Duchess By Night - Page 21/77

“Well, I might as well go downstairs,” Harriet said. She had her hair tied back, but no powder.

“Your hat!” Lucille said. She opened the wardrobe and then hesitated. “I’m sure he said the bicorne for horseback. Or perhaps a round hat.”

The round hat had a brim that stuck out all around, and a little cockade on the side. Harriet thought it looked stupid, but she grabbed it and jammed it down on her head. “I have to go or Strange will come up and find you here.”

“I can’t believe he walked straight into your bedchamber,” Lucille muttered. “You’re that fortunate he didn’t know it on the instant.”

“People see what they expect to see,” Harriet said, reassuring herself as much as Lucille.

“It’s perishing cold outside. Just look at the frost flowers on the windows. Here, I’ll put another cravat over that black one. No one will know the difference, and at least it will keep your neck warm.”

Harriet had to make a conscious effort to pick up her feet since her boots thumped so loudly on the wooden stairs that she felt as if she were waking the whole house. Given that she had stolen off to her room around eleven in the evening, when most of the party appeared to be just starting to enjoy themselves, she would feel truly guilty to wake them.

Strange was at the bottom of the stairs. In the morning light his hair gleamed the color of dark mahogany. She was overcome by a giddy sense of exactly how much fun she was having.

He glanced up and said, “I might as well have been waiting for a woman to dress, Cope.”

“Good morning to you too, my lord,” she said. The butler was waiting with their coats. When she had struggled into her great coat (Villiers’s tailor had padded her shoulders so that she looked more manly), Strange eyed her from head to foot.

“You don’t look warm enough,” he said brusquely. “And you’re as pale as Villiers. We’ll work up a sweat soon enough.”

Harriet smiled rather weakly and strode through the door. Outdoors the air was as cold as liquid ice, catching the back of her throat and emerging from her mouth in great puffs of steam.

Groomsmen were holding the reins of stamping horses. Strange’s mount threw up his head in greeting. Strange said over his shoulder, “Don’t get your nose out of joint, youngster. I gave you a filly, rather than a gelding, but that’s not meant as a comment on your horsemanship. She’s got a beautiful stride.”

A lad with a shock of white-blond hair and freckles on his nose was holding Harriet’s horse. Harriet walked over and held out her hand so the filly could blow warm air into her palm. Then she pulled on her gloves.

“Let’s go,” Strange snapped.

He must be irritable by nature, Harriet decided. She checked the belly strap of the horse as she watched Strange swing into the saddle. She’d seen countless men mount horses, but she never expected to ride astride herself.

Finally Harriet put her left boot into the stirrup and flung herself into the air.

Plop! She landed on the saddle and gathered the reins as if she expected to find herself there.

Strange started down the driveway without looking back, so Harriet signaled to the boy to let her horse go. He stepped aside but then said in a low voice, “If you’ll excuse the presumption, sir, grip with your knees.”

Harriet nodded in a dignified sort of way, and let her horse start picking her way down the icy path. The sun was up, and Strange was right about the light. At this hour it had a peculiar, dancing clarity that edged every blade of glass with silver. Ice crackled under her mount’s feet, and hung in great dripping rows from the fence beside the road.

“We can let them gallop at the end of this road,” Strange shouted over his shoulder.

Gallop? When she was growing up, her mother considered horse-riding unladylike. Horses were regarded as little more than moving sofas. Riding excursions tended to be ambling trips through the woods to a picnic spot, with a groomsman leading each horse to ensure that it didn’t startle. Certainly, there had been no wild gallops down icy roads.

She slowed her horse even further, but the end of the road arrived anyway. She found her host prancing about on a caracoling horse. “For God’s sake, Cope,” he said, “you’re riding like a maiden aunt.”

She scowled at him and he cocked an eyebrow. “Tetchy about getting up so early? Worse and worse. I’m not sure I can teach you to be a man.”

“You sound as if you belong to some sort of exclusive club,” she retorted. “As far as I can see, the definition of a man has nothing to do with whether he thinks it’s masculine to be out breathing ice and clopping around on a dangerously slick road.”

“Fear is not manly,” he told her, with an insufferably condescending look on his face.

“The list grows more and more interesting,” she said, intent on distracting him so that she could avoid galloping off down the lane. “Men get up at dawn, feel no fear, and—what was that you told me last night?—stay away from women’s hemlines.”

“Look, you’re at a disadvantage,” Strange said.

“As you already indicated.” Harriet put her nose in the air. “I find your rudeness insufferable.”

“Look at you!” he erupted. “You look exactly like a—well—you probably don’t know the word, so I won’t use it. But you’ll never find a woman at this rate.”

“Kitty seemed to have no questions about my manliness,” Harriet pointed out. “She said I was very handsome.”

“You are handsome,” he said, and then made a funny strangled sound in his throat. “It’s just that you—look at your hair!”

Harriet frowned at him. “I’m wearing a hat.”

“It has golden streaks in it,” he said. “Like a woman’s hair.”

“Well, yours has streaks too,” she retorted. “It looks just like mahogany.”

For some reason his face froze with horror. He spun his horse around and said, “Bloody hell!” And the next moment he was pounding away down the road.

Harriet let out a little snort of laughter. Strange was cracked. But her horse was straining at the reins, so she gripped with her knees just as the stableboy told her. It felt odd, but perhaps it would keep her in the saddle.

“All right,” she said to her mount. “Go, then.” She loosed the reins.

She would have screamed, but the icy air blowing in her face stole her breath. She would have stopped, but pulling on the reins did nothing. Her horse was intent on catching up with Strange and clearly considered its rider an afterthought. She would have fallen off except she couldn’t loosen her knees from pure terror. So she held on the reins and screamed silently. Her hat flew off. Her ears froze.

The horse seemed to eat up the ground with its long legs—and every time it lurched forward, she flew into the air and then came down with a crash. Ow! Ow! Ow!

Through narrowed eyes streaming with tears from the cold, she saw that somehow she was catching up with that devil, Strange. A moment later, her horse actually started to pass him, except that Strange bent over and shouted at his horse until it drew ahead again.

At the end of the road she drooped over the horse’s neck, panting. She didn’t even look at Strange. If he dared to say something about her being a poor rider, she’d—she’d—kill him.