His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen #4)(100)
“He’ll ruin one my horses,” Harriet replied, taking a seat on the saddle room’s sofa.
Philippe didn’t have to ask permission to sit in her company, she didn’t ring for tea in a frantic haste—there being no bell pulls in horse barns, thank the heavenly intercessors—nor tug her décolletage down with all the discretion of a fishmonger hawking a load of haddock.
“Then why sell Dudley the beast in the first place?” Philippe did not particularly care about the horse, but Harriet did. She cared about horses to the exclusion of all else, or so Philippe sometimes thought.
He’d never seen her hug a horse, though.
“I will sell my darling Utopia,” Harriet said, “because his lordship has coin and needed a mount for a lady, and Papa has horses to sell and needs that coin.”
Never had the Creator fashioned a more average female than Harry Talbot. She was medium height, brown-haired, blue-eyed, a touch on the sturdy side, and without significant airs or graces. She did not, to Philippe’s knowledge, sing beautifully, excel at the pianoforte, paint lovely watercolors, or embroider wonderfully.
She smelled of horses, told the truth, and hugged him on sight, and to perdition with beautiful, excellent, lovely, and wonderful.
“Do you have reason to believe the lady who will ride the horse is incompetent in the saddle?” Philippe asked.
“I have no idea, but his lordship is a terrible rider. All force and power, no thought for the horse, no sense of how to manage his own weight. He rides by shouting orders at the horse and demanding blind obedience.”
Women criticized faithless lovers with less bitterness than Harriet expressed toward Dudley’s riding.
“He might return the horse,” Philippe said. “He might pass the horse on to the lady after all.”
“I live in hope,” Harry said, sounding anything but hopeful. “How are you?”
To anybody else, Philippe could have offered platitudes about the joys of the Berkshire countryside at harvest, the pleasure of rural quiet after London’s madness.
This was Harriet. “Coming home at this time of year is both sad and difficult, but here is where I must be. At least I get to see you.”
“Papa will invite you to dinner.”
This was a warning of some sort. “And I will accept.”
“You need not. Papa will understand.”
Philippe hated that Harriet would understand. “I’ll even bring along Lord Ramsdale, because you are one of few people who can coax him to smile.”
“The earl is a very agreeable gentleman.” Harriet affected a pious tone, at odds with the laughter in her gaze.
“The earl is a trial to anybody of refined sensibilities. How is your father?”
They chatted comfortably, until the wheels of Lord Dudley’s phaeton crunched on the gravel drive beyond the saddle room’s windows, and the snap of his whip punctuated the early afternoon quiet.
The sound caused Harriet to close her eyes and bunch her habit in her fists. “If his lordship isn’t careful, some obliging horse will send him into a ditch headfirst.”
“He’s also prone to dueling and drinking,” Philippe said. “But put him from your thoughts for the nonce, and take me to see your papa.”
“Of course,” Harriet said, popping to her feet. She never minced, swanned, or sashayed. She marched about, intent on goals and tasks, and had no time for a man’s assistance.
And yet, some assistance was apparently needed. The roses growing next to the porch were long overdue for pruning, the mirror above the sideboard in the manor’s foyer was dusty, the carpets showing wear. Harriet’s habit was at least four years out of fashion, but then, Harriet had never paid fashion any heed.
Philippe was shocked to see how much Jackson Talbot had aged in little over a year. Talbot still had the lean height of a steeplechase jockey, his grip was strong, and his voice boomed. Not until Harriet had withdrawn to see about the evening meal did Philippe notice the cane Talbot had hooked over the arm of his chair.
“You’re good to look in on us,” Talbot said. “Good to look in on me.”
“I’m paying a call on a pair of people whose company I honestly enjoy,” Philippe said. “Harriet looks to be thriving.”
She looked… she looked like Harriet. Busy, healthy, pretty if a man took the time to notice, and dear. That dearness was more precious than Philippe wanted to admit. He’d come home because duty required it of him, but seeing Harriet made the trial endurable.
“Harriet is doing the work of three men,” Talbot said, “and she thinks because my eyesight is going that I don’t notice. I notice, damn the girl, but she doesn’t listen any better than her mother did.”
That was another difference. Talbot’s eyes, always startlingly blue against his weathered features, had faded, the left more than the right. Talbot held his head at a slight angle, and his desk had been moved closer to the window.
“Women are prone to worrying,” Philippe said.
“Now that is an eternal verity, sir. Harriet will fret over that mare, for example, though Lord Dudley’s no more ham-handed than many of his ilk. Will you have time to join us for dinner before you must away back to London?”
“Of course. I’ve brought Ramsdale along, lest he fall foul of the matchmakers while my back is turned.”