"Send the simple girl inside," the Duke said, loud enough for twelve gentlemen to hear him.
She was already in the saddle, and the black stallion that threw three grooms that summer stood perfectly still under her. Beatrice Harrow went nine years without speaking out loud. Her village called her simple. Not one person in that county ever asked her why she stopped.Before the week was out, she handed the Duke of Ravensmere a piece of paper with two conditions written on it, and the second one cost him everything he knew how to be.England, Herefordshire, the first frost of 1861.Frost covered the huntfield at Ravensmere on the first morning of the season, and the Duke of Ravensmere counted twelve gentlemen in the line before him. Every one of them turned at once. They did not turn for him. They turned for the girl on the black stallion—the horse that threw three grooms that summer, the horse that nobody at Ravensmere dared put a hand on after his brother departed.The Duke felt the heat rise in his collar."Send the simple girl inside," he said, loud enough for the line to hear him.Nobody moved. He looked again. She sat in the saddle already, reins loose in her fist, frost melting where her breath struck the horse's neck, and the black stallion stood perfectly still.Edmund Vane knew the sound of his own voice in a room. He used it the way other men used a pistol: rarely, and never twice. Twelve gentlemen of the county stood in a line across the frost with their hats in their gloves, and not one of them looked at him now. A rook called from the elms behind the kennels. Somewhere down the slope, a hound complained and went quiet."Your Grace." Fenwick, his head groom, came up at his shoulder with his hat crushed against his chest. The man's breath arrived in short, white bursts. "Your Grace, she went up before I saw her. I turned to the gate, and when I turned back—""How long?""A moment. Half a moment."