Chapter 3
The Duke of Rivers clapped a hand over his mouth before he could let out a cry of triumph from behind the bales of hay that were stacked quite high in the stables.
Harlowe, on the other hand, sneezed.
It was loud, it was obnoxious, and for a moment Rivers almost had a heart seizure because he was certain there was no way that Skyburn and his future lady hadn’t heard the sound. But the two were engaged in such intense and vital banter that they had not.
Skyburn and Lady Ruby were on fire! Like sparks and touch-paper.
It was heaven!
Harlowe gave him an apologetic stare.
Rivers gave the man a quick glance that seemed to suggest he needed to get his sneezes under control. But he did understand that sneezes were an exceptionally hard thing to control, especially for a man who spent almost all his time inside.
Harlowe was a butler, after all, and Rivers could not argue that fact. He didn’t know what he would do without his butler. Especially since he had formed The Marriage Managing Society some months ago.
Frankly, Rivers was grateful for the fact that Harlowe had been willing to come into the stable at all. Harlowe did not like horses. Rivers liked horses just fine, but he really did see them as a means to an end more than anything else.
The large beasts could be temperamental, and he didn’t like temperamental anything. He liked to control things. That was the best way to do things. And in that way, he supposed that he and Skyburn had a great deal in common.
Skyburn seemed wild. He was wild, but it was all because he was trying to control everything around him. He felt that if he moved fast enough, he could be the one who sorted everything out, but he wasn’t going to be able to sort out Lady Ruby Reynolds.
No, Lady Ruby Reynolds would be sorting Skyburn out.
“It’s working,” Rivers whispered, as he clapped Harlowe on the shoulder and hissed through his teeth. “It’s working,” he said again, so pleased that he could hardly take it.
“Of course it’s working,” Harlowe replied, his lips pursing. “We spent even more on these two than the last two.”
“It’s going to work out,” Rivers said, almost to himself. “It always works out.”
Harlowe nodded. “Indeed, Your Grace.”
Though there was a fleeting look of fear on the butler’s surprisingly young face.
“None of that,” Rivers said to Harlowe. “That last difficulty? That was an aberration. Everything worked out beautifully.”
“You tell yourself that, Your Grace. You tell yourself that,” Mr. Fennyman, the infamous owner of Fennyman’s gaming house, said as he strode up behind them.
“Shhh,” Rivers countered. “I don’t want them disturbed.”
“Then you shouldn’t be here,” Fennyman drawled before he looked about. “Why are you people obsessed with horses? Why can’t you just enjoy a good stroll or a play or a ballroom or a good dance or a fiddle being played? Why does it so often come down to dogs and horses?”
Rivers thought about this for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said.
“I do,” Fennyman returned archly.
“And?” Rivers prompted.
“Bloodlines,” sighed Fennyman as he flicked a bit of hay off his simple but immaculately cut black coat. “You lot are obsessed with bloodlines, and dogs and horses and people in the aristocracy all have them. You lot want to control them.”
“You make me sound quite clinical,” he said, keeping his jaw from falling.
“You are,” Fennyman returned.
Rivers supposed that was true. He cleared his throat and gestured to the stables. And the track outside. “Can you not appreciate the money made here?”
Fennyman let out a laugh. “You mean at the racetracks? Of course I can appreciate that sort of money,” he said. “But Skyburn’s horse cannot beat the new Arabians arriving. No matter what the fellow thinks. The future of racing is from the East.”
“Were you listening in to their whole conversation?” Rivers asked.
“Of course I was.” Fennyman waggled his brows. “I was in the hayloft. I came down the side ladder to find you and tell you we need to leave. This isn’t going to work out like we thought it would.”
“What do you mean? They’re getting on famously?” Rivers protested.
“Yes. And that’s bad.”
“Why is that bad?” Rivers gritted through his teeth. “Must you always ruin my excitement?”
“It’s my job.”
“The last couple we arranged had difficulties because they got on the wrong track,” Rivers insisted. “These two are perfectly on track.”
“They are on track, Your Grace. It’s true.
The course seems to be correct, but this is too easy.
They are going at breakneck speed. With these two, that’s a disaster.
” Fennyman winced. “I had no idea she’d be so…
bold. I should have. She’s a lady, after all.
But it seems like rules are being thrown out the window. ”
Rivers scowled. “That’s what we want.”
Fennyman shook his head. “These two are going to have an affair and be done. There will be no marriage if we don’t sort this out. Because they will have developed no real liking for each other. They will burn out like too-bright stars.”
“Must you always point out the difficulties?” Rivers said.
“Yes. You hate to lose, remember? Short wins do not a victory make.”
Harlowe swung his gaze back and forth before he cleared his throat and piped, “Remember, Your Grace, we are in this for the war and not the battles.”
The Duke of Rivers blew out a sigh. He supposed that the two men weren’t entirely incorrect, but it was still extremely frustrating.
“Bloody hell,” Rivers ground out. “It was such a good morning.”
“Yes, it seemed so,” Fennyman said. “And I could allow you to continue to believe that everything was going swimmingly, but you’re not like other lords who need to be pandered to. So let’s go and get this sorted out.”
“So, how do we slow them down?” Rivers said.
Fennyman snorted. “We’re lucky they aren’t seeking a bale of hay right now. Thank God they have better sense than that.”
Rivers groaned. “We are going to have to hold their hands, aren’t we?”
“Not through all of it,” Harlowe said, aghast.
“Not through all of it,” Fennyman agreed. “But through a lot of it.”
Harlowe blinked and then he gasped, “Good God, both of them want to control the other one, don’t they?”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” the duke asked, looking between Fennyman and Harlowe, who always had a slightly better grasp on people than he did.
“If Ruby Reynolds ends up in control of this,” Fennyman warned, “she will dance around him, and then she will hie off into the sunset alone because she doesn’t need a husband. She doesn’t have to want one.”
“Of course she does,” Rivers said. “She needs to have an heir.”
“Why?” Fennyman returned.
The duke sucked in a breath. “Because that’s what women do. They have heirs, especially titled women.”
“She is the heir to an earldom. She doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to.”
“And that’s why we picked her,” Rivers said, “because she matches him.”
“Yes, but I didn’t see the dilemma until I saw them together,” Fennyman said.
“You seem to be missing several details lately,” Rivers said. “Are you distracted? Something more pressing?”
Fennyman grinned. “Humans are impossible. They never do what you truly want, Your Grace.”
“Yes, they do,” he countered.
“No,” Fennyman said. “You can light the spark, but you can’t control the outcome of the meeting. I wouldn’t be surprised if those two were in bed within a week.”
“They can’t do that,” Rivers hissed. Not out of any sense of morality, but because he understood that if they had each other too soon…they’d grow disinterested. Wouldn’t they?
“Why not?” Harlowe said. “Surely that would ensure a wedding takes place immediately.”
The duke swung his gaze back to where Lady Ruby Reynolds and Skyburn had just stood a moment ago. They were heading out into the sunlight. “Thank God!”
Fennyman paused, then said quite seriously, “I think if they get to the end of the race too soon, both of them will be bored.”
The duke led out a groan. “Why do humans always, and I do mean always, have to be so bloody difficult?”
Fennyman laughed. “Come, Your Grace, that’s what makes life exciting, the difficulty of humans.”
“No, it doesn’t,” the Duke of Rivers said. “It really, really doesn’t.”
One would have thought he’d have gotten used to it by now, but Rivers feared he never would.
Harlowe gasped, then let out a perplexed note. “So what am I supposed to do exactly?”
“Arrange a ball. As always,” Fennyman said with surprising cheer. “You’re very good at it.”
“Well, how will that help?” Harlowe protested.
Rivers sighed, for he was growing to loathe balls. He’d never hosted a single one until The Marriage Managing Society was formed. Now, he felt he was hosting one a week. It was absurd and exhausting. But there was nothing like a ball.
“Balls always help,” Rivers admitted ruefully. “We can maneuver them together and make them see they are interested in each other’s minds, not just each other’s bodies. I think we might need to get Lord Philip involved in this one.”
Lord Philip was the Duke of Westfort’s younger brother, a capable young man who had been sent down from Oxford and had discovered the secrets of The Marriage Managing Society. He was now integral to the whole thing.
“Yes,” Fennyman said. “And the Duke of Windbourne.”
Rivers narrowed his eyes. “That’s a terrible idea. Besides, he’s only just arrived in town. No one knows him.”
“All the better,” Fennyman said boldly. “Skyburn needs a challenge, and if he thinks that there’s no challenge in getting Ruby Reynolds, well?”
Fennyman shrugged.
“This is all extremely frustrating,” the Duke of Rivers declared.
Harlowe let out a surprising sigh. “I don’t like how aristocrats behave,” he said. “I wish they would all just fall in line and take care of people like they’re supposed to.”
“Well said,” Fennyman agreed, “but they were all made powerful generations ago by people who liked to fight. Now they have too much money, power, and land. All of it inherited without a single bit of effort. But the warrior gene is still in them, so none of them likes to go easily along.”