by Betina Krahn
Available from Kensington Publishing Corp.
wherever books are sold
Prologue
New York State, 1888
This was the moment she had been waiting for, her time to shine.
She had the perfect horse—seventeen intimidating hands and black as midnight—and the perfect riding habit—scarlet coat with a black overskirt that hid her trousers, and a saucy top hat cocked at an eye-catching angle—
The Bellington Hunt had gathered in the estate’s stone-paved court and the barrel-chested hunt master was making the rounds, glad-handing the men and flattering the few ladies who would soon be riding over hill and dale in pursuit of a fox and a pack of baying hounds. The morning was brisk and sunny, with wisps of mist lingering among the stately oaks that dotted the grounds. The horses snorted and stepped sharply, anxious to be off, while the riders laid wagers on who would be first at the kill and quietly appraised the saucy young thing holding the reins of a strapping black stallion.
They were staring at her, so she lifted her chin and stared right back. And when the hunt master introduced her to nearby gentlemen, she thrust out her hand and gave them a shake they’d remember. She glanced at the other lady riders and thought: Sidesaddle Sadie’s, every one of them. Have to be hoisted up and tucked into stirrups like babies in buggies. Well, no mounting block for me, no sir! The minute that horn sounds, they’ll see Daisy Bumgarten’s a horsewoman who don’t need coddling. I’ll throw this soft bunch of city boys some gen-u-ine competition.
“Daisy!” Her mother’s fierce whisper penetrated her concentration, and Daisy looked down instantly to make sure her skirt didn’t reveal what she wore beneath. Her mother gave her reddened cheek a kiss and straightened her hat to a more demure angle, giving the impression of a doting mother come to see her daughter off. Daisy knew better. She had come to remind her daughter how much was riding on this opportunity.
“Don’t stare.” Elizabeth Bumgarten gave her arm a covert squeeze. “Remember your manners. Rein in that beast of yours and hang back. Stay in the middle of the pack—try to keep company with the other ladies. And avoid fences. No proper lady could keep her seat going over a fence.”
“Mount up!” the hunt master bellowed. “We’re soon away!”
Every horse and rider in the yard was suddenly in motion, including Daisy.
“Be sure . . . use the . . .”
Mounting block. Daisy didn’t need to hear it to know what her mother intended as she led her horse through the press and around that confounded contraption. With a quick look over her shoulder to be certain she was out of sight, she grabbed the saddle and jumped up to slip her boot into the stirrup. Swinging her leg over the saddle, she smiled. Let’s see any of these other gals mount half so slick. She pulled her skirt up to tuck out of the way. The horn blew, the hounds tore off at a wicked pace, and a shout went up as the riders bolted out of the yard and across the nearby field. Daisy’s last coherent thought before excitement seized her every sense was that her mother hadn’t even noticed she was using her western saddle.
* * *
The horses were lathered and smelly, the riders were windblown and red faced, and the hounds barked triumphantly as they jumped around the dismounting riders in the same courtyard two hours later. The male hunters vied with bourbon-bold bluster for recognition of their prowess on horseback. Hip flasks—silver and monogrammed—were passed around, and one found its way into Daisy’s hands. She grinned at its owner, tilted it up, and took a long, fiery swig of Kentucky’s finest.
Raucous male laughter burst around her as she swiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve and thrust the flask back into her benefactor’s hand. She’d done it—she had led the pack and jumped half a dozen fences and proved her mettle in grand style. And they toasted her performance in true camaraderie with their best liquor. She was too busy basking in the heat of their admiring gazes to notice the rush of footsteps behind her. It was only when her mother snagged her arm and spun her about that she realized she was in trouble.
“Daisy, dear, you must be exhausted from such exertion. You simply must come along to rest and change for tea,” Elizabeth Bumgarten said through lips pressed as tight as barrel staves. Her eyes were intense and her grip was fierce. Daisy allowed herself to be dragged away from the rest of the hunting party, praying that her mother hadn’t witnessed that impulsive gulp of bourbon. The heat of the draught lingered nicely in her throat and belly, fortification that would no doubt be necessary.
She was escorted firmly through the mansion’s main hall, up the grand, carved, mahogany staircase, and around a gallery to one of the rooms set aside for the visiting ladies.
The China blue bedchamber was filled with wrapped dresses hung from wardrobe doors and was piled with valises, hatboxes, and small trunks. Discarded tissue, recently shed shoes, tins of perfumed powder, ribbons, and hairbrushes littered the floor and dressing tables. Mercifully, it was empty of ladies and ladies’ maids just now, so no one else would hear the blistering Daisy was about to receive.
“How dare you present yourself to these people in that—that—” Her mother glared at Daisy’s overskirt, which was still turned up in front and tucked at her waist, and then at her woolen trousers. Daisy half expected the fabric to burst into flames. “What in Heaven’s Holy Name did you think you were doing dragging those things along?”
“I can’t ride sideways, Ma. I damn near killed myself the last time I tried. You try takin’ a fence on one of those death traps.” Recognizing the mistake of mentioning fences, she lifted her chin. “Unless you’d rather I just wore a damned skirt and let my naked legs show?”
“How dare you use such language with me?” Her mother backed her against the wall beside an open wardrobe and leaned in, an inch from Daisy’s nose, where she inhaled sharply. “You’ve been drinking!”
“Just a nip. To get the blood flowin’.” Daisy winced. She sounded too much like her beloved Uncle Red just now, and she was fairly sure her mother wouldn’t miss the similarity.
Elizabeth blanched and her mouth worked without sound. A moment later both her voice and her color returned with a vengeance.
“You know we’re here on sufferance. If Mrs. Barclay hadn’t intervened to get us an invitation—this is our one chance to show we’re more than just a bunch of raucous, ill-mannered western—”
A gaggle of feminine voices burst into the stuffy chamber, and a second later the mahogany door swung open to the sound of Mrs. Townsend-Burden’s grating, high-pitched laughter.
“Did you see the woman’s face?” she crowed. “Purely mortified.”
“Rightly so,” said a voice as yet unfamiliar, but betraying the tortured vowels of Boston proper. “And those bloomers. Good God—even Amelia Bloomer has given those up by now.”
“They’re not bloom—” Daisy’s whispered protest was cut off by her mother’s hand across her mouth. The gowns hanging from the wardrobe doors hid them, but they wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. Spotting the open doorway to the adjacent bathing room, Elizabeth impulsively yanked Daisy into the white-tiled chamber and pressed a finger to her own tightly clamped mouth, ordering silence.
“And riding astride with the men,” the Townsend-Burden woman continued. “Brazen creature.”
“Uncouth is what she is,” came a third voice. “Where is that girl of mine? These shoes are killing me.” That plummy, distinctive voice lowered. “No doubt she’s given the men more than an eyeful this day.”
The laughter was sharp as cats’ claws.
“Did you see her this morning before they started out? Not waiting to be introduced . . . smiling, laughing, and shaking hands like . . . like a man. Mark my words: that one knows too much.”
“A hussy, that’s what she is. Far too bold to be anything else.”
Daisy’s chest tightened as she watched the fire in her mother’s eyes flicker and damp. She wanted to look away, but the pain she read in Elizabeth’s face kept her riveted. This was
what her mother had brought the family to New York to do. For the last three years Elizabeth Bumgarten’s every action, every hope, every expenditure had been focused on getting them into society, on getting her girls well fixed in the world.
Daisy had mostly ignored or pretended amusement at her mother’s aspirations and the lessons, fittings, and exposures to “culture” that resulted. In truth, she had resented them and the implication that because she and her sisters were new to moneyed life, they were somehow inferior and had to work to become worthy of notice. Deeper still, she had chafed at her mother’s constant watchfulness that said she was not to be trusted around men. Thus motivated, she had found ways to escape most of her mother’s attempts to transform her.
Until now. Until she heard her mother’s fears and dire assessments coming from the mouths of others, ridiculing her mother’s attempts at her daughters’ betterment and naming Daisy a hussy—a judgment that was a bit too close to the bone.
“Just goes to show what money cannot buy,” the third woman said, her cultured tones dripping disdain. “Breeding, manners, and good taste. The chit and her pathetic mother will never set foot in my ballroom, I can tell you that. On that Mr. McAllister and I quite agree.”
With the drop of that name and the mention of a ballroom, the identity of the third guest was made clear. Mr. McAllister. Ward McAllister. Even Daisy knew that name. That meant their third detractor could be none other than Mrs. John Jacob Astor herself. The queen of New York society. The creator and self-appointed keeper of the Four Hundred. She had apparently deigned to attend the “boring country house party,” after all.
Daisy watched her mother’s shoulders round and her face redden with humiliation. The verbal scalding went on until the ladies’ maids descended to help their mistresses freshen for tea.
By the time the women exited the chamber, Daisy and her mother were pressed back into a corner behind the porcelain water heater, having missed detection by the slimmest of margins. Daisy stepped out cautiously and peered into the bedchamber, which now resembled the workroom at the rear of a dressmaker’s shop. When she turned back, her mother was staring at her with a desolate look.
“It seems you’ve gotten your wish,” Elizabeth said bitterly. “You won’t be troubled with manners and prissy clothes and ‘expectations’ ever again.”
“It’s not too late,” Daisy said anxiously. “I’ll behave. I won’t look at a single man and I’ll use my best Sunday manners. You’ll see—”
“I have already seen. And so have they,” Elizabeth said, her voice low and choked with anger. “As of this day, we are social pariahs. But know this, girl—you have not only ruined my hopes, you have ruined your sisters’ as well. Their reputations, their expectations are forever tarnished by your headstrong, selfish behavior.” She strode toward the bedchamber, but paused in front of Daisy for one last salvo.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
One
London, two years later
“You don’t have to do this, girl,” Uncle Red said as they paused on the front steps of the Earl of Mountjoy’s palatial London home.
“Yes, I do.” Daisy struggled for breath against her wickedly tight corset. She had worked fervently for the last two years to come to this moment. A little suffocation and a few spots before her eyes were a small price to pay for climbing onto the social register. A girl had obligations, after all—sisters to marry off and a mother with badly bruised pride.
This was going to make everything she had done wrong, right. She was going to marry a nobleman—a top nobleman—and take him home and watch Mrs. Astor choke on “that Bumgarten tart’s” good fortune. Assuming, of course, that she survived the night in this damned corset.
“You want a nip to brace you up?” Uncle Red patted the conspicuous bulge in the breast pocket of his coat. His concern was downright sweet, considering his own duress . . . being stone-cold sober and stuffed into a cutaway with a starched collar that was choking him senseless. But if anyone could sympathize with a body it would be Redmond Strait. Her blustery, ruddy-faced uncle had a sentimental streak about as wide as the massive silver vein he’d discovered in Nevada.
“I’m fine, Uncle Red. Truly.” She lied through her teeth; she could really use a nip just now. “Couldn’t be better. My feet are positively itching for a dance.”
Red sighed at her determined expression and took her at her word. The minute they handed over their invitation to the liveried footman, he smacked his mouth thirstily and struck off in search of the nearest punch bowl.
Daisy paused at the bottom of the great expanse of marble steps leading up to the ballroom, dreading the climb in an elaborate gown that had to weigh fifty pounds and made her look like she’d been caught in a florist shop explosion. Silk flowers were stitched to embroidered vines running riot over her narrow satin bodice and half bare shoulders—not to mention those absurd butterflies the countess had insisted on plastering all over her. She looked down at her waist, grabbed an eye-catching blue insect, and tugged until the threads that held it gave with a pop.
With a fierce sense of satisfaction, she gathered her skirts to proceed, but then someone clutched her elbow.
“Come with me, Miss Bumgarten.” Lady Evelyn Hargrave, Countess of Kew—Daisy’s sponsor and guide on her matrimonial quest—had eyes narrowed to slits and lips frozen into an icy smile. The force she used in spiriting her protégée out of public view told Daisy she was in trouble.
The countess ushered her down a long hallway and into a dimly lighted room filled with stuffed bookcases, heavy leather furnishings, and the smell of old cigars. As the door closed, the countess turned on her.
“Where in Heaven’s name are your gloves?”
Daisy sighed and produced lengths of limp kidskin from the folds of her dress. She was in for it. The English were obsessed with gloves, wore them morning, noon, and night—sometimes ate in the damned things.
“I believe I have made myself perfectly clear on this matter.” The countess yanked them from her and smoothed the wrinkles caused by her moist hands. “Ladies never appear in public without gloves.”
“They make my arms feel like sausages,” Daisy said as the countess held one out for her to insert her hand.
“They wouldn’t if you—” The countess bit off the rest, but Daisy finished the comment in her head: didn’t have such unladylike arms. She couldn’t help it that her body had what old Chuck Worth in Paris had called “a remarkably physical aspect.” She’d spent much of her life wrangling horses, carrying saddles, and hefting bales of hay back at her home in Nevada, and three years of city living in New York before she headed to Paris and London hadn’t been enough to soften all of her contours.
The countess struggled with the row of tiny leather-covered buttons, paused suddenly, and looked up with splotches blooming in her cheeks.
“Where are your butterflies?”
“I felt silly in them, so I—I—”
Daisy opened her other hand to reveal the squished blue silk. The countess’s mouth opened and worked, but produced only a gurgle. Daisy wondered if she were strangling on her own juices.
There’s a thought.
“We paid a small fortune to have those hand painted to resemble rare and exotic specimens.” The countess snatched the faux insect and tried to restore it, then stopped dead. “There are supposed to be two in your coiffure and two more at your shoulder. What the devil did you do with them?”
Daisy wished the woman would just come out with a good, old-fashioned “hell’s fire” or “damnation” and get it off her chest. Her blanches of disappointment were far too much like Daisy’s long-suffering mother’s. With a huff, she opened her reticule to reveal the four crumpled butterflies she had removed on the way to the ball.
The countess closed her eyes briefly and looked as if someone were lighting a pyre around her feet.
“You have engaged me to assist you in your quest, Miss Bumgarten. I cannot do so if you ref
use to follow my advice.” She drew back irritably. “I shall be waiting by the stairs to accompany you, should you decide to cooperate.”
Daisy watched the door close and then glowered at the gloves and butterflies.
“I’m a grown woman.” She tossed her reticule onto a nearby chair and started to button the wretched accessory. “I shouldn’t have to walk around frumped up like a goddamned flowerpot!”
“I agree.” Deep male tones startled her.
She clasped a hand over her racing heart and looked around to find the top of a head sticking up behind the back of a sofa.
“What are you doing there?” she demanded.
“Escaping a certain young lady’s irate mother. At least, I was before you and your governess barged in.”
“The countess is not my governess.” Daisy drew herself up with true indignation. “Eavesdropping is—you might have had the decency to say something, announce your presence.”
“And miss such a fascinating conversation?” A face wearing a wince appeared. “Oh. I see what you mean about the flowerpot.”
He began to rise. And rise. Daisy found herself watching a tall, broad-shouldered man unfold from the sofa . . . longish hair, arresting face, elegant evening clothes that sat casually on a leanly muscled frame. What she could see in the dim light gave her a very bad feeling. Well, not so much bad as wicked, the kind that started just behind her navel and curled upward and downward into alarmingly excitable territory.
With a flush, she jerked her gaze back to her glove buttons and tried to concentrate on stuffing the buttons through the loops. But he moved around the sofa toward her and she soon found herself looking up . . . and up . . . and up. He came to a stop barely an arm’s length away, and she took a half step back.