The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [35]
“I was going to ride, my lord.”
“Oh? Perhaps my vision has become suddenly deficient for I don’t believe I’ve seen any unknown horses in my stables. Where is this horse you were going to ride? I assume it is a horse. Even though I am apparently the ass in this drama, you cannot ride me.”
Alex was silent a moment, then said calmly enough, “Mr. McCallum has given me Fanny to ride since I’ve been here.”
“Fanny belongs to my sister.”
“I know. She is a spirited mare with a sweet mouth and nice manners. I know how to ride, my lord, truly. You don’t have to worry that I cannot handle her properly. Or would you prefer that I ride another horse?”
He was frowning ferociously at her. “So you brought no horse of your own?”
“No.” Actually, her father had sold many of the ducal horses some two months earlier, clearing out the once glorious Chambers stables before he’d known about Douglas and his offered bounty, before he’d known he’d need more than Douglas’s bounty to save Claybourn.
“You’re wearing a riding costume, though it is not new nor is it even in last year’s style. I may assume then that your esteemed blackguard thief of a father sent you away with at least enough clothes to cover you until you could wheedle some more out of me?”
As a verbal blow, it showed promise.
“I don’t know. I had not thought about it.”
He actually snorted and she heard an answering snort from one of the closed stalls. “That’s Garth,” Douglas said absently. “So you don’t think about furbelows and ribbons and flounces—”
“Certainly, when it is necessary to do so.”
“I cannot imagine Melissande not wanting lovely clothes and furbelows and all those other things you females clothe yourselves in to attract males and make fools of them. Why would you be any different?”
“Melissande is beautiful. She needs beautiful things and admires them and—”
“Ha! She doesn’t need anything. She would look glorious in naught but her white skin.”
As a verbal blow, it exceeded the last one.
“Yes, that is also true. What do you wish me to do, my lord?”
“I wish you to leave and turn all this damnable debacle into a nightmare from which I’ll awaken.”
It was difficult, but Alex remained standing straight, remained with a fixed pleasant expression on her face, forced herself not to scream at him or make fists or fall to her knees and wail. “I meant, do you wish me to ride Fanny or ride another mare or not ride at all?”
Douglas shoveled his fingers through his hair. He stared at the small female who everyone had informed him was indeed his wife. She looked pale in the shadowy light but that back of hers was as straight as if she had a broom handle bound tightly against her backbone. Her hair was tucked firmly up under a rather dowdy riding hat. One long tendril had come loose and was in a loose curl on her shoulder. The hair was a nice color, rather an odd dark red color, but it didn’t matter one bit. It could be blue for all he cared.
She was a complete and utter stranger, this female.
He cursed, long and luridly.
Alex didn’t move an inch.
“Oh, the devil! Come along, you may ride Fanny and I will judge if you ride well enough to continue mounting her.”
Mr. McCallum, fifty, wiry, strong as a man of twenty, baked brown from decades in the sun, and married to a young widow of twenty-two, was standing outside the stable giving orders to a stable lad when the earl and Alex led their mounts outside.
“Good morning, my lord.”
Douglas only nodded at him. As far as he was concerned, McCallum had betrayed him, giving this cursed female Sinjun’s mare. As had that accursed bounder cousin of his, that damnable Tony who deserved to be shot, and his own butler, Hollis, as well.
“Her Ladyship has a nice seat and light hands,” McCallum said, unknowingly stoking the embers of Douglas’s fury as he stroked the horse’s soft nose. “Ye needn’t worry that Fanny will suffer from any bad handling.”
Douglas grunted. Who cared if she were cow-handed? He didn’t. Indeed, who had bothered to care about him? No one, not one single bloody person.
He gave Alex a leg up, then