Page 45 of A Bride for the Ruthless Duke

The mare shifted one step, and Ellen settled her with a light touch of the reins.

“She suits me,” Ellen said, her voice softening as she ran her hand down the chestnut neck. “She has a turn of speed you would not credit from the look of her. I gave her her head along the bottom and had to remember I was a duchess before she remembered she was a lady’s hack.”

“Hibbert lunges her of a morning so she will not offer you that turn of speed before you have asked for it.”

“I know. He told me.” Ellen’s mouth curved a little. “He tells me a great deal.”

“Hibbert has reached the age at which silence would be viewed by him as a personal defeat.”

“He is the first person at Wrenfield who looked at me as though I were a person and not a sum to be carried.”

Theodore’s fingers tightened once on the reins. “He has been in that yard forty years. He has earned the right to look at people however he pleases, and he spends it freely.”

“He spends it kindly.”

“Do not tell him so. He will become impossible.”

“I suspect he already is.”

“He is indispensable, which is worse.”

Ellen smiled toward the valley, and the sight of it made the wind seem briefly less cold. “She is a beautiful animal.”

“I am glad you find her so.”

“You chose her?”

“I described what was required.”

“Very thoroughly, I imagine.”

“Thoroughness is seldom a vice.”

“That must be a comfort to you.”

This time he did look at her. She was still facing the valley, though the curve at her mouth told him she knew precisely what she had done.

“I begin to suspect,” Theodore said, “that country air improves your courage.”

“I begin to suspect that Your Grace prefers me timid.”

“I prefer you safe.”

The answer came before he could decide whether to say it.

Both of them seemed to hear more in it than he had intended.

The warmth left her smile by a degree. She looked down at the mare’s mane, smoothing one dark strand into place with her thumb.

“Safe is not quite the same as free,” she said.

“No,” Theodore replied, after a moment. “It is not.”

He did not ask her anything further. He let the gelding stand, and the two horses blew, shifted, and settled. The wind came up off the river, carrying the damp scent of water and late grass. They sat side by side and watched the valley without either of them rushing to fill the quiet, which was a thing Theodore had not done with another living soul since his mother’s demise.

“My father used to take me up to a ridge such as this,” Ellen said at last, speaking to the valley rather than to him. “Before the money went.”

Theodore turned his head. “Did he?”