The Duke's Bridle Path Read online

  “His Grace For the Win” © Copyright 2017 Grace Burrowes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book/novella may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations or excerpts for the purpose of critical reviews or articles—without permission in writing from Grace Burrowes, author and publisher of the work.

  “Desperately Seeking Scandal” © Copyright 2017 by Theresa Romain

  All rights reserved. No part of this book/novella may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations or excerpts for the purpose of critical reviews or articles—without permission in writing from Theresa Romain, author and publisher of the work.

  Published as a two-novella compilation, The Duke's Bridle Path, by Grace Burrowes Publishing, 21 Summit Avenue, Hagerstown, MD 21740.

  Cover design by Wax Creative, Inc.

  ISBN for The Duke's Bridle Path: 9781941419533

  Table of Contents

  His Grace for the Win Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  How To Find a Duke in Ten Days

  No Other Duke Will Do

  Desperately Seeking Scandal Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  About Theresa Romain

  Books by Theresa Romain

  Lady Rogue

  His Grace for the Win

  GRACE BURROWES

  Chapter One

  * * *

  “Will I see you at the race meets, Your Grace?”

  Lowered lashes and an arch smile suggested Lady Ambrosia Warminster wanted to see every naked inch of Philippe Albinus Bartholomew Coape Dodge Ellis, twelfth Duke of Lavelle.

  Many women sought the same objective—those inches were handsome, titled, and wealthy, after all. Alas for Lady Ambrosia, an equestrian gathering was the last place she’d find Philippe.

  He took her proffered hand and fired off a melting smile.

  “I’ve neglected my acres, my dear, and must forgo the pleasure of even your company to make amends with my dear sister at Theale Hall. Might I ask where you’ll spend the Yuletide holidays?”

  He kept hold of her hand and looked hopeful, that being the protocol when declining an assignation, or when dodging the forcible trip to the altar such an encounter would likely engender.

  “Papa hasn’t decided, or Mama hasn’t,” she said, retrieving her hand.

  Philippe let her hand go, slowly. “I will live in hope of a waltz next season. Please give my felicitations to your family.”

  Add a touch of eyebrow, a slight flaring of the nostrils—Philippe’s older brother, Jonas, had taught him that bit—allow the lady to be the first to turn away, and… With a curtsey and a smile, she was off, pretending to see a dear, dear friend on the other side of Lady Pembroke’s music room.

  “How do you do that?” Seton Avery, Earl of Ramsdale, had been born with an inability to whisper. He growled quietly or not so quietly. On rare occasions, he roared.

  “How do I avoid capture?” Philippe asked. “I give the ladies a little of what they want—my attention—and they give me what I want.”

  “Their hearts?” Ramsdale wore the expression Philippe usually saw when he and the earl were sharing an interesting game of chess.

  “My freedom. You are coming out to Theale Hall with me next week?”

  Ramsdale lifted two glasses of champagne from a passing footman’s tray and handed one to Philippe.

  “If I allow you to abandon me in Town, the disconsolate widows and hopeful debutantes will swivel their gunsights in my direction. One shudders to contemplate the fate of a mere belted earl under such circumstances.”

  Ramsdale grew restless as autumn came on, while Philippe felt the pull of his family seat, despite the memories. Ada bided at Theale Hall, doing more than her share to manage the estate, and Philippe owed his sister companionship at this time of year above all others.

  “Then have your belted self ready to depart no later than Wednesday,” Philippe said. “The nights grow brisk, and harvest will soon begin in Berkshire.”

  Ramsdale lifted his glass a few inches. “Of course, Your Grace. My pleasure, Your Most Sublime Dukeship. We’ll take that rolling pleasure dome you call a traveling coach?”

  When did Philippe travel a significant distance by any other means? “If it’s raining, you’re welcome to make the journey in the saddle.”

  “And deprive you of my company? Don’t be daft. Let’s leave on Tuesday. I’ve grown bored with Town, and the debutantes circle ever closer.”

  “Monday,” Philippe said. “We’ll leave Monday at the crack of dawn.”

  * * *

  “Such a beauty,” Lord Dudley cooed. “Such lovely quarters and elegant lines, such a kind eye. Makes a fellow itch to get her under saddle.”

  Titled men seldom rode mares, and thus his lordship’s innuendo was about as subtle as the scent of a full muck cart. Harriet Talbot stroked the mare’s shoulder, silently apologizing to the horse.

  Utopia deserved better than a strutting clodpate.

  “Shall I return her to her stall?” Harriet raised her voice to aim the question at her father, who was leaning heavily on his cane near the paddock gate.

  “Your lordship?” Papa asked. “Have you seen enough? She’s a superior lady’s mount and enjoys working over fences. At the fashionable hour, she’ll make an elegant impression, and she’ll be eager to hack out of a fine morning.”

  Please don’t buy her. Please, please do not buy this mare.

  “She’s very pretty,” Dudley said, “very well put together. I like her eye.”

  Harriet did not like the covetous look in Dudley’s eye. “While I commend your judgment, my lord, I hope you realize that she’s not up to your weight. I was under the impression—we were, rather—that you sought a guest mount for a lady.”

  For one of his mistresses, in fact. Dudley’s stable master had made that clear. “Utopia has some growing yet to do,” Harriet went on, “some muscling up. With another year or two of work, she’ll have more strength and stamina, but I’d advise against buying her for yourself.”

  His lordship stroked the mare’s glossy backside. “Oh, but she’s a chestnut. I cut quite a dash on a chestnut.”

  Besides, what lordling worth his port would make a decision based on a woman’s opinion?

  Utopia switched her tail, barely missing his lordship’s face. This would not end well for the viscount or the mare.

  “We can find you another handsome chestnut,” Harriet said, before Papa could cut in with more praise for his lordship’s discernment. “Utopia needs a chance to finish growing before she’s competent to carry a man of your stature.”

  The mare had the misfortune to be beautiful. Four white socks evenly matched, excellent conformation, a white blaze down the center of her face, and great bloodlines. She was doomed to become some nobleman’s plaything, though she truly wasn’t large enough to handle Dudley.

  Utopia was also not patient or forgiving enough. His lordship was tall and portly, and while many a large or stout rider sat lightly in the saddle, Dudley’s horsemanship had all the grace of a beer wagon with a loose axle and a broken wheel.

  “I do believe I shall take her,” Dudley said. “I’ll get her into cond
ition and show her what’s what.”

  The mare would be lame by the end of the year, possibly ruined beyond repair. Why had Papa agreed to show her to Lord Dunderhead?

  “Papa,” Harriet called, raising her voice. “His lordship has declared himself smitten with Utopia. I’ll leave the bargaining to you.” And yet, Harriet had to give herself one glimmer of hope that the mare could yet enjoy a happy life. “Regardless of the terms you strike with my father, please recall that we stand behind every horse we sell. You may return her at any point in the next ninety days for a full refund, regardless of her condition.”

  That term was Harriet’s invention, quietly tacked on to sales when she lacked confidence in the purchaser’s ability to keep the horse sound and happy. Several times, Harriet’s guarantee had spared an unhappy horse a sorry fate.

  Papa took a different approach: Buying a horse was like speaking vows to a bride. The purchaser became responsible for the creature for life, to have and to hold, and to provide fodder, pasture, shelter, farriery, veterinary care, gear, grooming, and treats until such time as a subsequent sale, old age, or a merciful bullet terminated the obligation.

  Papa was a romantic. Harriet hadn’t had that luxury since her mama had died five years ago.

  “Take the filly back to her stall,” Papa said. “His lordship and I will enjoy a brandy in my study.”

  “Brilliant!” Dudley replied, slapping Papa on the back and falling in step beside him. “She’ll be a prime goer in no time.”

  The mare would be back-sore before the first flight had pulled up to check for loose girths. Harriet was no great supporter of the hunt field, for it lamed many a fine horse while subjecting Reynard to needless suffering.

  “Come along,” Harriet said to the mare. “I can still spoil you for a short while, and you’d best enjoy the time you have left here.” Dudley’s stablemen would take as good care of Utopia as they could and argue for her to be bred when she became unsound under saddle. The situation could be worse.

  And yet, Harriet’s heart was heavy as she slipped off the mare’s bridle and buckled on the headstall. Five years ago, Papa would have listened to her when she’d warned against the likes of his lordship as a buyer for the mare.

  Five years ago, Mama would have been alive to make him listen.

  “There’s a gent waiting for you in the saddle room, miss,” Baxter, the new lad said. “Doesn’t look like the patient sort either.”

  Gentlemen in search of horseflesh were seldom patient. “Did he give you a name?” Harriet asked, unbuckling Utopia’s girths.

  “No, but he knew where he was going and knew not to intrude on your dealings with Milord Deadly.”

  “Dudley,” Harriet muttered, though stable lads would assign barn names however they pleased.

  A buyer who knew his way around the premises wasn’t to be kept waiting. Harriet handed the mare over to Baxter with instructions to get her out to the mares’ pasture for a few hours of grass before sunset.

  Harriet peeled off her gloves, stuffed them into a pocket of her habit, and hoped whoever awaited her in the saddle room was a better rider than Lord Dead—Lord Dudley.

  She tapped on the door, because wealthy gentlemen expected such courtesies even when on another’s premises, then swept inside with the confident stride of a woman who’d been horse-trading with her betters for years.

  “Good day,” she said to the tall, broad-shouldered specimen standing by the window. “I’m Harriet Talbot. My father can join us shortly, but in his absence…”

  The specimen turned, and Harriet’s brain registered what her body had been trying to tell her. She’d come to a halt halfway into the room, assailed by an odd sensation in the pit of her belly—happiness and anxiety, both trying to occupy the same space.

  “Philippe. You’ve come home.”

  He held out his arms, and Harriet rushed across the room, hugging him tightly. “Oh, you’ve come home, and you gave us no warning, and Papa will be so happy to see you.”

  Harriet was ecstatic to see him, though her joy was bounded with heartache old and new. Old, because this was a courtesy call on Papa, a gesture of affection toward the late Duke of Lavelle’s retired horse master. New, because every time Harriet saw His Grace—His Current Grace, she must not think of him as Philippe—the gulf between them was a little wider, a little more impossible.

  She was the first to step back, though he kept hold of her hand.

  “Do you ever wear anything other than riding habits?” he asked.

  “Yes. I often wear breeches, but you mustn’t tell anybody.”

  He smiled, Harriet smiled back, and her heart broke. She hadn’t seen the duke for nearly a year, and yet, this was how it was with them. Always easy, always as if they’d parted the day before with a smile and a wave.

  Philippe slipped an arm across her shoulders. “I will keep your secrets, Harriet, because you have so graciously kept mine over the years. You won’t tell anybody I’m hiding in here, for example. If that strutting excuse for bad tailoring, Lord Dimwit, should see me, I’ll be required to invite him over to the Hall for a meal. He’ll make a guest of himself—guest rhymes with pest—and my reunion with Lady Ada will be ruined.”

  “His lordship and Papa are secreted in the study bargaining over a mare. You’re safe with me.”

  Philippe had always been safe with her, and she’d always been safe with him—damn and drat the luck. He folded himself onto the worn sofa Harriet had donated last year from her mother’s parlor. When occupied by a duke, the sofa looked comfortable rather than at its last prayers.

  When embraced by a duke—by this duke—Harriet felt special rather than eccentric.

  He did that, made everyone and everything around him somehow more. Philippe was tall, dark, and athletic. In riding attire, he’d set hearts fluttering, though alas for Harriet, His Grace of Lavelle had no use for horses or anything approaching an equestrian pursuit.

  For Harriet, by contrast, the horse was a passion and a livelihood—her only passion, besides a doomed attachment to a man to whom she’d never be more than an old, mostly overlooked friend.

  * * *

  On some stone tablet Moses had probably left up on Mount Sinai—stone tablets were deuced heavy—the hand of God had written, “Thou shalt not hug a duke, nor shall dukes indulge in any spontaneous hugging either.”

  The consequence for this trespass was so well understood that nobody—not Ada, not Ramsdale in his cups, not Philippe’s mistresses, back when he’d bothered to keep mistresses—dared transgress on Philippe’s person after the title had befallen him.

  Harriet Talbot dared. She alone had failed to heed that stone tablet, ever, and thus with her, Philippe was free to pretend the rules didn’t apply.

  She was a fierce hugger, wrapping him in a long, tight embrace that embodied welcome, reproach for his absence, protectiveness, and—as a postscript noted by Philippe’s unruly male nature—a disconcerting abundance of curves. Harriet was unselfconscious about those curves, which was to be expected when she and Philippe had known each other for more than twenty years.

  “You do not approve of Lord Dudley,” Philippe said. “Did he insult one of your horses?”

  “He’ll ruin one of my horses,” Harriet replied, coming down beside him on the sofa. “One of Papa’s horses, rather.”

  Philippe didn’t have to ask permission to sit in her company, she didn’t ring for tea in a frantic rush to offer hospitality—there being no bell-pulls in horse barns, thank the heavenly intercessors—nor tug her décolletage down with all the discretion of a fishmonger hawking a load of haddock.

  “Then why sell Dudley the beast?” Philippe did not particularly care about the horse, but Harriet did.

  “Because his lordship has coin and needs a mount for a lady, and Papa has horses to sell and needs that coin. Papa has explained this to me at regular intervals in recent months.”

  Never had the Creator fashioned a more average female than Harr
iet Talbot. She was medium height, brown-haired, blue-eyed, a touch on the sturdy side, and without significant airs or graces. She did not, to Philippe’s knowledge, sing beautifully, excel at the pianoforte, paint lovely watercolors, or embroider wonderfully.

  She smelled of horses, told the truth, and hugged him on sight, and to perdition with beautiful, excellent, lovely, and wonderful.

  “Do you have reason to believe the lady who will ride the horse is incompetent in the saddle?” Philippe asked.

  “I have no idea, but his lordship is a terrible rider. All force and power, no thought for the horse, no sense of how to manage his own weight. He rides by shouting orders at the horse and demanding blind obedience.”

  Women criticized faithless lovers with less bitterness than Harriet expressed toward Dudley’s riding.

  “He might return the mare,” Philippe said. “He might also pass her on to a lady after all.”

  “I live in hope,” Harriet said, sounding anything but hopeful. “How are you?”

  To anybody else, Philippe could have offered platitudes about the joys of the Berkshire countryside at harvest, the pleasure of rural quiet after London’s madness.

  This was Harriet. “Coming home at this time of year is both sad and difficult, but here is where I must be. At least I get to see you.”

  She fiddled with a loose thread along a seam of her habit. “Papa will invite you to dinner.”

  This was a warning of some sort. “And I will accept.”

  “You need not. Papa will understand.”

  Philippe hated that Harriet would understand. “I’ll even bring along Lord Ramsdale, because you are one of few people who can coax him to smile.”

  “The earl is a very agreeable gentleman.” Harriet affected a pious tone at odds with the laughter in her gaze.

  “The earl is a trial to anybody with refined sensibilities. What is the news from the village?”

  They chatted comfortably, until the wheels of Dudley’s phaeton crunched on the gravel drive beyond the saddle room’s windows and the snap of his whip punctuated the early afternoon quiet.