“Where did you get such a horse?” she was saying. “I’ve never seen anything like him in Collie-Ben. Bucephalus is quite the mouthful. I can’t quite accustom myself to it. I think I shall call him Bucky.”
Bucky? He winced. “Please don’t call him that.”
“Bucky, hold up,” she called, ignoring his request.
A glance over his shoulder revealed that her bloody mule was lagging behind again. That or Bucky—damn it all, Bucephalus!—had increased his pace. He sighed as he forced his mount to slow his stride. Now she had him thinking of his own horse as Bucky. “Must you be so irritating?”
“I’m only talking. It’s called conversation.”
He angled his head. “Is it, though?”
“Yes,” she responded with a cheerful surety that grated his nerves.
“I think it’s called maddening,” he returned.
“Girls . . . women like to talk. Surely you know that. You have sisters. A mother, presumably?”
He shrugged. “Yes. Two sisters and a stepmother.”
“I always wanted siblings. A big family. You’re very fortunate.” He shifted in discomfort in his saddle. She thought he was fortunate because he had a big family? He inhaled. A family he happened to be avoiding. “You’re close with them, yes? The way you talked about Clara . . . it sounded like you’re close.”
A simple enough question and yet he took his time in answering because the answer was not so simple. And that summed up his life succinctly lately. Not simple.
“I’m close with my sisters, yes,” he admitted, wondering why he was telling her more than he told anyone before. “Clara is the baby. Very animated. She’s easy to love. Enid is more reserved, but a wit. Full of quips and clever observations. With my stepmother . . . things are complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“Strained.”
“Strained? That sounds intriguing.”
Annoyance flashed through him. “Not at all. It’s rather . . . disappointing. I had admired her greatly once.”
He knew he’d lectured Alyse not to trust any man, but trust in general hadn’t worked out for him, be it man or woman.
Trust was for fools.
“What happened?” she pressed.
He compressed his lips shut. The last thing he wanted to do was discuss Graciela and Colin. He was doing his best not to think about them.
“Come, come,” she coaxed, smiling. “It helps to talk about these things, you know?”
“Does it?” he asked, unconvinced. The only person he’d confided to over the years had been Colin. He was like a brother to him. They’d roomed together at Eton. And considering his best friend had betrayed him by shagging his stepmother, he didn’t think all that talking had helped much in regards to anything.
“Of course.”
He sighed. She wouldn’t stop pestering him. He might as well give her an abbreviated version of events. “A little over a month ago I caught her in a compromising position with my best friend.”
“Oh.” The single word was restrained, but rife with interest. There was no mistaking it.
“That intrigues you, too, does it? The sordidness of my life?”
Nothing about it had felt intriguing. Not then. Not now. The fact that Colin had toyed with his stepmother and gotten her with child still made his blood boil. He’d had to leave town before he did something regrettable. Something like challenge his former friend to a duel.
The scandal of the Dowager Duchess of Autenberry taking up with the young Earl of Strickland was going to be salacious enough for the wagging tongues of the ton. He refused to add to the fires by putting a bullet in his friend. That would definitely not help his sisters’ marriage prospects and he still had them to worry about.
At the time, it had made sense to leave. Now he wasn’t so sure. It had been rash. A reflex to catching Colin and Ela together. Perhaps he’d behaved badly. Like the spoiled privileged sot he knew Alyse Bell thought him to be.
“It was far from intriguing, believe me. I lost a friend and my stepmother.”
She shook her head. “I am sorry. I did not mean to make light of it.” She paused, but he could have guessed she was not done talking. “But I do not see how you lost them simply because . . .”
“Because they’re shagging one another?” he finished bitingly, his sense of betrayal surging to the surface.
Heat flared in her cheeks at his language.
He shook his head. “I cannot fathom how you can still blush. Days ago you stood on an auction block whilst all manner of ribald things were shouted at you.” Although that did feel a long time ago. It felt as though they had been together for quite some time now. Every moment with her felt full . . . significant.
“That doesn’t mean I’m accustomed to such coarseness.”
Coarseness? Meaning she thought he was coarse? He . . . a duke, godson to the queen? Not that she knew any of that, of course. He knew her well enough to know that it would not impress her in the slightest.
Her judgment did not sit well with him. His father had been coarse. Unequivocally. He was the definition of that. He did not care to be lumped into the same category.
Marcus stifled a groan and dragged a hand over his face. What did it matter what she thought of him? She was a member of his staff. She should be beneath his notice.
“I’m only saying,” she continued, “perhaps they love each other. Perhaps they couldn’t help themselves because of that. You couldn’t blame them for—”
“Love,” he snorted. “Lust more like it. And I do blame them. They could have exhibited self-control. Restraint.” Instantly his mind drifted to last night and his decided lack of self-control. There had been no restraint on his part. He’d acted impulsively and let his desire rule him. Could it not have been the same way for Colin and Ela?
The comparison did not sit well.
“Love. Lust. Perhaps it’s both. Do the emotions have to be exclusive of each other? Can people feel both things?”
He contemplated that, wondering if he’d ever pondered the subject of love and lust with anyone, much less a female. “More often than not lust is just that. Two people giving in to base desires and forgetting everything else.” Propriety and obligations. Friendship. Family loyalty. As the mental list grew, he actually felt a familiar tightening in his gut. Graciela and Colin hadn’t considered any of those things as they succumbed to their base desires. They had not considered Clara or Enid or him. Not how Society would react and what the consequences would mean for all of them.
“I believe you are a pessimist, Mr. Weatherton.”
For a moment, the sound of his family’s surname jarred him. He’d never been addressed by anything other than his title.
“It’s not pessimism. It’s called experience. I’ve seen . . . things.” Hard things. Ugly things.
He knew a great deal about base desires and lust. Less about love. Perhaps nothing. Nothing at all about love.
She made a sound. It was nothing he had ever heard from a woman before. At least never directed at him. It was a kind of like a . . . jeering snort.
He sent another glance over his shoulder. Her expression was scornful, one of her dark eyebrows cocked over those cat eyes of hers. “So life has taught you to doubt love?”
“In a manner . . .” Again, that sound from behind him. He wheeled around to face her. “What?”
“I don’t doubt love. I was so young when my mother died I can’t even remember her. At fifteen my father died and I married a man old enough to be my grandfather. I had to work his farm, raise his children, cook and launder for him. That same man sold me at auction. So I’ve seen things, too, you know. I’ve seen ugly things and I still believe in love. Your life must have been very hard indeed for you to be such a nonbeliever.”
She finished her tirade with flashing eyes and a deep exhale and nudged her mule ahead, for the first time bypassing him and Bucephalus.
Marcus started after her, admiring her and marveling at this female who had just made him feel like a rebuked child. He couldn’t even be annoyed with her. Not when she was right.