Page 19 of Private Arrangements
The admiration in his eyes almost made the whole mad enterprise worthwhile. He sank down to one knee and cupped his hands together. She expelled a long, ragged breath, took hold of the reins with one hand, the cantle with the other, and placed her left foot on his hands. He gave her a strong boost, she swung her right leg over the horse's rump, and she was in the saddle.
The horse snorted and shifted. She squealed and reached wildly for the bridle. He caught her arms just in time.
“Easy,” he murmured, to the horse or to her she couldn't be sure. “Easy.”
Then he lifted his eyes to her, the most reassuring eyes she'd gazed into since her father had passed away. “Don't worry. I'll keep you safe.”
“I should have asked you to be my groom instead of my husband,” she said.
He only grinned. “Hold on.”
He led the horse to a slow walk. Mercy, the ground must be fifty feet below her and receding. She'd forgotten what it was like to sit up so high on a great big stallion. She knew the horse's motion was gentle and smooth beneath her, but shefeltherself perched atop a wild bronco, about to be heaved off any second. An incipient nausea roiled her tummy. She wanted to throw her arms about the horse's neck, clamp her legs around its belly, and hang on for all she was worth. She wanted to get offthis instant.
“You are not really Lord Tremaine, are you?” she said, desperate for distraction. “You are a pauper who looks like him, and the two of you decided to switch places, fool everyone, and have a jolly old time.”
He laughed. “Well, I am a pauper—an ‘improverished nobody' as you so aptly put—except I'm already related to every royal house in Europe. So sometimes I put on my fancy clothes and go out and drink champagne with my noble cousins. Sometimes I change into rags and work in the stable. In truth, we shouldn't even have kept horses. But my father said then we might as well stop wearing hats and shoes. It was one economy I could not persuade him to make.”
His answer was so breathtakingly frank that she momentarily forgot her fear of an imminent tumble. “And your parents permitted this . . . this folly?”
“They turned a blind eye and pretended that somehow I was able to run the house better and for less expense without ever dirtying my own hands. Or running betting games at whichever lyceum I happened to be attending.”
“Betting games?!”
“Games that tend to run true to probability. So I could promise a prize of, say, a pound, and charge my fellow lyceans—particularly those who suffer at mathematics—a shilling a try to line up six coins heads up while blindfolded. I always came out ahead.”
“Good Lord,” she breathed. “Did you ever get caught?”
“For having a few coins in my pocket?” He chuckled. “No. I was the most courteous, virtuous, promising young man any professor had ever seen.”
There was such lovely mischief in his voice. Hewascourteous, virtuous (as far as she could tell), and infinitely promising. But he was also clever, cunning, and willing to bend the rules.
Why did the Fates tempt her so? Why must he be so marvelously perfect for her and yet so abysmally unattainable?
“Is there anything you can't do?”
“No,” he said, laughing. “But there are things I can't do very well. I'm a terrible cook, for instance. I tried, but my family refused to live on my frugal meals.”
The very idea of it shocked her. Even before he became Lord Tremaine, he'd been cousin to dukes and princes. This man, whose blood was so blue it was probably indigo, had worked before a stove and—success or not—produced at least one entire meal. What next? The Prince of Wales laying down railroad tracks with his own bare hands?
An even more shocking thought occurred to her. “Did you plan to work for a living?”
“I did. But lately I've become hesitant. A title does hamper things, even if it's only a courtesy title—for now. I suppose running an estate is a noble and time-consuming task.” He shrugged, his sleeve brushing the edge of her skirts. “But it's not what I'd have chosen to do.”
“And what would you have chosen?”
“Engineering,” he answered easily. “I study mechanics at the Polytechnique.”
“Your parents said something about physics or economics.”
“My parents are still in denial. They think mechanics sounds too common, too much grease and smoke and soot.”
“But why engineering?” Her father had worked with dozens of engineers. They were an earnest and rather single-minded tribe, seemingly having nothing at all in common with the elegant marquess beside her.
“I like to build things. To work with my hands.”
She shook her head. Hands. The future duke liked manual labor. “Well, don't tell anyone else what you've told me,” she cautioned. “They wouldn't understand at all.”
“I don't. I only told you because you spend as much time with your accountants and solicitors as you do your dressmaker. You are pushing to define a new normality as surely as I am.”
