One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)(69)

Oh, dear. She was already lost.

When the door swung open a half hour later, Amelia expected to be called to her bath. Instead, a parade of chambermaids entered, each laden with brown-paper-wrapped parcels and hatboxes.

“What’s all this?” she asked her lady’s maid.

“Your new wardrobe, Your Grace. Only now arrived from London.”

This was the delivery?

Amelia inspected one of the parcels and immediately recognized the lavender ribbon binding. These packages were from the London dressmaker who had fashioned her wedding gown. Spencer must have ordered an entire wardrobe for her, but of course it could not have been completed in one day. It was a small miracle that it had been completed in a week. She surveyed the growing mountain of boxes. They must contain at least a dozen dresses. And if the new gowns were even one fraction as fashionable and lovely as the pearl-gray silk she’d been married in, she likely now qualified as the best-dressed lady in Cambridgeshire.

Giddiness rose in her as she pulled at the first ribbon bow. She was going to open each package on her own, and she was going to do so slowly. This was better than a lifetime of birthdays.

“Your Grace?” An apologetic maid interrupted her little party. She extended a folded note.

Amelia opened and read it.

Somewhere in these, you will find a riding habit. Join me in the stables at ten.

—S.

Amelia stared at the note for a long time. His handwriting transfixed her, just as it had the first time she’d seen it, on the parish register they’d signed after exchanging vows. He didn’t follow any of the rules well-bred English children were taught by schoolmasters and governesses. Nevertheless, his writing was eminently legible—also strong, vigorous, unapologetic. Every pen stroke displayed confidence. She found it oddly arousing, then and now.

But most entrancing of all was a stray mark just before the word “join.” As though he’d begun a word, then thought better of it. Amelia studied the diagonal slash, capped with the beginnings of a loop … to her eye, it looked like an aborted “p.” And even though she knew there were probably ten thousand words in the English language that began with the letter “p,” she could not help but speculate the unthinkable had occurred.

Spencer had nearly written “please.”

“Oh, she’s ready, Your Grace. A bit nervous, as she’s a maiden yet.” With an abrupt whinny, the mare danced sideways. The groom corrected her with a word and a flick of the halter. “She’s an anxious one.”

Spencer shook his head. His own cattle were meticulously trained, and it annoyed him no end when gentlemen sent their unprepared horses to his stables. If any animal had a natural instinct to please, it was the horse. An owner failing to secure his horse’s trust and cooperation was, to him, as unfathomable as failing to feed or water the beast.

He reached out and patted her bay withers, murmuring low. “Did you give the teaser a pass at her?” he asked the groom.

“Aye,” the groom replied. “She was receptive enough, but reared up when he tried to cover her. We’ll need to hobble her, else she’ll kick.”

Spencer nodded his assent, moving to scratch the mare behind one dark-tipped ear. Teaser stallions were used to test a mare’s readiness for mating, so as not to fatigue or endanger a valuable stud horse. The teaser would chase her about the paddock, go through the motions of equine courtship, test the mare’s receptivity to being mounted—and then the handlers would pull him back before the deed could be accomplished. It was standard operation for a stud farm, and Spencer had never thought much about it. But this particular morning found him unusually contemplative.

On the one hand, he wondered if the practice could be detrimental to his stallions’ health or sanity. His own constitution felt remarkably improved, now that he was no longer playing the part of teaser himself. On the other, he felt it as a silent yet stern rebuke, that Amelia’s accusations had been true. He gave more consideration to the comfort of his broodmares than he had his own wife. Remembering the way he’d pounded her against the mattress last night, on their very first time together … it made him wince with guilt. It also made him semi-hard within seconds.

He sighed, resolving to turn his thoughts to something else.

The groom led the mare away, and Spencer leaned against the wall, making a show of kicking the straw from his boots and trying not to look as though he were waiting. The world waited on a duke, not the other way around.

“Spencer?”

His boot thunked against the brick-tiled floor. He looked up, and there, framed by the tall, square entryway, was Amelia. Or some new, luminous version of her.

“You …” His voice died as he remembered he just wasn’t the sort of man to blurt out By God, you look lovely in the middle of a horse barn. Or anywhere. He cleared his throat. “You came.”

“You sound surprised.” Lifting her eyebrows, she gave him a coy smile. “Thank you,” she added, dropping a hand to her skirt. “For this.”

Spencer rebuffed her thanks with a wave of his hand. Really, he should be thanking her. He didn’t recall specifying a color for her riding habit, but he couldn’t have possibly chosen better. The dark blue velvet skirt was cut and draped to stunning effect. The jacket was pieced together like mother-of-pearl inlay, angled and sewn so that each panel’s brushed nap caught the light differently, and the result was that Amelia shone. Sparkled, really, like an expertly cut and polished sapphire, offset by the gold filigree curls of her hair, and—