Free The American Duchess by Joan Wolf

that?”
    “Oh, yes. I don’t want to be cooped up inside a carriage on a day like this.” She gave him a slanting look from under lowered lids. “Did your brother tell you my disgraceful secret?”
    He frowned a little and then as her meaning struck him, he looked amused. “Do you mean the fact that you don’t ride?”
    “Yes.”
    “Don’t let it worry you,” he said easily. “It’s not important.”
    She remembered the vision she had had of him that morning. “I should like to learn,” she said tentatively. “I’m not afraid, you know. I just never had the opportunity.”
    Her husband grinned. “So Harry told me. He also said you informed him you could sail anything that floats.”
    “Well . . .” Her wide mouth quirked up a little at the corners. “Maybe not anything .. .”
    He laughed.
    They had a lovely day together. It could have been extremely awkward; they were two people who hardly knew each other and they were thrown almost entirely into each other’s company with little distraction in the form of other people. But it was not awkward at all.
    First they took a long and leisurely drive about the estate and the neighborhood. Tracy was interested in everything and noticed everything. Most of all, she noticed people. “What a marvelous-looking old man,” she said at one point, as they drove past a man working in a field. The man had turned toward the road when he heard the horses and had taken off his hat in respect as they went by. The Duke had nodded at him graciously and Tracy had smiled, but only one of them had really seen him.
    They had passed a group of children playing in the front yard of a cottage, and Tracy had given them a friendly wave. “Did you notice that dark-eyed little boy?” she asked the Duke. “What a beautiful child!”
     He had noticed the children in the mass. but not as individuals. He looked at his wife with interest. It seemed remarkable to him that she should be so observant.
    In the afternoon the Duke took out a gun and Tracy settled down to read in the garden. He was surprised, and pleased, by her independence. He had not expected to be able to get off by himself.
    “I would just love to sit in the sunshine and read,” she had said, half apologetically. “Unless, of course, there is something you want me to do?”
    He had replied that she must do whatever she wished to do and that he would be very happy to go out with a gun for a few hours. She was still reading when he returned and, instead of going directly into the house, he detoured to the garden. She was so absorbed she did not hear him coming and it wasn’t until he spoke her name that she looked up.
    “Oh, Adrian!” She looked at his shooting jacket, gun and the leather pouch he carried. “Are you back so soon?”
    “It’s after five o’clock,” he said.
    “Is it? Good heavens, I had no idea it was so late. I have been reading a new novel called Persuasion by Miss Austen,” she explained. “It’s marvelous.”
    “I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything by Miss Austen,” he said.
    “She is a genius,” Tracy said enthusiastically. “And hilariously funny as well, although this book is rather different from her previous novels.”
    “Do you read a great deal, Tracy?”
    “Constantly. I brought six books with me to Thorn Manor.”
    He threw back his head and shouted with laughter. When he had got his breath back, he said, “Promise me solemnly, ma mie, that you won’t reveal that fact to a soul. Think of my reputation! My wife found it necessary to bring six books on her honeymoon. I should never live it down.”
    Tracy had been regarding his mirth with good-humored bewilderment, but now her own rich laugh rippled out. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She gave him an impish look. “It will be our secret.”
    “Thank you, darling,” he said fervently. “Do you think you could tear yourself away from your book for long enough to have dinner?”
    “Certainly,” she