She shrugged. “I don’t know why the allowance from my father stopped—it was long before he died—but it did. Perhaps he thought I was old enough to support myself—I was sixteen. We had no way of contacting him, but we managed. We grew vegetables and there were eggs, and of course I hunted.”

“Hunted? But I thought you objected to—”

“I object to hunting foxes for sport. Hunting rabbits and hares for the pot is different. It was a necessity.”

So this “useless girl” had staved off starvation by hunting to keep herself and her servant alive. Her father deserved a thrashing. Pity he was dead; Hart would have liked to deliver the thrashing himself.

A thought occurred to him. “If you were so short of money, how did you acquire that stallion of yours?”

She dimpled, and said in a suspiciously airy voice, “I had rich neighbors, and some of them were, let us say, careless with their horses.”

“You stole that horse?”

“No!” Her expression was part guilt, part glee. “Not exactly. My grandfather left one good mare—a beautiful Arabian called Juno—originally bought for my mother, so the mare was mine. She was a lovely creature, getting on in years but still able to bear progeny. She came into season at the very same time the rich and careless guest of one of my neighbors left his stallion out in the paddock while he went off with friends . . .”

“You put your mare in with the stallion?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Not exactly. But I did put her in the next paddock and let nature take its course. The stallion jumped the fence, of course. I returned him to his paddock afterward, and nobody knew what had taken place. But as I’d hoped, he got a colt on Juno. Sultan was her last foal.” She slid him a glance that was part guilt, part triumph. “I know it wasn’t very ethical, but you should have seen how carelessly this fellow treated his horse. And he had the worst seat I’ve ever seen. He didn’t deserve such a fine animal.”

Hart shrugged. He had no issue with a stallion jumping a fence to reach a mare in season. He knew exactly how that stallion felt.

“So when you were so hard up, why didn’t you sell Sultan? You could have sold the animal for a good sum.” Her answer should have surprised him, but it didn’t.

“Sell Sultan? I couldn’t. When he was born, I helped deliver him—Juno had a difficult birth—and I raised him and trained him. He’s family.”

Of course he was. Dog, stallion, elderly servant—Lady Georgiana Rutherford’s family. Until the last year, apparently, when she’d discovered her real family . . .

“Now it’s my turn,” she said.

Hart frowned. “Turn for what?” He knew perfectly well what.

“To ask you about your life.”