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Loki was five years old, and at more than seventeen hands, helookedlike a mature horse, bristling with muscle and energy. He was a typical adolescent, though, both full of his own consequence and lacking in common sense. Robbie had made Nathaniel a gift of him, claiming that even an eccentric duke needed some entertainment.
Nathaniel hadn’t had the heart to refuse his brother, given the effort Robbie must have expended to procure the horse.
“And you are entertaining,” Nathaniel murmured, pausing to scratch Loki’s belly.
“Lady Althea has pots of money,” Elgin observed. “She put that house of hers to rights and made a proper job of it too. She’s a handsome woman, according to the lads at the Whistling Goose.”
“From whom all the best and least factual gossip is to be had.” Nathaniel moved around to Loki’s off side. “When a woman of considerable wealth is described as handsome, we may conclude she is stout, plain, and cursed with a hooked nose.”
“You have a hooked nose,” Elgin said, setting a saddle on the half door to Loki’s stall. “Yon gelding has a hooked nose. I used to have a hooked nose until it got broke a time or three. What’s wrong with a hooked nose?”
“Loki and I have aquiline noses, if you please.”
Loki also had a temper. He objected to the saddle pad being placed on his back, then he objected to the saddle being placed atop the pad. He objected strenuously to the girth—the horse was nothing if not consistent—and he pretended he had no idea exactly where the bit was supposed to end up.
Until Nathaniel produced a lump of sugar. Then the wretched beast all but fastened the bridle on himself.
“Shameless beggar,” Nathaniel said, gently scratching a dark, hairy ear. “But standards must be maintained, mustn’t they?” How often had the previous Duke of Rothhaven intoned that refrain?
“If Lady Althea’s so plain,” Elgin said, “and you aren’t interested in her money, then why must you be the one to inform her that we have her pigs?”
“Ideally, I will inspire her to pack her bags and retreat all the way back to London. Even our formidable Treegum isn’t likely to produce that effect.” Her ladyship did spend some months in the south every year, though she always came north again, like some strange migratory bird helpless to resist Yorkshire winters.
“And if she’s not the retreating kind?”
Nathaniel led his horse out to the mounting block, took up the girth another hole, pulled on his gloves, and swung into the saddle. “Then I will settle for impressing upon her the need to leave me and mine the hell alone.”
“You’re good at that,” Elgin replied, giving the girth a tug. “Maybe too good.”
Loki capered and danced, his shoes making a racket on the cobbles. Then he bolted forward on a great leap and swept down the drive at a pounding gallop. Every schoolboy in the shire knew that His Grace of Rothhaven galloped wherever he went, no matter the hour or the season, because the devil himself was following close behind.
And the schoolboys had the right of it.
Althea heard her guest before she saw him. Rothhaven’s arrival was presaged by a rapid beat of hooves coming not up her drive, but rather, directly across the park that surrounded Lynley Vale manor.
A large horse created that kind of thunder, one disdaining the genteel canter for a hellbent gallop. Althea could see the beast approaching from her parlor window, and her first thought was that only a terrified animal traveled at such speed.
But no. Horse and rider cleared the wall beside the drive in perfect rhythm, swerved onto the verge, and continued right up—good God, they aimed straight for the fountain. Althea could not look away as the black horse drew closer and closer to unforgiving marble and splashing water.
“Mary, Mother of God.”
Another smooth leap—the fountain was five feet high if it was an inch—and a foot-perfect landing, followed by an immediate check of the horse’s speed. The gelding came down to a frisking, capering trot, clearly proud of himself and ready for even greater challenges.
The rider stroked the horse’s neck, and the beast calmed and hung his head, sides heaving. A treat was offered and another pat, before one of Althea’s grooms bestirred himself to take the horse. Rothhaven—for that could only be the Dread Duke himself—paused on the front steps long enough to remove his spurs, whip off his hat, and run a black-gloved hand through hair as dark as hell’s tarpit.
“The rumors are true,” Althea murmured. Rothhaven was built on the proportions of the Vikings of old, but their fair coloring and blue eyes had been denied him. He glanced up, as if he knew Althea would be spying, and she drew back.
His gaze was colder than a Yorkshire night in January, which fit exactly with what Althea had heard of him.
She moved from the window and took the wing chair by the hearth, opening a book chosen for this singular occasion. She had dressed carefully—elegantly but without too much fuss—and styled her hair with similar consideration. Rothhaven gave very few people the chance to make even a first impression on him, a feat Althea admired.
Voices drifted up from the foyer, followed by the tread of boots on the stair. Rothhaven moved lightly for such a grand specimen, and his voice rumbled like distant cannon. A soft tap on the door, then Strensall was announcing Nathaniel, His Grace of Rothhaven. The duke did not have to duck to come through the doorway, but it was a near thing.
Althea set aside her book, rose, and curtsied to a precisely deferential depth and not one inch lower. “Welcome to Lynley Vale, Your Grace. A pleasure to meet you. Strensall, the tea, and don’t spare the trimmings.”
Strensall bolted for the door.
“I do not break bread with mine enemy.” Rothhaven stalked over to Althea and swept her with a glower. “No damned tea.”
