“I… shall consider it,” Valeria replied, to the suggestion he had forgotten he had made.
The dark-haired girl pulled a face but kept her opinion to herself.
“Do you ride, Miss Maxwell?” Duncan asked, ignoring the girl.
Valeria peered up at the magnificent stallion, her lips quirking into a nervous smile. Before he could warn her of his horse’s penchant for biting, she put her hand out to the creature… and the stallion nuzzled his nose into her palm, snorting with contentment.
“I love to,” she said in a faraway voice, her eyes creasing at the corners with something like sadness. “I had two mares who were very dear to me, but… I rarely had the opportunity to ride them, so I relinquished them.”
Duncan frowned. “That is… noble of you.” He willed her to look at him. “Would you care to ride Zeus?”
“Pardon?” she gasped, glancing around as if she had done something awful.
“I shall hold the reins, do not worry.”
He could tell she was tempted as she returned her attention to the horse, running her hand up and down the stallion’s nose, stroking him gently. Even the rude girl beside Valeria seemed encouraging, giving Valeria a nudge in the ribs.
“You should,” the girl urged. “What a treat that would be!”
A moment later, Valeria shook her head. “I am not suitably attired, Your Grace, and I believe my friends and I were shortly about to leave.” She dipped her head to Duncan, all coldness and stiff propriety. “Enjoy your ride. He is a beautiful stallion.”
With one last stroke of the horse’s nose, Valeria grabbed the dark-haired miscreant by the arm and ushered her back across the path. Duncan followed Valeria’s departure, noticing the picnic beneath the tree. A pleasant scene that he would not have minded joining.
And why should I not?
Wrapping the reins loosely around his hand, he led Zeus to the gathering of ladies.
“Lockie!” Amelia cheered, shooting to her feet. “Oh, my goodness, Lionel will be so disappointed to have missed you! Are you in London for long? I know he will want to see you.”
It appeared that Valeria had forgotten that Duncan was well acquainted with her friends—their husbands, at least, though hehad visited Edmund and Lionel’s houses enough to know most of the ladies in a friendly capacity.
“I am here for the foreseeable,” Duncan replied, ignoring the prickle of heat that burned into the side of his head. The source: Valeria’s sharp glare.
Evidently, she had assumed that he would continue on with his afternoon without stopping to greet the others.
Amelia clapped her hands together. “How splendid! Daniel will be thrilled. He asks about you so very often, wondering when ‘Robin Hood’ will be coming to visit again. For months, he slept with that bow and arrow you gave him.”
“One day, I hope to teach him how to shoot a real one,” Duncan replied. “With your permission, of course.”
Amelia pulled a worried face. “I suppose it would do no harm for him to learn from an expert, though that ‘one day’ will have to be many years from now.”
“We must have a dinner.” Isolde swooped in, all smiles. “This week, perhaps? All of us together. Joseph will be sick with envy if Daniel gets to see you and he does not. They can retire to bed a little later, if we have an early dinner. What do you say?”
Duncan glanced at Valeria, who had turned rather red in the afternoon heat, and would not look at him. “I would be delighted. I trust that Miss Maxwell will be in attendance, too?”
Valeria blinked, meeting his gaze with a panicked gleam in her eyes.
Do you think I will tell them of our clandestine lessons? Come now, you ought to know me better than that.He held his tongue, hoping that his face relayed the message instead.
“We would not leave her out,” Isolde said with a laugh, as if that should have been obvious.
Rebecca raised a desperate hand. “I will be there too, Your Grace. Mercy, it will be so nice to dine with familiar faces, instead of fighting through conversation with strangers. I feel as if I am saying the same things over and over, and it is most infuriating.”
“Alas, that is the nature of society dinners,” Duncan replied with a sympathetic smile. “I am certain there is a book of inane questions somewhere that many of these people read, spooling them out at every party and gathering.”
Rebecca nodded eagerly. “I quite agree! If I must tell another gentleman my age, my parentage, and my residence again, I shall scream. Then, there are the gentlemen who compliment my perfume when I am not wearing any. I swear they are just reciting from a rehearsed script.”
“Or you smell very good,” Duncan offered, laughing. His gaze drifted to Valeria, remembering the scent of her: soap and clean linen and cool spring nights.
