Page 50 of Lessons for Marquesses
Horses whinnied at the sweet-smelling hay they carried. Others kicked at the box walls.
Nicholas turned in to the corridor housing the stallions. He halted at the first box, his hand gripping the iron door. Wild Squire came to his feet and shook off the straw. His horse, his friend, maybe his only friend now, stretched out toward him with a nicker.
“You remember me?” he whispered. “Or are you well and truly her horse now?”
Wild Squire lipped Nicholas’s chin. He scratched the stallion’s ear.
Tears stung his eyes. He clenched his jaw to quell the nuisance of emotion and escaped outside for air.
Scanning the horizon for foes, a habit ingrained in him, he spied a saddled horse grazing near the copper beech. By the sleek, powerful outline, the horse was Minion. Without a rider.
He stepped from the yard, and the lump his peripheral vision had assumed an unruly patch of weeds was a human lounging against the tree trunk.
He was five days late because he couldn’t stand himself. Because in Georgiana’s presence he had spoken more than two sentences together. Words had poured from his mouth. He had bothered with questions, lectures. Worse, he had begun to ward off the nightly visitations of war, not by dreaming of Farendon, but by pondering Georgiana’s life. Had William St. Clair made her a George? Why,howwas she so patently guileless?
He marched toward the tree with hate the only thing to fight the appeal of her.
Georgiana was sleeping with a bottle wedged at her knees under the copper beech with her faithful mare glaring at him. Georgiana’s coat, wig, and two empty bottles had been thrown a good length. In the setting sun, her tousled hair smoldered like crimson embers.
“George?”
She opened her eyes.
His chest tightened. It was impossible that her eyes were a shade of violet matching the streak glowing above the riverbank.
She lifted the bottle to her lips, gulped, fumbled to fit the bottle back, swung a slim leg wide, and settled it at the juncture of her thighs. And closed her eyes.
“George, are you drunk?”
Her shoulders bobbed. “’Struth.”
Picking up the empty bottles, he sniffed. Two bottles of a lauded vintage of Bordeaux. He crouched down beside her and peeled her fingers from the bottle between her thighs. Each finger promptly restaked its claim. He raised the bottle up with her hand.
Brandy.
The very drunk girl had the listless air of heartbreak about her. The birdsong and sunset, the breeze teasing the cherry-gold waves at her brow intensified it.
Nicholas unscrewed the bottle from her grasp. “You should stop.”
“Mebbe.” In her shrug was the naivete of one who hadn’t trod the road to drunkenness before.
Nicholas searched for more to say. That is, he had much to say but what would be remembered? “Thank you for the book.”
She opened one eye. “Mr. Wolf?”
“Who else would it be?”
“You’re five days late.”
“So I’ve been told.” Just once he wanted to touch her hair. Sheathe it in his hands. Bring her close and catch the scent of her over the liquor.
Her mouth. That was beautiful.
Beautiful?This obsession was bordering on insanity.
She crooked a smile. “Did you come for the ball?”
“What ball?”
