Jason laughed at that quick, clean shot, and smiled, thinking of Jessie Wyndham.
Hallie felt a glow in her own belly at that laugh and smile. “I’m the only one in the family who prefers four- legged transportation to rudders and wood. I sailed all my life until I came to live year-round in England. Let me tell you, I’ve run my uncle’s stables for two years now. It’s time I went out on my own, that’s what my uncle finally told me since I was tired of waltzing with chinless young men and lecherous old men who wanted to stare down my gown.”
Jason said, “Ha. Did you get your uncle drunk?”
“There was no need to. I had his sons tell him it was time. I’m not stupid. I got them on my side two years ago.”
“I should have known. Given that they’re young and impressionable, they were easy targets.” Jason turned to his brother. “This is the typical behavior of an American female, James. Yes, yes, I know you’re English, but you were raised in America for much of the time, and that’s what counts.”
“That’s not true. I spent my first five years traveling the world with my father.”
Jason ignored her. “James, American girls plot and scheme and simper and wheedle, all with equal facility. They are a scary lot, particularly those with a modicum of intellect and a pocket full of groats. In Miss Carrick’s case, evidently her father has allowed her to dip deep into his pockets. Did I forget to mention spoiled? Another American female trait. Hopefully she isn’t instructing our English girls on how to-” He stalled, Judith’s face so clear in his brain that he wanted to pound his head with a rock to get her out.
“Trust me, Mr. Sherbrooke, your English girls don’t need any assistance from me. The way they can freeze you in place with only a raised eyebrow-” She shuddered. “They are very much in control, your English girls.”
James, who had seen the sudden pallor on his twin’s face, wanted to tell him not to think about the girl who’d betrayed him, who’d betrayed all of them, but he knew he couldn’t. He said, all bland and easy, “So all the gentlemen in London bored you, Miss Carrick?”
“Yes, they bored me senseless, my lord. I told my uncle that I had no intention of marrying, no intention of returning to America or moving in permanently into Carrick Grange, and that announcement helped spur him toward agreement to my buying my own property. Naturally he hied himself off to his study to write my father, but my father won’t interfere.”
“I can see why your uncle would resign himself,” Jason said. “Since you haven’t managed to find yourself a husband and are well on your way to your dotage, he doesn’t want you hanging about Ravensworth. How many seasons have you had? Five? Six? Of course if your father is providing a big dowry, it wouldn’t matter if you were sixty, without a tooth in your mouth. Some fool would be on his knees begging you to make him the happiest of men.”
“Not so far into my dotage as you are, Mr. Sherbrooke. May I ask why you bothered to come home? I heard you were content to live with James and Jessie Wyndham and raise their children.”
“Didn’t you say I only thought about sleeping with women and racing?”
“That too.” She frowned as she patted her horse’s neck, keeping him calm. Charlemagne loved to fight or gallop with the wind, he didn’t care which. She knew he was keeping a hopeful eye on the two Sherbrooke horses, hoping she’d let him go kick them into the fodder bin. She let him rear up on his back legs, fling his great head from side to side, and give a very fine show.
“See to your horse, Miss Carrick,” Jason said, “else the gentlemen will have to rescue you.”
“As if I would ever expect one of your ilk to rescue me.” She sneered.
James felt as if he’d been pulled back in time. He burst out laughing, couldn’t help himself. It was a Corrie sneer, one she’d perfected more than seven years before and used with flawless timing to make him so angry his eyes crossed. He wondered if his twin would fall for it, turn purple in the face, yank her off her horse, and wallop her butt.
But Jason merely sneered back at her, a sneer more potent than hers. He’d learned that in America? “Listen to me, Miss Carrick,” Jason said slowly, as if speaking to the village idiot, “I plan to buy Lyon ’s Gate. It will be mine. Go away.”
“We will see about that, won’t we?” Hallie Carrick wheeled Charlemagne about, let him rear up and paw the air one more time. She smiled as he bugled a clear challenge to Bad Boy and Dodger, whose eyes were rolling, on the brink of pulling free of their tethers.
Jason spoke in a low quiet voice and both horses calmed.
“Wait,” James said. “Where are you staying? Surely Ravensworth is too far a ride for you today.”
“I am staying at the vicarage in Glenclose-on-Rowan with Reverend Tysen Sherbrooke and his wife.” She struck a pose. “Why, I do believe they’re your aunt and uncle.”
Jason stood there, shaking his head back and forth. “No, that isn’t possible. Why ever would they have you there? Rory wrote me from Oxford, not above a month ago, so even he’s not at home any longer, and there are no spinsters your age-”
“Leo Sherbrooke is marrying a dear friend of mine, Miss Melissa Breckenridge. I’m supporting her to the altar on Saturday, and that’s why I’m visiting the vicarage.”
“You make it sound like you’re going to have to carry her.”
“No, Melissa is actually a blithering idiot when it comes to Leo. She’ll probably be running, skirts held high, to get to him as fast as she can. I will precede her, strewing rose petals from Mary Rose’s garden, all the while praying that Melissa doesn’t gallop over me to get to her groom. Whilst I’m strewing, I will marvel at the stupidity of girls giving over all their freedom, not to mention their money, to a man.”
“Their father’s money,” Jason said.
“Jessie Wyndham would surely shoot you if you said that in her hearing. As would my stepmother.”
“That’s true,” Jason said, surprising her. “There are exceptions, albeit very few.”
James’s eyebrow arched. “I take it you don’t care for Leo?”
Jason said, “I think Miss Carrick would like to serve all men up in the same soup, chopped into small pieces.”
She gave him a considering sneer. “Very small pieces. However, for a man, Leo isn’t all that bad. I wouldn’t care to deal with him every day of my life, but I’m not the one who has to marry him. If he follows in his father’s footsteps, at least he won’t run to fat or lose his teeth, and that’s saying something. Perhaps he laughs as much as his father as well. All in all, I suppose I must admit that if one has to be shackled in leg irons, Leo just might be one of the best of the lot.”
James said, “Leo is more stubborn than his hound Greybeard. Does your friend know that?”
“I don’t know, but I imagine it’s too late to tell her now. She wouldn’t believe me. Or if she did, she would doubtless believe it charming.”
“Greybeard also sleeps with Leo.”
“Oh dear, Greybeard is rather large.”
“Indeed,” said James. “I see conflict on the near horizon.”
“Surely Leo would rather sleep with his new wife than his old dog.”
“For a while, at least,” Jason said, cynicism dripping from his mouth.
James said, “So Leo is all right, as is my uncle Tysen. I assume you also admire your father and uncle?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I must.”
James said, “Well, then, it seems to me you can hardly say we’re a bad species.”
“You have made a good point, my lord, but the fact is, you could be a rotter and I just don’t know it yet. But experience with your twin here suggests that a girl-spinster-better tread warily around him or suffer the consequences.”
“What consequences?” Jason asked.
He’d stumped her, both James and Jason saw that he’d left her with not a word to fire back. She opened her mouth, closed it. She looked at Jason like she wanted to ride her beast right over him. She finally managed to get out, “To my mind, calling men a species grants them too much importance.”
“That was paltry, Miss Carrick,” Jason said, a potent sneer on his mouth. “Let me ask you, what man hurt you so badly that you’ve painted every one of us with your manure-covered brush?”
She froze in the saddle. Jason watched her force herself to ease, force herself back in control. It was amazing how quickly she got hold of herself again. What he’d said had hit close to home. So, there had been a man who’d hurt her. Would she screech at him like a fishwife? What came out of her mouth was, “I found out about this
