Lucien raised his hands, turned, and found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol. Jamie McLeod, garbed in naught but hastily donned breeches, sleep tousled and hard eyed, pointed a weapon at Lucien.
Recognition flared in the Scotsman’s battle-hardened eyes. He lowered the pistol, bare feet shifting in discomfort. “Your lordship! What are you…? I didn’t expect—I thought I heard someone meddling with the horses.”
It wouldn’t be the first time thieves had attempted to steal one of the valuable animals.
“Is something amiss?” McLeod asked, running a hand through his dark red hair.
“No. I am going for a ride.”
McLeod frowned and looked out the stable window. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I ride when I please.” The certainty eased some of the tension inside him. He was a viscount. In command of this stable, this estate. His own goddamned body.
Their gazes locked, held for long moments, McLeod’s bitter. The stablemaster made no secret he had contempt for the landlords he’d left in Scotland. Men who had turned him off his family’s land. Lords, like Lucien, who did as they pleased. But at last, the Scotsman laid the pistol atop a barrel and took over the task of saddling and bridling the gelding.
When Atlas was ready, Lucien swung up into the saddle, but McLeod held fast to the reins. “There have been incidents between angry workers and some other landlords to the east,” he warned.
Lucien thought of the brick that had been thrown at him in London. The threat tied to it.
McLeod held out the pistol. “Take this.”
Arabic symbols inlaid in the pistol glinted silver in the lantern light, mysterious words from the years McLeod had spent as a prisoner of war in Afghanistan.
Lucien took the firearm and thrust it into the waistband of his trousers. McLeod opened the stable door and Lucien spurred off into the night. He had faced a far more lethal threat than horse thieves or rebellious crofters in Grace’s bedchamber tonight.
Grace’s husbandwas avoiding her. For seven days Lucien had come to her bed at precisely ten of the clock, made love to her with a fierceness that left her breathless, then vanished behind his bedchamber door, transforming back into the reserved stranger she had once known him to be.
Oh, there were those rare times during the day when she caught him watching her with those hooded ice-blue eyes as if he were a wolf, in the dark of winter, glaring at the beckoning warmth of a fire, but unable to draw near.
Her own world felt cold as well. She had tried talking to the servants, though the maids seemed nervous and the housekeeper jealously guarded her territory. After those failed forays, she had decided to turn her attention to the crofters at New Everdene. But searching the pantry for jars of jam and other treats to share with them met with the cook’s denouncement that Captain Harcourt’s wife had already distributed this month’s largess. Remembering Helen’s mistakes with the staff at The Willows, and not wishing to tread on Penelope’s toes, Grace relented and puttered about the garden, wrote letters, read books, and generally tried not to let her unhappiness show.
The one place Grace had not been regarded with suspicion was the stables. She’d walk over there every day, lean against the fence, the sight of mares and foals in the pasture reminding her that she would not always be so alone. This marriage might soon grant her a babe to love and care for. She imagined a child with Lucien’s eyes, his dark hair, that child in his father’s arms. Lucien smiling down at his son or daughter with a tenderness and wonder all the more precious because he allowed that side of himself to show only to her.
She had seen glimpses of what could be if this enigmatic man let her into his closely guarded heart. And that hope had filled her with longing—no, more than that.Love. She felt a shiver work through her, somewhere between thrill and fear. She was falling in love with Lucien. And yet, once she conceived their child, would he disappear altogether?
As the stable yard came into view, she was grateful for the sight of Eli, the young groom who was brushing a two-year-old mare named Guinevere.
“Your charge is doing very well,” Grace said softly. She picked up a brush from the bucket at Eli’s feet and gently began smoothing the little mare’s mane.
“My lady,” Eli said, pulling his cap. “Mr. McLeod is letting me help with her training.”
“She obviously trusts you,” Grace said.
Was the weight of that responsibility the reason for the shadows under Eli’s eyes? In the seven days since her arrival, he had grown noticeably paler.
“Have you been ill, Eli?” she asked, gently stroking the mare’s nose.
“My lady?”
“I can’t help but notice you are not as hale as when first I came here.”
The boy ducked his head. “Oh, I never get sick. It’s just sleepin’ in the tack room that’s worn me out.”
Grace’s brow furrowed. “Is one of the horses ailing?”
“No.” The boy pulled a face. “Leastwise, not yet.”
She tipped her head in puzzlement. “I don’t understand.”
