Page 62 of A Duke Changes Everything
Mina spun to face him, nudging him back, her hands braced on his chest. “Don’t do this. You’ll regret it.”
“I’m at my best when I’m doing things I’ll regret.”
“Father, leave them,” Gregory called as he entered the stable yard. He’d taken a Tremayne saddle and bridle and led Hades by a short rein. “The beast seems to have been well cared for. I’ll ride him back.” He locked eyes with Mina. “No harm done, I’m sure.”
“We shall not leave until this matter is resolved. This man”—Lord Lyle pointed at Tobias—“filched my horseflesh. I won’t rest until I see him hang for it.”
Mina sighed and pivoted back toward Lord Lyle. “I’ve already told you. I’m the one who found Hades.” She shot Gregory a fearsome glare. “We tended his wounds and gave him time to recover.”
“You’re a meddler, Miss Thorne. What would Magistrate Hardbrook say of your thievery?” Lord Lyle grimaced as he took in her rumpled shirt and dirty trousers.
“We’ve retrieved our property, Father.” Gregory cinched the saddle on Hades, put a boot in the stirrup and mounted the horse. “Let us leave the gambling club owner and his trouser-wearing steward to whateverbusinessthey were conducting before we arrived.” He tugged sharply at Hades’s reins but the horse shied back, resisting his rider’s lead. “Come on, you wretched cur.”
Nick could barely see the man or the horse through the waterfall of red fury clouding his vision.
Lyle’s son was the one. The knowing glances between Mina and Gregory Lyle hinted at the tale. Whether love or lust or something in between, the man had hurt her. Now the blighter thought he could cast her dismissive glances across the stable yard.
Rage flooded Nick’s senses, firing his blood, pushing every rational thought into the flames. He’d never had any patience for bullies. They were irritating sparks to the dry tinder of his anger.
But it was Mina’s gasp of horror at how the younger Lyle treated the horse that sealed the beast’s fate.
“How much?” Nick strode past her, wishing he could reach for her, reassure her. Instead, he confronted Lord Lyle’s cad of a son.
“Good God, you’re a duke now, Tremayne.” The young man turned his nose up. “I thought perhaps a title might have cured your fixation on lucre, but everyone at your club says you’re a greedy rotter.”
Nick remembered the young man vaguely. He was one of those pampered noblemen who expected the world to fall at their feet and whined when fortune frowned instead.
“Lord Calvert says your tables are rigged,” he continued in a whine high enough to make the horse’s ears flick back.
“Calvert is a poor loser.”Like you.“How much for the stallion?”
The buffoon cackled, a comical attempt at masculine confidence. “He’s not for sale.”
Nick couldn’t imagine what Mina ever saw in the lordling. Except, of course, that he was pretty, with a delicate, almost girlish face that hadn’t been slashed open by his father’s penknife.
“Everyone has a price.” Nick grabbed the slack line of rein hanging under the horse’s snout. “A thousand pounds.”
Ah, the fancy-faced nobleman liked that. Younger Lyle gulped visibly, his haughty grin folding like a house of cards. “You’re a madman, Tremayne.”
“Possibly.” Nick cast a glance over his shoulder at Mina.
She wore an unbearably hopeful expression, and Nick didn’t want to disappoint her. What he wanted was to kiss her more thoroughly, take whatever she offered, and never let his wretched past intrude again.
“Probably,” he admitted when he turned his attention back to Gregory Lyle.
“You cannot buy your way out of this.” The elderly Lyle wagged a bony finger at Mina, and Nick barely resisted the urge to break it free from his hand. “What this woman has done is a crime. The law will decide her payment.”
“Two thousand pounds,” Nick said with the last thread of calm he possessed. It was a very thin, quickly fraying thread. He sighed as he waited, darting his gaze between Lyle, who was flapping his gums like a fish flopping on the shore, and the son who’d been struck dumb, his mouth hanging agape.
“The horse isn’t worth half that sum.” Lord Lyle’s voice had lowered to little more than an astounded squawk.
The man’s honesty was a pleasant surprise. It meant the old rotter had stumbled on an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“Is that a yes?” Nick had made enough deals in his life, seen enough desperate men, to know when he’d won.
The younger Lyle leaned over in the saddle as his father approached and whispered in the old man’s ear. The father grimaced and clasped his hands around the lapels of his frock coat, puffing out his chest and lifting his chin.
The coward couldn’t look Nick in the eye. Bested noblemen rarely could.
