"My father, Bernard Thornwood, bred and trained hunters for 30 years. I was his only child and he taught me everything. By the time I was 12, I could start a colt under saddle. By 15, I was riding the ones no one else could manage. I sold horses at Tattersalls when my father fell ill. I negotiated with earls and squires while my mother kept the ledgers. I am not a country mouse who wandered into a ballroom by accident."
Alexander absorbed this in silence. The fire popped. Somewhere outside a watchman called the hour.
"The breeding contract," he said quietly. "You know of it."
"I know my father's lines are prized. I know your stables needed an infusion of new blood after the wasting fever four years ago. My mother wrote to me last month. She said the marriage was a fair exchange." Margaret's voice remained steady, but her hands were still in her lap and that stillness cost her effort. "I did not expect love, Your Grace. I only hoped for respect."
He crossed the room and lowered himself into the chair opposite her. "You will have it. That at least I can give."
Margaret searched his face. "Respect cannot be given. It must be earned and it must be returned."
The door to the sitting room opened without a knock. The Dowager Duchess of Ashford, a woman built of whalebone and vinegar, swept in with the force of a winter draft. Her dark silk gown rustled like disapproval itself.
"I have heard the most extraordinary tales about today's debacle. Margaret, you have set the entire town cackling into their teacups. A Duchess does not gallop ahead of the field like a hoyden."
"Mother," Alexander rose, his tone a warning.
Margaret remained seated. "I was given a horse incapable of keeping up. I kept up. The alternative was to fall, and I chose not to oblige my detractors."
The Dowager's nostrils flared. "You were meant to be unobtrusive. This is not your father's muddy paddock."
"I have always found," Margaret said, picking up her brush again, "that mud washes off. Disgrace of a certain kind does not."
The older woman's lips thinned to a bloodless line. She turned to her son. "Control your wife, Alexander."
"I think," the Duke said, "my wife has demonstrated she controls herself rather well."
The Dowager stared at him as though he had begun speaking in Greek. Then she withdrew, the door closing with a definitive click. In the silence that followed, Margaret looked up and saw the ghost of a smile at the corner of her husband's mouth.
"That," Alexander said, "was the first time I have ever contradicted her in your hearing."
"Then we are both making progress," she replied.
The next morning brought a calling card on a silver tray. Lord Julian Wrexham requests the honor of an audience with Her Grace, should she be disposed to walk in the gardens.
Alexander read it at breakfast and felt an unpleasant tightening behind his ribs. Wrexham was heir to a viscountcy, a man of effortless charm who had spent the hunt on the sidelines precisely where he could best observe Margaret's triumph. That he had wasted no time was a statement of its own.
Margaret appeared in the breakfast room dressed in a sprigged muslin that made her look younger than her years. Alexander folded the card and said nothing of its contents. But when she excused herself an hour later saying she wished for air, he found himself following at a distance. A man suddenly terrified that something precious he had only just noticed might already be slipping from his grasp.
Part Four
Lord Wrexham was waiting by the ornamental fountain, his arm in a sling and his expression one of genial good humor. He greeted Margaret with a bow that managed to be both correct and warmly familiar.
"Your Grace, I hope you will forgive the impertinence, but after yesterday's performance, I simply had to make your acquaintance properly. I am a devoted student of horseflesh, and to witness such a partnership as you have with that extraordinary bay... well, it was a revelation."
Margaret inclined her head, a small smile betraying her pleasure. "Gimlet did the work. I merely sat still and tried not to hinder him."
"Modesty from the most talked-about rider in three counties. You are a rare creature, Duchess."
Wrexham's gaze was direct without being insolent. He offered his good arm. "Walk with me. I promise to speak only of horses and to slander no one except perhaps that brute Fenwick who deserved every nettle he fell into."
She took his arm. From the shadow of the lime walk, Alexander watched them go, his hands clenched at his sides. He told himself he was merely protective of his household's reputation. The lie was too feeble to sustain even a short stroll.
Wrexham, true to his word, conversed knowledgeably about bloodlines and training methods. He asked Margaret's opinion on crossbreeding Welsh stock with Arabian and listened to her answer as though she were an oracle. No one in London had ever listened to her like that. The Duke listened only long enough to correct or dismiss. Wrexham simply attended.
"You are wasted on the formal circuit," Wrexham said as they looped back toward the house. "In Ireland, they hold long-distance rides across open country. No fences clipped, no field to follow, just a woman and a horse and a map. I think you would leave them all behind there, too."