fire on your unsuspecting spouse.”
If they had children… “Today you pick out Matador’s feet, Your Grace.”
Philippe was doing quite well in the saddle. Papa had said he had a natural seat, and Papa was—once again—right. On the ground, where a horse could rear, strike, bite, or knock a man flat, the duke wasn’t as confident.
Matador had confidence enough for ten students and an abiding affection for his paddock. He’d endure fumbling and bumbling under saddle for the promise of an hour at grass. The duke couldn’t know that. Matador had not earned His Grace’s trust, and His Grace had not earned Matador’s either.
Philippe was conscientious about removing the bridle and saddle, putting on the headstall, and fastening the crossties. He also went about the grooming—curry, coarse brush, then fine brush—without skimping anywhere. The bliss of a thorough brushing had Matador’s eyelids drooping and his head hanging as low as the crossties would allow.
“You’ve groomed the baby to sleep,” Harriet said. “Or tired him out. Soon, I might assign you a different mount.”
“You dare not,” Philippe replied, draping an arm across Matador’s withers. “Mastiff will think he’s fallen out of favor with me.”
“Mast—Matador is accustomed to his pupils moving on to other mounts.” Harriet had never quite got the knack. When her students went to other teachers—always to men, of course—she worried. Would this one learn to sit straight? Would that one ever keep her eyes up?
“About your compensation,” Philippe said, giving Matador’s shoulder a scratch.
The horse groaned like a heifer flopping into spring grass.
“You haven’t cleaned out his feet.” Harriet took a curved pick from a nail on the wall. “I’ll do the first one. You’ll do the other three.”
Horses were trained to lift their feet for this process. The groom had simply to scrape the mud, stones, or manure from the concave area on the bottom of the hoof. Balancing on three legs was difficult for an animal weighing a ton, though, and thus a quick, competent touch was necessary.
Harriet reviewed the basics—run a hand down the horse’s leg, tug at the hair on his fetlock, give him a moment to lift his foot, then cradle it like so in one hand…
“And use the pick with the other. You put his foot back on the ground. He doesn’t get to snatch it away.”
Philippe took the pick from her. “He outweighs me by a factor of ten. He gets to do as he jolly well pleases with his feet, and my primary concern is for my toes.”
“Then don’t bother trying,” Harriet retorted. “Don’t put your hand on this horse unless you are prepared to tell him exactly what he needs to do to earn your continued goodwill.”
Matador was awake now, head up, listening to the conversation. He wouldn’t grasp the words, but he’d grasp tone of voice. He’d note the posture of the humans on either side of him and probably even their expressions and subtle changes in their scents.
“I’m to be the duke even in this?” Philippe said. “Hurl orders and thunderbolts, demand proper address, brook no disrespect?”
Was that how he saw the title? “You are to be a person Matador can rely upon to see to his safety and well-being. That means he learns to obey you in small matters so that large matters never become an issue. Right now, you are his groom, Your Grace, nothing more.”
Philippe bent to Matador’s off foreleg, hoof-pick in his hand. “Your Grace.” He ran his hand down the horse’s front leg, tugged on the hair in the general vicinity of the fetlock, and nothing happened. “Now what?”
“You have to mean it,” Harriet said. “He has to know you’re not mucking about for show.”
A second attempt yielded the same result. This was Matador’s version of a game, getting back a bit of his own. He’d been a good boy for well over an hour, doing exactly as he’d been told. In what passed for horsey thinking, he was owed a bit of sport.
Rotten timing, though.
“I have grooms,” Philippe said, stepping back. “They will deal with the distasteful business of scraping manure from horse feet when the need arises.”
“So if you’re out on a hack, enjoying some solitude in the saddle, and your horse begins to go uneven in front, you’ll make him walk all the way back to the barn with a stone lodged against his sole rather than dismount, get out your penknife, and solve the problem on the spot? A stone bruise can lead to an abscess and worse.”
Matador shook all over, sending gray hair cascading in every direction. For him, the grooming session was done.
“Now you have me killing my horse before I’ve even cantered him,” Philippe said.
Harriet waited.
She’d been waiting for Philippe in a corner of her heart for years. She could afford to wait a moment more. If he gave up now, that would be for the best, because the challenges only increased from this point forward. Philippe had made a good try, but he had reasons for stepping back, and if that was his choice…
Harriet would be eternally disappointed.
“You,” Philippe said to the horse, “are a disrespectful backbencher from the West Riding who doesn’t know his place. Lift your damned foot, horse.”
Matador obliged for a moment, then came within inches of putting his foot down atop the duke’s boot.
Philippe passed Harriet the hoof-pick, and she nearly began to cry. You cannot give up. Not on yourself, not so soon.
Then he shrugged out of his jacket, slung it in the direction of a trunk, and caused Matador to shy.
“The hoof-pick, please.”
Harriet passed it over.
“Now that I have the attention of yonder pleasure barge,” Philippe said, “perhaps he’ll condescend to allow me to scrape the manure from between his royal toes.”
Matador hadn’t bargained on his groom’s strength or wiliness. Philippe went through the routine—bend, run a hand down the leg, tug at the feathers around the fetlock—but at the last instant, Philippe shoved his shoulder against the horse’s side.
The gelding lifted his foot as if to step to the side. Philippe caught it and curled the foreleg up to put the underside of the hoof skyward. In a few brisk swipes with the pick, he’d scraped out a pile of dirt.
“Two more to go, horse. I value this shirt more than your dignity, so plan accordingly.”
The first back hoof went smoothly. On the second, Matador tried to wrestle his foot away, but he was merely playing, and Philippe was in earnest. The duke finished with the foot easily.
“Well done,” Harriet said. “Now you can put him up.”
Philippe led the horse to his loose box, which had the generous dimensions of a foaling stall. “If you’d bring me my coat?”
Harriet obliged, though seeing His Grace without benefit of his riding jacket was the best distraction of the day so far.
“The left pocket holds a carrot,” Philippe said, unfastening Matador’s headstall. “We’re to end on a good note, despite our wrestling match.”
Harriet had reminded him of that. End every lesson on a positive note, even if that positive note was merely a smooth halt or a quiet circuit of the arena on a loose rein.
Philippe broke the carrot in half, took a bite, and put the remaining portions on his flat palm. Matador whispered his lips over Philippe’s hand. The carrot disappeared amid loud mutual crunching.
“I’ve done the same on many occasions,” Harriet said. “They also like apples.”
“I like a fellow who has some backbone,” Philippe said, stroking Matador’s neck. “I’m not sure I like an insubordinate horse.”
“Did you follow every instruction from your tutors and professors? Did you never ask them a clever question to see if they were as learned as they pretended to be?”
Philippe stepped from the stall and closed the latch on the half door. “I challenged them all the time.” He leaned near. “You are a good teacher, Harriet. A very good teacher. How do I repay you for your time, your patience, and your wisdom?”
Since undertaking these riding lessons, Philippe hadn’t flirted with Harriet, not once. She’d touched him in the course of instruction, and he’d listened patiently to her lectures, as if he’d never kissed her, as if she were in truth the son Jackson Talbot should have had.
She was not that son, though lately she hadn’t felt much like a daughter either. She’d felt like an exhausted drudge, except for when Philippe had kissed her.
He was asking how to repay her for her time, her patience, and her wisdom. Harriet had a few ideas, and none of them involved pounds and pence.