“Well, then,” his lordship said, fiddling with Revanche’s mane, “I suppose we know the harness works.”

“You are uncomfortable,” Robert said. “I am sorry for that, but this is who I am. I have staring spells, I have seizures, and they are only the visible parts of my illness. The memory lapses, muddled thinking, the fatigue…they are equally burdensome. That others have to deal with any of it vexes me exceedingly. Walk on.”

A horse recovering from exertion should not stand. That commandment welled up from childhood, and Revanche was apparently happy to saunter forth.

“I’ve considered having my leg amputated,” Stephen said, both hands resting on the top of his cane. “You must not tell my family I said that, or they will haul me before a board of examiners.”

I am your family now. “If you can’t end your life, you’ll at least end your leg’s life?”

“The bloody thing hurts, Rothhaven. All the time, and it will only grow worse as I age. I can delay the inevitable by living in a Bath chair, but would you rather have twenty years shuffling around with your canes or forty years in a Bath chair?”

Were Robert not on horseback, idly circling the arena, had he not just had a spectacular staring spell, Stephen would very likely not be sharing these confidences—these frustrations.

“So why haven’t you made a date with the surgeon’s knife?”

“I have, twice. Canceled both times. The surgeons, fellows who learned a lot on the battlefield and were confident of their craft, talked me out of it. Infection is inevitable, and even a severed limb can cause pain. One of them opined that the problem is not my shinbone—he had some Latin name for it—but rather my knee. What a cheerful topic this is. You’d best canter him the other direction, and then I’ll fetch my mount so we can hack about the park.”

The riding out had started two days ago, at the walk, with short stretches of trot. “I want to canter up the drive,” Robert said.

Stephen resumed his perch on the barrel at the center of the arena. “Do you really?”

“The worst that can happen is apparently that I will have another staring spell, in which case, if you don’t instruct Revanche to halt, he will carry me back to the stable yard and halt himself.”

They tested the theory, with Stephen instructing the horse to halt mid-canter in the second direction. Revanche nearly sat on his tail, so attentive was he to Stephen’s command.

“Why aren’t you quaking in dread?” Stephen asked when a groom had been sent for his horse. “Why aren’t you leaving this arena, never again to return? You had a staring spell and didn’t even know it.”

The question had deeper significance, relating to Bath chairs, death, and tomorrow’s looming ordeal.