The Beguilement of Lady Eustacia Cavanagh (The Cavanaughs 3)

His black was the stronger horse, but the bay was fleet of foot and carried a lighter rider who, he had to admit, knew how to ride. He caught up to her only on the last stretch. She threw him a laughing—challenging—glance, then leaned forward, and they raced neck and neck to the end of the tan.

They shot off the track and wheeled to the right, onto the grass, and slowed.

Frederick stared at her, conscious of the wild thunder of his heartbeat, of the sheer exhilaration that coursed through his veins.

She tipped back her head and laughed, rather breathlessly, then shot him a smiling glance. “Thank you. That was fun.”

He shook his head at her and set the black to walk beside her bay. “Do your brothers know you ride like that?”

“Who do you think taught me?” She looked ahead, still breathing deeply enough to have him battling the urge to stare at her chest rather than her face. “When I was younger, Rand, and sometimes Kit, too, used to let me sneak out and ride with them at this hour.” She nodded ahead, and he saw a mounted groom waiting under a tree. “I still occasionally ride at this time—much better than later, when there are too many of the ready-to-be-censorious about.”

Frederick waited, but when she set course for her groom, transparently intending to leave the park, he heard himself say, “I wondered when you would reappear. I have to own to being impressed you thought to seek me out here.”

She shrugged. “I asked your mother if you rode in the mornings. It seemed a reasonable venue in which to meet, in case you’ve come to a decision regarding my proposal.”

He noted she’d slid around asking outright if he’d decided. “I’m still considering it.”

She acknowledged his reply with a tip of her head, then as they neared her groom, she drew rein and met his gaze. “In that case, I’ll leave you to the rest of your morning.”

Gracefully, she half bowed.

Instinctively, he returned the gesture with elegant flair. And said nothing at all.

With a subtle smile, she turned away and set her mare trotting.

Frederick watched as she rode toward the Stanhope Gate, with her groom falling in behind her.

Until next we meet had been the words that had sprung to the tip of his tongue, but he hadn’t uttered them.

He remained inclined to refuse her request, yet some impulse argued increasingly stridently against that tack. Whether that impulse was fueled by his suspicion that her proposal almost certainly had merit and he should, therefore, seriously consider it or merely by a wish to see what her next tactic might be, he couldn’t have said, yet he doubted this morning would be the last he saw of her.

Theoretically, she might change her mind and pursue some other less-reticent principal performer. Against that, she patently knew what a drawcard he would be—an arrogant assessment, perhaps, yet entirely justified. Given he’d sequestered himself from the ton for more than a decade, refusing to play at even his mother’s or sisters’ events, his earlier performances had attained a near-legendary status.

If he deigned to sit before a piano at a ton event, the hordes would gather.

Despite his entrenched resistance to her scheme to use him and his talent to draw attention to that of other musicians, he couldn’t fault her reasoning. Or her consequent plotting.

He stirred, shook his reins, and set the black walking homeward.

And inwardly admitted that, in viewing the upcoming days, the most intriguing prospect exercising his mind was what Stacie would do next.

The following afternoon, Frederick opened the door to his favorite bookshop and strolled inside.

A bell jangled loudly. After closing the door, Frederick paused to breathe in the aroma of parchments and glue and the musty scent that spoke of aged, even ancient, tomes.

The poky little shop off Leicester Square was the domain of Mr. Griggs, musical bibliophile extraordinaire. Shelves covered both side walls, reaching up into the shadows, and four freestanding rows of shelves ran parallel to the walls down the length of the shop, creating alleys so narrow that Frederick had to turn slightly sideways to negotiate passage to the counter at the rear of the room.

Daylight barely penetrated that far; when he reached the counter, Frederick saw that, as usual, Griggs had a shielded lamp burning.

Frederick hadn’t muted his steps, yet only when he leaned on the counter did Griggs, a curmudgeonly sort, place a thick finger on the page he was reading and look up.

Recognition flowed over Griggs’s heavy features, and he grunted. “It’s you.”

Unperturbed by the reception, Frederick smiled. “Good afternoon, Griggs. How’s business?” That was Frederick’s customary invitation for Griggs to bend his ear about whatever books on musical history had recently fallen into the old man’s hands.

Frederick had been haunting Griggs’s shop ever since he’d discovered it in his teens. Many of the volumes that now graced his library had passed through Griggs’s hands.

“Well enough.” Griggs pushed off the stool on which he’d been perched and bent to reach beneath the counter. “I ’spect you’ll want to take a look at these books I got in from a contact in Switzerland.” Griggs rose, bearing a foot-high stack of unusual-sized volumes covered in old leather. “In German, they are, but you can read that, can’t you?”