Page 76 of A Remarkable Rogue

Sydney glanced up at Miss Jenner. It was her turn to be caught in distraction. “Oh, yes. Thank you so much for letting me borrow it. I’ll make certain the dressmaker creates another one for you, along with anything else you need. I think it’s time you had a new wardrobe.”

The governess’s cheeks flushed with an expression that crossed embarrassment with horror. “It’s not necessary, I assure you.”

“I insist. It’s the least I can do for your generosity.” Sydney did not mean the dress nor the hospitality during their stay. She meant being granted access to Robbie.

Sydney had never told Miss Jenner the truth about Robbie’s birth or how he was related to her. But the governess was sharp, and Sydney was certain she’d figured it out. Children born to women who could not keep them were certainly not uncommon among thetonand were usually sent off to distant relatives to be raised as their own.

The unwanted children of theton’s men fared much worse. They were usually abandoned to foundling hospitals by mothers who had no choice but to surrender their babies. Rarely did the mothers keep them as Nate’s had done. Even rarer still were the children who managed to raise themselves above their illegitimate station. But Nate had done just that. It was one more complicated facet to his life that elicited both wonder and admiration from her.

“Very well,” Miss Jenner conceded. “If it pleases you, ma’am.”

“It does.” She smiled through the tightening knot of emotion in her throat. “It pleases me a great deal.”

Miss Jenner followed Sydney’s gaze to the boy. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Robbie glanced back and forth between the two women. The private conversation floated above his head, so he simply reached for another strawberry and popped it into his mouth.

Twenty-Two

“Stay up out of the saddle as you take the jump, but don’t lean across his neck,” Nate instructed Robbie as the boy trotted his gray Shetland pony around the rear lawn in a wide circle toward a small jump not more than a foot off the ground. His young face was set with grim determination. “Keep your shoulders straight.”

The boy nodded, but his full attention was on the trotting pony beneath him who, thankfully, seemed about as excitable as a sleeping vicar. Despite his name, the animal was a mild-mannered, frighteningly rotund, and very lazy beast who wouldn’t have broken into a run if someone shot off a pistol at its rear.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Nate encouraged, “ride him a few yards out, then circle back toward the jump, point him at it, and go.”

Robbie nodded. His hands gripped the reins so tightly for this momentous event that his knuckles showed white. Nate knew without having to glance her way that so did the knuckles of the baroness as she sat on a blanket beneath the chestnut tree at the edge of the lawn and breathlessly watched her son’s first jump.

The woman—and her sleep-induced, contradictory confession that she loved him—should have terrified him. Yet oddly enough, she didn’t.

She certainly confused the hell out of him, though. Half the time, he didn’t know whether he wanted to throttle her or laugh with her, but always he wanted her. She had him thinking in circles, and holding her in his arms last night while she slept was almost as pleasurable as being inside her. Most confusing of all, she hadn’t run away when he told her about Sarah, the baby, and the flogging. Any other woman would have done exactly that.

She couldn’t love him, yet she did, even if she couldn’t admit it in the light of day.

Just as she obviously loved her son yet couldn’t admit that either.

As the pony trotted slowly toward the little jump, Nate found himself not knowing where to look—at the boy to see his reaction or at the woman who loved him to see hers.

The pony lumbered across the lawn, reached the low jump, and trotted over it, barely breaking stride.

Nate blinked. Did the shaggy beast even realize the pole was there at all? But Robbie shouted with excitement, bouncing so hard on his saddle that Nate began to hurry forward to steady him, only to stop dead when Robbie jumped to the ground and ran across the lawn to Sydney, threw his arms around her neck, and hugged her.

Nate’s heart thudded as he held his breath and waited for her reaction.

Sydney hesitated as if she didn’t know quite what to do. Then she raised her arms and hugged him back. She pulled him tightly to her and buried her face against his little shoulder. When she raised her head, her eyes found Nate across the lawn and held his gaze, even as she whispered something into the boy’s ear.

Robbie nodded. Then he released her to run back. He slid to a stop in front of Nate and sharply saluted.

Nate returned the salute. “Very good, sir,” he told the boy, aware of Sydney’s gaze still on the pair of them. Her close attention warmed him.

“Thank you, Captain!” He bounced up and down. “It was deuces!”

“So it was.” He gave the boy a grin of approval.

“What next?”

“You do it again. Practice makes perfect.” He signaled to Mr. Beasley, and the man set about raising the pole. “This time, higher.”

“Higher?” the boy squeaked out.