The Duke's Bridle Path Read online

  Shamed by an orphaned mastodon. “Very well,” Philippe said. “As I recall, one walks on the horse’s left.”

  The equine cortege came along docilely, hooves the size of soup tureens clopping inches from Philippe’s boots. Though the animal was apparently well trained, Philippe was abruptly aware that he was about to entrust his well-being to a creature ten times his size who had no respect for the ducal succession.

  And yet, the horse was a placid beast, handsome in its way, and Philippe was no longer a small boy with only a small boy’s strength.

  “Let’s use the rail to get you into the saddle,” Harriet said. “The first thing you should know about Matador is that he’ll stand until Domesday. He’s stood for hours in the line of duty, put up with crowds, barking dogs, disrespectful children, and drunken fools. There isn’t much you can do to unnerve him.”

  “His job sounds rather like being a duke,” Philippe said, swallowing back some inconvenient welter of emotion. Excitement to be taking on a challenge, impatience at the indignity of being a beginner, fear of mortal harm—might as well be honest—and also hope, that this adventure ended well for all concerned.

  Then he was perched on the fence railing, making an awkward job of clambering into the saddle. The horse sighed as Philippe slipped his boots into the stirrups.

  “Now what?”

  Harriet led Matador a few feet from the rail. “Now we adjust your stirrups. You have longer legs than most stable boys.”

  The next few minutes were taken up with Harriet handling her pupil. Philippe lifted his legs, sat tall, had his boots turned to rest nearly parallel to the horse’s sides, and generally endured fussing. When Harriet stepped back, Philippe’s stirrups were at the correct length, and his insides were in a muddle.

  He’d made the mistake of looking down, thinking to feast his eyes on the sight of Harriet’s hands on his person. He’d instead seen the ground, miles and miles below where it should have been.

  “Your stirrups are on the fourth hole,” Harriet said. “Remember that, because when we’re finished here in the arena, we’ll review saddling and unsaddling.”

  “Right, fourth hole.” Not that Phillippe could count to four in his present state. With no warning, his heart had decided to take off at a gallop, his mouth had gone dry, and his wits were probably somewhere in the muck heap.

  “Now, you follow me,” Harriet said. “Horses are herd animals. This shouldn’t be difficult.” She drew off her jacket—probably one of Talbot’s castoffs, judging from the poor fit—and slung it over the railing. “Follow the leader, Your Grace, and I’m the leader.”

  She strode off. Matador swung his enormous head to sniff at the toe of Philippe’s boot.

  Get on with it, mate.

  “Keeping you from your oats, am I?” Philippe gave a scoot with his seat.

  Nothing happened.

  He tapped his heels ever so gently at the horse’s sides, and one hoof shuffled forward.

  A firm tap produced a funereal toddle, which suited Philippe splendidly. The horse moved like an equine sea, rolling, rhythmic, and relentless, but also deliberate. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four…

  “Are your eyes up?” Harriet called without looking back. “Look where you’re going. Don’t stare at his mane.”

  Well, yes. Philippe tipped his chin up, and the rolling sea became a plodding horse. This was all in aid of the Talbots’ future. A secure old age for a man who’d worked long, hard years. Harriet swung left around a jump, and Philippe guided his mount in the same direction.

  She didn’t even glance back, which Philippe suspected was her way of allowing him some privacy at an awkward moment. Two more turns, a halt, and onward… until Philippe realized that this game of follow the leader would be the undoing of him, for the leader, striding along in her breeches, had a very fetching derriere.

  * * *

  Harriet got an education while teaching the duke.

  By the second lesson, she realized that His Grace was an athlete. Being unwilling to ride meant that he walked far more than most of his peers. He mentioned that on holidays he’d go for a twenty-mile jaunt over the hills and consider that a pleasant day. He fenced, he rowed, he swam—the Duke of Lavelle was an intensely physical man.

  He had the muscles to show for it. As Harriet moved his leg—here for the signal to move forward, there for the signal to move sideways—she grew distracted.

  Ye gods, his calves. His thighs.

  As she adjusted his hands on the reins—black leather gloves notwithstanding—she grew muddled, for those hands had coaxed terrible longings from her.

  As she watched his progress from behind—lest he be sitting subtly to one side or the other—she lost her train of thought entirely. Such broad shoulders, such excellent posture. Such…

  “That’s enough for today,” Harriet said. “Posting the trot will leave you sore, regardless of your otherwise fine physical condition.”

  Posting the trot—rising in the stirrups to the rhythm of the horse’s footfalls—made for a smoother ride than trying to match the horse’s movement with the seat in the saddle. Matador had a nicely cadenced trot, but his gaits were enormously springy.

  Philippe had caught Matador’s rhythm easily, though this lesson would exact a toll in aching muscles tomorrow. Sunday he’d be uncomfortable in the extreme, if the duke’s tutelage followed the usual course.

  “I had hoped we might canter today,” Philippe said, giving Matador a whacking great pat on the neck. “Two lessons and the whole business is already coming back to me.”

  “We’ll canter soon enough,” Harriet said. “Today, you can take off his saddle and bridle and groom him yourself.”

  Philippe kicked his feet out of the stirrups and hopped off as nimbly as any cavalry officer. He ran the stirrups up their leathers, loosened the girth, and looped the reins over Matador’s head.

  “We have not discussed your compensation,” he said, leading the horse to the gate. “Come with me to the barn, and we can have that argument while I get horsehair all over my clothing.”

  “As you wish.”

  “You don’t fool me, Harriet Talbot. You’ll be agreeable until I put the HMS Mastodon into dry dock, and then you’ll turn up contrary. If we had children, you’d reserve all your ire for when the little ones were tucked up into their beds and then open fire on your unsuspecting spouse.”

  If they had children… “Today you pick out Matador’s feet, Your Grace.”

  Philippe was doing quite well in the saddle. Papa had said he had a natural seat, and Papa was—once again—right. On the ground, where a horse could rear, strike, bite, or knock a man flat, the duke wasn’t as confident.

  Matador had confidence enough for ten students and an abiding affection for his paddock. He’d endure fumbling and bumbling under saddle for the promise of an hour at grass. The duke couldn’t know that. Matador had not earned His Grace’s trust, and His Grace had not earned Matador’s either.

  Philippe was conscientious about removing the bridle and saddle, putting on the headstall, and fastening the crossties. He also went about the grooming—curry, coarse brush, then fine brush—without skimping anywhere. The bliss of a thorough brushing had Matador’s eyelids drooping and his head hanging as low as the crossties would allow.

  “You’ve groomed the baby to sleep,” Harriet said. “Or tired him out. Soon, I might assign you a different mount.”

  “You dare not,” Philippe replied, draping an arm across Matador’s withers. “Mastiff will think he’s fallen out of favor with me.”

  “Mast—Matador is accustomed to his pupils moving on to other mounts.” Harriet had never quite got the knack. When her students went to other teachers—always to men, of course—she worried. Would this one learn to sit straight? Would that one ever keep her eyes up?

  “About your compensation,” Philippe said, giving Matador’s shoulder a scratch.

  The horse groaned like a heifer flopping into spring gr
ass.

  “You haven’t cleaned out his feet.” Harriet took a curved pick from a nail on the wall. “I’ll do the first one. You’ll do the other three.”

  Horses were trained to lift their feet for this process. The groom had simply to scrape the mud, stones, or manure from the concave area on the bottom of the hoof. Balancing on three legs was difficult for an animal weighing a ton, though, and thus a quick, competent touch was necessary.

  Harriet reviewed the basics—run a hand down the horse’s leg, tug at the hair on his fetlock, give him a moment to lift his foot, then cradle it like so in one hand…

  “And use the pick with the other. You put his foot back on the ground. He doesn’t get to snatch it away.”

  Philippe took the pick from her. “He outweighs me by a factor of ten. He gets to do as he jolly well pleases with his feet, and my primary concern is for my toes.”

  “Then don’t bother trying,” Harriet retorted. “Don’t put your hand on this horse unless you are prepared to tell him exactly what he needs to do to earn your continued goodwill.”

  Matador was awake now, head up, listening to the conversation. He wouldn’t grasp the words, but he’d grasp tone of voice. He’d note the posture of the humans on either side of him and probably even their expressions and subtle changes in their scents.

  “I’m to be the duke even in this?” Philippe said. “Hurl orders and thunderbolts, demand proper address, brook no disrespect?”

  Was that how he saw the title? “You are to be a person Matador can rely upon to see to his safety and well-being. That means he learns to obey you in small matters so that large matters never become an issue. Right now, you are his groom, Your Grace, nothing more.”

  Philippe bent to Matador’s off foreleg, hoof-pick in his hand. “Your Grace.” He ran his hand down the horse’s front leg, tugged on the hair in the general vicinity of the fetlock, and nothing happened. “Now what?”

  “You have to mean it,” Harriet said. “He has to know you’re not mucking about for show.”

  A second attempt yielded the same result. This was Matador’s version of a game, getting back a bit of his own. He’d been a good boy for well over an hour, doing exactly as he’d been told. In what passed for horsey thinking, he was owed a bit of sport.

  Rotten timing, though.

  “I have grooms,” Philippe said, stepping back. “They will deal with the distasteful business of scraping manure from horse feet when the need arises.”

  “So if you’re out on a hack, enjoying some solitude in the saddle, and your horse begins to go uneven in front, you’ll make him walk all the way back to the barn with a stone lodged against his sole rather than dismount, get out your penknife, and solve the problem on the spot? A stone bruise can lead to an abscess and worse.”

  Matador shook all over, sending gray hair cascading in every direction. For him, the grooming session was done.

  “Now you have me killing my horse before I’ve even cantered him,” Philippe said.

  Harriet waited.

  She’d been waiting for Philippe in a corner of her heart for years. She could afford to wait a moment more. If he gave up now, that would be for the best, because the challenges only increased from this point forward. Philippe had made a good try, but he had reasons for stepping back, and if that was his choice…

  Harriet would be eternally disappointed.

  “You,” Philippe said to the horse, “are a disrespectful backbencher from the West Riding who doesn’t know his place. Lift your damned foot, horse.”

  Matador obliged for a moment, then came within inches of putting his foot down atop the duke’s boot.

  Philippe passed Harriet the hoof-pick, and she nearly began to cry. You cannot give up. Not on yourself, not so soon.

  Then he shrugged out of his jacket, slung it in the direction of a trunk, and caused Matador to shy.

  “The hoof-pick, please.”

  Harriet passed it over.

  “Now that I have the attention of yonder pleasure barge,” Philippe said, “perhaps he’ll condescend to allow me to scrape the manure from between his royal toes.”

  Matador hadn’t bargained on his groom’s strength or wiliness. Philippe went through the routine—bend, run a hand down the leg, tug at the feathers around the fetlock—but at the last instant, Philippe shoved his shoulder against the horse’s side.

  The gelding lifted his foot as if to step to the side. Philippe caught it and curled the foreleg up to put the underside of the hoof skyward. In a few brisk swipes with the pick, he’d scraped out a pile of dirt.

  “Two more to go, horse. I value this shirt more than your dignity, so plan accordingly.”

  The first back hoof went smoothly. On the second, Matador tried to wrestle his foot away, but he was merely playing, and Philippe was in earnest. The duke finished with the foot easily.

  “Well done,” Harriet said. “Now you can put him up.”

  Philippe led the horse to his loose box, which had the generous dimensions of a foaling stall. “If you’d bring me my coat?”

  Harriet obliged, though seeing His Grace without benefit of his riding jacket was the best distraction of the day so far.

  “The left pocket holds a carrot,” Philippe said, unfastening Matador’s headstall. “We’re to end on a good note, despite our wrestling match.”

  Harriet had reminded him of that. End every lesson on a positive note, even if that positive note was merely a smooth halt or a quiet circuit of the arena on a loose rein.

  Philippe broke the carrot in half, took a bite, and put the remaining portions on his flat palm. Matador whispered his lips over Philippe’s hand. The carrot disappeared amid loud mutual crunching.

  “I’ve done the same on many occasions,” Harriet said. “They also like apples.”

  “I like a fellow who has some backbone,” Philippe said, stroking Matador’s neck. “I’m not sure I like an insubordinate horse.”

  “Did you follow every instruction from your tutors and professors? Did you never ask them a clever question to see if they were as learned as they pretended to be?”

  Philippe stepped from the stall and closed the latch on the half door. “I challenged them all the time.” He leaned near. “You are a good teacher, Harriet. A very good teacher. How do I repay you for your time, your patience, and your wisdom?”

  Since undertaking these riding lessons, Philippe hadn’t flirted with Harriet, not once. She’d touched him in the course of instruction, and he’d listened patiently to her lectures, as if he’d never kissed her, as if she were in truth the son Jackson Talbot should have had.

  She was not that son, though lately she hadn’t felt much like a daughter either. She’d felt like an exhausted drudge, except for when Philippe had kissed her.

  He was asking how to repay her for her time, her patience, and her wisdom. Harriet had a few ideas, and none of them involved pounds and pence.

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  Riding lessons created a welter of conflicting emotions for Philippe.

  He liked the scent and sounds of the horse barn. That hadn’t changed. When he walked into the stable and caught a whiff of hay, manure, and equine, he relaxed, and his cares and worries temporarily roosted somewhere besides his too busy mind.

  He did not like that horses, for all their size, could move at blinding speed. A jerk of the horse’s head, a startle at a swooping barn swallow, a casual stomp of the hoof to dislodge a fly, and the nearest human could well be injured.

  Though perhaps the need to remain ever alert was part of what made Harriet so vibrant.

  She was a very competent instructor. Being around her was wonderful—and awful. Philippe did not enjoy his lessons, so much as he endured them. Harriet’s tutelage was a barrage of admonitions worthy of Philippe’s men of business:

  Think ahead.

  Eyes up; look where you’re going.

  For God’s sake, the horse is ten times your size. You must plan carefu
lly when moving that much muscle around the arena.

  Riding a horse was too much like being a duke. All responsibility with very little recreation. The moments before and after the lesson were Philippe’s reward for heroic sacrifice in the name of inchoate courtship.

  He posed the question of compensation to Harriet and then propped a shoulder against a worn beam to await her answer. She was again in breeches and had again lost her jacket partway through the lesson.

  “How do you pay me?”

  “Coin of the realm, goods in kind, services rendered.” Philippe draped his jacket over her shoulders. “Your time is valuable. What do I have that will compensate you for the thankless task of yelling at me for an hour?”

  “Let’s discuss this in the saddle room.”

  His spirits rose as he followed her down the barn aisle. If Harriet wanted privacy, then she was inclined to be honest with him, and honesty in private locations could lead to interesting destinations.

  “Shouldn’t you be returning to the Hall?” Harriet asked right outside the saddle room. “You’re having guests for supper.”

  “Harriet, you needn’t be embarrassed to discuss money with me. Contrary to popular perception, a titled man spends much of his time concerned with financial matters. If I’m not meeting with solicitors, I’m reviewing their reports, looking over ledgers, or writing bank drafts. Lady Ada is endlessly corresponding with me about this improvement or that expenditure at the Hall. I’ll happily write a bank draft to your father.”

  Though he’d even more happily put coins directly into Harriet’s hand. Talbot would use the money to paint fences, while Harriet might need the money for new fabric.

  Or a bonnet. Every woman deserved the occasional new bonnet.

  She let him hold the door for her. “I seek a different sort of remuneration from you, Your Grace. Coin is all well and good, but like you, I have requests I cannot make of just anybody.”

  Philippe stepped closer. “I fully intend to sing the praises of Talbots’ stables when you’ve repaired my equestrian capabilities. I’ll buy my personal mounts from you, credit you with restoring my skills in the saddle, and otherwise recommend your services from here to Mayfair.”