“Of course I know how to ride,” Jack lied. “I just didn’t want you to have to worry about your servants knowing about your midnight … comings and goings. Didn’t want to cause a scandal and all that.”
Hazel glanced back at him sideways, leading the way to the stables. “My house has always been a little odd. My father’s absence, my mother’s— Well, in simple terms, my brother died, and my mother went into mourning, and neglected to come out of it. All of which is to say no one really cares what I do or where I go, especially since I never had to bother with the whole nightmarish spectacle of a London coming-out, me being practically engaged since I was a baby and all.”
“You’re engaged?” Of course she was engaged, Jack thought, women like her were always engaged. They were practically bred for it. Sows groomed for the slaughter.
Hazel paused. Her familiar answer caught itself on her tongue, and the memories of what had happened at the Almont ball came flooding back, bringing with them waves of emotion: terror first and then, surprisingly, relief, at the inevitable finally having happened. Hazel laughed, a full-throated laugh that startled a few nearby birds into scattering from their trees. “I suppose I am engaged.”
“I’m not sure that’s the typical reaction. Most brides are excited for that sort of thing.”
“I haven’t really said it out loud before. It sort of felt like a bad dream up until now.”
“Why? Ugly guy? Pockmarks? No, let me guess: He’s pushing sixty, with a potbelly?”
“Actually, no. Eighteen in March, fairly handsome from what I understand these things to be. Lord Bernard Almont. You don’t know him, do you?”
Jack shook his head. “Know the house, though,” he said before he could stop himself. Hazel gave him a queer look. “Everyone knows Almont House, I mean. Big ’un. In the New Town.” And then, to change the subject quickly: “So how come you don’t want to get married? Live in that big house, get money and all that?”
“I don’t believe they let viscountesses dissect dead bodies,” Hazel said.
“Well, how could they possibly fit it into their demanding social schedules?”
“It would certainly stain their gloves.”
Jack pushed a lock of hair dangling in his face behind his ear. “So they let women engaged to be viscountesses dissect dead bodies?”
“Only if they don’t find out.” Hazel smiled as she opened the stable gate, and led Jack toward a maple-colored horse tied to a post, with a saddle already affixed. She ran her hand along the horse’s muzzle.
The horse had a glossy coat, Jack could see that, and a velvety pink lining around its nose, but the thing that drew most of Jack’s attention was the horse’s alarming, colossal height.
Hazel read the fear on his face. “I know, they’re larger than the usual ponies one typically sees around here. My father had them brought up for us from London. Arabians. But they’re lovely, really. This one is mine. Miss Rosalind,” Hazel said, stroking her brown mare’s haunches tenderly, to which the horse responded with an affectionate whinny. Hazel saw the look on Jack’s face and rolled her eyes. “I was young when I named her. I didn’t know what you were supposed to name a horse. That one is yours, for tonight anyway. Betelgeuse.”
She gestured with her head toward a stallion so black Jack had missed it altogether, a nightmarish beast with slender legs that could have been a full story high. The horse, Betelgeuse, gave a distrustful snort. “Beautiful,” Jack said.
Hazel swung herself onto Miss Rosalind’s back with ease, and unfastened the horse’s reins from the post with a single flick of her wrist. She guided the horse into a gentle trot, going around in a circle. “Well, no use standing on ceremony. Come on, hop to it.”
Betelgeuse the horse tossed his head back and looked directly at Jack. He seemed no happier about the prospect of Jack riding him than Jack was.
“Wait! Hold on a moment,” Jack said to Hazel, barely able to contain his relief. “I have the wheelbarrow. We won’t be able to get the body back on horseback. Guess we better walk after all.”
Hazel leapt from her saddle to the ground as if the rules of gravity didn’t apply to her. “What are you talking about?” She walked around to the side of the stable, where a small cart was leaning up against a bale of hay. Effortlessly, she wheeled the cart around to her horse and affixed its breeching to Miss Rosalind’s saddle. “There,” Hazel said, pulling a piece of turnip from her pocket and letting Miss Rosalind slurp it from her palm. “Simple. And much easier than carrying a wheelbarrow.”