Lady Eve's Indiscretion by Grace Burrowes

them?”
    â€œThey’re quite good size for riding mounts, but I think mostly he wasn’t looking to add to his training responsibilities.”
    There was nothing in Deene’s tone to suggest he was being snide, yet Eve bristled. “You saw Devlin at Christmas. He’s doing much better now that he’s married.”
    Deene drove along in silence, turning the horses through Cumberland Gate and onto The Ring. Eve kept breathing but realized part of the reason she was in such difficulties.
    Since the accident, she’d driven out only with family. She didn’t know if this eccentricity had been remarked by Polite Society, but given the level of scrutiny any ducal family merited, it very likely had.
    Her brothers hadn’t been on hand to drive her anywhere for ages. In recent memory, she’d driven out only with her mama. While Her Grace was a very competent whip, even a noted whip among the ladies, Deene at the ribbons was a very different proposition.
    A more confident proposition, in some regards. For one thing, he was a great deal larger and more muscular than any duchess; for another, he was former cavalry; and on top of that, he was just… Deene.
    â€œI did not mean to scold,” Eve said. “Devlin had us worried when he came back from Waterloo.”
    Deene kept his gaze on the horses. “He had us all worried, Lady Eve.”
    She wanted to ask him, as she’d never asked her own brother, what it was that made a man shift from a clear-eyed, doting brother with great good humor and a way with the ladies, to a haunted shell, jumping at loud noises and searching out the decanters in every parlor in the house.
    Except she knew.
    She must have moved closer to Deene, because he started in with the small talk.
    â€œThe leader is Duke, the off gelding is Marquis. They’re cousins on the dam side.”
    â€œThere must be some draft in them somewhere,” Eve remarked. Quarters like that didn’t result from breeding the racing lines exclusively. “They’ve good shoulder angles too. Have you ever put them over fences?”
    This earned her a different glance. “You’re right, they do. I suppose the next time I take them out to Kent, I’ll have the lads set up a few jumps. Is His Grace still riding to hounds?”
    â€œIn moderation. I think you do have a loose shoe on the… on Marquis. Up front.”
    â€œHow can you tell?”
    â€œThe sound. That hoof sounds different when it strikes the ground. Listen, you’ll pick it up.”
    They clippety-clopped along, though to Eve the sound of a tenuous shoe was clear as day.
    â€œYour brothers said your seat was the envy of your sisters,” Deene remarked a few moments later. “When they talked about you taking His Grace’s stallion out against orders, they sounded nothing less than awed.”
    â€œI was twelve, and I wanted to go to Spain to look after my brother. Proving I could ride Meteor seemed a logical way to do that.”
    â€œI gather your plan did not succeed.”
    She hadn’t thought about this stunt in ages. Meteor had been a good sort, if in need of reassurance. He was in the pensioner paddocks at Morelands now, his muzzle gray, his face showing the passage of years more than his magnificent body. Eve brought him apples from time to time.
    â€œI had a great ride, though.” It had been a great ride. Her first real steeplechase, from Morelands to the village and back across the countryside, with grooms bellowing behind her, her brother Bart giving chase as well, and all hell breaking loose when she’d eventually brought the horse back to the stables.
    â€œI bet it got you a stout birching, though.”
    She had to smile. “Not a birching. His Grace stormed and fumed and shouted at me for an age—not about riding the horse, but about taking him without permission—then condemned me to mucking stalls for a month. Mama was in