Twelfth Night Secrets by Jane Feather

He had buried him and then turned his face forward to the next step of his mission. What else was there to do?
    Just asking himself the question surprised him. He had merely coped as he always had done with such situations, but now he felt a momentary stab of loss and for the first time acknowledged to himself that friends in his world were too few to be easily forgotten.
    Judd glanced at both children. Tom had turned away and was idly kicking an upturned barrel, his face averted. The groom looked back at Julius. “Will you mount, my lord?” His voice was crisp, but his eyes were soft and filled with his own sorrow. He held the horse as Julius prepared to swing himself into the saddle.
    “That’s a fine animal, my lord.” Harriet came into the yard, well wrapped in a fur-trimmed cloak, the hood drawn up against the sudden chill of an icy gust of wind. She crossed the cobbles to where he stood by the gelding.
    “I can’t deny it,” the Earl said, running a possessive hand along the curve of the animal’s neck.
    “What do you call him?” She stroked the velvety nose, and he whickered against her palm.
    “Casanova.”
    “Casanova?” She stared at him incredulously. “What kind of name is that for a horse?”
    He smiled. “I’ve crossed the Bridge of Sighs many times, my dear.”
    “More times than you’ve climbed through the casements of wives and maidens?” she queried with raised eyebrows.
    “Probably,” he returned with the same enigmatic smile. He put a foot in the stirrup and vaulted into thesaddle. “If you’ll excuse us, Lady Harriet, Casanova needs a good gallop.”
    She stepped back, opening her palms wide in a gesture of mock permission, and watched him walk the horse out of the yard. He moved as one with his mount in the manner of all superb horsemen. Nick had ridden in the same way, as if he and Lucifer were one whole, with one mind. She blinked rapidly and turned around, remembering her errand.
    “Grace . . . Tom, where are you?”
    “They’re be’ind the rain barrel, my lady,” Judd informed her. The children had taken advantage of their sister’s momentary distraction to disappear from sight, guessing correctly that they were the object of her arrival in the yard.
    She sighed with exasperation and crossed to the barrel. “Come out of there, now. I need you in the house. You’ll be expected in the drawing room for tea, and you’re both so grubby, it’ll take Nurse Maddox an hour to get you respectable again.”
    “Do we have to?” they groaned in chorus.
    “Yes,” she responded, seizing a hand of each. “The aunts are asking for you.”
    “Not Great-aunt Augusta,” they moaned as she tugged them along beside her.
    “Yes, Aunt Augusta and Aunt Sybil are very anxious to see you. And Grandfather will be in the drawing room, too, so you need to be as quiet and civilized as you can possibly manage. Don’t forget, tomorrow is Christmas Day.”
    The reminder silenced further incipient protests, and they trotted along beside her with more equanimity. “The Earl said he doesn’t know how to tell the sex of a water beetle,” Tom said, as if remembering something of great importance. “Do you know how to tell, Harry?”
    The non sequitur startled her into silence for a moment, before she asked mildly, “Why would you be discussing the sex of water beetles with Lord Marbury?”
    “Oh, we were racing them, and he came to watch,” Grace informed her. “And then we showed him the new colt.”
    “We like him . . . he’s sort of like Nick,” Tom said.
    “Yes, we like him,” Grace concurred. “He’s not really like Nick, but he is a little.”
    Harriet could think of no suitable response to this confidence. Part of her could almost see what they meant. But the man was, of course, a consummate actor. He was a spy, a counterfeit, an assassin, mostlikely. How could one possibly know his real self, if, indeed, he knew it himself?

    Julius gave Casanova his head on the ride