Mary Elizabeth did not understand what all the fuss was about regarding Sampson. He was a good horse, with a steady gait and the manners of a gentleman. He took his jumps without balking, and when she dismounted, he followed her up the rocky hill and over to the dunes without trying to wander off, though he wore no bridle and had only met her the day before. The great beast seemed to feel protective of her and more than earned the sugar cubes she had stolen for him from her room’s morning tea tray.
She stood with Sampson close by, watching the waves as they rolled onto the shore. She had rarely seen the sea, though her family made their living on it. It was not deemed proper for a woman to work onboard ship, though Ian had always let her climb the rigging with him when she was small. She had spent most of her life inland, at the family keep of Glenderrin, but the sea called to her as she stood beside it. She supposed it was in her blood. In this, as in so many things, her blood did not know that she was a woman.
The ride had left her happy, as riding bareback always did. Sampson seemed content himself as he snuffled at her pockets, and once he had eaten all his sugar, he began to crop the sea grass.
Mary Elizabeth let the wind caress her cheek. Her curls had mostly fallen from their pins, and she let them fly. What did she care how she looked? There was no one near to see.
She no sooner had that thought than Harry the stable lad rode up on a fair-gaited gelding. Mary offered her hand to the gelding at once, without thinking, but Sampson put himself between them.
“You jealous galoot. Mind your manners,” she said to him.
“Any man would be jealous,” Harry said.
She laughed at him, her good nature coming to the fore as it always did. She could not hold a grudge, even if she wanted to. Grudges took too much effort, and he had only called her a hellion, after all. A stable lad in the middle of Northumberland could know nothing of London rumors, nor how they stung.
“So you’ve forgiven me then,” Harry said, swinging down from his mount’s back.
She noticed his boots, polished to a high sheen. She wondered why a stable boy would have such fancy boots but knew it would not be polite to ask. Not that he had thought of politeness the night before.
“I’ve forgiven you,” she said.
“For calling you hellion,” he added, as if she needed that point clarified.
“Yes.”
“So you didn’t mind the kiss I gave you?” He held both hands up as if in surrender, but stepped closer to her—so close that she could smell the sandalwood on his clothes. How would a stable boy get his hands on sandalwood? Perhaps she had made a wrong assumption. Perhaps he was a guest of the old duke himself, if an odd one. She was not the person to judge a man for being odd.
Mary Elizabeth felt her heart leap with a strange, hopeful joy at the thought of the kiss they’d shared and wondered what on earth was the matter with her. She felt her breath suddenly come short and told herself not to be a fool.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she lied.
“Oh, don’t you?”
He smiled at her, and his face was transformed by the warmth of it. Mary Elizabeth blinked at the sight, and Harry took one step closer.
“Perhaps you won’t mind if I kiss you again, here and now.”
“Mind?” she asked, trying to think of some sensible way to back down. She did not want to pull a knife on him, for she liked him. She had chastised him enough for his slip of the tongue, and now she wanted to slip her tongue into his mouth again. What madness was that?
She did not rally her thoughts in time to answer him. He had closed the gap between them so that the buttons of his waistcoat brushed against the front of her overlarge shirt. She was thinking that that a stable boy would never wear a waistcoat when his lips were on hers, blocking out the rest of the world.
Mary Elizabeth knew she should not allow him, or any man, to touch her, but he was not just any man. He was her sort-of-friend Harry. She leaned against him, feeling the contours of his chest against hers, enjoying the strength in his arms as they came around her. She knew, somehow, that he would not push her too far. She could explore with him and have a good time, with no one the wiser. Her mother would take a strip out of her hide if she knew, but her mother was in Glenderrin and would never know.
Mary Elizabeth opened her mouth, and Harry did not hesitate to press his advantage, deepening the kiss so that her breath caught and her hands started wandering.
His shoulders were truly as broad as Atlas’s, and she wondered what burdens he carried beyond the occasional rosebush and the currying of horseflesh. Her fingertips searched his shoulders for a moment, taking in their breadth even as she savored the unaccountable taste of chocolate on his tongue. Her hands wandered then, down the front of his waistcoat, where it seemed a pipe was tucked away inside a breast pocket. She did not get the chance to explore further, for he caught her hands then, taking his lips from hers.
“Mary Elizabeth, that will do.”
He looked down at her, and she wondered why she had ever thought the blue of his eyes icy. They were more like blue flames, small but well-lit fires that did not look like they would go out anytime soon. She stood, warming herself in the heat of his gaze, wondering if what she felt, if what she saw in him, was desire.
She had read about such things in her brother Davy’s library, but she had thought it something for the storybooks, some nonsense a writer made up to cadge a living out of an unsuspecting public. But here it was, staring her in the face in the guise of a stable boy with blue eyes and red-blond hair.
“I am not done kissing you,” she said.
“Yes, you are. For today, at least.”
He could not seem to catch his breath, and Mary Elizabeth noticed that her chest was heaving as if she had run a fast mile in heavy boots, with a sword in one hand and a bow in the other. She supposed breathlessness came with desire. She wanted to explore the concept further but he stepped back from her altogether.
“Well,” she said, her good sense returning slowly. “I suppose you’re right. We might startle the horses if I were to kiss you again.”
A gleam of humor came into his eyes, joining the fiery-blue conflagration of his gaze. “We would not want that.”
“No, indeed,” Mary Elizabeth answered. She found herself smiling into his face, though she had no idea why, as he had refused to keep kissing her or to even let her kiss him. Still, she did not feel rejected, but only as if they had put their shenanigans on hold for the moment. She wondered when she might kiss him again and knew that she should leave him where he stood.
“Well,” she said. “Good day to you, then.”
She vaulted onto Sampson’s back, who left off chewing the greenery and reared under her—not to throw her off, but to show her that he still had his wits about him.
She patted his neck and leaned close, whispering to him to find Mrs. Prudence, where they had left her canoodling under a tree with Robbie on the other side of the hillock.
Harry looked nonplussed to be left alone, so she winked at him as a small concession before she rode away.
* * *
The Scottish girl left him flat.
If that had ever happened to Harry before, he could not remember it. What woman in her right mind, or even a woman who was half-mad, would leave a gentleman standing alone, gaping after her? Harry felt yet again the unaccountable desire to reveal who he was to her. Surely even a half-wild girl from the North knew better than to treat a duke with anything less than respect.
Though Mary Elizabeth was occasionally dismissive of his persona of strange stable boy, Harry had seen no evidence of fawning on her part. Indeed, the girl seemed as if she would be the last woman on Earth to fawn over him, or over anyone. Though her kisses, while untutored, were the most delicious he had encountered in years, if not ever.
She was a quick study, it seemed.
She had commandeered his best horse, so Harry once again climbed onto the docile Merry and headed back to the stables. He did not linger, but left his mount with Charlie and made his way to the house. He did not go alone to his rooms, where Billings no doubt had set up his breakfast, but went instead up the servants’ staircase to see his mother.
“Harry, I am gratified that you would join me at so early an hour. What, may I ask, brings you to my rooms before the cock has even crowed?”
The Duchess of Northumberland looked impeccably dressed, even in her night robe, her hair in a long, silver braid down her back, the royal blue of her dressing gown bringing out the deep blue of her eyes. Even now, as old as she was, Harry could see why his father had loved her for so long, and why he had obeyed only her as if she were his North Star.
Harry wondered for half a moment what it might be like to have a marriage like that. He dismissed the thought almost at once, before it could worry him. He did not have marriage on his mind, but slippery Scottish girls.
Harry kissed his mother’s cheek and sat down beside her on the settee in her sitting room. Her breakfast had already been served, as it always was at this hour. When he was small, Harry used to sneak into her rooms after his father had left and filch a bit of hot chocolate. Her habits had not changed, and neither had his. The duchess poured hot milk into the heated chocolate, stirred, and handed him the largest cup, taking a demitasse for herself.
She then put a chocolate brioche on a Sevres plate, setting it in place with gold tongs and handing it to him so that both his hands were full of sweetness.
When he did not answer her, she went on as if he had. “Well, I, for one, am glad to see you. You have been such a ghost about the place ever since my guests arrived. I thought to see you at dinner last night at least.”
“I don’t want to tell them that I’m the duke.”
His mother raised one imperious eyebrow at that bit of nonsense, and he felt himself flush like a schoolboy. He reminded himself that he was thirty, a duke, and lord of all he surveyed. Still, in his mother’s presence, he felt less than adequate when she turned that look on him.
“I see,” she said. “Because eight hundred years of a proud history and service to the kings of England is something for you to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed,” Harry said. “These people will treat me differently once they know who I am.”
She pursed her lips. “How do they treat you now?”
“Like an equal.”
“But they are not your social equals, and they never will be.”
“They think I am a stable hand.”
The duchess laughed outright at that, snorting indecorously into a lace handkerchief that she produced from her sleeve. She set her chocolate down and wiped the tears of mirth from her eyes. “A stable hand? Harry, really.”
“Mother, I have not come here to talk about them.”
“No?” she looked into his eyes as if she could read the thoughts behind them. Harry shifted on the uncomfortable settee, the kind of furniture he endured only occasionally, and only then for love of her.
She waited for a moment for him to continue, and when he only drank his chocolate until it was gone, she refilled his cup.
“Well,” she said at last, “I am grateful for your company, whatever the reason. I miss the sight of you at dinner. I wish you would come and take tea with us at least, before the hordes arrive from London tomorrow.”
Harry winced at the thought of the bevy of marriageable ladies and their families about to descend on his peaceful haven. He pushed the thought of them aside, for none of that signified more than finding out a little more about Mary Elizabeth. If he could only bring himself to ask.
When he did not speak even then, his mother smiled on him, a new warmth coming into her eyes. “Harry, I can’t pass you off as a stable boy at table, but I will be happy to tell the Waterses that you are a cousin, a distant relation that we keep about the place as an act of charity.”
Harry did not like this description of himself as a mangy dog brought in from the rain, but he liked it better than owning up to the fact that the house, the lands, and all on them belonged to him. At least for now.
“Thank you, Mother.”
She kissed him then, her lips soft on his cheek. “You needn’t be always alone, you know. There are many people who like you very well for yourself.”
He smiled and knew it was a poor excuse for one. “Mother, I think those who like me for myself alone are the two people in this room.”
“The Waters family likes you,” she said.
“Is that her last name, then?” he could not help but ask.
His mother froze as if she were a deer in the woodland, but it was a brief lapse before a studied casualness came over her. “The sweet Scottish girl who is visiting us?”
“I am not sure I would call her sweet,” he said.
His mother smiled then, and leaned back against her cushions with an air of a cat at a mousehole. “Why yes, Harry. Sweet or not, that is the girl’s name.”
“Mary Elizabeth Waters,” he said, musing to himself.
“Indeed.”
He saw the calculating look in her eye for what it was. He kissed her cheek and bolted, taking his brioche with him. “I’ll be down for dinner” was all he said before he closed her bedroom door behind him.