Chapter 18 #2
He held up the ledger. “My grievance, madam, is that you seem determined to occupy every person in this house with your diversions. My mother with your attempts to rearrange her parlor. Mrs. Hargrave with your innovations in the servants’ schedules. And now Godwin with your hobbies.”
“Horses,” she said, “are not a hobby. They are the backbone of your estate. Or have you forgotten that nothing moves without four legs and a saddle?”
“You forget nothing,” he said coldly. “Except, perhaps, that your own home in Scotland lies blackened.”
It was a low blow. He knew it even as he delivered it. Her face changed as if he had struck her. Color drained from her cheeks, her eyes flashed with hurt before the familiar anger came up to cover it.
“You think I don’t remember?” she said, voice tight. “That I somehow failed to notice the fire that ate my childhood? Are ye mad or just stupid?”
“You find time enough to advise my stable master on breeding plans,” he said. “Forgive me if I wonder how your grief permits such leisure.”
He regretted it the moment it left his mouth.
“I would like nothing better,” she said, each word very clear, “than to be in Perthshire where my brother has gone, walking through the smoking ruins of my house, speaking to every tenant whose cottage lies in the shadow of our walls. I would like to see for myself that Moira’s roof still stands, that old Angus did not fall on the stairs, that the children who played in the south courtyard had time to run. ”
She took a breath that shook.
“But I must keep up appearances. That the new Duchess of Wexford should not be seen returning post-haste to the land she has just traded away. Am I not to play the ornament?”
Her fingers tightened on the sheaf of papers until the edges bent.
“So do not tell me,” she said, low and fierce, “that I do not care. I care for every stone of Strathmore. For every person who drew breath beneath its roof. I sit here in Hampshire with my hands idle and my mind full of what might have happened to them. If I spend an hour in your stables, it is not because I am frivolous. It is because the smell of hay and horse reminds me that not everything I love has turned to ash.”
The rawness in her voice cut neatly through his anger.
He looked at her properly then, past the sparks and the sharp tongue, and saw the fatigue at the corners of her eyes, the way her shoulders sat too straight, as if she was holding herself upright by force.
He heard, too, the thing beneath the words.
A woman who worried not for portraits and paneling, but for servants and neighbors and the ordinary people whose lives had been wrapped up in those walls. His throat tightened.
She cares for those people the way I learned to care for the sailors under my command. To see them as family.
“Isla,” he said quietly, the ledger feeling suddenly vulgar in his hand. “I spoke unjustly. My remark …”
“…was cruel,” she said. “And beneath you.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “It was.”
She blinked, taken aback by the swiftness of his agreement. The air between them shifted, fractionally.
He drew a breath. “What were you discussing with Godwin? Truly.”
She hesitated. He saw the moment where she could have retreated into pride, refused to answer. Instead she exhaled. A mare nudged her shoulder and she smiled, absently rubbing its nose.
“Bloodstock,” she said. “The future of your horses.”
He raised a brow.
“Your sire line is strong,” she went on. “The grey you bought from Harcourt is a fool’s purchase for gentleman riders, but he has the speed for hunting and perhaps racing. Your mares are sound, if somewhat mismanaged. With care, Wexford could produce some of the finest hunters in Hampshire.”
“Hunters,” he said. “And racers.”
A flicker of suspicion pricked again. Purses, betting, the easy temptation of making money by breeding champions.
Is this another angle? Strathmore horses racing under Wexford colors with the profits flowing north under the guise of partnership.
His mind began to sketch the possibilities. Isla watched his face and, with the same unnervingly quick accuracy she showed with horses, read his thought.
“If you are wondering whether I mean to turn this stable into a gambling hall,” she said dryly, “I do not.”
He opened his mouth to deny it. She lifted a hand.
“We could breed racers,” she said. “One or two, with the right matches. But hunters first. Hunters that will carry your tenants and your friends over your own land without breaking a leg. Hunters that will fetch a fair price at sales and give your estate a reputation for quality. It is not a scheme, Edward. It is a plan. For you.”
“Most plans for me,” he said, “end with someone else richer.”
“If you will not trust my motives, trust my sense,” she said. “A breeding program takes years. If I wished to entrap you quickly, this would be the worst way imaginable.”
To his own surprise, a short laugh broke from his chest. “You have a point.”
“I have two,” she said. “At least.”
The laugh, small as it was, loosened something in him. He looked down at the papers she held. They were covered in notes, names of mares, sires, proposed crosses, little arrows linking one to another. No sums. No calculations of profit. Just bloodlines, strengths and faults, possibilities.
He reached for one page, and his fingers brushed hers. “You have given this thought.”
There was a tingle in the contact and he wondered if she felt it too.
The slight flush in her cheeks, the sudden attention she gave to the mare which required her to turn away from him, told him she had.
His lips twitched in an unconscious smile.
He found himself reveling in that brief contact.
So brief, so small yet the memory of it would sustain him for days.
This is a dangerous tide, Lieutenant. Take care with it or be swept onto some very nasty shoals.
“I have had nothing but thought to give it,” she said. “And Godwin is clever, but he was not born with a chart of pedigrees in his head. I was. It is the one advantage of having grown up where every man, woman and dog can tell you who sired which grey in the next glen.”
He considered, then jerked his head toward the ladder to the hayloft. “Come up,” he said. “We are in the way here.”
Her brows rose. “The hayloft?”
“Unless you mean to stand in the middle of the aisle while the stable boys trip over your hem,” he said. “We can talk more easily above. Godwin will be less nervous if he is not forced to pretend he hears nothing.”
She hesitated only a heartbeat, then gathered her papers and followed him up the narrow ladder, one hand steady on the rung, the other keeping her skirts from catching. The hayloft was warm and dim, the scent of dried grass thick in the air.
Light striped through the gaps in the planks, picking out motes of dust that floated lazily in the beams. Bales were stacked along one wall. Edward chose one and sat, stretching his legs out, back braced against the timber.
Isla settled on the bale beside him, skirts arranged with practical efficiency, an inch or two of shoe visible before she tucked them modestly away. Her shoulder was a hand’s breadth from his.
“Very well,” he said. “Convince me.”
She smiled, quick and genuine. As she talked, the language of pedigrees and conformation unwound with an energy that had nothing to do with self-interest.
He listened, despite himself, as she described mares who produced colts with brave hearts and foolish heads, stallions whose tempers stamped themselves on every foal. Her hands moved as she spoke, tracing imaginary lines between horses, sketching the shape of a future herd in the air.
“You care for these creatures,” he said quietly, when she paused for breath. “Not as tools. As … people.”
She glanced at him, color touching her cheek.
“I care that they are given work suited to their nature,” she said.
“A high-strung blood horse will go mad pulling a plough. A plodding cob will break its heart trying to keep up with hounds. If you match them well, everyone suffers less. Horse and human alike.”
He thought of ship’s crews, of men placed at the wrong posts, of disasters born of stubborn insistence on theory over temperament.
“I see,” he said.
She leaned back against the timber, following his gaze out through the small gap where the loft overlooked the yard.
For a moment they sat in companionable silence, watching a colt in the paddock cavort while a stable boy groaned and tried to catch him.
Edward found his eyes drawn to her face, watching her profile.
It was a rare moment where he could stare, unobserved.
Should I trust her? Should I ignore my head for once?
“I miss it,” she said softly. “Strathmore. The sound of hooves in the yard at dawn. The way the hills look when the first snow falls and the ponies stand with their rumps to the wind.”
The longing in her face was unguarded, written plain across every line.
“God willing,” he said before thinking better of it, “you will see it again.”
She blinked, startled.
“Do you believe God takes an interest in roofs?” she asked, a touch of wryness returning.
“In some,” he said. “In others, perhaps He delegates.”
She huffed a quiet laugh. “If He has delegated Glenmore’s fortune, we are all in trouble.”
He filed that away. “Strathmore will not always be ash,” he said. “Stone endures more stubbornly than men.”
“And what of the people?” she asked. “Will they endure? That is what wakes me at night. Not the portraits. Moira. The kitchen maids. The stable boys. The old gardener who used to bring me snowdrops in spring. If they have lost both roof and work…”
Her voice trailed off.
He wanted, irrationally, to reach for her hand. He kept his own hands where they were, fingers digging lightly into the rough twine of the bale.
“You would take them all in here if you could,” he said.