Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
“That one is huge!”
Nicholas was balanced on the bottom rail of the stable yard gate, both hands gripping the top bar, his chin hooked nearly level with the latch.
He was staring at Calder, who held his head over the stall door, watching the boy.
“That one is not for you,” Penelope said, her voice a soft warning.
“I know that, I have already met him. I just wanted to bring your attention to him. But he truly is enormous, like a horse from a legend.” Nicholas dropped off the rail, his boots hitting the gravel with a crunch, and looked up at her.
“Do you think His Grace will let me ride a smaller one again? Or perhaps I can start growing into a bigger one.”
“I expect he has made a suitable choice, Nicholas.”
Nicholas fell into step beside her as they passed through the gate. His hands kept opening and closing at his sides, as if he were already practicing the grip of the reins.
Penelope held her gloves in a tight knot and said nothing. Her heart was doing its own frantic staccato against her ribs.
Malcolm was already in the yard.
He stood at the center of the cobbled space with Hector sitting like a statue at his heel.
One large hand rested on the neck of a bay horse Penelope hadn’t seen stabled before.
A sturdy animal, broad through the chest and shorter than Calder by a clear hand and a half, with a quiet, considering eye.
Malcolm had his back half-turned to the gate, checking the throatlatch of the bridle.
He turned as the gravel shifted under their feet.
Hector was gone in the same instant. Nicholas dropped to one knee and wrapped his arm around the dog. They both went sideways into the dirt in a tangle of limbs and fur. Nicholas was laughing before they had even stopped sliding.
Penelope positioned herself to the right of the gate. She stood with her spine braced against the wood, close enough to see every movement, far enough to be unambiguously a witness and not a participant in whatever was happening here.
“This is Bramble,” Malcolm said.
He stepped aside so Nicholas could see the full length of the horse. “He is eight years old, and has carried riders who didn’t know their left hand from their right, and he has no bad habits. He will let you know when you are not riding him correctly, but he will not do it by throwing you.”
Nicholas stepped forward the way Malcolm had shown him. Hand out, palm up, a slow and respectful approach. Bramble dropped his heavy nose and breathed a warm, huffing cloud across the boy’s palm.
“He is warm.” Nicholas’ eyes went wide with wonder.
“And he is very ready.” Malcolm looked at Nicholas, his gaze level and unyielding. “Do you want to try?”
Nicholas looked at the leather saddle, then at Malcolm, then back to the saddle. “Yes,” he said, his voice cracking only slightly.
Penelope’s hands tightened further around her gloves until her knuckles turned white.
Malcolm talked him through the mounting like he clearly had done another time, for Nicholas listened raptly. The Duke covered everything slowly and carefully: the stirrup, the grip on the pommel, the distribution of weight, the angle of approach.
The first attempt came apart midway. Nicholas’ right leg swung too wide, his weight shifted, and he began to slide ignominiously back down the horse’s side.
Malcolm’s hand shot out. Two fingers caught Nicholas’ elbow, steadying him without a word or a change in expression.
“It is all right,” Malcolm said. “Try again, and do not be afraid to make a mistake or not get it right so quickly.”
The second attempt landed. Nicholas swung his leg over and sat up in the saddle. He looked down at the yard, at the horse, and finally at Penelope.
She exhaled so quietly it was almost a sob.
He began to move around the horse, his hands adjusting Nicholas’s posture without asking for permission. He moved a shoulder, corrected a hand, nudged the angle of a heel in the stirrup.
Nicholas held perfectly still under the touch, a patience Penelope found remarkable. He didn’t flinch or argue; he simply absorbed the correction and waited for the next.
“Good,” Malcolm said.
Nicholas’ chin came up half an inch, the praise hitting him like a physical bolster.
They began to walk. Malcolm held the lead rope, his voice low and steady as he paced beside them. He watched Nicholas’ elbows, and the direction of his gaze, which kept pulling down toward the horse’s ears.
“Look where you are going,” Malcolm encouraged. “Not where you are. The horse knows where he is, but he must know where you intend to be.”
Nicholas looked up, nodding affirmatively.
They went three times around the yard. Then Malcolm stopped and looked at Nicholas’ hands.
“All right, now, drop the reins,” he instructed.
Penelope was off the fence before she’d decided to move. “He has not even been on a horse more than a handful of times!”
“He is sitting on a stationary horse in an enclosed yard.” Malcolm’s voice was even. Entirely maddeningly even. He didn’t even turn his head to look at her. “Nothing is going to happen.”
“You cannot know that. A horse is a living thing, not a piece of furniture.”
He turned then, holding her gaze without heat, his eyes the color of a winter sea. “If you would like to understand why, you are welcome to try it yourself. Otherwise, I would ask you to let the lesson continue. You are making the horse nervous.”
She looked at Nicholas. He was sitting perfectly still on Bramble, the reins in his hands, looking at a point in the middle distance between Penelope and Malcolm.
She stepped back, her face burning.
Malcolm turned back to Nicholas, giving a slow nod. “If you feel comfortable to do so, Nicholas, drop the reins.”
Nicholas placed the reins on the horse’s neck. He tipped slightly to the left, caught himself, and stilled.
“I feel it,” Nicholas said, his voice hushed. “The difference. It’s like sitting into him instead of just on top of him.”
“Yes,” Malcolm agreed. “Hold that feeling.” He watched Nicholas for a long moment, a strange, unreadable softness in his jaw. “Now, take them again.”
Penelope resumed her position against the fence, her heart still hammering.
They worked through the walk, the turn, and the halt.
Malcolm stopped them three more times to correct things Penelope couldn’t even see. Small adjustments to the grip, the breath, the subconscious lean of a shoulder.
Nicholas made the same mistake twice. His left knee drifting on the curve, and Malcolm used the same words both times, patient and exact. On the third pass, Nicholas fixed it himself.
Malcolm stopped walking. “You are doing just fine,” he praised.
At the affirmation, Nicholas sat up two inches taller, proud and happy with himself.
They went around the yard twice more before Malcolm stopped again. This time, he turned fully and looked at Penelope.
“Do you ride?” he asked.
“Adequately,” she replied, tilting her head.
“How often?”
“When it is required.”
“Then you ride the same way your son was taught to, I imagine. By someone who wanted you to stay on, not someone who wanted you to ride.” He tilted his head toward a smaller gray mare already saddled near the far stall.
“That is Mira. You will understand what I am correcting in your son if you feel it yourself.”
She looked at the gray. She looked at Malcolm’s steady, challenging gaze. She looked at Nicholas, who had gone carefully blank.
“How long do you expect me to demonstrate for?” she asked.
“Ten minutes.”
She crossed the yard to the mounting block. Mira was still. Penelope put her foot in the stirrup, and before she could brace herself, his hand came to her waist.
It was practical. She knew it was practical, the way a riding master or a groom would assist a lady.
The touch lingered for all of two seconds.
But through the thin linen of her dress, the heat of his palm felt like a brand.
It sent a jolt of electricity up her spine that made her breath hitch in her throat.
She settled into the saddle and stared straight ahead with a mask of complete composure.
“Shoulders,” Malcolm corrected, standing at her stirrup.
She loosened them.
“Now the reins.” He stepped closer, his chest nearly brushing her knee.
He reached up, and his fingers moved hers into the correct position.
His touch was brief, adjusting the angle of her right hand with two fingers, but it felt like a silent conversation.
“Light hands, Penelope. You want contact, not a grip. The horse is not your enemy.”
“I understand the principle.”
“Your knuckles were white. You were gripping.”
She adjusted, relaxing her fingers. The difference in the mare’s posture was immediate.
He walked her through the same exercises he’d given Nicholas. The same economy of language, the same sharp attention to detail.
There was no condescension in his voice, no softening because she was a woman. She was a student, and the evenness of that treatment felt, strangely, like the highest form of respect he could offer.
“Mama, you look like you are actually riding!” Nicholas called out from the fence, grinning.
“Thank you, darling,” she said, allowing herself a small smile.
“Your back was very bent before, like an old lady’s. It’s much better now, though!”
“Thank you, Nicholas. That is quite enough.”
She thought she heard a low, amused huff from Malcolm’s direction. She kept her eyes fixed forward.
Nicholas’ lesson resumed after hers. He had found his focus now, and he moved through the instructions with a speed that was genuinely surprising. The left knee corrected on the second reminder. His hands stayed low and relaxed. His gaze stayed ahead.
At the end of the third circuit, Malcolm stopped. He looked at Nicholas, the posture, the hands, the quiet confidence.
“That will do for today,” he said.
Nicholas dismounted with the sequence in perfect order and patted Bramble’s neck. He handed the reins to a waiting groom and turned around, his face glowing.
“May I come back on Thursday?” Nicholas asked, looking between Penelope and Malcolm.
“If your mother agrees,” Malcolm said, his eyes moving to Penelope.
She met his gaze, the air between them still humming from the contact earlier. “Thursday is suitable.”
Nicholas gave Hector a comprehensive final goodbye that involved both hands and most of the dog’s ears. Then he straightened and said, “Thank you, Your Grace.”
The groom disappeared into the stalls. The yard went quiet.
Penelope and Malcolm stood in the center of the cobbles. She turned toward the gate. “Good day, Your Grace.”
“I shall send a note before Thursday,” he said from behind her.
“That will be fine.”
She walked away.
She could feel his gaze on her back, a physical weight that followed her from the gate to the very end of the drive.
She kept her pace even and her spine straight, refusing to turn around.
She heard nothing behind her. No footsteps, no movement, only the stillness of a man standing exactly where she had left him.
“He wiped paint off your face?”
Violet set her teacup down, a squeal barely concealed. She was sitting across from Penelope in the drawing room, both feet tucked under her.
“It was a smudge that just happened to be on my cheek,” Penelope said, her voice a model of reason. “He noticed it. It was a practical, albeit intrusive, gesture.”
“He reached up and touched your face,” Violet repeated, her voice hushed and reverent.
“In your private studio, and without an invitation. Penelope, the man is a duke with a reputation for being a hermit, and he is playing valet to your complexion! Not to mention that you said it sent fire through not even five moments ago.”
“I should not have used that word,” Penelope muttered.
“You absolutely should have! It is the most honest thing you have said about him since he caught Nicholas that very first night.” Violet tucked one knee up to her chin. “And the kiss? The one you mentioned in the garden? Heavens, did you kiss him back? You did not mention.”
Penelope turned her teacup in a slow, agonizing circle as her face heated up. Her silence said enough.
“You kissed him back,” Violet pieced together, her voice soft.
Penelope went to speak, then stopped. None of the excuses she had rehearsed were any good. “I do not intend to repeat it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I do not know who he is.” The words came out more honestly than she had intended.
She heard them and recognized them as the root of her fear.
“I do not know him. And yet somehow he is in my studio, and my son is hugging him, and he is teaching my son things I cannot, and I have agreed to see him three times a week indefinitely, and I… I do not know who he is, so why have I even agreed to any of this? Why am I standing for any of this?”
Violet looked at her for a long, quiet moment.
“Penelope,” she said gently. “I think there is some instinct in you that goes beyond the warnings and the stories. Perhaps you are seeing the man beyond rumor? The man who is merely a man, not a wolf?”
The drawing room was quiet. Somewhere outside, the afternoon had turned long and golden, the light slanting through the window in a heavy amber bar across the carpet.
Penelope looked at her teacup.
She didn’t answer. She did not know to, nor wanted to think that, deep down, Malcolm was just like her: somebody more than the rumors and stories.