“Ah… I believe you would call them paddocks… after a fashion.”
The young woman's brow wrinkled. “They were at your father’s estate? Is it far from the nearest town?”
Elizabeth wilted and gestured helplessly. “I fear it would be too difficult to explain. I met Ri–I mean Colonel Fitzwilliam as he tried to perform a gallant deed on my behalf.”
“How very like him!” Miss Darcy mused. “Of course, you were grateful.”
“Not at the moment,” Elizabeth confessed. Then, seeing the redoubled look of dismay blossoming on the countenance of her hostess, she hastened to add, “But I did come to appreciate his kindness and thoughtful manners.”
Miss Darcy nodded curtly. “Naturally. And as you have said it, may I presume that you do enjoy a fine gallop, Mrs Fitzwilliam? And what of you, Miss Bennet?” she asked, twisting in her saddle to regard Jane.
Jane managed a strangled response in the affirmative. “Yes, but I am not a fast rider,” she pardoned herself. “Not nearly so fast as my sister.”
“Well, then—” Miss Darcy straightened in the saddle and adjusted her grip on the reins. For the first time in their brief acquaintance, the girl appeared to be smiling… and it made Elizabeth's blood run cold. “We shall make a fine go of it. Only a gentle canter, Miss Bennet, and no fences or brush today, but what do you say we venture over yonder rise?” Without waiting for more than a cursory nod from her guests, she chirruped to her mount, and the fine brown mare leapt into a ground-eating stride that soon left them behind.
“A canter!” Jane cried in dismay. “What in blazes is that? Why do they always have to give everything fancy names?”
“Hush, Jane,” Elizabeth hissed as she tried to sort out the double reins. “Just follow her. We were raised on the back of a horse. Are you going to permit Miss Manners to best us?”
“Yes!” insisted Jane as she began to turn her mount.
“Jane!” Elizabeth cried. She waited until Jane grudgingly subsided, then flicked the crop—far more clumsily than Miss Darcy had. The rangy chestnut lurched, and she let out a yelp at his first massive stride. Soon after, she discovered that he was anything but the docile creature she had first taken him for. He began to huff like a freight train and pushed against the bit as if expecting her to hold him in.
Elizabeth swore under her breath, a colourful phrase she had learned from rough-riding men. The thinner rein was twisting around her littlest fingers, the thicker one seemed stuck to her ridiculous gloves, and she was making a hopeless snarl of the mess. Why would anyone need so many reins? She could feel her right leg trembling in fatigue and tension, and her left leg clamping desperately against the horse’s side, which only urged him on faster. Every nerve and sinew were strained until she could not make her body do what she wished. Her rump was slapping the saddle like a greenhorn, but she was too tense and frightened to care—particularly not when her mount breezed by Miss Darcy’s without any sign of slowing.
“Don’t fall off, Elizabeth,” she kept muttering to herself. “And watch out for holes!”
Fortunately, the manicured landscape seemed devoid of burrowing rodents, but it cost Elizabeth a great deal of her dignity to finally turn her horse’s head and force him into a reluctant, surging kind of circle. At last, the beast permitted her to check his stride, and she dragged him down to an eager trot, looping around to come beside the others.
“What do you think of him?” Miss Darcy asked with a peculiar cheer in her voice. “My brother suggested you might like a horse with some spirit, so I had the groom saddle Fitzwilliam’s new hunter for you. He goes well, does he not?”
Elizabeth gritted her teeth. “He certainly goes.”
London
September 1900
Darcysighedintotheleather chair in his cousin’s drawing-room, grateful for the Earl of Matlock’s scotch as he recounted his findings related to Richard—or, rather, lack thereof.
“General Houghton implied there might yet be hope for Richard’s return. Nothing official, just rumors he would not repeat. I tried to ask for more, but he just clamped his teeth and invited us to dine with him someday, which is his way of informing me that even if he did have more information, he could not share it.”
“Bellamy has not heard from his cousin?” Reginald asked again. “Letters do take some time—”
“They have had no word since we last had a letter from Richard. He did write on my behalf, but I cannot decide if we need merely wait longer or give up on that.”
Reginald stroked his chin. “I am half tempted to go there myself and talk to some of the officers.”
“To South Africa!” Darcy scoffed. “They would never permit you off the ship.”
“You forget that I have more influence now,” Reginald reminded him.
“Precisely. Do you think the officers want the new Earl of Matlock reporting back to the House of Lords how badly matters are proceeding there? They will take you to some general’s house, ply you with spirits and empty promises, and send you on your way. What influence you have has already been brought to bear, for they know well and good who Richard is to you. If they had him to return, they would have done so by now.”
Reginald hissed and sagged back in his seat. “But we must dosomething.”
“I mean to go myself,” Darcy declared.
“What makes you think you would have more success than I?”
