Read Online Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback) by Sydney Alexander - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sydney Alexander
Tags: Regency Romance
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eager to wed the deLacey daughter, if such a thing was possible. Violetta deLacey, secure in her future as a countess, was a plump, fish-mouthed thing who seemed to live on a steady diet of gossip and iced cakes. The first time William had seen her as an adult, punch glass in one hand and a feathered fan in the other, listening to her companion with such scandalized pleasure that her fat mouth had dropped open like a codfish’s, he had thought that she still looked alarmingly like that baby in her silk-hung crib: right down to the white lace and ribbons that bedecked her from head to toe.
Now he took another gulp of whiskey, remembering his father’s face when he’d told the man he could never marry such a girl. “She can’t even sit a horse,” he’d insisted, pleading now with the hard jaw and flinty eyes of his sire. “She cares only for parties and fashion. She despises the country and never leaves London. We have nothing in common! What sort of match would we make? What sort of marriage would that be?”
His father had dismissed his worries with a wave of a hand. “What do you expect from one of these geese? None of them can see beyond their own feathers, always worrying that they can’t play the part of a swan. Horses, boy? You worry about a wife who can ride horses? You’ll marry her, get your heir and your spare, and go on with your life as you lived it before. There’s no reason to worry that you have nothing in common with the woman in the next room. It’s her bloodline that matters, boy.”
William had gritted his teeth. She wasn’t a mare, after all. The woman he must spend the rest of his life with, raise children with, and his father said it didn’t matter, as long as she was of good breeding?
“I cannot possibly wed that woman,” he insisted, grinding out the words. “You ask too much of me.”
“I ask precisely nothing of you,” the earl snapped. “I let you spend your days as you please. You wish to ride horses all day in the country, and do I not let you? You did not wish to learn a trade, and did I demand it? You can neither read the law nor preach a sermon, you have never donned a uniform, you have never done a day’s work in your life, and now, when I make one simple demand on you, you have the nerve to refuse me! But I tell you, boy, I will not have it this time! You shall obey me in this, and when you have wedded and bedded Lady Violetta and she has given you sons, you may go back to your hunters and think of her no more. Is that quite clear?”
The earl took a deep breath at the end of this speech. William was not too angry to see how frail his father was growing, or how he gripped the back of the chair he was standing behind in order to balance himself. The earl would not be around much longer. The man who had taught him to ride a pony and jump a fence had not been on a horse in years. William was looking at an old man.
And that was when William made the single most cold and calculating decision of his life.
“You make yourself perfectly clear, Father,” he told the old man glaring at him from behind his desk, and then he left the library, shutting the door quietly behind him, the picture of an obedient son. He nodded politely to the butler as he took his hat and coat, and stepped lightly down the stairs into the warm London night.
And then he went straight to his club to meet Peregrin.
They’d plotted his escape that night over a bottle of brandy. It seemed simple. Peregrin had gone visiting in Ireland the autumn before and done some hunting. William was a master horseman. Peregrin would fish around amongst his hunting acquaintances and find him a position in a stable. William, his last name shortened to Archer, could disappear in the wilds of Ireland, far beneath the view of his circles in London, and wait.
Until either Violetta married someone else, or his father died.
It was a bleak thought. No matter how much he and his father had disagreed in the past years,
Now he took another gulp of whiskey, remembering his father’s face when he’d told the man he could never marry such a girl. “She can’t even sit a horse,” he’d insisted, pleading now with the hard jaw and flinty eyes of his sire. “She cares only for parties and fashion. She despises the country and never leaves London. We have nothing in common! What sort of match would we make? What sort of marriage would that be?”
His father had dismissed his worries with a wave of a hand. “What do you expect from one of these geese? None of them can see beyond their own feathers, always worrying that they can’t play the part of a swan. Horses, boy? You worry about a wife who can ride horses? You’ll marry her, get your heir and your spare, and go on with your life as you lived it before. There’s no reason to worry that you have nothing in common with the woman in the next room. It’s her bloodline that matters, boy.”
William had gritted his teeth. She wasn’t a mare, after all. The woman he must spend the rest of his life with, raise children with, and his father said it didn’t matter, as long as she was of good breeding?
“I cannot possibly wed that woman,” he insisted, grinding out the words. “You ask too much of me.”
“I ask precisely nothing of you,” the earl snapped. “I let you spend your days as you please. You wish to ride horses all day in the country, and do I not let you? You did not wish to learn a trade, and did I demand it? You can neither read the law nor preach a sermon, you have never donned a uniform, you have never done a day’s work in your life, and now, when I make one simple demand on you, you have the nerve to refuse me! But I tell you, boy, I will not have it this time! You shall obey me in this, and when you have wedded and bedded Lady Violetta and she has given you sons, you may go back to your hunters and think of her no more. Is that quite clear?”
The earl took a deep breath at the end of this speech. William was not too angry to see how frail his father was growing, or how he gripped the back of the chair he was standing behind in order to balance himself. The earl would not be around much longer. The man who had taught him to ride a pony and jump a fence had not been on a horse in years. William was looking at an old man.
And that was when William made the single most cold and calculating decision of his life.
“You make yourself perfectly clear, Father,” he told the old man glaring at him from behind his desk, and then he left the library, shutting the door quietly behind him, the picture of an obedient son. He nodded politely to the butler as he took his hat and coat, and stepped lightly down the stairs into the warm London night.
And then he went straight to his club to meet Peregrin.
They’d plotted his escape that night over a bottle of brandy. It seemed simple. Peregrin had gone visiting in Ireland the autumn before and done some hunting. William was a master horseman. Peregrin would fish around amongst his hunting acquaintances and find him a position in a stable. William, his last name shortened to Archer, could disappear in the wilds of Ireland, far beneath the view of his circles in London, and wait.
Until either Violetta married someone else, or his father died.
It was a bleak thought. No matter how much he and his father had disagreed in the past years,
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