The Duke and His Duchess - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,37
leg.”
She chattered on about the colonel perhaps being considered for a knighthood, though he’d rather be a general. Percival turned Comet into the alley that led to the mews, glad in his bones that Esther had already departed for Morelands. With luck, he could have Maggie situated somewhere not too far away by sundown, and then he and Cecily O’Donnell would come to whatever understandings were necessary to keep the girl safe.
***
“These are very big horses,” Devlin remarked. His tone was casual, but Esther well understood the grip the child kept on her hand as they walked past the team hitched to the traveling coach.
“They are very nice horses,” she said. “They particularly like little boys, because your brothers come visit them frequently.”
Small fingers seized around Esther’s hand painfully tight. “My brothers?”
“You have four, and they are capital fellows, just like you.” Except those four had never known want, never known cold, never been expected to part with their mother’s love with no possible explanation.
“That’s a pretty horse.” Devlin did not point—the boy had wonderful manners—but his gaze fixed on a chestnut stallion walking up the alley.
As the clip-clop of shod hooves grew closer, for an instant, the picture before Esther’s eyes did not make sense. She recognized Comet, she recognized Comet’s handsome rider, but she did not… A small child, a red-haired girl, sat before Percival in the saddle. The child was vaguely familiar, and Esther had seen Percival wrap his forearm around his own sons with the very same vigilant protectiveness.
The horse shuffled to a halt. “Esther. You have not yet departed for Morelands.”
His tone was so grave.
The hair on Esther’s nape and arms prickled, and beside her, the boy was unmoving. “And you, my lord, have not been to any committee meetings.”
A groom came out to take Comet, sparing them conversation while Percival swung down, handed off the reins, and hefted the child out of the saddle. She stood beside Percival, her hand in his, her gaze watchful in the way of children who grew up early.
“You’re the Viking lady,” she said to Esther.
“She’s the chocolate lady,” Devlin replied. “She’s my papa’s wife.”
A thousand questions rose in Esther’s mind while the chill breeze pushed dead leaves across the cobbles. One of the coach horses stomped its great hoof and tossed its head as if impatient with the two adults staring at each other in silence.
“Percival, who in the world…?”
“Madam, we will speak privately.”
Of course they would, because if Percival thought to move his mistress and her offspring into Esther’s house, Esther would need a great deal of privacy to disabuse her husband of such a notion.
“Devlin, ask the grooms to show you and this girl the stable cat. There’s a kitty with only one eye, and she doesn’t yet have a name.”
A commotion by the back gate had all adult eyes slewing around as Bart and Gayle came barreling into the alley. “We’re ready to board the ship!” Bart bellowed.
Gayle came to a halt beside his older brother. “Who are they?” His green eyes narrowed on the girl. “Who’s she?”
Bart smacked his mittened hands together. “They can be the colonials! We can play Damned Upstart Colonials, and we’ll have French and colonials both. We can slaughter them and take scalps and everything while Mama and Papa kiss each other good-bye!”
Gayle glanced at his parents as if he knew exactly how long two parents could kiss each other, and grinned. “Come on.” He took Devlin by the hand. “There’s a tiger in the stables, and we can hunt her down for our supper.”
The red-haired girl fell in with the boys. “I want to be a lion who hunts down the hunters.”
“You have to be the damned upstart colonial,” Bart said. “I’m General Bart, and that’s Colonel Gayle.”
“Then I shall be a fierce, damned upstart colonial wolf named Maggie.”
***
What did a man say to the wife who’d come upon him riding along the alley with an unexplained by-blow up before him?
While Percival pondered that mystery, one of the children gave a shriek as a cat skittered around a corner of the stables, and small feet pelted off in a herd.
Percival stared at his wife, who stared back at him in visible consternation. He did not know what to say to her, did not know why she’d been in the company of that small dark-haired…
Images of the same child, warily clutching another woman’s skirts, barreled into Percival’s mind. He felt the impact physically, a spinning sensation that whirled through his