Jafeer, she decided, was having a tantrum. Just as she had with Charlie, Mia waited until she caught Jafeer's eyes. Instantly, the wild loneliness drained out of his expression, and he brought his front legs to the floor with a thud.
The groom who had been hauling on his reins, trying in vain to control the horse, let out a string of thankful curses, turned, saw her, and started.
"Your-Your Grace!"
"Jafeer," Mia said, "just what do you think you're doing?"
The horse blew air and shook his head. He wasn't going to throw in the towel immediately. It was all her fault, apparently.
Mia stepped forward. "Come here," she said, reaching toward him.
He held out for another moment, letting her know that she shouldn't have abandoned him in a strange place where men shouted at him. With a huge sigh he lowered his head to her.
Mia reached her arms around his neck. "You mustn't behave this way," she told him. "It's not as if I can sleep in the stables with you."
As if he could understand her, Jafeer gave a little snort and lipped at her hair. Susan had left it down in a style that she swore was all the mode, but Mia thought was merely untidy.
She drew away. "There's entirely too much light here," she said, turning to address the stable hand. "Oh, Mulberry, there you are! Wouldn't it be better to extinguish the lamps? Look at poor Lancelot. He wants to go to sleep."
In fact, Lancelot was asleep. It would take more than a terrified, homesick horse in the stall next door to keep him awake.
"If I'd known that stallion needed a duchess to make him happy," Mulberry said, "I never would have recommended we buy him."
"It's probably just a woman's touch," Mia said, even though she didn't like that idea. Jafeer was hers.
Mulberry shook his head. "No, Your Grace. Since you were here this morning, we tried all the scullery maids, the downstairs maid, and one of the dairymaids. I tried to lure the cook, but she wouldn't come."
Mia ran Jafeer's velvety ear through her fingers. "I can't remain in the stables with you all night, silly boy. Mulberry, if you would be kind enough to extinguish all but one of the lamps, perhaps I can quiet him enough to sleep." She turned her face and dropped a kiss on the horse's whiskery nose. "You're sleepy, aren't you?" The Arabian's eyes drooped. It couldn't be easy having a daylong tantrum.
Charlie used to drop to sleep like a stone after his fits, back when he was two years old.
One by one the lamps were turned down and the stable descended into near-darkness. The men all left, with Mulberry the last to go.
Finally it was just the two of them. Well, the two of them and two dozen other animals, slowly breathing in a warm darkness that smelled like horses and clean straw.
Mia unlatched the door to Jafeer's stall and entered. The moment she was next to his head, he folded up his long legs and collapsed like a house of cards.
"You're going to sleep," Mia said, in a calm low voice. She sat on the floor next to him and leaned against his shoulder. He curved his neck around her, and she stroked his cheek. "Pretty soon I shall have to leave, and you will sleep through the night. I'll visit you in the morning, and perhaps again in the evening."
Jafeer's head slid off her shoulder to the straw as he fell asleep.
Mia just sat, hand on his neck, thinking about her life. She had sacrificed everything for Charlie-her self-esteem, her self-respect, her chance at a happy marriage. But it had been the right thing to do; even thinking about his shining eyes made her smile. He wanted to learn to ride, so she'd have to allow it.
Ever since the moment when she'd realized that her newborn nephew might die due to his mother's extravagant use of opium during birth, and the doctor had chosen not to rouse the baby because of his deformity, she had taken responsibility. It began when she upended a pitcher of water on the baby's head and woke him up from an opium-induced daze.
As Mia saw it, there were times when only one possible road lay ahead, and so she had snatched Charlie from the arms of the nurse. And eight years later, she had faced a similar conundrum, and married Vander.
She leaned back against Jafeer, pushing the subject of Vander out of her mind.
Perhaps the count jilted Flora because he was an inveterate inebriate, along Chuffy's lines? But there seemed to be so much pain behind Chuffy's drinking . . . she couldn't manage it if Frederic was in that sort of emotional state.
Novels weren't like real life.
The darkest problems were like syphilis and lice. She couldn't touch them, not in the pages of her books.
Chapter Eighteen
DRAFT: WEDDING
Having grown up in an orphanage, Flora's knowledge of the marital state is near to non-existent. The image of a gentleman on his knees knocked together in her head with a vision of herself in a silk gown, being served by a liveried butler footmen in livery.
Flora had long dreamed of a man in an exquisite coat who would sit beside her, vowing eternal adoration.
She had never imagined this . . . this agony.
With trembling fingers she unwrapped the screw of paper the priest handed her, his face riddled with compassion.
("Riddled" sounds as if he has pox, which no man of the cloth should have.)
With trembling fingers, she opened the sheet of paper. The words danced before her eyes. Black dots swam before her eyes.
Frederic had changed his mind.
Vander stared at the dining room door as it closed behind his wife, and felt a leaden sense of guilt settle in his gut. For a moment, before Mia smiled insincerely and bade them goodnight, he had seen misery in her eyes.
Misery.
He had done that.
"You're a horse's ass," Chuffy confirmed. He had taken up his fork again and spoke through a mouthful of beef. "I know she blackmailed you and all the rest of it, but your bed is made, lad. What are you going to do, spend your whole marriage sniping at her? She doesn't even fight back. It's hardly a fair fight."
Mia hadn't fought back. A wooden look had slid over her face that he didn't like. Not at all.
"I'll have to give you some lessons in how to deal with women," Chuffy said, waving his fork. "God knows, your mama was unusual, which is probably why you don't understand 'em."
"Unusual?" Vander said, bristling. "I don't think she was unusual."
Chuffy frowned at him. "What's your meaning?"
"She was unfaithful to your brother," Vander said. "She took a lover and cuckolded him in plain sight of all society. There's nothing unusual about that."
Chuffy put his fork down. "That's taking the ugliest possible look at it."
"What other way is there?" Bitterness swelled in Vander's heart. "I watched her, Chuffy. I saw my mother swan around ballrooms on that man's arm. He would stay for months, sitting in my father's place at the table. Even when I was still in the nursery, I knew it was wrong."
Whenever his father was to be released from the private asylum, Lord Carrington would vanish back to his own estate. Vander had never spoken to his father about what happened during his confinements.
If the duke had known that every time he fell too deeply into melancholia to bathe himself, after he was banished to the asylum again, Lord Carrington would stride back into the house, a shock of golden-gilt hair waving above his forehead . . . It would have been terrible.
So Vander had unwillingly become a party to deceiving his father. A party to adultery.
"It was complicated," Chuffy said, interrupting his thoughts. "I suppose we should have discussed this earlier."
"There's nothing to discuss," Vander stated.
Chuffy rose and went to the sideboard, retrieved the bottle of wine, and poured it into the glass he'd carried with him.
"You're supposed to summon Gaunt to pour," Vander snapped.
"Are you really going to try to turn your house into a ducal establishment?" Chuffy asked. "Bit late for that."
That was true. Vander liked to work in the stables all day. He didn't care to change for the evening meal, though he'd done it today. He had married a woman who dressed like an elderly housekeeper. His uncle was drunk most of the time.
"I suppose not."
"I loved my brother," Chuffy said, leaning back against the sideboard and sipping his wine. "When we were young, he was like a god to me: always telling stories, getting into trouble and talking his way out, dragging me along even though I was much younger."
Vander nodded. "Thank you for that." He stood. "If you'll excuse me-"