The animal was so well trained just a slight tug on the reins or a quick squeeze from his rider’s thighs brought a response. It was good that Huge and the horse fit like hand and glove, because the man paid substantially less attention to the journey between London and Essex than the steed did. The sky had been purple when he’d left the city. No one stirred as he saddled the horse himself, leaving the stable boy sleeping in a corner of the stall. There hadn’t been any questions about where he was off to, or why, which suited him just fine. He didn’t have answers and was too disgruntled to lie. While he would have preferred to thunder through the darkness, he forced the horse to walk. The hour was so early, the sky just beginning to break its nighttime cover and take on the first steely grays and glimmering periwinkles of the day, that if he rode pell-mell he would likely arrive before the household began to stir. The element of surprise—that he wanted. But to disrupt the other women before they’d had the opportunity to knuckle sleep from their eyes?
