She didn’t comment. The pieces were already falling into place.
And so she couldn’t help but ask… “Why didn’t you send me away? The night I arrived?”
“Because it was dark,” he said, his mouth twisting. “And I am not so beastly that I’d turn a woman out to the wolves.”
“Ah, so you admit it.” Rosamund was relaxed in her saddle, hands loosely holding Daffodil’s reins. “You are a gentleman at heart.”
“I admit nothing.” But then he drew his mount to a halt. “This brook marks the edge of Cavendish property.”
Rosamund came to a halt beside him.
Below them, a wide swath of water tumbled over rocks, almost a river in its breadth, sparkling as sunlight scattered across the ripples.
“It’s higher than usual,” the duke said, and then pointed. “That rise marks the northernmost point. We’ll go south from here.”
They followed the water’s curve, hooves splashing in shallower places. A heron lifted itself from the shallows at their approach, wings vast and slow. The duke nodded toward the current.
“It was here I found Angus. Half drowned, skin and bone. He could barely lift his head.” He spoke as though matter of fact.
Rosamund glanced toward the massive hound trotting happily beside them now, tongue lolling. “I’m so glad you found him.”
“It was during the worst of it for me,” Julian continued, voice quieter, roughened. “I was… not myself. But Angus needed someone. And in some ridiculous way, I–” he cut himself off.
Her chest tightened. “You needed him as well.”
Julian only shrugged, but she caught the shadow of something gentler in his gaze.
“And Sable?” she asked after a moment. “She seems too proud a creature to have been rescued.”
He laughed then. A sound that sent unexpected warmth down her spine.
“Sable’s ruled me for over a decade, since she was a kitten. Her mother abandoned her, one of the stable cats, and I smuggled her into the house. Without my parents knowing, of course.”
Rosamund smiled, staring down at her hands.
“What?” he asked.
“That sounds like something I would do.”
He just stared at her for a moment, and then nodded. “It does, actually.”
She held his eyes for as long as she dared. Because eventually, she needed to breathe…
In between the stops that followed, he surprised her with more little glimpses. With parts of him she hadn’t expected to see.
And by the time Rosamund realized she was no longer riding after him but beside him, it felt perfectly natural.
A hare burst from the brush without warning, a blur of brown and white.
Daffodil shied, her weight shifting beneath Rosamund before she could correct for it.
The duke reacted at once.
His hand closed over the reins near Daffodil’s neck—covering Rosamund’s hand as he steadied her.
“You’re all right,” he said quietly.
She was. Entirely. Daffodil settled at once, snorting, ears flicking forward again.