Page 88 of Marry in Scarlet
“I object to hunting foxes for sport. Hunting rabbits and hares for the pot is different. It was a necessity.”
So this “useless girl” had staved off starvation by hunting to keep herself and her servant alive. Her father deserved a thrashing. Pity he was dead; Hart would have liked to deliver the thrashing himself.
A thought occurred to him. “If you were so short of money, how did you acquire that stallion of yours?”
She dimpled, and said in a suspiciously airy voice, “I had rich neighbors, and some of them were, let us say, careless with their horses.”
“Youstolethat horse?”
“No!” Her expression was part guilt, part glee. “Not exactly. My grandfather left one good mare—a beautiful Arabian called Juno—originally bought for my mother, so the mare was mine. She was a lovely creature, getting on in years but still able to bear progeny. She came into season at the very same time the rich and careless guest of one of my neighbors left his stallion out in the paddock while he went off with friends...”
“You put your mare in with the stallion?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Not exactly. But I did put her in the next paddock and let nature take its course. The stallionjumped the fence, of course. I returned him to his paddock afterward, and nobody knew what had taken place. But as I’d hoped, he got a colt on Juno. Sultan was her last foal.” She slid him a glance that was part guilt, part triumph. “I know it wasn’t very ethical, but you should have seen how carelessly this fellow treated his horse. And he had the worst seat I’ve ever seen. He didn’t deserve such a fine animal.”
Hart shrugged. He had no issue with a stallion jumping a fence to reach a mare in season. He knew exactly how that stallion felt.
“So when you were so hard up, why didn’t you sell Sultan? You could have sold the animal for a good sum.” Her answer should have surprised him, but it didn’t.
“Sell Sultan? I couldn’t. When he was born, I helped deliver him—Juno had a difficult birth—and I raised him and trained him. He’s family.”
Of course he was. Dog, stallion, elderly servant—Lady Georgiana Rutherford’s family. Until the last year, apparently, when she’d discovered her real family...
“Now it’s my turn,” she said.
Hart frowned. “Turn for what?” He knew perfectly well what.
“To ask you about your life.”
“There’s nothing to tell. Childhood spent at Everingham Abbey, my family seat; then school, Harrow, followed by Cambridge; and you know the rest.”
She gave him a stern look. “I don’t know the rest—and as a life story, that was pathetic. I gave you details, stories, people. Tell me what you did as a child, who you cared about, what you learned.”
“There’s nothing to tell. It was all very conventional, very dull. Oh, look. London. We’re almost there.”
She peered out the window. The carriage had just reached the top of a slight hill and the city of London was spread out in the distance. For a few moments she gazed at the view, picking out the features, no doubt. But then she turned back to him. “There’s still plenty of time to tell meabout your childhood. Or school—tell me about your schooling. Did you enjoy it or did you hate it?”
“Neither. I did what I had to.”
She made a frustrated sound. “You are a terrible storyteller! And you’re not playing fair.”
He shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to play ‘let’s get to know each other.’” He loathed stirring up the past.
“Yes. Each other.” She folded her arms, fixed him with a look that was heavy with expectation and waited.
“Very well, then, I met my best friend, Sinc—Johnny Sinclair—on the first day of school. We’ve been friends ever since.”
She waited, and when it was clear he didn’t intend to say any more, she made a huffing sound and turned back to the view out of the window.
They passed the last few miles in silence. She was annoyed with him, and he understood why, but it wasn’t going to make him open his budget about things better left in the past. All this cozy exchange of stories, it wasn’t for him.
And it wasn’t necessary for marriage. A man and wife met in the bedroom and that was all that was required—at least in the kind of marriage he intended to have.
***
“He was hopeless, Emm. As talkative as a... a post. He dug so much out of me—and I tried to be honest with him and shared. And it wasn’t easy. But when it was his turn, he told me nothing—nothing personal at any rate. He just pokered up and looked down his nose and shared precisely nothing. Except that he’d met his friend, Mr. Sinclair, at school. Which everyone knows anyway.”
George squirmed now at the shameful things she’d revealed about herself; her loneliness growing up, the scorn of the villagers—he had experienced for himself the attitude of the local gentry toward her—the fact that she and Martha had been so poor they almost starved, the unethical acquisition of Sultan. She wished she could take it all back, but it was too late now.
