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“No.”

Francis exited the stall with the sidesaddle in hand, shooting her a look that said quite simply she was not what he thought a baroness should be.

Brook focused on her father. “Another deal, then. If I can break Oscuro within two months’ time, you let me learn to drive.”

He was a master at the arched eyebrow, this father of hers. “You expect to convince me to let you learn one dangerous task by promising to do another?”

“He was born to race.” Her tone went more serious than she’d intended. Her fingers curled into her skirt. “Some creatures have a harder time obeying the standards put before them. But if you can inspire them to, they will outdo all the rest. You must simply learn their language.”

She expected him to ask if she had ever broken a horse before. She was prepared to tell him all about her favorite mount in Monaco, how she had finally ridden him over the French hills after months of work.

He didn’t ask but studied her until Francis returned with a regular saddle and a stony countenance. Then he sighed. “Two months?”

“Well. Assuming I’m not forbidden from stepping out in the rain.” As she had been all last week. Granted, it had been abysmally chilly, but she would have suffered it for the sake of a horse. “And then the car.”

Whitby turned to face the end of the aisle again, where Oscuro still snorted and fumed. “This is certainly no life for him. If he can be trained—”

“Your lordship!” Aghast, Francis paused in his reach for the
girth strap. “You’ve the best trainers in all Yorkshire. If they canna break him, then he canna be broken.”

“Or . . .” Whitby faced her again, met her gaze. “They did not speak his language. Sometimes when we think someone should understand English, they really only know . . . French.”

Brook’s heart swelled, warmed.

Francis looked ready to snort along with Oscuro. “You want we should speak
French
to him?”

Another twitch of his lips, but her father didn’t turn to the groom. “If you can do it, my dear, then I will not only allow you to learn to drive, I will learn with you.”

She held out her hand as he had done before. “Done.”

Rather than shaking, he clasped her hand in both of his and squeezed it. “Be careful. If you’re not back in precisely two hours, I’ll send out the hounds to find you.”

“Thank you.” She stretched up on her toes so she could kiss his left cheek, then his right. When she had said farewell to Justin that way a week ago, Aunt Mary had played her fainting trick again and had lectured her for a solid hour afterward.

Her father half-smiled, as if remembering the same thing. “The sea abuts our property on the east, of course. To the south, you may go so far as the copse of trees beyond the duck pond. To the west, so far as the road leading to the village, and to the north, all the way to the hedge dividing our land from Delmore.”

“Delmore?”

“Pratt’s estate. It’s a sprawling, mazelike monstrosity that has a strange charm I think you’ll enjoy seeing.”

She wrinkled her nose at the name. “I’d just as soon not.”

He chuckled. “Enjoy yourself. Perhaps tomorrow, if the weather holds, we can take a morning ride together.”

“I can think of no better way of starting the day than with a ride.”

He moved off, greeting a few of the horses with the same muted affection he gave his family. Muted, but sure. Solid.

Brook watched him step into the weak sunshine and turned to Tempesta. Francis led her out of the stall and handed Brook the reins with nary a word. He gave her the exact same flat stare her maid—whom she was apparently now to call O’Malley—had when she saw the split skirt. Silent, screaming disapproval.

And they all wondered why she needed a solitary ride.

She adjusted the stirrups and then swung up into the saddle. Its leather was supple, well worn and well cared for. She settled comfortably into it, gathered the reins, and patted the horse’s neck. “
Allons-y, ma
fille.
”

Go she did, at a high-stepping walk from the stables, into a trot southward with the barest of whispers, and to a full gallop when Brook gave her rein. Tempesta’s hooves ate up the ground, raining clods of dirt down behind them.

Before they left the lawn, Brook reached up and unpinned her hat so she could toss it to the ground. She needed the wind to whip through her hair and blow away all the frustrations. She needed to be free, to discover, to find her place.

Find it she did, at the southeast corner, where the land rose before tumbling into the sea. The waves before her, a cliff under her, the moors rolling out behind . . . not exactly the seascape she had grown up with, but close enough. Beautiful enough.
Enough
.

For a moment after reining Tempesta to a halt, she merely closed her eyes and breathed it in. Whispered a thank-you to the Lord, and then a please. An outpouring. An in-taking. Then she slid down so her own feet could test the earth.

Were the wind not gusting off the ocean, she would have withdrawn from her pocket the two letters she had chosen to read today. One from her father, one from her mother. He had
traveled a good deal, it seemed, in those days. And whenever they were apart, they would write.

Of love. Of family. Of yearning to be together again.

She had matched up the dates as best she could for the two stacks, which had taken most of one rainy afternoon . . . especially given how often she had to pause to laugh at something Regan or Melissa said as they all worked on their projects together in the upstairs salon. Reading them she was taking slowly as well. Familiarizing herself with each loop in her mother’s hand, in the quick dash of her father’s. Their favorite phrases, their nicknames for each other.

According to the dates, she was drawing near to the time when they would mention
her
, as in that first letter of her father’s she had spotted. Though she knew already there would not be many letters for her to read for that time—they had not been apart then. She had mentioned the gap in dates as she was correlating them, and Aunt Mary had given her an indulgent smile.

“When Ambrose found out Lizzie was expecting, he could not be dragged from her side,” she had said. “Not until necessity dictated it right before . . .”

Before that night. The night the carriage careened off the road and everything changed.

The wind shifted, and the warmth she had worked up on the ride went the way of the sunshine—swept away by the clouds. With a shiver, Brook pulled out her watch from her pocket. She still had time, but if the sun didn’t reemerge, she would be half frozen before she reached home.

After mounting again, she set a slower pace toward the house. By the time she had found her hat and gained the stables, she was shivering. She handed the reins back over to the brooding Francis.

Coffee. She needed coffee.

“Brook!” Regan waved to her from the terrace outside the library. She sat with her sister and mother, looking positively warm in her short-sleeved afternoon dress. “Tea?”

Striding their way, Brook chafed her hands together and smiled for her cousin. “Aren’t you cold out here?”

Regan laughed. “Are you jesting? It’s lovely.”

Aunt Mary reached for her teapot. “Strong or weak today, dear?”

She had tried both. She cared for neither. Grinning, she said, “
Caffe espresso
. Can your pot produce that? If I beg?”

Her aunt laughed and motioned toward the house. “No. But I daresay the chef’s can. Ask him for some and join us.”

Funny—the two times she had dared request coffee since Justin left, she had been delivered a cup of pale, watery stuff unfit for consumption. “I’ve been warned away from the kitchen—how, then, do I put in this request?”

“Oh, nonsense.” Aunt Mary sipped at her tea, her stern gaze belying her pleasant smile. “Don’t let the servants intimidate you, child, or you will never manage the house. You are mistress. Go where you will. Ask for what you want.”

Mistress.
Not a role that seemed hers, with Aunt Mary presiding over teas and dinner and Whitby in control of all else.

But her aunt was right. If she ever hoped to be accepted by the household, she had to earn their respect. And she wouldn’t do that playing the mouse. With a smile, she nodded and made for the library door. “I shall return with
caffe
.”

The door opened noiselessly, shut with a click. A rustle of newspaper from the corner proved her presence had been noted though, and her father peered over the top of the page with smiling eyes. “With twenty minutes to spare, even. All in one piece, are you?”

“So long as you are not counting hairpins. Although I would like to lodge a complaint—your air here is too cold. Might we import some Mediterranean breezes?”

He chuckled and raised the paper again. “I’ll have some shipped, posthaste.”

The rows of books were tempting, as was the fire in the grate. But the allure of coffee kept her feet moving through the room. She would settle into her leather chair after tea, before the dressing gong. It had become her favorite hour of the day.

The halls grew less familiar as she neared the stairs down to the kitchen. Her mother must have walked this path countless times, on her way to plan the menu with the old cook. Brook tried to picture her here, the true mistress about her duties. She would have been comfortable, in her element. Humming, perhaps. She would have smiled as she descended and the sound of laughter drifted up to her.

Brook felt like an interloper.

“Aw, come now, DeeDee. Have a cup with your lowly friends.” A male voice, though Brook couldn’t place it.

The answering laugh she knew, though Melissa and Regan had been the ones to draw it out before. “That’s O’Malley to you, Hiram. And sure and if I do, her ladyship will return the self-same moment all covered in mud and needing my assistance.”

Her cue. Clearing her throat in warning, Brook descended the last steps and turned the corner into the kitchen.

The servants all leaped to their feet or halted their work. Brook smiled at the group at large. “Don’t mind me. I only need a word with Monsieur Bisset.” Those about tasks resumed them. Those about their tea shifted from foot to foot without retaking their seats.

She had learned that the English took their teatime quite seriously—so she would hurry. She turned to the rotund man frowning from his place at the stove. “
Bon
après-midi, monsieur. Ça va?
”

He turned back to the simmering pot. “I am busy,” he answered in French.

French . . . but not quite
French
. Hadn’t they said he was from Paris? Or was it only that he was
schooled
in Paris? She stuck to
français
. “And it smells delicious. I will trouble you only for a moment.” Her gaze went to the beautiful, miraculous, life-promising machine in the corner. How had he come by the exact model the prince had insisted on for the palace? They weren’t cheap, and she couldn’t think that Whitby had bought it, given that he never drank espresso. It must be the monsieur’s, and he must have spent years of savings on it. Was he simply unwilling to share with her? But if so, then why had he produced a pot when Justin was here?

Well, she would never know if she didn’t ask. “I was hoping I could have a cup of espresso.”

The chef spun on her, his face red. “You would have me abandon my hollandaise, the most temperamental of sauces, the one I learned from my grandmother in Provence, which she had learned from hers, to make you coffee?”

The kitchen went silent around them, but Brook merely folded her arms over her chest. The French bluster she knew well. His particular accent she did not. “Provence? I think not.” More likely some corner of Quebec or another.

He sputtered and muttered, though he used no words that she could make out. And the red in his cheeks faded to white.

Blast.
She hardly cared if he had lied about where he was from to secure a position as a French
chef du
cuisine
. All she wanted was a cup of coffee. Why was that so much to ask?

Deirdre held her breath with the others while the baroness and the monsieur all but spat at each other in French. Apparently her ladyship had no qualms about arguing with an employee. She answered him phrase for phrase, gesture for gesture. Proclaimed something emphatic with a sweep of her arms and then
pointed at the odd machine that hissed and steamed whenever the chef used it, and spurted out a coffee black as night. Other than Bisset himself, no one but Lord Abingdon had ever suffered it. Well, and the baroness. Though when a cup had been requested for her last week, the chef had not set the thing to hissing, he’d merely tossed a few grounds into a kettle.

Which her ladyship must have realized. Pure exasperation covered her face as she delivered another line of too-rapid French, ending with a
s’il vous plaît
that sounded more like command than request.

Monsieur Bisset glared. Sighed. Asked something.

“
Non
.” The baroness motioned again at the machine. “
Je veux seulement un espresso!
”