he managed to say firmly.
She shrugged, a lissome movement of her slender shoulders. “It’s good you’ve finally come home. Your mother has need of you. Standish Court is an enormous estate. You have responsibilities here.”
The brown eyes that were looking at him were cold. He was not accustomed to having Diana look at him like that, and he set his mouth and said quietly, “I realize that. That’s why I have come.”
“The war is over anyway, is it not?” she said.
“Yes. The allies are ready to enter Paris, and Napoleon will be forced to sign an Act of Abdication one of these days.”
Dismissing him from her attention, Diana turned to her mother. “I think I will go back to the stables and check on Candy, Mama. She didn’t seem to take any harm, but I want to make sure.”
“I’ll go with you,” Alex said quickly. “I’d like to see what horses you have. Monty is still here, isn’t he?”
“Of course. In fact, I have been riding him, so he is in excellent condition.”
He turned to Mrs. Sherwood. “Will you excuse us, ma’am?”
She looked from him to her daughter then back again to him. “Of course,” she said after the briefest of pauses. “When you are done, return to our house, Diana. I want to finish fitting that new dress of yours.”
“All right, Mama,” Diana said, and the two young people went out the door.
They didn’t speak as they went down the stairs and through the back hall to the door that was closest to the stables. The garden was still mostly bare from the winter and the great fountain with nymphs and cherubs was dry as well. The footpath to the stable led through the garden and down a grassy hill. At the bottom of the hill stood the brick stable building and the stable yard, which was surrounded by a stone wall. In the distance were the fenced-in pad-docks where two horses were turned out.
As they passed under the stable arch, Alex finally broke the silence. “I wrote to you many times, but you never once wrote back. Not once, in all those years.”
She raised her chin and kept walking. “Did you expect me to? You made your choice, Alex. I said it was either the army or me and you chose the army. It wasn’t I who ended things between us, it was you.”
He put a hand on her arm, forcing her to stop and face him. “You told me to go.”
“It was so obvious that you wanted to go, Alex. I just said the words you wanted to hear. But I never said that I would wait for you.”
“But you haven’t married,” he said.
She shrugged, a typical Diana gesture. “There is no one around here that I want to marry. But I am going to make my come-out with Sally next month and, hopefully, we will both find suitable husbands in London.”
He looked down at her. He was two inches over six feet tall and the top of her head reached only to his nose.
He tightened his grip on her arm. “I thought about you all the time I was away. I missed you, Dee. I told you that in my letters.”
“I never read them,” she said, and pulled away from him and continued on into the stable yard. A tall, broad-shouldered man in his thirties was holding a horse in front of the stable, and his face broke into a huge grin when he saw Alex. “My lord,” he said. “You’re home!”
Alex forced a smile and went over to Standish Court’s head groom. “Yes, Henley, I’m home to stay. How are you? You look well.”
“I am very good, thank you, your lordship. We were all that worried about you when we heard you was wounded!”
“It was nothing,” Alex said. “It healed very quickly. Miss Sherwood has come to check on the pony that threw my sister and I have come to have a look at the horses.”
Henley called to a young boy to come and take the horse he was holding. “Monty is in fine fettle,” he said. “Miss Diana has been keeping him fit for you.”
“Why don’t you show his lordship around the stable and I will take a look at Candy,” Diana said.
“Fine!” Henley said enthusiastically.
Alex glanced at Diana but she was not looking at him. After a moment he moved off with Henley.
“We haven’t made many changes since your father died,” Henley said as they walked down the wide aisle and looked into the light, airy stalls. “We kept his two hunters and Master James and Master Jeremy ride them when they come home from school. The grooms keep them exercised and Miss Diana will take them out occasionally and put them over some jumps. Here is Annie, Miss Diana’s horse.”
Alex looked into the stall at the tall, rangy bay mare. Strictly speaking, Annie did not belong to Diana. Alex’s father had bought the mare from an abusive owner and had allowed Diana to ride her, deeming the mare not good enough for any of his own children.
Alex said, “She must be getting on in years by now.”
“She’s virtually retired,” Henley said. “Miss Diana has been riding Monty lately. Of course, now that you’re home…”
“I have a horse coming,” Alex said. “The horse I rode in Spain. There’s no reason why Miss Diana can’t keep riding Monty.”
Henley beamed. He had always adored Diana. “You’d think that horse should be too big for her, but he’s like butter in her hands. I think she can ride anything, Miss Diana.”
They were standing at the stall of a stocky chestnut gelding, who came over to greet them. He looked at Alex with soft eyes.
“This one is new,” Alex said.
“He belongs to Lady Sarah. He’s a sweetheart.”
They continued on down the aisle, looking at the carriage horses and the ponies that belonged to Alex’s two younger sisters, Maria and Margaret. Diana was in the stall with one of the ponies and she came out as they approached.
“There’s no heat,” she said. “I thought she might have kicked herself when she spooked, but she seems all right.”
“She’s a feisty little pony,” Henley said. “Maybe she’s too much for Lady Maria.”
“She’s new,” Alex said. “I don’t remember her.”
“Maria outgrew her old pony and we got her Candy a few months ago,” Diana said. “She was quiet when I looked at her, but she seems to have a habit of spooking.”
“Having a deer jump out in front of her would spook most horses,” Alex commented.
“True,” Diana said. “But there have been other occasions…”
“Remember that hellion of a pony I used to have?” Alex asked.
For the first time a faint smile tilted Diana’s lips. “You loved him because he would jump anything.”
“He would buck at anything, too.”
The smile disappeared from Diana’s face. “I hope the horses meet with your approval,” she said stiffly.
“Miss Diana has taken charge of the stable since your father died, your lordship,” Henley said. “She has made sure that everything runs smoothly.”
“I see that I must thank you, Dee,” Alex said. “I appreciate your time and effort.”
“It was nothing,” she said dismissively. “Now I think we had better return to the house and see what has happened to poor Maria.”
She strode down the aisle toward the door and he lingered a moment, watching her slim figure clad in a serviceable riding skirt and a wool jacket. Her red-gold hair caught all the light in the stable.
After a moment, he followed