“You didn’t steal that kiss.”

“I am heartened to hear it. Even such a one as I frowns upon larceny.”

“Stop it.” Alice tossed her napkin on the table and got up, pacing over to the window.

“Stop what?” Ethan rose and stood just behind her. Kissing and taking advantage were deplorable and inexcusable, and he would never do such things again. Probably. There was nothing in the code of gentlemanly behavior to prohibit inhaling a woman’s fragrance though, or admiring the slope of her breast from a discreet angle.

“You refer to yourself as if you’re some reprobate off the hulks.” Alice crossed her arms over her chest, still facing away from him. “In the company you describe, you will be among the better behaved, I’m sure.”

Ethan took a step away as a disturbing notion got hold of him. “You’re not sure at all. Are you ashamed to be seen with me, Alice? Or with my children?”

“Of course not,” she shot back, expression gratifyingly horrified. “How could you think that?”

“Because others have been. If you aren’t concerned about being seen in our company, then what on earth is the problem?” She turned her back again, and Ethan had to strain to hear her.

“How will we get there?”

What queer start was this? “It’s within walking distance, if we take the bridle path. The boys would likely take their ponies, and were I left to my own devices, I’d ride Waltzer.”

Ah, but walking was hard for her, and so was riding.

Ethan almost smiled with relief. “I’ll help you. You can take Waltzer, and I’ll be up on Argus, how’s that? Waltzer is a capital fellow, very willing to please, and as solid as a plow horse.”

“A plow horse?” Alice’s cheeks lost color.

“Yes. Very docile, biddable, sensible, that sort of plow horse.”

Was this what had her in such a taking? She was afraid to ride?

“We could send you in the coach,” Ethan said, “along with whatever contribution we’re making to the picnic, and extra clothes for the boys, in case they should spill their lemonade, for example.”

“Would anybody notice?” Alice asked, her voice small.

“Nobody will think twice about it,” Ethan lied glibly. “If we bring along some blankets, the boys’ hoops, a pillow or two, it will not be remarked. But, Alice?”

“Ethan?”

He was back to Ethan, and that was good.

“I would like to teach you to ride.”

She drew in one shaky breath and shook her head.

“No.” She shook her head again. “No and no. It is good of you, and I appreciate your generosity, and you have my thanks, but no. Absolutely not.”

“What if I rode with you,” Ethan posited carefully, “and we took the stirrups off the saddle?”

“Removed the stirrups? How would that help?”

“I assume you were dragged because your foot caught in the stirrup. No stirrup, no getting caught.”

“How can you teach me to ride sidesaddle? Do you even own ladies’ saddles?”

“I own several,” Ethan said. “I’d hoped, at one point, to at least be able to hack out with my wife. She ordered a number of habits, for riding both to the left and to the right, but never wore a one of them.”

“That is a waste. But no, I cannot imagine I would survive five minutes in the saddle without having a breathing spell.”

“You didn’t have a spell the last time you rode with me,” Ethan said. “We covered nearly a mile on Argus. It isn’t much farther than that to Willowdale.”

She turned to face him, her expression troubled. “I know you want to do this for me, and I appreciate it more than I can say. But once I get on that horse, I will feel like you are inflicting torture on me. It feels so high up, and all I can recall is bouncing against the ground, the horrible pain, and knowing I was going to die.”

That was not all she recalled. Ethan knew she recalled all manner of odd details, and each one could trigger an entire panorama of awful memories.

“In the intervening years, Alice, you haven’t died. You didn’t die then.”

“I wanted to.”

And in her mind, Ethan knew, the bad fall was part and parcel of the scandal Hazlit had alluded to. God above, he knew what that was like. Ever since his first week at boarding school, Ethan had been unable to stomach the smell of a barrel of pickles. If the scent hit him without warning, he’d still become ill. When he met people named Hart or Collins, he flinched mentally and tried not to shake their hands.

Pathetic, but after all this time, he no longer castigated himself for these weaknesses. They were the instincts of a man who wanted to live to see his children grown, and that was a good thing.

Ethan turned Alice by the shoulders then dropped his hands. “You will be safe on any horse I put you on. I promise you that.”

“You can’t promise me that. Nobody can promise that. The most competent rider in the world can be tossed when his horse steps in a rabbit hole or takes a bad spot in the hunt field.”

“Your brother said there was a scandal.” Ethan kept his gaze on hers and let the words stand alone, an invitation for Alice to say more.

She paced away from him. “Estrangement from one’s brothers might not be entirely bad. Why on earth would Benjamin burden you with such a confidence?”

“Two reasons.” Ethan watched as Alice drew in on herself, arms wrapped around her middle. “First, he wanted to explain the different last names, though he might have simply allowed me to conclude you are half siblings, as it’s common enough. Second, and I think it the more compelling concern for him, he demanded that should this scandal erupt anew, I give him a chance to ride to your rescue before I toss you over the transom to whatever wolves and vultures are waiting to devour you.”

She wrinkled her nose. “And you didn’t call him out?”

“I have siblings, Alice. For several years I could barely learn how they went on, or let them know the same regarding me. Your brother cares about you.”

Alice dropped her arms and marched back to the window. Outside across the gardens, Davey, sans livery and flanked by a boy on each side, a shovel over his shoulder, ambled toward the stream. “I suppose now you want to know the whole of it?”

“Not unless you want to tell me. I’ve endured scandals of my own, Alice, and telling you about them would neither abate the pain of those memories nor raise me in your esteem.”

“It might.” Alice smiled the faintest, sad smile. “Just to know you didn’t die either, it might.”

“I haven’t yet.” Ethan’s smile matched hers for sadness.

“Was Barbara the reason you didn’t reconcile with Nick?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” He thought for a moment, trying to choose words and sort out how much to tell her. “When I met Barbara, it was nearly eight years ago. I’d been down from university for several years, but I spent my time on my commercial endeavors, crass as that might seem. I wanted to be able to support a family in appropriate style, and quite honestly, I enjoy commerce.” He flicked a glance at Alice’s face but saw no judgment there. Yet.

“Barbara approached me at some function where I was escorting Lady Warne. I’d never go about in society unless Grandmother inveigled me into it. Lady Warne suggested Barbara was exactly the kind of diversion I needed, and I’ve never regretted an impulsive decision more.”

“You didn’t care for her?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Ethan said, and what was he doing, imposing his past on her, when she was the one who was supposed to be confiding in him? “I had kept very much to myself, at school, at university. There were reasons, and they seemed like good ones at the time, though it left me appallingly unsophisticated with respect to the ladies and Society in general. But she was persistent, available, and physically appealing.”

And this characterization of his past was not mendacious, but it was different from any previous descriptions he might have given of it.

“You were besotted.”

He’d been horny, plain and simple, and wretchedly, painfully inexperienced with women. “Parts of me were besotted, perhaps, and Barbara was adept at reading people and being what they wanted, for a time anyway.”

“Do you suppose she intended to conceive your child?” It was a bold, personal question, but the whole discussion was outside the bounds of propriety, and Ethan rather liked it there.

“She admitted as much on many occasions,” Ethan said, wincing in memory of the way Barbara had laughed at his incredulity over her conniving. “I was the most gullible fool ever to stumble up a church aisle.”

“That is…” Alice sank back down onto a seat at the table—Ethan’s seat, in fact. “That is the most heinous, despicable… that is like rape, but worse, because in addition to a betrayal of one’s vows, it’s willfully inflicting on a child enmity between the parents. It’s an abysmal… I am so sorry.”

In a few words, she’d gotten to the heart of years of misery and conflict, summing up even more heartache than she knew. He wanted to kiss her again.

“I was sorry too, for a while, but now I have the boys, and I consider I got the better of the bargain.”

There was no sadness in her smile now. She beamed radiant approval at him, and that made him want to kiss her too. “Oh, you did. You very certainly did, Ethan. They are wonderful boys, and you will always be glad they are yours.”

Ethan saw such a light of longing in Alice’s eyes, he had to look away. God above, the woman wanted children. She wanted children of her own, and she’d be a wonderful mother. And yet Barbara, to whom children had been merely pawns, was given two, while Alice was denied any of her own.

“You’ll ride with me.” Ethan patted her hand briskly. “Say you will, just once, to give it a try and shut me up.”

“You won’t let this alone, will you?”

Never. Maybe he couldn’t give her children, but he could give her this. “I’ve told you more about my wicked past than I’ve told my own brother. I’m not asking you to trust me with the details of your own unhappy history, Alice, I’m asking you to trust me to keep you safe for a few minutes on a very reliable horse.”

The two were related. He’d bet Argus on it.

“Very well, but I have no proper attire.”

Victory without bloodshed, the best kind. “That’s my girl. You won’t need it, because we’ll start off astride.”

“You won’t take me up like you did before?”

“That has to be the worst way to ride a horse,” Ethan scoffed. “Yes, I get to put my arms around a pretty lady, but you are trying to balance contrary to the movement, which makes no sense.”

“You did not think I was pretty.” Alice snorted, then put a hand over her mouth as if to recall the words.

“You are pretty.” Ethan had never been more sincere. “And your scent is delightful, as is your form. And while you went above stairs and couldn’t catch your breath, I went above stairs and thanked the Almighty for a governess with a bad hip.”

So to speak.

Ethan saw he’d silenced her, and shut his maw before he said even more. When had he become so damned loquacious?

He tapped her nose with a single finger. “Go put on some half boots. Meet me in the stables in thirty minutes.”

She could change her shoes in five minutes, and what Ethan had planned behind the privacy of his locked bedroom door would also take about five minutes—all three times.

* * *

Alice’s mind went in two directions at once. Part of her was preparing for a nasty breathing spell; another part was suggesting if she’d just glance down at the horse’s neck, she could find the reins to pick them up.

But that she could not do, lest she see the ground yards and yards away, so she fished with her fingers in the thick mane until she encountered leather. “I’ve got them.”

“Now we just sit here.” Ethan’s voice was right at her ear, his cedar scent was a soothing fragrance on an otherwise horsy breeze, and his chest was a solid presence at her back. “We’re well trained, and we know we don’t take a step until my lady tells us to. I don’t think it’s quite as warm today as it was yesterday.”

Hang the bloody weather. “Neither as hot nor as humid.”

“I asked you what you’d consider a treat by way of reward when we saddled up. You never answered,” Ethan reminded her pleasantly. His hands were resting lightly on her waist, and but for that, Alice knew, she knew in her bones, and muscles, and organs, she’d fall and be dragged again.

“Getting off would be my best treat.” Though in the barn, when Ethan had mentioned a treat, she’d been helpless not to gaze at his mouth. “How long do we sit here?”