One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)

Amelia cast a wary glance at the mare, and Juno released a gruff snort, as if in confirmation. “Then why do you keep her?”


“Because no one else would. She’s the first horse I ever bought in this country. My father left me a small legacy, and when I came of age, I took the funds to an auction and came home with this creature. I was young and stupid—made my decision based on pedigree without taking temperament into account. She was four years old and had noble bloodlines and some modest racing success. Thought I’d made a fine bargain. What I didn’t know was that she’d always trotted the line between spirited and flat-out dangerous, depending on her rider, and she’d spent the previous year boarded at some country estate, in the care of an incompetent stable master. She’d been kept tethered in a dank stall, barely groomed, beaten often.”

He stopped and drew a deep breath. Even now, he felt the old fury rising in his chest. When he’d mastered his voice, he went on, “By the time I bought her, her trust in men had been completely destroyed. No one could saddle her. No one could even get near her without risking his fingers. Clearly we’d never be able to breed her. My uncle wanted to put her down, but I wouldn’t allow it.”

“You wouldn’t?” Amelia stroked his arm in a sympathetic manner.

“Oh, it wasn’t so noble as it sounds,” he told her. “Pride was my true motive. I’d bought the damned mare, and I didn’t want to lose the investment. Or admit defeat.” Releasing Amelia, he walked forward to offer his hand to Juno. She nosed his fingers with rough affection, then turned her head to offer him her favorite spot under her left ear. She liked to be rubbed there, so he humored her for a bit.

“I took personal responsibility for her and then turned her out to pasture for a full year,” he said. “Made no attempts to train her, asked nothing of her. I fed her, watered her, groomed her as much as she’d allow. Even once I’d gained her trust, it took a full year of slow training to ride her. With time, I was able to break her to halter, bridle, eventually saddle … Strangely enough, those rides were what finally improved her disposition. As if that’s what she’d been waiting for, been needing—the chance to carry a rider and gallop across an open park. So I began riding her regularly, and her mood improved. Now it’s our habit. She’ll let the stablehands feed and groom her, but to this day, I’m still the only rider she’ll allow.”

He looked to Amelia, and she gave him a slight, disarming smile. It occurred to him he’d been talking for an uncharacteristically long time, and she’d been standing there patiently for a long time, too—pointedly silent, unwilling to interrupt until he finished.

“She’s getting old,” he went on. “Too old to be ridden by anyone, much less a man my size. I’ve always been more weight than she really ought to carry. But if I try tapering off the frequency of our rides, she grows touchy again. Starts refusing to eat, kicks at the stall. I hate to keep riding her, but I’m more concerned about what will happen if I stop altogether.” He rubbed the mare’s withers briskly, then stepped back and folded his arms. “That’s where Osiris comes in.”

“Osiris?” she asked, obviously baffled.

“It’s difficult to explain.”

Again, she gave him that patient, friendly silence.

So he explained, and found it wasn’t so difficult after all. “I’d been trying to learn more about Juno’s early years, to see if there might be something else to calm her, or someone else she once trusted. A groom, a jockey perhaps. It wasn’t easy, so many years after the fact. But I found the farm where she’d been bred to racing age, and the old stable master was pensioned but still living nearby. He remembered her, of course. He told me she’d always been difficult—no surprise—but that in her second year she’d formed a strong bond with an orphaned colt. Horses are much like people, you see. They form friendships and often remember one another, even if parted. We once had a pair of geldings who’d been separated for years, but once they …”

He stopped, absorbing the fact that her blue eyes had grown wide as shillings. God, he knew this would sound ridiculous spoken aloud.

“So this colt that she bonded with … it was Osiris?”

“Yes.” He tapped his heel defensively. “I know it sounds absurd, but it was the only possibility I could think of. Juno’s never socialized well with the other horses here. But I thought if she’d bonded with Osiris in her early years, before the horrific abuse she endured, perhaps she’d warm to him again and have some companionship to … to soothe her.”

They stared at one another for a while.

“So …” She pursed her lips around the drawn-out word. “This is why you’re pursuing Osiris. You’re willing to spend tens of thousands, rearrange your life, risk the fortunes of others—including my own brother—all so your ill-tempered mare can be reunited with her childhood friend?”