How to Handle a Scandal by Emily Greenwood Read Free Book Online

moaned about mud for days after the last time he and Will went riding. I believe he despairs of Louie ever really being the sort of fellow an earl ought to be.”
    Tommy laughed as he passed through the door. After days cooped up in proper, tasteful drawing rooms, dashing across muddy fields with the autumn wind whipping at him sounded like bliss.
    They rode sedately out of the city, then as soon as the houses fell away switched to a pace that would spare their horses but was nonetheless tiring for the riders. There was little chance for conversation over the beating of three sets of hooves, save for shouted taunts and masculine laughter. But they hadn’t come to chat anyway, and as they rode under a brilliant blue sky over open fields and past trees showing the first yellows and oranges of autumn, their grins grew wider.
    Eventually they passed the edge of a wood, and before them in the distance gleamed the thin line of a stream.
    “The tree on the left,” Tommy called out, indicating a pair of enormous oaks that stood by the stream’s edge. “Race you!” He kicked his horse into a gallop as his companions did the same.
    First one of the men would seize the lead, then another, the sound of thundering hooves filling the air along with splats of mud. They held to no rules of politeness when going neck-or-nothing, so when Louie edged Will toward a cluster of small branches that whipped him as he passed, Tommy laughed and did the same to his cousin.
    Will, however, took the dubious honor of most obnoxious when he thundered past both of them just as they drew near a puddle, showering them so liberally with mud that Tommy and Louie both got it in their hair.
    Tommy saw his chance as the path narrowed between two stands of trees. He pushed his horse ahead and had made it almost to the oak tree, but Louie came from behind to cut him off at the last moment, arriving first, followed seconds later by Tommy and Will.
    “Ha!” crowed Louie as his horse danced beneath him. “Victorious over His Majesty’s newest knight.”
    Tommy snorted. “Enjoy it. It’s a long way back to Mayfair, and your old bones will be feeling it.”
    “Nonsense,” Louie said. “I feel invincible. I’ve never been in better form, wouldn’t you say, Will?”
    “I’d say that you’re within a whisper of sounding like the most conceited earl in the ton .”
    Filthy and winded, the men dismounted and walked their horses along the stream and watered them. Louie handed out sandwiches his cook had packed.
    Will said, “Last night, Heck thought it would be amusing to lean out a second-floor window and shoot pebbles at the flowers in our garden.”
    “And he’s only six,” Tommy said with wicked glee. “Too bad I won’t be around to watch him vex you as you try to form him into the responsible heir of a viscount.”
    Tommy felt his brother’s eyes lingering on him at the mention of not being around in coming years. He should have kept his mouth shut. “I suppose I’ll have a taste of what Father must have suffered when he was training me,” Will said. “I remember him telling Mother it couldn’t be done, but you know Mother—she was endlessly optimistic.”
    “She was,” Tommy agreed with a trace of that old emptiness. She’d died when he was seven, their father a few years after. The world was full of dying, Tommy had discovered early on; he meant to live . To behave with no regard for risk—that was his way of thumbing his nose at death.
    Louie polished off the last hunk of his sandwich. “So, Tommy, have you considered staying? You know the whole family is happy to have you back, and India won’t miss you for a year or two. Why take a long boat journey again after only a few months at home? It seems like pure madness.”
    “Really, madness ?” Tommy laughed. Though it was true that he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the long return voyage, and it was quite fine to be somewhere that had an autumn after all the years in India,