Chapter Thirty-Two
Mr. Benson’s house was a comfortable manor made of brick, worn in and lovingly used. Mr. Benson stood on the overgrown gravel drive waiting for them. He was an unpretentious, countrified gentleman, who handed Celine down from the phaeton himself.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Genet. The drive was not too exhausting, I hope?”
(I love—)
“Not at all, Mr. Benson,” she said, shaking off her preoccupation and exerting herself to smile.
On the other side of the highflier, the duke handed the reins off, her tone cold and impersonal as she instructed the groom.
“I enjoyed seeing more of the English countryside. What a lovely old house you have!”
He coloured with pleasure. “May I see you inside, to freshen up after your journey? It’s a little rough and ready, but you’ll find all you need.”
“Please.”
After she had washed off the dust from the road in a private room, she was shown to a gallery—preceded through the door by three enormous dogs whose tails whacked her skirts—where Mr. Benson awaited her. She had no idea where the duke had gone and was somehow embarrassed to ask.
Mr. Benson had begun telling her some of the history of his house when sounds from outside intruded: squawks and laughter that could be heard from all the way down the long drive.
She came to the front stairs on Mr. Benson’s heels and saw two curricles haring up the driveway carrying four young men apiece, nearly overbalancing the seat at every slight turn.
Mr. Benson shook his head, saying with exasperation, “They’re sportsmen to a man, come to admire what they themselves can’t hope to buy. I know them from the racing circuit. Horse-mad, all of them.”
The boisterous young men decanted themselves from the curricles and tripped up the stairs to try to jolly their way inside.
The first of them caught sight of Celine and fell back a step, a stunned look on his face, with disastrous consequences for his fellows, who were still rushing up the stairs behind.
She laughed, delighted, and in a trice, she had the chaotic group organised around a single uniting principle: herself.
The party moved inside into a cluttered, well-used parlour that became very crowded once they all filed in. The large, glowering gentleman already ensconced in the corner was, Celine surmised after some time, the thwarted Russian buyer. Tea was served.
The mood was lively and admiring, and Celine was enjoying herself enormously when the stableboy dashed in some twenty minutes later.
His neckerchief was askew, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes shining.
“They’re bringing Bold Titus out,” he said.
“Quickly, follow me!” And she was supplanted in everybody’s interest by a horse.
BOLD TITUS MADE the duke’s carriage horses—that ill-mannered, athletic pair—look like ponies. Celine hadn’t a clear idea what his English name meant, but she would’ve resorted to cliché in order to capture him: Lucifer, Beelzebub, Devil.
A groom led him out of the stables and into the arena, and he was like a deeper piece of darkness detaching itself from the gloomy doorway: dancing steps forward and back, his muscular neck bowed, nostrils blown wide.
His coat was a sleek, absolute black, relieved only by the reflection of light when he moved.
He was huge, a colossus, and his muscles slid and bunched uneasily beneath his skin.
Had she been told he had been formed whole from the mind of a child searching the stars for beasts, she would have believed it.
The duke stood in the middle of the arena, waiting.
She had removed her coat and hat. Her cravat as well.
She stood utterly still, the bared skin at her throat and chest lifting with every breath and covered in a faint sheen of sweat.
Her black boots shone like the horse’s coat, the pendant winked at her neck, and her pale hair crowned her in sunlight.
Time seemed to slow, etching the moment with perfect clarity, the colours saturated, dust motes lighting on fire.
Celine felt her breath slow as well, caught up despite herself.
The duke and the horse stood like two titans waiting to meet, and it was unclear who would triumph.
Surely, surely the beast? It towered over the duke.
But the duke’s expression was calm, her body relaxed and confident.
She was vaguely aware of the sportsmen jostling for position beside her and Mr. Benson making some polite enquiry, but none of it could hold her attention.
She couldn’t look away from the slow-moving collision before her. She didn’t want to look away.
The horse lurched suddenly, haunches digging deep grooves into the sand as he bolted upright and swung his body off to the side, then danced and shied away again, the groom scrambling inelegantly after him at the other end of the long rein.
She hopped onto the lower railing of the fence, gripping the upper railing. She wished she could remove her bonnet and let the wind play through her hair. How free she felt, like she and the duke hadn’t just taken a trip away from London, but away from everything.
The horse at last quieted somewhat, and the groom approached the duke, holding out the rein.
But the horse reared back suddenly, ripping the lead rein free.
The groom scurried on all fours out of the way, then ran to the fence and vaulted it.
The sportsmen hollered and leapt about, alternating between calling out advice and cringing away from the scene before them. The Russian emitted a derisive grunt.
The horse was unimaginably huge, silhouetted against the sky, all that power and muscle held proudly aloft.
He shook his head, a feral challenge. You think to tame me?
The duke barely reached his chest and as he pranced, his front hooves struck close to her face, the iron shoes glinting wickedly in the sun.
Celine’s breath caught, seizing painfully.
Move, she wanted to yell. Give way. For God’s sake, concede! For some reason she was trembling. She could distantly feel splinters pressing into her hands.
The duke didn’t flinch, didn’t move.
The moment went on and on. It became unbearable.
Celine could no longer hold it inside her body.
Just when she’d opened her mouth to shout—to join her voice to the chorus around her—the horse dropped back down to its feet, let out two loud snorts in quick succession, and stilled. Silence fell around the arena.
As though she had all the time in the world, the duke bent over and picked the lead rein up from where it lay in the sand.
“Come,” she said quietly, and the horse ambled towards her until his monstrous nose came to rest against her free hand, from which he snatched an apple.
He chewed and propped one of his hind legs up, relaxed as a dray horse at rest in the field.
The duke rubbed his nose, up under his forelock, around his ears. She murmured endearments to him.
Celine couldn’t make them out, but her skin rose because she didn’t need to hear them to know exactly what that felt like: the duke’s murmuring voice in her ears, hands rubbing over her.
The horse started sniffing round the duke for more apples, and the duke, laughing, unclipped the lead rein and nudged the large head away. “Not till you’ve earned it,” she said and walked around the side of the horse, a hand running under his loose mane.
In one sudden, graceful movement she mounted him and sat tall in the saddle, gathering the reins up.
The horse seemed to need the same moment Celine needed to grasp what had just happened.
His neck jerked up; his ears swivelled sharply back; events caught up to him.
He danced five quick steps backwards, then reared suddenly.
He bucked, pranced, skittered. His hooves landed in the packed sand with a thud Celine felt in her chest. He did his valiant best, but it was wasted.
He had already been mastered.
The duke kept her seat, the working muscles in her thighs obvious through her tan breeches, her shoulders bunching beneath her shirt—a match for all that beast’s immense strength. Even Celine, who had no interest in horsemanship, could see she rode beautifully.
In the space of minutes, the duke had the horse cantering obediently around the arena. There was still something dangerous about him—something feral in the way he moved—but he submitted utterly to his master’s direction.
And she had walked into the Duke of Howard’s house and thought she could bring the duke to her knees with a piece of paper. That woman who would never kneel to anyone and never submit to any master.
The duke came cantering back around the arena, and as she passed, she looked at Celine. From those terrible heights, the duke smiled. Victorious and smug, arrogant and bright, nothing held back. It was happiness, and the corresponding place in Celine’s chest where it had taken root responded.
(—love you.)
The duke continued past, the smile there and gone in a blink. But the knowledge it laid bare in Celine did not end.
She hadn’t come to London for a husband. She hadn’t come for a bed to sleep in, or for safety, or for riches.
She had come to London like a lovesick girl; she had come to London for the duke.