Page 9 of Lady Like

The following afternoon, Harry goes to see Alexander Bolton, Duke of Rochester, for their postponed ride.

The last time they saw each other, Harry’s hair still fell to her waist, and Alexander had been a pimpled, poorly proportioned youth who had overcompensated for his meager looks and short frame with a biting wit and too much energy.

He had also been piss drunk and reciting Homeric poetry to a hedge he had mistaken for a lady.

Now, as he trots from the barn and across the paddock to where she is waiting for him with Matthew Mark Luke and John, face split in a grin, she hardly recognizes him.

In their years apart, he has transformed into the picture of clean-aired, warm-blooded country living.

Blond hair with a soft curl frames his wide, pleasant face—all he needs are panpipes and a line of soft-eared ewes trotting after him down a country path and you could drop him comfortably into a Boucher painting.

“Harry!” He throws his arms around her, the strength of the embrace lifting her off her feet. “Where have you been?”

“Off riding a horse some daft gent’s groom let me walk away with,” Harry replies, her face squashed against Alexander’s shoulder. “I was tempted not to bring him back.”

“You came so early! I was still in bed.”

“What do you call him?” Harry asks. “The full name is far too long.”

“Just Matthew, usually,” Alexander replies. “The breeder christens all his horses after books in the Bible, but the Gospels had to be combined for registration purposes.”

“You’re lucky you got in early in the New Testament. If he was called Philippians, no one would bet on him for fear of misspelling it on a racing form.”

Alexander laughs, then slaps her on the shoulder. “Come, let’s ride. I want to see you on Matthew.”

Harry notices he leaves his hand on the small of her back just a little longer than is natural, his eyes sweeping her frame before he turns, the same way she is admiring the cut of his breeches, so tight they nearly render him an anatomical drawing.

The curve of his ass as he climbs astride his horse is the first thing to truly distract Harry since the revelation of her lineage.

Harry and the duke ride most of the afternoon, Alexander on his Arabian, trotting on the heels of Harry and Matthew.

Now that she need not regulate Matthew’s speed lest Collin grumble about being left behind, Harry lets the horse show off the extent of his youthful athleticism.

He’s keen to be told what to do, and responds well to Harry’s directions when she stands in the stirrups, knees bent, and leads him to the next jump.

Alexander finally calls for their return to the stables as the sun is beginning to set.

Harry could have ridden longer, and suspects Matthew could have as well, though he slurps gratefully when water is offered.

Harry too drinks deeply from the bucket hanging off the fence, then splashes her face, watching as Alexander leads his Arabian into the yard to meet them.

“I’ve had an idea,” Harry calls to him as he dismounts. “What if you give me Matthew? It will save him the trouble of running away from home to be with me and breaking your heart.”

Alexander strips off his jacket before dunking his whole head into the trough.

Harry watches as he shakes the water from his hair like a dog.

His shirt clings to his shoulders, and when he turns, Harry can see the muscled cords of his back through the translucent material. When had her daft friend become so fit?

They’d first met when Harry was twenty and Alexander only six and ten—a young aristocrat washed up at the brothel where Harry’s mother used to work, in hopes a night with a Camden fen would make him a man.

Harry had stumbled across Alexander in the common room, sweating and stressed and still a virgin, for their first attempt had ended with Mariah shouting that fucking him was like trying to shoot billiards with a rope.

Harry had calmed his nerves with a few hands of cards, and the next day he had sent her flowers at the Palace in thanks.

They had become fast friends after that, haunting the same seedy London circuit until Alexander left for the Continent on a tour his father hoped would tame him.

Harry isn’t certain it had the desired effect, for now he’s fit and charming, and though she had never before numbered him among the very short list of men she finds attractive enough to bed, she suddenly finds herself wondering if she had simply never seen him clearly before.

Maybe it’s the confidence with which he now carries himself that’s sending pleasant tremors through her belly.

Or maybe it’s his thighs.

Perhaps both.

He catches her staring and grins. “I like your hair.”

“I like your ass,” she says, and he lets out a surprised bark of laughter. “Don’t laugh, it’s true! I might have written you more if I knew you’d gotten so fit.”

“I played a lot of cricket,” he says, ducking his head as though bashful, but Harry knows him well enough to spot the performance.

“In Paris?”

“In Sussex. I’ve been back at my father’s estate for a year.”

“Ah, well that’s probably better for your health than staying up all night betting on cards and drinking cheap gin.”

His lips quirk. “I still do a lot of that too.”

They lead their horses to the barn and into their respective stalls. Alexander has grooms that can do the work for them, but Harry insists on removing the tack and picking out Matthew’s hooves herself.

As she pries mud from the horse’s shoes, Alexander calls to her over the wall separating the two stalls. “Tell me how you’ve been, Harry! How’s the Palace?”

“Likely to be condemned any day now,” she replies.

She considers telling him about her mother’s death.

The gulf between her and Collin. Even the recent revelation about her paternity and that she may not be much longer at the Palace because of it.

But she and Alexander have never been on terms that intimate, and she cannot imagine what such a sudden change in atmosphere might do to the mood.

She had once tried to talk to him about tension in the Palace company over the casting of As You Like It and he had, quite literally, run from the room to avoid unpacking that emotional carpetbag.

The sporadic letters they had written to each other after he left to tour had never included more than the set dressing of their lives.

Alexander, she had long ago learned, was not a man to whom one bares their soul.

Though neither had he been a man with such an impressive ass. Perhaps all things could change.

She opens her mouth to continue, but he begins speaking before she can. “My father won’t stop nagging me about my spending. I’d renew my subscription box but he’s put me on an allowance while I’m here.”

“Were you not getting an allowance before?” Harry asks.

“No,” Alexander says, sounding genuinely surprised. “I simply had access to his accounts.”

Harry tosses a chunk of what she expects is a bit more than just mud over at him. “I cannot imagine why he regretted that decision.”

“Ho there, my whist game has improved considerably. And this horse breeder I met in Essex—the one who sold me Matthew—has taught me a much wiser strategy than my previous method for playing the ponies.”

“Which was?”

“Bet on the prettiest one.”

“The same method you use for ladies.”

“Well, it serves me, doesn’t it? You’re here.

” Alexander’s head appears over the stall divider, arms folded and chin resting on his hands.

His hair, half dry, is the color of just-harvested honey.

Harry does her best to appear nonplussed.

She knows Alexander is a prodigious flirt, though that had never before amounted to anything more than a few teasing pecks.

Harry never wanted it to. That she is even considering it now is new and thrilling in a way that is almost indistinguishable from fear.

“Harry,” Alexander says, reaching over the stall to flick one of the cropped strands of her hair against his thumb. “Do you know what I thought the first time I met you?”

“How much fun it must be to have a face this fine?”

“I knew I wanted to sleep with you at least once.”

“Good God.” Harry drops the pick and stands to face him over the stall wall. “Are you trying to woo me?”

Alexander grins, and Harry is gratified to see his cheeks color faintly. “Is it working?”

“Assuredly not,” Harry says, lying. “Thank God you only got fit—if you were suave too, the ladies of London would be murdering one another in the streets to get a swing at you.”

Alexander catches her by the arm as she turns back to Matthew and pulls her to him, both of them pressed to their respective sides of the stall wall. “What about you? Do you want a swing?”

There is, Harry thinks, a good chance that sleeping with Alexander is a decision that will age like milk. But if she is about to be forced into monogamy against her will, she is determined to see as many people naked as possible beforehand.

Which is why she takes Alexander by the collar, says, “Now who could resist an offer like that?” and kisses him.

—

After, they lie naked together, wrapped in Alexander’s luxurious sheets, and though Harry is far from satisfied—Alexander, it would seem, has become so good-looking that sexual proficiency isn’t really required—she’s still pleased by the evening’s turn.

She dozes with her head on Alexander’s shoulder, only waking in earnest when he kisses her on the forehead, then pries himself from her and begins to dress.

She watches from the bed, and when Alexander catches her eyes in the dressing table mirror, he grins. “I had a fine time today.”

“As did I.” Harry arches her back, pointing her toes to relieve the cramps in her muscles.

“We should ride again.”

“In which sense?”

“Either. Both.”

“I’m on as Macbeth the rest of the week, but I could stay the night.”