his hair. “I wanted what was best for my daughter.”
“Then why…?”
Deene took a step back, measuring the man before him. The man who’d fought Deene’s every effort to be an uncle to Georgie.
“My lord?” A woman’s voice. Deene turned his head and vaguely recognized a willowy blond with serious gray eyes.
“Amy, this is none of your affair.” Dolan’s tone had a gruff note in it, a warning note, and something else— something beseeching.
“Hush, sir. Inasmuch as I love Georgina too, this is my affair.”
Of all people, the Earl of Westhaven shouldered through the circle of curious onlookers forming around Dolan and Deene. “Might I suggest we take this discussion back to the privacy of the stable block?”
Others appeared at Westhaven’s elbow: Lord Valentine Windham, the Baron Sindal, the Earl of Hazelton, and bringing up the rear, no less personage than the Duke of Moreland himself.
Dolan sighed, smiling faintly. “Your wife has an honor guard, Deene. It seems we’re to repair to the stables. Amy, you will walk with us.”
Jonathan Dolan was not much given to prayer, but walking along through the thick spring grass on a pretty day, he prayed the gamble he was about to take might pay off.
For Georgina. For him it might be a flat loss, except it would expiate some of the guilt left by Marie’s death.
“Dolan, we haven’t much time.” Deene spoke softly as his relations-by-marriage hovered near, making it plain they weren’t about to let his lordship deal with Greymoor without a show of support.
“I intended to lose, Deene, it’s as simple as that. Georgina would go into your keeping, I’d be labeled an arrogant Irish fool, and you would allow me ample visitation with my daughter. Amy would keep an eye on the girl, you’d dote upon Georgina and spoil her rotten, and she’d have her pick of the lordlings when the time came.”
Deene scowled at him. “Does this have anything to do with a promise you might have made to my sister?”
Dolan blew out a breath, feeling a reluctant pang of admiration. “Oh, of course. I was to keep an eye on you, to help you deal with your idiot father, and so on.”
“Then why the hell…?” Deene stopped and lowered his voice when one of the Moreland lordlings glanced over. “Why the hell did you give me such a hard time when I wanted to see Georgie?”
“Because you are a lord of the realm,” Dolan said. “Everything comes easily to you, on every hand. You value only what’s denied you, and so I denied you your niece, and you came to value her greatly.”
“You are an idiot, Dolan. A bona fide, blazing, certifiable…” Deene fell silent again.
“I am an idiot, but until I started limiting your access to Georgina, you were intent on haring off in all directions. Cairo one moment, Baltimore the next, which is exactly what your sister did not want to see happen.”
Deene glanced over again, his expression considering. “I was supposed to keep an eye on you as well, but I soon gave up on that. If looking after Georgie was the only way I could keep a promise to my sister, then look after Georgie was what I would do.”
It must be galling to the younger man, to know his sister had set them both up like this. A few more years of marriage, and his perspective would shift, if Dolan’s estimation of the marchioness was on the mark.
“I suppose all’s well, then,” Dolan pointed out. “You won the race. You get the prize.”
“I did not win the race,” Deene said, his voice low but forceful. “My jockey will be disqualified, and if you didn’t try to drug my horse, then I’d like to know who did?”
Dolan took Miss Amy Ingraham’s arm and caught Moreland’s eldest noting the gesture.
“Amy has something to tell you, something she managed to tell me only after we’d saddled up and wrestled Goblin up to the starting line. Tell him, Miss Ingraham, and make it quick, because Greymoor will not spare us a moment’s more privacy than he has to.”
“I know who drugged your horse, my lord. At first I thought it was you, so closely does the man resemble you. Then I realized he’s older than you, a little less broad through the shoulders, and so forth.”
“The man’s name?”
Dolan gave Deene credit for asking civilly. Amy seemed to shrink against Dolan’s side, and her pace slowed as they approached the Denning stable block.
“I am familiar with
“Amy, would you excuse us for just a moment?” Dolan tried for a conciliatory tone but wasn’t quite successful.
“Jonathan, you promised.”
“I know, my dear, and I shall keep my promises. All of my promises.”
She looked like she wanted to say more, but went up on her toes and kissed Dolan’s cheek right there before the Moreland horde, with Deene looking on, Kesmore glowering at all and sundry from the stables, and the Earl of Greymoor standing around smacking his boots with his riding crop.
That one small kiss on the cheek gave Dolan the resolve he needed to explain to Marie’s brother what should have been made plain to the man long since.
That Dolan had been in awe of his pretty, oh-so-proper wife, and would have paid five times the fortune he had to make her his own.
That he’d fallen in love with Marie despite every intention to the contrary.
That he’d waited a year after their vows for her permission to consummate the union, and that, when it was obvious more children might be the end of her, he’d still been nonetheless helpless to deny his wife anything, including the babies she’d begged for.
A decision he’d regretted every single day of his widowerhood.
“Be patient, my lord, please. They’ve needed to talk for years, and a few more minutes won’t make a difference.”
Eve wasn’t about to beg—Greymoor was in charge of a simple horse race, for pity’s sake. He wasn’t Lord High Admiral of anything; nor was his own family history so free of scandal that Eve feared the man would stir up trouble for the pure mischief of it. He looked like he might be formulating some polite rejoinder when Eve heard a familiar voice.
“Eve Windham… Denning.”
Her Grace approached at a pace a bit less decorous than the duchess usually displayed in public, while Greymoor bowed slightly and called out to one of his subordinates.
“Mama.”
The duchess appeared composed, until Eve caught Louisa’s eye. Louisa looked fretful, which suggested she might be scanning the surrounds for His Grace, which suggested in turn that Mama was not as calm as she appeared.
“You… You…” Her Grace stared at Eve, and while Eve braced herself for a lecture that would trump any scene the menfolk might be brewing, her mother’s eyes filled with tears. “I am so
It was the last thing Eve expected her mother to say, much less in a public location. “Proud of me?”
“Oh, you rode like a Windham. I wish Bartholomew had been alive to see his baby sister out there, soaring over one fence after another. I wish St. Just had been here to brag on you properly. I wish… oh, I wish…”
She reached for Eve and enfolded her daughter in a fierce, tight hug. “You showed them, Eve. You showed us all. Deene will be wroth with you for such a stunt, but he’ll get over it. A man in love forgives a great deal. Just ask your father.”
Her Grace whispered this between hugs, tighter hugs, and teary smiles.
“Mama, Deene is the one who said I ought to ride. I would never have had the…”
The
