Page 20 of Lady Like

The stable is muddier than the lawn, straw and muck congealing into a tarry laminate, and Emily knows within steps that she has ruined a second pair of shoes thanks to Harriet Lockhart.

“Alex,” Harry calls, slipping past Emily into the narrow walkway between the horse stalls, and Rochester looks up from where he’s running a brush over his mare’s flank. His eyes go from Harry to Emily, then widen in surprise.

“Miss…” He looks to Harry again, and Emily can almost hear Harry mouthing her name to Alexander in reminder. “Tarpit!”

“Sergeant,” she says. “It’s good to see you again, my lord.”

Alexander straightens, brushing straw off his trousers as he surveys her and Harry, side by side. “What an unexpected pair the two of you make.”

“There’s no pairing,” Emily says quickly.

“You don’t know each other?” Alexander asks.

“Well, yes,” she says. “We are…acquainted.”

Alexander gives her a queer look. “What brings you here, Miss Sergeant? You don’t strike me as the sort of woman who passes mornings at a stable.”

“Oh, but I would like to be,” Emily replies.

Loose, she thinks. Be calm. Be relaxed. Be interesting.

“I wanted to see your jumping racehorse!” She thinks about sharing one of the facts she learned about horses, but decides it’s best to dole them out in moderation.

No need to vacillate so quickly from bland as unsalted soup to deranged encyclopedia.

“Of course.” Alexander doesn’t look nearly as excited as she hoped he would be. She had thought that regardless of his interest in her viability as a long-term companion, he would at least be cheered by the opportunity to put his hands upon her waist under the guise of helping her into a saddle.

He gestures to his mare, though one of the grooms is already seeing to her. “I’m afraid I’m quite occupied. But perhaps Harry here can give you a primer. She’s a far better rider than I.”

Emily begins to protest. “I would much rather—” but Rochester interrupts.

“What say you, Harry?” Alexander claps her on the shoulder. “Fancy teaching the girl to ride?”

And Harry has the audacity to remain straight-faced as she replies, “It would be my honor.”

Emily follows Harry across the yard to where her horse is drinking sloppily from a trough. At his side, Harry’s mastiff slurps with equal vigor and saliva. When he sees Harry, he trots over, dribbling water from his jowls like a wrung-out dishrag.

“All right.” Harry adjusts the collar of her shirt, and Emily catches a flash of the pale curve of her breast. She looks away.

“Shall we stand out here for perhaps ten minutes and pretend to talk about horses? I’ll give you three things you can take back to Rochester, astonish him with your new education, and they’ll be reading the banns by tomorrow morning. Is that what you want?”

“What I want,” Emily says, “is for you to show me your horse.”

Harry lets out an exasperated laugh. “You’re safe with me, Miss Sergeant. You can admit you were just putting on a show for Alex.”

“Surely you were,” Emily retorts. “All that peacocking around in your tall boots and hopping fences and playing with your hair. All your Alex this and Alex that, just because he’s asked you to call him by his familiar name.”

Harry runs a hand over her forehead. “God, that’s me exactly. I do hop a lot of fences and wear a lot of tall boots.”

Emily glowers at her. “Tell me about your damn horse.”

The corners of Harry’s mouth turn up, and lord, the audacity of this woman, to take such pleasure in chaffing her.

“What’s funny?” Emily demands.

“Nothing,” Harry says. “Only, Rochester would like you better if you spoke to him the way you speak to me.”

Emily almost laughs. Men think they want a spirited lady until they actually meet one. Then all they want to do is break her. That’s what Thomas had taught her. And Emily does not have time to be spirited anymore—no matter how fantastic Harriet Lockhart’s ass looks in those riding breeches.

Looked, she corrects herself. And only when she thought it Alexander’s ass.

Harry pats the horse on the neck, then says, “Well, this is Matthew Mark Luke and John.”

Emily nods to the horse, who eyes her with unsettling, slanted pupils. “Pleasure to meet you.” Then, back to Harry, “Four names for a single horse?”

“He comes from a long line of biblical stallions,” Harry says. “The nomenclature of racehorses is such that they must be registered under a unique name, and each of the four Gospels alone were too common.”

“Well then he’s very lucky he was not born later or he might have been called Philippians.” Harry gives her another of those sideways looks, and Emily crosses her arms. “What?”

“I made the same quip to Alexander,” Harry says. “That’s all.”

“Well, it’s obvious,” Emily says, unwilling to admit that she and Harry might have anything like a sense of humor in common. “Philippians is the hardest of all New Testament books to spell. It doesn’t have as many double letters as it should.”

“Thessalonians would disagree,” Harry says, adjusting a twisted strap on the horse’s bridle. “Shall we start with what you do know about horses?”

“I know they grow all their teeth by age five,” Emily says. “They usually live to be between twenty and five and thirty years of age. They cannot breathe through their mouths, and are often described by their colors—palomino, bay, chestnut, gray, roan, piebald. And you measure them in hands.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know anything about horses.”

“I took it upon myself to learn.”

“You are dedicated to your craft. Or, craftiness, I suppose, is more apt.”

“I am simply trying to make a better impression upon a man I wish to know.”

The sky flashes with lightning, chased almost instantly by low thunder.

Harry looks skyward. Emily feels it too—the gentle patter of the first few raindrops striking the back of her neck.

Dark spots pebble the ground around them, turning the warm umber paddock the color of cold coffee.

Matthew tosses his head, ears flicking in a helix, and Emily leaps backward, nearly crushing Harry’s foot.

“You should go inside,” Harry says, a steadying hand on Emily’s elbow. “One of the grooms can find you a curricle back to your cousin’s.”

“What about you?”

“I have to see to Matthew.”

“In this weather?”

“Someone’s got to. And I don’t mind the rain.”

Emily glances back to the stables. What might Rochester say upon seeing her dash inside in girlish fear of getting her hair wet?

It would not provide the impression of bold nonchalance she hopes to convey, particularly if Harry, in contrast, works out in the rain, unbothered and focused.

But to what end? Creating another version of herself just to draw Rochester’s eye?

Pretending to be someone else she’s not in order to trade one version of captivity for another?

Emily feels suddenly foolish, a lady in the rain trying to spin hope out of straw.

But a lifelong charade is still preferable to a marriage to Robert Tweed.

Emily squares her shoulders and imagines herself returning to the stable, wet and fetchingly mud splattered, and when Alexander comments upon the storm, she will toss her hair over her shoulder in a damp arc and say I hardly noticed, as I was so enthralled with your beautiful stallion.

Someday soon, sir, you and I should… And here she will execute a suggestive but not lewd cock of her eyebrow, ride.

She has not come this far to be deterred by something as mundane as the weather.

“I don’t mind the rain either,” she says. “May I help?”

Harry takes in Emily’s thin morning dress and cotton jacket, and Emily thinks she may refuse.

But then she tosses Emily a rag and says, “Take off your gloves and give him a rubdown then.” Her cotton shirt, already damp with sweat and now nearly transparent with rain, sticks to her.

Emily notes the thick muscles of Harry’s forearms, and how they flex when she hefts the saddle from the horse’s back.

“Don’t stand behind him,” Harry says. “And watch out for his mouth.”

“So where am I meant to stand?” Emily asks. “If not in front nor behind him?”

“To the side.”

“Then he’s looking at me.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Harry hefts the tack onto the fence, then troops over to where Emily is hovering beside Matthew, well out of reach of teeth and hooves and wiping down. “Here.” Harry puts a hand on the small of Emily’s back, pushing her gently forward.

Fear grips her suddenly, and Emily digs her heels into the mud. “Wait just a moment!”

Harry stops. “If you’re truly that afraid, you’ll do nothing but spook Matthew and get underfoot.”

“I want to…” She trails off, unsure how to finish. I want to impress Rochester or I want to appear less dull are both fitting, though so is I want to do this with you.

“It’s all right,” Harry says, her tone surprisingly gentle. “You don’t have to. You’ve nothing to prove.”

Emily looks from the horse to the stable, then to Harry. The concern in her eyes is frustratingly sincere. Don’t look at me like that, Emily wants to say. You are not supposed to care about my well-being, it makes this all much more confusing.

Or maybe it’s the horse Harry’s fretting after. That seems more likely, and Emily feels suddenly flushed and foolish for thinking it was her.

“I want to help—” Emily says again, but then Matthew tosses his head, and she leaps in surprise, dropping the cloth. Harry grabs her before she falls, one hand at Emily’s waist like she’s pulling her in for a waltz.

“Steady on,” Harry says, and now those muscled forearms are against Emily’s shoulders. The small of her back. She can map the shape of Harry’s arm where it presses against her.

“Did I startle him?” Emily asks, turning to Harry. Their faces are very close.

Harry leans suddenly into her, so close their cheeks almost brush, and Emily’s heart skips. All the blood leaves her head, and she’s worried for a moment she might swoon in earnest.