A country road in Buckinghamshire
They heard the two curricles before they saw them, the galloping hooves, the cacophony of harness and bounding wheels, the drivers shouting encouragement to their teams and insults to one another.
Sutton turned his own horse to the shoulder of the road and the rest of the party followed his lead. As first one racing carriage and then the other careened by, James murmured soothingly to his horse. “Stand, Seistan. Stand still, my prince.”
Seistan obeyed. Only a stamp of the hind foot and muscles so tense he quivered displayed his eagerness to pursue the presumptuous British steeds and feed them his dust.
From their position at the top of what these English laughably called a hill, James could see the long curve of the road switching back at the junction with the road north and descending further until it passed through the village directly below them.
One of the fool drivers was trying to pass, standing at the reins, legs broadly astride. James hoped no hapless farmer tried to exit a gate in their path!
Seistan clearly decided that the idiots were beneath his contempt, for he relaxed as James continued to murmur to him. “You magnificent fellow. You have left us some foals, have you not, my beauty? You and Xander, there?”
The earl heard his horse’s name and flashed his son a grin. “A good crop of foals, if their handlers are right, and honours evenly divided between Seistan and Xander. Except for the stolen mares.” He laughed, then, and James laughed with him.
Once the herd recovered from the long sea voyage, many of the mares had come into season. Not satisfied with his allotment, Seistan had leapt several of the fences on the land they had rented near Southampton, and covered two mares belonging to other gentlemen. Most indignant their owners had been.
“They did not fully understand the honour Seistan had done them, sir,” James said. Which was putting it mildly. When James arrived, they had been demanding that the owner of the boarding stable shoot the stallion for his trespass, and probably the owner for good measure.
The earl laughed again. “I wish I had been there to hear you explain it, my son.”
A thirty-minute demonstration of Seistan’s skills as a hunter, racer, and war horse had been more convincing than any words of James’s, and a reminder of the famous oriental stallions who founded the lines of English thoroughbreds did the rest. In the end, he almost thought they would pay him the stud fee he had offered to magnanimously cut by half.
But he waived any fee at all, and they parted friends. Now two noblemen looked forward to the birth of their half-breed foals, while James had delivered the herd to his father’s property in Oxfordshire and was riding back to London to be put to stud himself.
“Nothing can be done about his mother, Sutton,” the Duke of Winshire, had grumbled, “but marry him to a girl from a good English family, and people will forget he is part cloth-head.”
The dust had settled. The earl gave the signal to move on, and his mount Xander took the lead back onto the road. James lingered a moment more, brooding on London’s Season, where he would be put through his paces before the maidens of the ton and their guardians. One viscount. Young, healthy, and well-travelled. Rich and titled. Available to any bride prepared to overlook foreign blood for the chance of one day being Duchess of Winshire.
Where was the love of which the traveling musicians spoke? The soul-deep love for which his own parents had defied their families? James couldn’t do that. Too many people depended on him—his father, his brothers and sisters, even the wider family and the servants and tenants who needed certainty about the future of the duchy. At least his cousins had adamantly turned him down. Not that he had anything against Sarah and Charlotte, but they did not make his heart sing.
The racing curricles had negotiated the bend without disaster and were now hurtling towards the village. Long habit had James studying the path, looking to make sure the villagers were safely out of the way, and an instant later, he put Seistan at the slope.
It was steep, but nothing to the mountains they had lived in all their lives, he and his horse, and Seistan was as sure-footed as any goat. Straight down by the shortest route they hurtled, for in the path of the thoughtless lackwits and their carriages was a child—a boy, by the trousers—who had just escaped through a gate from the village’s one large house, tripped as he crossed the road, and now lay still.
It would be close. As he cleared one stone fence and then another, he could see the child beginning to sit up, shaking his head. Just winded then, and easier to reach than lying flat, thank all the angels and saints.
Out of sight for a moment as he rounded a cottage, he could hear the carriages drawing closer. Had the child recovered enough to run? No. He was still sitting in the road, mouth open, white-faced, looking as his doom approached. What kind of selfish madmen raced breast to breast, wheel to wheel, into a village?
With hand, body and voice, James set Seistan at the child, and dropped off the saddle, trusting to the horse to sweep past in the right place for James to hoist the child out of harm’s way.
One mighty heave, and they were back in the saddle. James’s shoulders would feel the weight of the boy for days, but Seistan had continued across the road, and just in time. The racers hurtled by so close James could feel the wind of their passing.
They didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow. In moments, they were gone.
The boy shaking in his arms, James turned Seistan with his knees, and walked the horse back to the gates of the big house. A crowd of women waited for them, but only one came forward as he dismounted— a gentlewoman, if her aristocratic bearing and the quality of her fashionable gown were any indication.
“Forgive my temerity in speaking without an introduction, my lady,” he said, “but have you perchance mislaid this child?”
“How can we ever thank you enough, sir?” Her voice, as she took the child from him, confirmed her class. She turned to the bevy of other females, handing the boy over. “Here, he is unhurt, thanks to this brave gentleman. What is his name?”
The reply was a chorused “Thomas Monday, my lady.” Not her son, then. Indeed, a plaque on the gate post behind her proclaimed the place to be the Creydon Sanctuary for Orphans and Abandoned Children. A lady, and a charitable one.
“Stay inside the gates, Thomas,” she told the little boy, “where you will be safe.” She waved the women away, and they fluttered off, weeping over, scolding, and hugging their retrieved charge.
The lady lingered, and James too. He could hear his father and the others riding towards them, but he couldn’t take his gaze off her. He was drowning in a pair of brown-grey eyes, like a pond in the deep shelter of a nurturing forest. Did she feel it too? The Greeks said that true lovers had one soul, split at birth and placed in two bodies. He had thought it a nice conceit, until now.
“Jamie!” His father’s voice broke him out of his trance. “Elfingham, your grandfather expects us in London.” The earl lifted his top hat with courtly grace to the lady, and rode on, certain that James would follow.
A lady, and by the rules of this Society, one to whom he had not been introduced, but he needed a name, that he might find her again. He took off his telpek, the large shaggy sheepskin hat.
“My lady, I am Elfingham. May I have the honour of knowing whom I have served this day?”
Collected though she had been when she addressed the others, she now seemed as dazed as he, which soothed him a little. She stuttered slightly as she gave him her name. “L-L-Lady Sophia. Belvoir.” Yes. Unmarried, he had cause to hope, for most married ladies were known by their husband’s name or title. He beamed at her as he remounted. He would be able to find her.
“Thank you, sir. Lord Elfingham.”
“My lady,” James told her, “I am yours to command.”
“Oh my,” Felicity said. Sophia had not even noticed her until she spoke. All of Sophia’s attention was on the rider. Oh my, indeed.
“So that is what all the gossip is about,” her sister added. “Even sight unseen, he has ruffled the feathers of the biddies and the sticklers. He looks very exotic, does he not? And yet, he speaks like one of us and has the most elegant manners! London shall go mad when they see him.”
“We must be glad he was there, and in time to help,” Sophia said, struggling to keep her voice calm when the thud of her heart must be audible throughout the village. “Thomas might have been badly hurt.” She managed to drag her eyes away from the retreating horsemen. Undoubtedly, Lord Elfingham had forgotten her already. He did not look back.
She turned towards the Children’s Sanctuary. Felicity fell into step beside her, still talking.
“I must say, he was not at all what I expected. To hear Hythe, one would think him a wild barbarian, uncouth and fierce, without manners or education.”
Sophia repressed a snort with some difficulty. “Hythe has been listening to the wrong Haverford. Our Godmama knew Lord Sutton, his father, when he was only a third son, before he left England to seek his fortune. Aunt Eleanor says that Lord Sutton was married to a Persian princess, and his children were raised as royalty, as well as English ladies and gentlemen. Aunt Eleanor says they were given the finest education.”
“His Grace of Haverford has forbidden Her Grace and Lord Aldridge to attend any event at which they might meet Lord Sutton or any of his children. Is that because she and Lord Sutton were once acquainted?”
Sophia knew that look on Felicity’s face. With the least encouragement, she would be interrogating the dowagers and the old maiden aunts, and increasing the storm of scandal around Lord Sutton and his family even further.
“Hythe says that the Duke is incensed at the dilution of another duke’s blue blood.” Felicity gave a little skip at the horror of it all. Hythe did say that, but Sophia was sure Haverford’s virulent enmity was more personal than a distaste for miscegenation.
“Apparently, Haverford believes that English dukes should marry only English ladies of an appropriate rank,” Sophia replied. “Foreign princesses need not apply.”
“If, in fact, Sutton did marry the foreign princess.” The scandalous nature of the conversation was delighting Felicity, which could not be encouraged.
“We shall trust his word as a gentleman,” Sophia told her, firmly.
Sophia looked back over her shoulder. The horsemen were visible in the distance, just cresting the hill beyond the village. One of them had stopped—his horse gleaming golden in the sun. It was foolish to think she could feel his intense gaze from this distance. She couldn’t even see his features. But she did see one hand raised in salute before he wheeled the horse to follow his companions.
His second apoplexy had left the Duke of Winshire paralysed down one side. By sheer force of will, he usually made himself understood. Today, however, the news he had heard from Ponting, his secretary, had him incoherent with rage. Ponting scuttled from the room under a barrage composed of any liftable item within reach of the duke’s good arm.
James left his sister Ruth and his father to soothe the old man, and followed Ponting out. The secretary stopped in the adjoining sitting room taking deep breaths and smoothing down his coat, while regarding James with caution.
Did he think James would take up where the duke left off? “You are safe from me, Ponting,” James told him, handing him a cloth to wipe the residue of lemonade that had sprayed across his chest and arm as he ducked a jug. “We already knew about Haverford’s plans, and if we did not, it would still not be your fault. Killing the messenger is not only unfair, it ensures that people hide bad news until it is too late to prevent.”
“You are gracious, Lord Elfingham.” Ponting was balling the wet cloth in his hand, looking about as if for a place to put it.
“I am practical.” James called a footman in from the hall outside the duke’s chambers. “Get rid of this, will you? And send someone with warm water, soap and a towel so that Mr Ponting might make himself tidy.” No point in replacing the duke’s lemonade or tidying the mess until he was over his tantrum.
Father emerged from the bedchamber, glancing sharply between his son and the secretary.
“Elsewhere, Ponting. I would speak with my son.” He caught James’s eye as Ponting followed the footman out, and arched an eyebrow. “So, Haverford has given up on the claim that I am an imposter. Once I was recognised by my father and sisters, he was never going to convince those who matter.”
“Old friends, too, Father,” James pointed out. A number of Father’s contemporaries, friends from his youth, had been pleased to renew the friendship with the prodigal who had returned wealthy and titled. “Now Haverford thinks to convince his peers that they don’t want half-breeds living amongst them, dancing and worse with their daughters.”
“That is it with the bark off,” Father agreed. “The only good thing to come out of Haverford’s latest start is that my progenitor now feels obliged to oppose whatever Haverford favours. Haverford thinks to prove my marriage a fiction and my children barred from Winshire’s title? Then Winshire has stopped demanding I repudiate you all and is instead supporting you as my heir.”
James wrinkled his nose in distaste. “And he demands that I sacrifice myself in marriage in your place, and proposes that one of my cousins joins me in the deed. Not that I have anything against my cousins, Kaka, but I had hoped for more to bind me to my wife than mere duty.” The Turkmen word for Papa slipped out, a legacy of his life in the kaganate of Para Daisa, where the inhabitants spoke a minimum of Turkmen, Farsi, and English, and readily slid from one language to another, often in a single sentence.
Father tipped his head to one side and shifted into the polyglot language of their home. “I ask much of you, my son. Yet the old man is right in his way. We have always said that the proper wife will smooth your way and that of your brothers and sisters. We can prove our case, should it be necessary, but there are those who will vote against the evidence. An English wife with the right bloodlines will reassure them.”
James shook his head in frustration, rather than denial. “I have known since I was a boy that I must marry to benefit the family. I’ve known my duty lay in England, and I will do my duty, sir.” He swallowed hard, and took a deep breath so that his voice, at least, would be calm, whatever the turmoil inside. “But must I rush? The lady in the village—”
Father raised his brows. “The lady at the orphan asylum? You exchanged barely a handful of words with her, Jamie.”
James managed a smile. “I must apologise to Matthew. When he met Dedika, he said her soul spoke to his. I laughed at him.” Part of that might have been sour grapes, since his next brother in age was able to marry where he loved, and was being groomed to take over as King of the Mountains after their father left.
As a child, James had assumed he would marry and raise a family in Para Daisa, and in due time be kagan in his father’s place, but the winter he turned twelve, his grandfather sent for Father to be a spare for his sickly heir. Father refused to go, but from that time, James was raised to know that he might one day need to travel to the far-off foreign land of his father’s birth, to take a foreign bride, and to hold a foreign title and estates.
Matthew married and began a family. So did his next brother, John, and his sisters Rachel and Rebecca. James wanted what they had, but he was bound by his loyalty to the man who was his father, commander, and king. Still, the Lady Sophia gave him hope that he might at least find domestic happiness.
Father nodded. “If your connection with the lady is confirmed when you know her better, and if she is a good match in all the ways that matter to the family, then follow your heart my son. I hope that all of my children can have what I had with your Mami.”
James suppressed a surge of irritation at the conditional approval. “She is an excellent match! But Grandfather says we have no time.”
Father shook his head. “We have time enough. This petition of Haverford’s needs to be considered, a committee appointed, evidence heard—it will take months, if not a year or more. Get to know your lady, Jamie. Court her, if your attraction persists. You have time, and you deserve to be happy.” He switched back to English. “You have my support, and so I shall tell the duke.”
He retreated back into the bedchamber.
James crossed to the fireplace, and managed to control a start when his cousin Charlotte spoke from the chair that had hidden her until now.
“I take it Grandfather has heard that the Duke of Haverford has run mad,” she said.
“Mad like a fox,” James answered. “He has accepted that my father is Winshire’s son, but thinks he can easily have us declared illegitimate.”
Charlotte waved an impatient hand at the chair opposite hers. “Take a seat, James, and don’t loom over me. You don’t think it will be as easy as he believes?”
James obeyed, lowering himself into the chair opposite. “I think the man a fool for underestimating the King of the Mountain. You have heard our grandsire’s solution for swaying opinion our way?”
She had, of course. That was clear from the way she examined his face before she spoke; a considering look, as if wondering how much to trust him. “It is a good idea for you to marry an English girl an impeccable pedigree.” With a snap, she closed the open book that was sitting on her knee. “That girl will not be me, James. I mean no offence, but I stand by my decision. I will not marry you, whatever Grandfather might say. I do not intend to wed, ever.”
“Thank you for telling me.” James smiled at his cousin’s earnestness. “Perhaps, you would be kind enough to help me find a bride who will fit the duke’s requirements and my own?”
“And what might your requirements be?” Charlotte asked.
James did not hesitate. “Someone I could grow to love. Someone who could be my friend and partner, as well as my wife.”
Charlotte expressed her scepticism with a raised eyebrow. “You are a romantic, cousin. I warn you; Haverford is powerful. He will make it hard to find a girl from the right family who will accept you, despite our family’s name and your father’s wealth. Finding one who is your match may be impossible.”
James looked down at his hands. If she thought him romantic, she would be certain of it in the next moment. “Perhaps I have found her already. What can you tell me of Lady Sophia Belvoir?”