Behind them, chaos unfurled. Lord Fenwick's gelding refused the hedge and unseated him into a patch of nettles. Lady Penelope's mare took fright at a flapping coat and bolted sideways, tangling with another horse.
The Duke saw none of this. He had kicked the black into a furious gallop, his pride a hot coal in his chest, but the black was overpressed, its mouth hard, and at the brook, a glittering slash of water lined with alders, the animal dug in its heels and refused outright.
Alexander St. Claire, seventh Duke of Ashford, went over its head in a parabola of scarlet wool and landed in 2 ft of icy water. He surfaced, sputtering, to see his wife's mount launch from the far bank and vanish into the copse beyond.
A groom rode up, struggling to hide alarm. "Your Grace, are you injured?"
"Get me a horse," Alexander growled, his boots squelching. "Any horse."
But by the time he had commandeered a fresh mount from an embarrassed viscount, the hunt was effectively over.
The Duchess of Ashford reached the finish point, a white flag planted beside an ancient oak, a full 5 minutes ahead of the next rider. She did not look triumphant. She drew Gimlet to a walk, leaned forward, and pressed her cheek against his lathered neck.
"You were worth 10 of them," she told the horse.
When Alexander finally arrived, clothes mud-stained and jaw set like granite, the scene had a dreamlike quality. The master was conferring in hushed tones. Riders straggled in, some nursing injuries, others already reworking the narrative. Margaret had dismounted and stood beside Gimlet, offering him water from a leather bottle she had pulled from some hidden pocket. She paid no heed to the stares.
"Madam," Alexander's voice came out sharper than he intended, scraped raw by humiliation and something else, a feeling that he had been watching a stranger all along. "You will explain yourself."
Margaret raised her eyes to his. They were the color of forest moss after rain and completely unafraid.
"I was invited to ride. I rode. What explanation does Your Grace require?"
"You made a spectacle."
"I was given a spectacle." She gestured toward Gimlet, who stood placidly, one hip cocked in exhaustion. "They expected me to tumble at the first fence. Perhaps that would have pleased you."
The small crowd within earshot pretended not to listen. Alexander felt heat climb his throat. He was a man accustomed to command, not to being cornered by the quiet truth of his own failings. "That is not what I meant."
"Then say what you mean, Alexander." She used his name deliberately, and it struck him like a glove across the cheek. "You never asked if I could ride. You never asked about my father's work or my childhood or what I might have been before a piece of paper made me your Duchess. You assumed I was nothing, and now you are angry because I am not."
She did not wait for his reply. She handed Gimlet's reins to a dumbstruck groom and walked toward the line of carriages, her stride unhurried, her head high.
The other ladies stepped aside as though she had acquired an invisible radius of danger. Lady Penelope, mud-spattered and furious, opened her mouth to speak but something in Margaret's glance stopped her cold.
Lord Rexham, a tall, fair-haired man who had not ridden that day due to a sprained wrist, approached Alexander with an expression of undisguised admiration. "Remarkable horsewoman, your Duchess. I've seen cavalry officers with less nerve. Wherever did you find her?"
"I did not find her," Alexander said stiffly. "I married her."
Rexham's smile was slow and far too knowing. "Yes, I recall. Something about a breeding contract. Tell me, Ashford, did you know she could ride like that when you signed?"
The question hung in the air like smoke. Alexander did not answer. He was watching his wife's retreating figure, the way she did not once look back, and he understood that he had just lost ground he had not known existed to lose.
Part Three
Ashford House that evening felt like a mausoleum with candles. Margaret dined alone in her rooms, a tray of cold fowl and bread untouched on the table. She heard the distant slam of a door downstairs, followed by the measured tread of her husband's boots. She did not rise.
He found her in the small sitting room she had claimed as her own, a space still bare of personality save for a single leather-bound volume on equine anatomy and a pressed flower under glass. She was brushing her hair by the fire, the strokes slow and methodical as though she were soothing a nervous animal.
"I have been unpardonably rude," Alexander said from the threshold. The words came out like stones he was forcing past his teeth. "My behavior this morning was beneath the dignity of a husband."
Margaret set down the brush. "You were angry because I embarrassed you."
"Yes." He hesitated. "And no. I was angry because you were a stranger who wore my ring, and I had not troubled myself to learn why."
She turned on the low stool to face him. In the firelight her features were composed, but her eyes held a guardedness that made him feel like an intruder in his own house.