She turned a sharp eye on Imogen. “The only way to extract a man from an undesirable engagement is to play a very chilly game indeed. Do you understand me?”

Imogen nodded.

Griselda rose to her feet. “I am quite looking forward to the next fortnight or so. I’m not sure which will be the more delightful: to watch my brother court a lovely young woman or see the elusive Mr. Felton ensnared whilst I am there and able to make a full report to all the dowagers in London who have tried to match him to their daughters.”

She paused in thought with her fingers to her lips, presenting a magnificent picture of elegant womanhood from the blushing rose on her bonnet to the silken toes of her slippers.

“Mr. Felton,” she decided, turning toward the door. “One’s family must always take second place, alas, to an on-dit such as this. Luckily, I brought a great quantity of stationery with me.”

Annabel took Tess’s arm as they left the room, and whispered, “I hope you know what a responsibility you have escaped by allowing yourself to be courted by Mayne. I am apparently going to launch a courtship in which a simple kiss is likely to be broadcast to all of London.”

“Mr. Felton is not the sort of gentleman who will kiss you without asking for one’s hand in marriage,” Tess said.

“Well, there’s no need to frown over it,” Annabel said, starting up the stairs. Lady Griselda was already whisking around the corner toward her chamber. “A gentlemanly attitude, of course, will make my task all the easier. I have always thought that men hidebound by propriety were extremely easy to lead by the nose.”

Tess found that her frown was deepening and that she was apparently developing a headache.

Chapter 13

The CourtyardHolbrook Court

B eing an only child, and that of parents who saw no reason to encounter their son and heir more than a few times a year, Lucius had never had to accustom himself to waiting for a familial group to assemble. Having remained unmarried, he was also unfamiliar with the length of time that it apparently took young ladies to prepare themselves for something as harrowing as a brief riding excursion to the village of Silchester.

Yet the tedium and the wait was something he would have expected. These were the very reasons that he had long eschewed family groups, and the reasons that he had adroitly avoided anything that resembled a house party.No, what was shocking him to the marrow of his bones had nothing to do with time. Ladies, as anyone in their right mind knew, rode plodding mounts, suitable for those of a gender plagued by delicate nerves and even more delicate limbs. Lucius doubted very much that his own mother had ever mounted a horse, but if she had, the horse would have needed a back as wide as a backgammon board, and a constitution mild enough to ignore a full-blown fit of hysteria taking place on his back.

Not so the Essex sisters, at least the three Essex sisters who were riding, Josie having decided to remain at home with her new governess.

To all appearances, these particular ladies rode polished Thoroughbreds that spent their free time irritably flattening their ears at each other, when they weren’t throwing their heads into the air and bucking at the clouds. Three exquisite, gleaming horses awaited the elder Essexes, each of which seemed to think that stamping would make their mistresses appear with more speed. The scene was all the more remarkable because Rafe’s courtyard was paved in large rounded stones that caught the horses’ shoes and sent showers of sparks into the air.

Miss Imogen was the first to appear from the house. “We are extremely good horsewomen,” she said, catching Lucius’s dubious gaze as she tucked a short crop into the waist of her riding costume. “My Posy was considered a likely shot at the Derby until she suffered a severe strain two years ago. I’ve been riding her ever since she recovered.”

Her Posy was skittering sideways as if she were being bitten by midges and looked nervous enough to leap the huge gate around the courtyard. “She seems to have an inappropriately flowery name,” Lucius said, moving to the side to avoid being struck by Posy’s enormous, muscled haunches.

“I gave her the name because she’s a poseur,” Imogen said, pulling on well-worn riding gloves. “Posy is a faker, a fraud. She likes to pretend to racehorse status, but in fact she’s a lovely mount. And quite polite, although, as I said, she pretends to be fiercely difficult.”

“A beautiful horse,” Rafe said, appearing at Lucius’s shoulder. “I saw her run in the Ascot, the year before she was lamed. Lovely mount.”

Lucius frowned; Rafe was hardly showing a proper guardian’s concern for the safety of his wards.

Annabel had walked into the courtyard and was greeting a gelding whose ears were flat to his head. She looked up and smiled at Lucius. “This is Sweetpea,” she said. “He’s a bit cross this morning; I think he might be homesick.” Sweetpea bared his teeth and shook himself all over, like a steed preparing to enter a battle.

“My mount is nothing to Tess’s,” Imogen was telling Rafe. “Well, here she comes; she can tell you herself.”

Lucius turned.

Miss Essex was walking through a patch of sunshine in the courtyard, looking slender, fragile, and suited for only the sweetest mount in the stables.

“Tess is the bravest of us all,” Imogen was saying. “She rides Midnight Blossom, out of Belworthy, you know.”

“Midnight Blossom,” Lucius said sharply. “The gelding who threw a man at the Newmarket three years ago?”

“The same,” Imogen said. “Do you think that the Maitlands will arrive soon? I’m afraid that Posy is a wee bit restless.”

That was an understatement; Posy was like a fiend in a horse’s body, prancing and stamping. Lucius reached out a hand, and Posy calmed.

“She likes you,” Imogen said, with some surprise.

“Horses do,” Lucius said. He was watching as a groomsman threw Tess up onto the back of a monstrously large horse, a horse the color of midnight. Unlike Posy, Midnight Blossom didn’t bother with prancing or fidgets. All he did was arch his neck once, blowing his nostrils as if sighing for the moment when he would run free. Midnight Blossom was no poseur, pretending to be a racehorse. He was built for speed.

Yet Tess seemed unmoved by the fact she was perched precariously, sidesaddle, on the back of such an animal.

“You shouldn’t allow your ward to ride on that horse!” Lucius said to Rafe. “Midnight Blossom threw a man a few years ago.”

Imogen cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you worried about Tess, Mr. Felton? You shouldn’t be. She’s the best of us. Papa said she has a bone-deep understanding of horses.”

“I would assume that my wards have more than enough ability to handle their cattle,” Rafe observed. “They are grown women, and none of them seems unused to her mount.”

“A guardian should take a more active role than that,” Lucius snarled. Midnight Blossom had lapsed into a stand now, and the only motion he made was the flicking back and forth of his ears as Tess spoke to him, a much-darned glove patting his muscled neck.

In a silent storm of fury, Lucius went to his own horse and swung up onto his great polished back. At least he could keep pace with Miss Essex when her horse ran away from her.

At that moment Draven Maitland came through the great rounded gates of Holbrook Court at a near gallop and stopped his horse by pulling it straight into the air. Lucius had just reached Tess’s side and was allowing their two horses to exchange friendly puffs of air.