No Proper Lady by Isabel Cooper Page B

with that.
    “Good morning,” he said.
    “Good morning,” said Joan, and grinned. “I’m glad to see you still exist.”
    She was quite altered. The hollows in her cheeks were much less pronounced, and her face itself seemed brighter. Her hazel eyes sparkled, and her lips were dark and sensuous. And with good food and Rose’s attention, her hair had become a gleaming reddish gold. She was still thin, and probably always would be, but she looked closer to slender than starved now.
    When she saw him looking, she smiled a little, knowingly, and Simon flushed.
    I’m just…noting changes, he thought, not—
    And then he was , because he saw her hair spread out over his pillows like a golden storm and thought of the way her face would look transported by passion. His cock jerked, hardening. Simon dropped quickly into his chair and hoped nobody had noticed.
    “I—hope you’re both well,” he said, collecting himself.
    “Very well, thank you,” said Joan.
    Her table manners were almost acceptable now, though absolutely mechanical. A little crease of concentration showed between her eyebrows whenever she held a fork or a teacup. Hopefully, that would pass with time.
    “Eleanor and I,” she went on, “were talking about riding. I believe they’ll let me head out on my own today. She was kind enough to suggest some routes.”
    “I see you’re going to go out as well,” said Eleanor. “Perhaps—if it’s not too much trouble—you could accompany Miss MacArthur? You do know the land better.”
    She looked back down at her plate after she spoke and not at Simon, but he smiled at her anyway. “I’d be glad to, Ellie. Will you come with us?”
    “Oh—no, no thank you. If you don’t mind, I have a few letters to write this morning. I’ve been very remiss about it, and my friends will be wondering.” She picked up her teacup and took a sip.
    “Then,” he said, “it would give me great pleasure to ride with you, Miss MacArthur.”
    ***
    When he came out to the stables, Joan was already there, a tall figure in dark blue, her hair brilliant gold in the sun. From a distance, she cut quite an elegant figure, though it would have been better if she hadn’t kept raising her hand to push at the brim of her hat. The gesture was appropriately equine but not quite appropriate to a lady.
    “It won’t fall off,” Simon said, as she turned to face him with a skeptical look on her face that set him grinning. “Really.”
    “You sure?” she asked and then shook her head. “I mean, are you certain?”
    “If Rose did her job properly, you have nothing to worry about. And it’s not as if you’ll be galloping or jumping.”
    “Mmm,” she said, looking down at the skirts of her riding habit. “Not in this anyhow, I’d hope. I like my neck whole.”
    The grooms led out the horses then, Aladdin and another gelding, a gentle, fat chestnut. Joan stood still for a moment looking at them. She concealed her feelings well, Simon thought. Even he didn’t know for certain whether she was nervous, and he alone knew that she might have reason to be.
    “You’ve been riding Gareth,” he said into the silence. “There’s a gray around here called Gawain. I’m afraid I was in something of a romantic phase when I named them.”
    Joan looked over her shoulder at him, lips curved a little. “How old were you?”
    “Fifteen, or thereabouts. My father wrote me at school and asked me what I should name the foals that year. I think he hoped to make me take an interest in the estate. Or in horse breeding. Something practical.”
    “Did it work?”
    He laughed. “As well as anything else did. It certainly gave us a generation of interestingly named horses. There’s a mare named Deirdre here, named for a tragic Irish heroine, and the most placid little thing you could imagine.”
    “Fate loves thwarting youth,” Joan said, pausing only briefly to substitute “thwarting” for whatever profanity had been in the original.