Unbefitting a Lady

‘How was dinner?’ Bram tried again when she said nothing. That got a reaction. Her eyes turned stormy. So that was it.

‘They want to send me away.’ She shot him an accusatory look.

Bram sat down on a hay bale left between stalls for the morning. ‘Where to?’ The way she said it made it sound like she was being shipped off to a convent or the wilds of Scotland.

‘London! They want me to go have a Season.’ Phaedra waved a hand in outraged dismissal. He ducked in time to avoid being hit. ‘You’d like that. You’d have the stables all to yourself.’

It was on the tip of his tongue to say she was a lucky girl but to argue it would make him look complicit in her assumption that he wanted her out of the way. He’d love to be back in London with all the comforts it provided. But obviously Phaedra didn’t want to go and, contrary to her beliefs, it didn’t suit his plans to have her go. London was the one place he couldn’t be right now. ‘A Season is very generous.’ Bram hedged his comments. Inspiration struck. ‘Have you been before?’

Some of Phaedra’s anger faded when she realised he wasn’t going to argue. He could see her body relax beneath the overlarge shoulders of his coat. ‘No. I was supposed to but that was the year my brother, Edward, died. He was nineteen.’

He’d heard as much from Tom Anderson. ‘And the next year?’ The family would have been out of mourning by the following spring.

She shrugged, a gesture he was coming to recognise as a distractor. She shrugged when she wanted to appear nonchalant, a sure sign she was hiding something of greater value. It was a delightful gesture. He wondered if she knew she did it. ‘There were a lot of things going on with the family last spring. Giles had just come home and I didn’t feel like leaving, not for London anyway.’

Another set of mysteries to solve about the Montagues, Bram thought. It was odd indeed for a ducal family not to send their eligible daughter to London. ‘Did your sister go?’ Phaedra wasn’t the only one who would have been itching for a Season.

The reference brought a slight smile to her lips. ‘You don’t know Kate. The last thing she ever wanted was a London Season. She went once for her debut and she never went back.’

He was starting to understand. Perhaps her sister’s poor debut had coloured her own perceptions. ‘Just because your sister had a bad experience, doesn’t mean you will.’ That would hardly be the case. London’s bachelors would stumble over themselves to get to her; an attractive duke’s daughter was quite a catch indeed. Something raw and primal knotted in his stomach at the thought of London’s bucks competing over Phaedra as if she were a prize to be won. If there was any winning to be done, he’d be the one to do it. After all, he saw her first.

Phaedra shook her head impatiently. ‘I can’t possibly leave Warbourne. If I go to London, I’ll lose my chance to race him at Epsom.’ She paused and watched him, her blue-grey eyes holding his. ‘Aren’t you going to laugh or are you simply going to ignore the statement the way Giles does and pretend you didn’t hear it?’

They were back to that again. The lantern light cast an intimate glow over the stables, limning Phaedra’s delicate profile in a soft rosy glow. In the loose box, Warbourne had settled to sleep. Bram let the words hover between them before he ventured into the conversation.

‘Warbourne’s a good horse. There’s nothing to laugh about there. But why Epsom? There are other races. There are even other races at Epsom he can enter next year as a four-year-old. Why is the Derby so important to you?’ The personal nature of her quest for Epsom had not been addressed in their earlier conversation.

‘It’s the most prestigious. It secures a horse’s reputation for stud.’ She looked at him as if he were an idiot. Any horseman worth his salt would know that. Bram had met women who were patronesses of the sport but they were not duke’s daughters. They were women of a middling rank or less who had made a hobby-cum-livelihood out of it. They dabbled in breeding and racing. Phaedra didn’t need a livelihood. It begged the question, what did she need?

‘Why is it so important to you though?’ he pressed, knowing full well he was treading on unexamined territory. Bram could not recall the last time he’d had a real conversation with a woman, where he’d actually listened, where it actually mattered what she said next. Maybe he’d never had one. But he was having one tonight, and he was beyond curious about her answer. For whatever reason, her answer mattered. He wanted to know what drove this neck-or-nothing beauty. This was unexplored territory indeed. ‘Well, Phaedra, why?’ He repeated softly.

Whatever her ambitions, she’d not had practice in articulating them. He could see her mind debating if she should tell him, if she could trust him. She shot him a hard look, her defences up in the tilt of her chin, apparently unaware what a watershed event this was for him. Lord, that look of hers made him hard. Phaedra in full defiance made him want to haul her up against the wall.

‘I need something of my own. This isn’t just about the Derby. That’s only the beginning. I want to create a grand stud, a breeding and training facility that rivals any in England, north or south.’

Bram let out a low whistle. That was an enormous ambition and an exciting one; it was something he’d like to do if he could ever raise enough funds or settle down long enough. ‘Does your brother know?’

‘He knows. He doesn’t understand, not really. It’s different for a woman.’ Phaedra played idly with a piece of straw but Bram could hear the untold story behind that sentence. A man like Giles wouldn’t fully understand. Montague had his military career. He had been in charge of his life. Now he had this property to oversee and a dukedom coming his way eventually. As a man, Phaedra’s brother took his independence for granted, a natural assumption of his life. But Phaedra could make no such assumption.

‘I’m not a baby any more, not a child. I can do things,’ Phaedra said with no little frustration. ‘I just have to make Giles see that.’

She was the youngest. Bram had forgotten. When he looked at her, he didn’t see a child but a lovely young woman. Naturally, Giles would want to protect her; young and female, a man like him would see her as someone to shelter, especially after the other losses Tom Anderson had mentioned.

‘And Warbourne is the key to this dynastic vision of yours?’ Bram asked lightly.