Page 44 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

Alice set down her teacup. The morning stretched before her, empty and still, and she refused to fill it by sitting in the breakfast room and dwelling on last night.

“I have an idea,” she announced. “The weather is fine. Shall we ride? All of us. Around the estate.”

Freddie looked up from his plate. “Ride? Now? Today? Can we take the bay pony? Can we go past the north meadow? There’s a stream there where I saw a heron last week, and Charlie didn’t believe me, but I swear on my honor that it was a heron, not a stork. I know the difference because Uncle Jonathan taught me.”

“I taught you no such thing,” Jonathan said. “I taught you the difference between a heron and a crane. You confused the lesson and have been confidently misidentifying waterbirds ever since.”

Alice looked at Charlie. He had not spoken. His knife rested against the edge of his plate, and he was studying the marmalade jar as though its label contained an argument he needed to consider.

“Charlie?” Alice kept her voice gentle. “Would you like to come?”

He did not answer immediately.

Alice recognized the hesitation. She had performed that calculation a thousand times herself: whether joining in would be worth the risk of being overlooked once the excitement began.

“Charlie is an excellent rider,” Jonathan offered. He leaned back in his chair and addressed the ceiling as though delivering a verdict to the room at large. “Better seat than his brother, in fact, though Freddie has more enthusiasm, which he mistakes for skill. Charlie has the hands. Quiet hands are what make a horseman, not volume.”

Charlie’s chin lifted a fraction of an inch. “I am adequate.”

“You are better than adequate,” Jonathan said. “And the bay pony has been stabled for three days, which means she will be fresh and opinionated, and she prefers a rider who listens to her rather than shouts at her. You are that rider, Charlie.”

Charlie looked at Alice, a small smile tugging at his lips. “I will come.”

The stables smelled of hay and warm leather. Mr. Briggs had four horses saddled within twenty minutes: Alice’s chestnut mare, Jonathan’s grey gelding, the bay pony for Charlie, and a stocky dun for Freddie, who had scrambled into the saddle before the girth was fully tightened.

“Heels down, Frederick,” Briggs called. “And stop kicking. She knows where she’s going.”

They rode out through the south gate. The morning had opened into full spring, the hedgerows thick, the air carrying the sweet smell of cut grass from the home farm. The countryside beyond Bearmoor’s formal grounds was rolling and open, dotted with sheep and old oaks.

Alice settled into the mare’s steady rhythm and felt the tension in her shoulders begin to loosen. Though Frederick’s lips did not cease moving for longer than a minute, Charlie rode beside her in companionable quiet. His hands were steady on the reins, his posture upright without stiffness.

Jonathan had been right. The boy had an instinct for the horse beneath him, adjusting his weight through turns and rises without fuss.

“You ride well,” Alice complimented.

Charlie glanced at her. “Mr. Briggs has been teaching me since I was four. He says I have a feel for it.”

“You do.”

A pause. The bay pony flicked an ear back, listening to the conversation above her.

“Papa used to ride with us,” Charlie said. “When we were smaller. He would take us on the lead rein around the south paddock. He stopped when the estate got busier.”

Alice said nothing. There was nothing to say.

They followed the bridle path north. The land rose gently, and the hedgerows gave way to open moorland where bracken curled in bronze spirals and the wind carried the distant sound of running water.

Freddie had slowed, his earlier enthusiasm tempered by the effort of riding uphill, and his dun plodded alongside Jonathan’s grey gelding in amiable resignation.

The stream appeared beyond a stand of birch trees, narrow, clear, running over smooth stones into a pool that caught the light and held it in shifting patterns on the sandy bed. Alice reined in and dismounted, looping the mare’s reins over a low branch.

“Shall we rest?”

Freddie slid down from his saddle with the boneless energy of a child for whom dismounting was merely a different form of motion. Charlie climbed down more carefully, patting the bay pony’s neck before leading her to the water’s edge.

“I’m going to find the heron,” Freddie announced, and set off along the bank before anyone could object.

“Stay where I can see you,” Alice called.