by Joan Wolf
“But you gave sugar to Monarch,” Nicky said.
“Not all stallions are the same, and Monarch has always been a very sweet-tempered horse.”
Nicky looked thoughtful.
“Why don’t we look at the stallion in the next paddock,” I suggested brightly, and Savile gave me an amused look as he began to walk in the suggested direction.
The stallion in the last paddock was also a bay and one of the most enormous horses I had ever seen. He snorted when he saw us and then ostentatiously turned his back and looked off into the distance, his head held imperiously high, his neck an arch of arrogance, the whole of his strongly muscled body exuding insolent disdain.
“Centurion is not famous for his friendly disposition,” Savile said. “He is, however, a Derby and a Gold Cup winner and he is much sought after as a sire.”
“Why is he so unfriendly, sir?” Nicky asked.
Savile replied thoughtfully, “It often happens that the most competitive horses, the ones with the real fire, the real drive to win, are the ones who remain essentially untamed. It’s an important part of their nature, and if a man tries to squelch it he either drives the horse into absolute rebellion or he kills all the fire that makes the animal what he is.”
It both surprised and moved me that an aristocrat such as Savile should evince so deep an understanding of the nature of an animal such as this one.
The three of us leaned on the fence, and this time Nicky failed to get between us. In fact, he was on the other side of the earl and evidently perfectly content to remain there.
Savile’s arm brushed against mine.
My heartbeat accelerated.
He didn’t move and I didn’t either, afraid to seem as if I were making too much of what was essentially an extremely casual contact.
The three of us stood there for five minutes watching the supremely beautiful and arrogant Thoroughbred totally ignore us, while I tried to get control of my breathing.
“I like him,” Nicky said at last, and it was as if the sound of his voice broke a spell that was holding me captive. I reached up, ostensibly to brush an insect away from my cheek, and then I stepped away from the earl.
“Do you?” Savile said to Nicky. “Why?”
“He’s like a prince,” Nicky said.
“And he knows it,” I added dryly.
“Take a Centurion colt to market and you will realize a very considerable sum of money, Mrs. Saunders,” Savile said. “Neither Rajah nor Monarch will command as much.”
At that point Nicky finally decided to insert himself between us. “Are you going to choose him to be the father of Maria’s baby, Mama?”
I frowned. “I never thought of trying to sell a foal of Maria’s to a racehorse owner, Savile. After all, she herself has never raced. She has no record.”
He shrugged. “To be honest with you, I don’t think that will matter a great deal. It’s true that you will not get as much as you would if you had a mare with a winning record, but Centurion foals are in very high demand. There are not that many of them, you see. I am very particular about the mares I allow to be bred to him.”
I lifted my eyes to him in surprise.
“And you would accept Maria?”
“Maria is one of the loveliest mares I have ever seen.” The eyes holding mine were very golden. Savile’s voice had dropped suddenly, become soft, almost caressing. I felt a throb deep within my body. For some reason, Tommy’s words came rushing to my mind; “She reminds me of you, Gail.”
I must be insane, I thought in agitation. Did I really think the earl was trying to make love to me? In broad daylight? In front of my son?
I went back to looking at the stallion. “And what is Centurion’s stud fee, my lord?”
“Two hundred fifty pounds.”
“Two hundred fifty pounds!” My eyes swung back to him, this time in shock. “Have you taken leave of your senses, my lord? I cannot afford to pay two hundred fifty pounds for a stud fee.”
“Ah, but you are not to pay me until you have sold the foal,” he reminded me. “The Duke of Harwich bought the last Centurion foal for over a thousand pounds.”
By now I was beyond shock. “Dear God,” was all I could say.
Nicky grabbed my hand and began to pump it excitedly. “That’s a lot of money, Mama!”
“It surely is, sweetheart.”
“If your goal is to make money, then I recommend that you choose Centurion,” Savile said.
I was trying to think. “What if there is something wrong with the foal? What if I can’t sell it?”
“Then there would be no charge. I guarantee healthy foals,” Savile said blandly.
I looked once more at the splendid, untamed prince standing so arrogantly in his paddock.
“He wouldn’t hurt Maria?” Nicky asked doubtfully.
“Centurion likes mares much more than he likes people,” Savile assured him. “He will take very good care of her.”
“You’ll have to pull her shoes, though, or she might take good care of him!” I shot back.
“Don’t worry, we know how to deal with prickly ladies around here, Mrs. Saunders,” Savile said gravely, and once more I had the uneasy feeling that he was not talking about my mare.
Then he smiled down at Nicky. “Do you want to see the yearlings?”
“Yes, sir!”
We set off in another direction, and Nicky skipped along beside the earl, talking and asking more questions.
I had never before realized how much he would enjoy being around a man who was the right age to be his father.
Nicky was obviously sleepy at dinner, so I left Savile at the dining-room table with his bottle of port and took my son upstairs to put him to bed.
Nicky fell asleep almost immediately, but I waited in my room for another hour, afraid to go back downstairs.
By now there was no longer any point in trying to conceal from myself that I was strongly attracted to the Earl of Savile. The merest brush of the man’s arm against mine did more to my nerves than had any of the romantic tactics that other men had tried during the six years since Tommy’s death.
The plain truth was that I did not want to be alone with him. I did not trust myself.
At last I decided that it was late enough for me to seek him out and decently make my excuses about needing to go to sleep. I smoothed down my rose-colored afternoon frock—Savile had thoughtfully told me not to worry about bringing an evening dress—and marched down the stairs to the library, where the butler had told me his lordship could be found.
He was sprawled in a comfortable-looking armchair in front of the wood fire when I came in the door. The bottle of port next to him looked as if it had had some serious inroads made upon it. A huge portrait of a male Melville in tights and Elizabethan ruff gazed arrogantly out at the room from over the fireplace.
I said, “Nicky is asleep, my lord, and I believe I am going to follow him. It has been a long and tiring day.”
He turned to look at me and then slowly got to his feet. He ran his fingers through his hair, dislodging a few strands so that they fell across his forehead. He leaned his hands on his desk as if for balance, looked at me somberly, and said, “You should send that boy away to school, Gail. He is being smothered alive at home.”
All my thoughts of sexual attraction disappeared as if by magic.
“You know nothing of the matter!” I said furiously. “In fact, you scarcely know Nicky at all. I can assure you that he is perfectly happy at home with me at Deepcote and doing his lessons with Mr. Ludgate.”
He leaned farther forward on his hands, his eyes commanding mine. “Mr. Ludgate is an old man, and so is Mr. Macintosh. The boy is obviously starved for the company of someone whose range of interest is wider than cooking and books.”
The red that had been hovering before my eyes since he’d first brought up the subject of Nicky leaving home now deepened to a bright crimson. The fact that I was secretly afraid that he might be right only mad
e me angrier.
“When I want your opinion you can be sure I will ask for it,” I snapped. “In the meantime, Nicky is my son and I know what is best for him.”
“You’re asking him for the kind of companionship you ought to be getting from a husband,” Savile said bluntly. “And that isn’t doing Nicky any good at all.”
At those words, something in me snapped.
“How dare you!” I snarled, and, striding swiftly across the room, I stopped at the desk and raised my hand to strike him.
He caught my wrist in midair. “Oh no you don’t,” he said softly. Then, still holding my arm, he came around the desk until he was standing beside me. Before I realized what he was going to do, he had pinned my arm to my side and his lips were coming down on mine.
Fire leaped through my veins at the touch of his mouth. I knew I should push him away. I even raised my free hand to his shoulder to do it, but my fingers stilled against the blue wool of his coat and did nothing. A moment later my arm slid around his neck, opening my body so that it pressed full-length against his.
It was not a chaste kiss. My mouth was open, our tongues probed each other, and I tasted the heady sweetness of port on his breath. I was standing on my toes, and when he let go of my captured wrist I slid that arm around his neck as well.
I felt his hands circle my waist. Then one of them came up to cup the back of my head and the other covered my breast. The intense thrill of pleasure that went through me at that caress frightened me back to my senses.
I put both my hands on his shoulders and pushed hard.
It took a moment for him to realize what I was doing, but then he let me go.
I jumped back from him as if I had been released from a slingshot.
“Oh God,” I said. “Oh God!”
I stared at him in utter terror.
“Gail,” he said. He was noticeably out of breath. “Don’t look that way, sweetheart. Please don’t look that way.”
“What way?” I managed to croak.
“Frightened. Believe me, I am not trying to extort payment from you for taking your mare. I never meant this to happen. I just lost control.”
I had never suspected him of such a thing. Such low tactics were beneath him; I knew that. It wasn’t Savile I was frightened of; it was myself.
I was scared to death by how much I wanted him.
This had never happened to me before. Making love with Tommy had been sweet, but I had always been content to let him be the one to initiate it.
Much as I had loved Tommy, I had never burned for him the way I burned now for the Earl of Savile.
I said hurriedly, “I think I had better go upstairs, my lord. Right now.”
The fire behind him lit his hair to a brighter gold. The eyes that were watching my mouth had an unmistakably hungry look to them.
“Yes,” he said. “I think you had better.”
“Good night,” I said, and rushed out of the room.
The elegantly hung four-poster was extremely comfortable, but I did not get much sleep that night. Both my body and my mind were aroused, the one aching for something it could not have and the other worrying about what Savile had said about Nicky.
Nicky was perfectly fine at home, I told myself with defiant determination. Savile knew nothing about the matter. My boy was happy and healthy, both in mind and body.
The more I thought about the earl’s words, the more my indignation swelled. Easy for Savile to tell me to send Nicky away to school! Would he also care to tell me how I might pay public-school tuition?
Of course, if I could sell Maria’s foal for anything near the sum that Savile had quoted to me, I might manage it, I thought.
Then the image of the earl’s face as it had appeared as he looked at me right before I left the room flashed before my eyes.
“I just lost control,” he had said.
I did not think he was a man who lost control very often.
Of course, I had lost control too.
It doesn’t matter, I told myself. I have nothing to worry about. Tomorrow Nicky and I will go home and I will probably never see him again.
It was disconcerting, how unutterably depressing I found that thought to be.
I turned on my other side and went back to worrying about Nicky.
So passed the night.
* * * *
At about five in the morning it started to rain. I heard the drops tapping steadily against my windowpanes, and when the chambermaid came into my room at eight she raised the blinds on a bleak, gray day. Nicky and I went down to breakfast together, and Savile was already there, drinking coffee and reading the Morning Post.
He looked up and smiled courteously when we came in. My face in the mirror that morning had borne the unmistakable shadows of sleeplessness, but his looked perfectly normal.
For some reason, I found that I resented that.
“What a vile day,” I said as I put a boiled egg and a muffin on my plate and came to sit at the table, making sure to keep a place between us.
“I know,” Savile replied. “I am sending you and Nicky home in the chaise. This is not weather for an open carriage.”
Nicky carried his own extremely full plate to the table and took the place directly to the earl’s left. “Are you coming with us, sir?” he asked, hope shining naked in his crystal-blue eyes.
Savile folded his newspaper and put it aside. “I am afraid not, Nicky,” he answered gently. “I have an engagement in London later today.”
Nicky made no attempt to hide his disappointment.
“Perhaps you can come to visit when you bring Maria back to us,” he suggested.
“Perhaps,” Savile said in the same gentle voice, and I knew that he would not come.
He turned to look at me, and when he spoke his voice was all business. “Hall will keep Maria here until he is certain that she is in foal. We can make arrangements then to return her to you.”
“Thank you, my lord,” I said.
He nodded. He was sitting only one place away from me at the table, but I felt as if he were a million miles away.
One did not need to be a savant to comprehend that he bitterly regretted his lapse of the night before.
Was he afraid that I was now going to pursue him?
If he was, he flattered himself.
I said to my son, “Hurry up and eat, sweetheart. His lordship has things to do, and we need to get back home.”
Nicky, who was like a tuning fork when it came to my feelings, immediately put down his fork. “I’m not hungry, Mama,” he said. “I’m ready to leave whenever you are.”
I looked at his full plate and felt a sharp pang of conscience. I promised myself that I would have Mrs. Macintosh cook him an immense meal as soon as we reached Deepcote.
I said to Savile, “Nicky and I will wait upon your convenience, my lord.”
Savile looked at Nicky’s plate and a muscle jumped in the corner of his jaw.
“I will order the chaise, then,” he said.
I stood up. “That will be splendid. We shall be waiting in the front hall in fifteen minutes.”
Savile stood up. “All right.”
I forced myself to hold out my hand. “Thank you, my lord, for your generosity.”
He seemed to hesitate, then he took my hand into his much larger grip.
It was as if a streak of lightning leaped from his fingers into mine. We both disconnected the handshake, as if we had been burned.
“Gail…” he said, and the businesslike tone was quite gone from his voice.
But I backed away from him. “Goodbye, my lord,” I said firmly. Then I took Nicky’s safe little hand into mine, turned, and walked out of that room.
Chapter Eleven
The lilac trees in the garden at Deepcote were in flower when I got the notice from my landlord that would change my life.
My dear Mrs. Saunders,
I have just completed the sale of Deepcote to a Mr. William Northrup. Mr. Northrup
and his family wish to take possession of the house as soon as possible, therefore I will not be renewing your lease.
I will appreciate it if you will have vacated the premises by the thirtieth of June.
Your devoted servant,
John Mar
I sat staring at the letter before me in a state of shock. June thirtieth was exactly four weeks away. How on earth was I supposed to relocate myself and my business, which included seven horses, within such a short period of time?
I went immediately to get my copy of the lease, to make certain that Mr. Mar could in fact do this to me. After fifteen minutes of closely perusing the document, it became brutally clear to me that he could.
In exactly twenty-eight days I would be out of a home.
I stood at the morning-room window, looking out at the lilac trees in all their misty beauty, and tried to think rationally about how I should approach this disaster.
As I saw it, the most immediate problem was the horses. If I wanted to continue my business in a new location, I had to hold on to them. A good school horse is worth his weight in gold, and I had four of them: two ponies and two geldings. Then there was my beloved old Noah; Squirt, Nicky’s pony; and Maria.
Maria! At least I could do something about her, I thought. I would write to Savile and ask him to keep her at Rayleigh until I had a place for her. She was still there because she had not been successfully bred on her first try with Centurion, and Savile was keeping her until she came into season again so that they could try once more. I was certain that he would not mind keeping her until I had found a home to bring her to.
That left me with three horses and three ponies. Not to mention Nicky, myself, and the Macintoshes.
It would be nothing short of a miracle if I could find a new establishment within a month’s time, I thought. I didn’t even know how to go about looking for something. Tommy had been the one who found Deepcote for us all those years ago.
Inevitably, the name Sam Watson popped into my head. I knew that if I asked Sam, he would take in my horses. I knew that he would also take in Nicky and me and the Macintoshes.