Page 87 of A Baby for the Duke

They did not turn the carriage around, but he was still holding back a smile at the turnpike.

It turned out he was extremely good at it.

That was what she had not accounted for and could not stop watching. He knew horses. He knew them the way he knew wood, from the outside in.

Within twenty minutes of arriving, he had walked the length of the rail with her father and her brothers and said perhaps nine words, and all nine of them had turned out to be right.

“The bay’s short behind.”

“He’s my favorite,” Evan said.

“He’s short behind, and the ground is soft. He will not get up that hill. Look at him slipping down.”

The bay did not get up the hill.

“How do you know all this?” Augusta demanded at his elbow, with a pastry in each hand.

“I have looked at a great many horses.”

“Where? You never go anywhere. Nora says you never go anywhere. Mama says it is because you are shy, and Evan says it is because you are rude.”

“Augusta Belmont!” Lady Huntington gasped in horror from four feet away.

“It is because I am rude,” Colin confirmed.

Augusta considered this for a moment. “Then how do you know about horses?”

“Because for fifteen years, I have gone to sales at six in the morning where there is nobody around but grooms, bought what I wanted, and returned home before anybody was up,” Colin explained. “You may go to any place in England you like, if you are prepared to go at an hour when it is empty.”

Augusta shook her head. “That sounds extremely dull.”

“It is.”

“Then why do you do it?”

Colin looked down at her for a moment.

“Because it was either that or not going,” he said. “And I wanted the horses.”

By the third race, Evan had stopped arguing and started writing down what Colin said, which was, Leonora thought, the most flattering thing her brother had ever done for a human being. By the fourth, Alexander had lost four pounds and was delighted about it. By the fifth, their father had cornered Colin against a rail and was explaining wool duties to him, and Colin was arguing back.

Lady Huntington had turned to make her way toward them.

“Leave them,” Marina said, catching her sleeve.

“He’ll go on for an hour.”

“Then let him go on for an hour, Mama. Look at Papa’s face.”

Their father was flushed, enormously happy, and being disagreed with by a duke in a public field, and every man within twenty feet had noticed.

Their mother stopped.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, the clever thing.”

“He isn’t doing it on purpose.”

“Then he is even cleverer than I thought,” she said, and went off to tell four people about it.