Not Quite a Lady by Loretta Chase Page B

stable door.
    Her back to him, Lady Charlotte stood two stalls away, murmuring to the horse whose shoulder she was gently washing.
    Relief surged through him, as powerful as a blow. His knees buckled. He set his hand on the doorframe and pretended to lean there casually. Not that anyone heeded him.
    The two men inside were too busy arguing, chests out, chins jutting. Their attire told Darius their positions. The older and larger fellow with the red hair and vinous red nose must be the coachman. The smaller, wiry man must be the head groom.
    “Listen to him and that mare’ll be the worse for it, your ladyship,” said the coachman. “With a wound like that, the natural spirits is oozing out and taking down the heat. You wash it, and you takes the heat down more again. It’s the black ointment what you want, to fire her spirits.”
    “An ointment on a scrape like that?” the groom said scornfully. “She’ll take a fever for sure. It wants a poultice first, lest you want to kill the creetur.”
    “I worked for his lordship boy and man, and never kilt no horse—”
    “They died all by themselves, did they?”
    “Your ladyship—”
    “Her ladyship knows a poultice is the proper—”
    “You’ll bring that mare down and no coming back!” the coachman roared. He took a step closer to the groom and swelled his chest. His face grew redder still. It was a threatening display, but the groom wouldn’t back down.
    “Why not bleed her as well, then?” the coachman demanded. “Why not draw off what little spirits is left in her? This is what comes of some people not knowing their place. I been looking after the horses here, boy and man, since you was a girl, your ladyship. This mare belongs to the coach house to be tended to.”
    “If her ladyship liked your way of tending cattle, she wouldn’t’ve brought her to me, now, would she?”
    “Enough!” Lady Charlotte snapped. “What is wrong with you? Belinda had a fright, and she is hurt—and now you are shouting and upsetting her. You ought to know better, the pair of you.”
    Darius straightened away from the doorframe. “Ahem,” he said.
    The two masculine heads swiveled toward him. Lady Charlotte turned sharply round and stood, sopping rag in hand, staring at Darius as though he’d sprung up direct from Beelzebub’s hot parlor.
    In the process, she dribbled water—or whatever solution she was using—over the front of her dress. Though now fully buttoned, the dress looked more thoroughly disreputable, having acquired a good deal of dirt and several grease stains since last he’d seen it.
    Darius walked farther inside, inhaling the familiar aromas of horseflesh mingled with manure and hay. The stalls were airy, well designed, and neatly organized. His stable was a much smaller affair, not a fraction so grand as this, with its screens of Ionic columns dividing the stalls. Small as his was, though, he’d want a good while to bring it to this pitch of cleanliness and order.
    He took in his surroundings with a glance. Most of his attention, though, was upon the lady. She did not seem to be broken. Nor had she oozed away any spirits, by the sounds of it.
    “Mr. Carsington,” she said.
    “I heard you had an accident,” he said. “I saw your dogcart at the side of the road, and the broken wheel. I was…concerned.”
    Panicked was more like it. He never panicked. Ever. About anything. Even when his father summoned him to the Inquisition Chamber.
    A state of panic was a state of total irrationality.
    What the devil was the matter with him?
    “The wheel stuck in a rut and the cart tipped,” she said tightly. “It was no great matter, but Belinda took fright and jumped, and the shaft caught her in the shoulder.”
    “But you are unharmed,” he said. “And Lady Lithby?”
    “Oh, we are well,” she said impatiently. “She and I have taken worse tumbles. Colonel Morrell came along and helped us.”
    Darius did not snarl at the mention of the colonel.