“Why don’t you come with me?”
He flinched, eyes wide. “What, on your horse?”
“Well, no. You’d need your own horse.”
He glanced over at the stallion.
“Not that one,” she added hastily. “A nice, tame mare from the stables. I’ve seen some of them bear children on their backs. You’d be safe.”
“It’s… it’s not that I’m a coward, I just…”
“I don’t think you’re a coward,” Lavinia said firmly. “Fear is entirely natural, and whoever says otherwise is just a simpleton. “My brother, Hugh, was afraid of horses, and he was a remarkably brave man.”
There was a brief moment of silence between them. Hugh’s name seemed to hang in the air. It prickled over Lavinia’s skin. When was the last time she’d spoken his name aloud? Oh, he was always on her mind, his name and face always going round and round in her head. But she felt that if she spoke his name aloud, it would start up the pain again. The pain of grief and loss, she’d learned, never quite went away.
The duke looked away. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You… you didn’t.”
“Your brother… he is not… not with you? I had heard that you had only one sister. But… my sister told me that there was a tragedy about your brother.”
She looked him full in the face and gave a bleak smile. “There is just the two of us, now.”
The duke understood and dropped his gaze. “I am sorry. I have never lost a sibling, and I can’t… cannot imagine how it would feel.”
“It feels… as though the bottom has dropped out of one’s world,” Lavinia said, voice so quiet she could barely even hear it herself. “Hugh was a remarkable man. He was kind, fair, handsome, charming, and so intelligent. I said once that my parents – my mother, at least – favour Gillian over me. It was never like that when Hugh was alive. He brought balance to our family, it seemed. He used to love giving presents, I remember that much,” she paused, chuckling at the memories which came flooding in. “He would bring back trinkets for us whenever he went away, silly tin necklaces and wooden rings and carved animals, things like that. He’d wrap them up so carefully, and hide them in our beds, so that we would find them when we went to bed. I remember once he bought me some books he knew I wanted and slipped them under my pillow. I was tired, and threw myself into bed without checking, and banged my head on a pile of books. I was fairly cursing him; I can tell you.”
The duke chuckled. “He sounds like a kind man.”
“He was, he was. He loved getting presents, too. He would get as excited as a child. I often wish now that I’d given him more things. I never thought about it, at the time.”
“How old was your brother, when you… when you lost him?” the duke seemed to have difficulty getting out the words. Lavinia wondered which of his siblings he was imagining losing.
“Twenty,” she said at last. “Just turned twenty. He was the oldest of the three of us. He was never strong. When he was young, a horse threw him and broke his arm. It could have happened to anyone, and his arm healed well, but he refused to ride again or have anything to do with horses. Papa loves horses, and is interested in breeding horses, and he’d always intended for Hugh to help him with that. I think the day Hugh told him he intended to go into the law was the only time I’ve heard the two of them argue.”
She sighed, looking down. “Papa always thought he’d change his mind, but once Hugh started learning the law, that would be the end of that. They parted on bad terms. Hugh went to London and began his studies. He excelled, from what I heard. But as I said, he was not strong, and London is… well, you know what it’s like. And of course, Hugh was not staying in the good part of London. He’d taken on cheap lodgings. You must already know that we are not a rich family anymore, and those lodgings were all Hugh could afford. He had been studying for about six months when he got ill. He stayed quiet about his illness for a while, thinking that it would clear up. When it became clear that he was seriously ill, and could no longer afford the physician’s fees, he travelled home to us.”
Lavinia paused, wiping away a tear with the back of her hand. She was a little shaken at how powerfully the story had affected her. The duke said nothing, eyes fixed on her face, waiting for her to continue.
“He died a week after coming home,” she finished at last, voice shaking. “We tried to nurse him, paid for all the best physicians, but it was too late. The sickness had taken his lungs, you see. When he arrived home, he looked like a ghost. I don’t think I’ll ever forget his pale, gaunt face. And just like that,” she snapped her fingers, “the light of our lives was extinguished. I used to have a locket,” she paused, tapping her collarbone where Hugh’s locket would lie, “with a picture of Hugh as a child in it. I lost it at a ball one night. I remember always taking it for granted, and then one day it was gone forever. My last piece of Hugh. Gone. The clasp broke, I imagine.”
The duke flinched at that. Perhaps the image of a lost locket was too powerful for him to resist. She drew in a breath and continued.
“My point is, your Grace, life waits for nobody. Things can change in an instant. Allowing fear to rule us can be fatal – we have no idea what waits around the corner. Your father is gone. Dead. So is Hugh. We, however, are not.”
He swallowed hard. “And what is your purpose in saying all that, Miss Brookford?”
She smiled wryly, swallowing back the familiar tide of grief. “I am saying that you should ride a horse again, your Grace. Today. Now. After all, tomorrow we may all be dead.”
He sighed. “What a cheerful notion.”
“I am just being honest.”
He breathed in deeply, squaring his shoulders. She saw him glance across the paddocks to the glistening black stallion.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I will go riding with you.”
Chapter Nineteen
