“Footing is how I came a cropper all those years ago. It’s how my mare bowed two front tendons. It’s how I ended up crawling to the chamber pot.” She blew out a breath while her husband merely looked at her. “This race is upsetting me, Deene, but not because you may have wagered more than we can afford—or not just that. I question why we’d put a good animal at risk, why we’d put Aelfreth at risk. I know this isn’t a lark for you, but…”
“Eve, I assure you, we can afford the money riding on this race. I know what Anthony has told you, but on many of these outings to Town, I’ve been meeting with my bankers and their clerks and my men of business. Anthony has reasons for presenting the situation conservatively, and I will brace him on those reasons, but trust me when I say we are not in difficulties.”
He would tell her that even if they were in the worst difficulties imaginable—wouldn’t he? His Grace was a poor manager of finances. Her Grace would never admit such a thing, but it had become evident to Eve when she observed the lengths to which Westhaven had gone to secure management of the family’s resources.
A gentleman could be deeply, deeply in debt and still maintain appearances, and the gentleman’s family would have no notion of the problem. If he were a titled gentleman, then he could not be thrown into the hulks for his indebtedness, and the situation could get very bad indeed.
Eve caught up with her husband at the rushing brook bisecting the racecourse. He rode Beast right up to the bank. “The ground is still more or less solid, but if we get more rain tonight…”
“I hate mud, and I hate muddy water.” Eve’s tone was grimmer than she’d intended. “If I were riding William, I’d cue him to jump the entire blessed thing, to overjump it, so he lands well away and runs no risk of having to scramble on either bank.”
“You will tell him this when you tuck him in tonight.”
Deene was perfectly serious. He believed Eve could communicate with the horse on some level known only to horsemen and horsewomen, though Eve herself didn’t give the horse—or herself—that much credit.
“I will tell Aelfreth, and we’ll send somebody out to inspect before the stewards close the course tomorrow morning.”
They rode the remainder of the course, though they already knew each jump, had inspected each jump for loose nails, bad footing, rotting timber, and subtle shifts brought about by weather, the passage of time, the time of day, and even changes in the wind.
At the last fence, where the horses turned for home and had a long, level stretch to use up whatever speed remained to them, Eve paused.
“There will be flags tomorrow on the pavilions and at the finish line.”
“What of it?” Deene was still glowering, and he’d still not told Eve the rest of his wager, which left her with an ominous, queasy feeling.
“If there’s a stout breeze, the horses will come around the last turn and be able to hear the pennants whipping in the breeze. They’ll see the flags snapping and the flag ropes slapping against the poles.”
“A detail, surely. These horses are bred to run, Eve, and they’ll know they’re headed for the finish.”
There was no such thing as a detail in a contest like this, but Eve and her spouse had run out of racecourse. “Husband, won’t you tell me, please? It isn’t that I don’t…”
She fell silent. The word trust was too explosive, a Congreve rocket of issues lay therein, and not all on Deene’s side of the marriage. She thought back to their wedding night, when she’d had every opportunity to trust her husband, and had yet held her silence.
If a horse refused a jump for no apparent reason, a competent rider reconnoitered, then turned around, aimed the beast right back at it, and cleared the thing smartly, brooking no excuses.
“I want to know what hangs in the balance with this race, Lucas, because I do not want you carrying the burden of this wager all on your own shoulders. You’ve allowed me to contribute to William’s training, and that means a great deal to me. Allow me to contribute something as a wife as well.”
He fell silent, his expression grave. The unease inside Eve grew greater as she concluded that whatever he was about to tell her, it might yet not be the full extent of what he was risking with this race.
“I’ve wagered William. If I lose, William becomes Dolan’s possession. If Dolan loses, I get Goblin—and the money. Mustn’t forget the money. Shall we return to the stables?”
He’d wagered a one-in-a-million horse, a horse to whom Eve was quite attached, and a fortune into the bargain. Eve said not one word. She turned her mare for the stables and cantered along at her husband’s side, trying not to cry.
For herself, for the horse, and for the man whose honor—or whose wife—had compelled him to engage in such a wager.
***
Deene sat among blankets on a pile of straw, his back against the wall, his arms around his drowsy wife.
He should have told her the whole of it earlier in the day, but her expression had gone so bleak when he’d admitted they might lose William. He’d not been able to say another word. And yet… silence was not serving them either.
“I should have told Anthony to send the coach back for you.”
She stirred in his arms. “If you’re staying, I’m staying. The child hasn’t been born to the English countryside who hasn’t snatched at least a nap in some obliging hayloft.”
Below them, Beast shifted in his stall, giving a little wuffle at the sound of Eve’s voice.
“I can understand your willingness to pass a night up here with me, Evie, but how is it you come to know so very much about how to ride a course like the one out there on the downs?”
When he’d reflected back on their most recent ride over the course, he’d realized Eve saw the entire challenge like Wellington saw a potential battleground, anticipating moves, choosing options, and analyzing the exercise on a level Deene himself had been oblivious to.
“I used to talk to Devlin and Bart endlessly about their cavalry exercises, about how a battle could turn on horsemanship. Boggy ground played a role in the French defeat at Waterloo, and Devlin is convinced Wellington knew it would when he put his artillery up along the ridge.”
“A grim thought.” The feel of Eve’s hair tickling his nose was not grim. It was dear and precious and soothing.
“When I was a little girl I’d talk to Papa about the hunt meets and his cavalry days. It was one of few ways to gain his notice when I had so many older siblings competing for it. I would interrogate him at every turn about the good gallops and the bad falls.”
Deene kissed her temple, an image of a very young, diminutive Eve on the fringes of the loud, busy circle of otherwise tall and robust Windham family members coming to mind. “And then you fell and lost more than just the ability to waltz with every swain in the shire.”
He was holding her close to his body, so he felt something go through her. A shudder, a shiver, something. She’d come close on at least two recent occasions to telling him more about her fall, but he hadn’t known how to encourage her confidences when he wasn’t being entirely honest with his own.
“I must go for a walk.” She tried to rise. He prevented it by virtue of kissing her cheek.
“Not without me.”
“Yes, without you. Sometimes a lady needs a little privacy, but I won’t go far, and I’ll look in on William.”
She was going to find a convenient spot in some clump of bushes, racetrack facilities being next to nonexistent.
“Don’t be gone long. We’ll be up well before first light.”
“Which assumes we sleep at all.”
He let her have the last word, let her disappear silently down the ladder, and felt the prayers start up again in his mind:
Please give this marriage the chance it deserves.
Let no harm come to horses or riders tomorrow.
Let there be a harmless explanation for the horrific and false disarray in which Anthony presented the Denning family finances.
&nb
sp; Let there be an end to the mess between Deene and Dolan, and let it be an end that didn’t cost him his niece, his wife, and his honor, much less his available coin and his prize stallion.
The litany grew longer before Deene spied Eve’s blond head coming up the steps in the weak slats of moonlight making patterns through the barn siding.
She tucked herself in very close, and from the feel of her—from the heat and the tension in her—Deene knew immediately something was afoot.
“Evie? What’s amiss?”
“Husband…” She was breathing rapidly and trying to whisper. “Husband, we must hurry. Somebody is going to drug poor William, perhaps with a quantity of somnifera, and I fear they’ve already done Aelfreth a bad turn.”
God damn Jonathan Dolan.
“You stay here.”
“No.” She clutched at him with desperate strength. “There were four of them. They went off to fetch the drug, all quite merry with their mischief. I do not think them completely sober, but neither are they so drunk they could not do you an injury.”
“Eve, I cannot allow Dolan’s henchmen to drug William.”
Her head came up, and she peered at him closely in the moonlight then leaned in and whispered into his ear.
He went still. She leaned in again, but he framed her face in his hands, kissed her soundly on the mouth, and pronounced her brilliant. They could solve the problem of Aelfreth’s hangover in the morning, but for now, time was of the essence.
By the time they were back in their hayloft, Eve once again bundled into her husband’s arms, Deene wasn’t feeling quite so sanguine.
“We’ve thwarted this plan, Wife, but it still leaves us with a considerable handicap tomorrow if Aelfreth is in no condition to ride.” We. It felt good to use that word when solving problems. Eve snuggled in more closely, giving Deene the sense she felt the same.
“You could ride him, Lucas. You know that course inside and out, you know your colt, and you’re every bit as skilled as Aelfreth.”
She was loyal. She’d not suggested Bannister or one of the other lads; she hadn’t hesitated to put her faith entirely in her husband. She hadn’t mentioned that Deene was far more weight than any jockey would be, and she hadn’t once considered the most logical choice to get the beast around the course safely.
“We have another option, Evie.”
“Bannister isn’t in fighting shape, Deene, and he’s been focusing more on Aelfreth than on the horse, and furthermore—”
Deene kissed his wife. Kissed her soundly enough to get her attention, almost soundly enough to lose his focus on the matter at hand. “Not Bannister, Eve Denning. The best chance that horse has of making it around the course in record time is the woman I’m holding in my arms right this minute.”
He spent another hour arguing with his wife, his marchioness, his lady, and his love, and in the end, she agreed to trust his judgment. In this, Deene reflected—though perhaps in little else—she was going to trust him, and he was not going to let her down.
***
“The steward is coming to look over the horse,” Kesmore reported. “For God’s sake, get her hair stuffed under that handkerchief.”
Kesmore was looking thunderous but said nothing more, which was fortunate, because otherwise, Deene looked like he was going to indulge in a bout of fisticuffs with his brother-in-law. Aelfreth, sick as a dog, had handed over his silks without a word of protest, right down to his signature red, black, and white handkerchief. Bannister was muttering profanities as he saw to William, Beast was contentedly napping amid the commotion, and Eve was…
In love with her husband.
How could she have doubted him? How could she have put some silly fear about scandal and ruin ahead of the kind of faith she saw in Deene’s eyes every time he looked at her? She still had the sense he wasn’t being entirely forthcoming about his situation with Dolan—and didn’t Mr. Dolan also have a great deal to answer for on this fine day?—but nothing else seemed to matter beside the magnitude of Deene’s faith in her.
“You don’t seem nervous,” Kesmore observed while Deene led William from his stall.
“I cannot disappoint my husband, Joseph. He has placed all of his trust in me, and this… this is reassuring.”
Kesmore draped a heavy arm around Eve’s shoulders, and she realized—because the man could not be seen exactly hugging Deene’s jockey—this was a show of support from the earl. “How is it, my dear, Deene asks you to risk your fool neck in a goddamned idiot horse race over wet grass and greasy mud, and this earns him your undying devotion?”
She didn’t understand it entirely herself, and had considered that Deene had asked her to ride merely as a show of loyalty, while he fully intended to ride himself; but no, they’d argued about which of the two of them should ride the colt—they’d finally argued, in heated whispers and long silences, and even a few pointed fingers and waved hands, and now Eve was going to do the unthinkable and ride William in a match race.
The steward watched while William was trotted straightaway, turned, and trotted back. The horse went sound—of course he did—and with no evidence of any drugging.
“To the starting line, then,” the steward said. “Greymoor wants a clean race.” This last was directed at Eve where she stood beside Kesmore. “No bad conduct, no allegations of bad conduct, not even muttering into your ale next week about bad conduct—not with the riding crops, not with the horses, not with anything, or Greymoor will declare the match a dead heat, see if he doesn’t.”
Eve tugged the brim of her cap even lower with an acknowledging nod, then breathed a sigh of relief to see the steward hustle off toward the starting line.
“Thank God there’s no handicapping, so we don’t have to weigh you in. The finish will be tricky as it is,” Kesmore said, keeping his voice down while Deene went about saddling William up. “You dismount at the first opportunity, and we’ll put Bannister or one of the lads up to walk the horse out. You off, Bannister on, and then out of these silks, my lady. Louisa will assist you.”
Eve nodded again, accepting that the subterfuge was unavoidable. She hardly wanted her family knowing she’d indulged in such a flight, much less the world at large—why, it would cause a scandal—
She watched Deene snugging up the girth on the horse and wondered why this hadn’t occurred to her earlier. If it was discovered Deene had let his wife ride even in a private match race, there would be such awful talk, about him, about her… Dolan would exploit that talk and use it mercilessly.
Her knees went weak at the magnitude of the risk Deene was taking. She moved a little closer to Kesmore. “You will keep an eye on Deene, please. He’s been under a tremendous strain, and I fear he isn’t thinking clearly.”
“He isn’t, and I will. Do not take off those goggles if you value my sanity, madam, not until you’re out of your silks and in a very private situation.”
He took a flask out of his pocket and held it out to Eve, who declined with a shake of her head. Kesmore blinked, as if realizing he’d just offered strong spirits to a lady, then took a nip and put the flask away. “The whole damned Windham family is mad. I have reason to know this. Even Lady Ophelia, who is the soul of kindness and discretion, has agreed with me on this.”
Kesmore muttering about his prize market sow was not soothing Eve’s nerves. She caught Deene’s eye and realized the moment had come to leave the safety of the stable block.
Deene smiled at her, a private, challenging smile. A smile that said, “You can do this,” and even, “I know you can do this.”
He’d hatched up a daring plan, a crazy plan—and a plan that could work.
“Come, Aelfreth.” Deene’s voice was raised a little, to carry over the bustle in the barn. “Your horse and your adoring public await you.”
Eve checked the chinstrap on her cap and tried to swagger out to the yard like a jockey. Deene tossed her up on the little racing saddle, then climbed aboard a very sleepy Beast. Kesmore, on his
black, came up on William’s other side, and they moved off toward the noise of the crowds at the starting line.
William was on a fine edge, bursting with the need to compete but still mindful of the rider on his back.
“Don’t override,” Kesmore muttered as they moved off, “but don’t underride either, lest the horse start taking matters into his own hands, except a horse hasn’t any hands.”
He sighed gustily and took another quick nip from his flask. “I’ve married into a family of lunatics, and now the Denning line must strengthen this deplorable tendency. I’m not having any children, and what children I do have aren’t going to be given any ponies. They shall ride pigs, see if they don’t.”
“Joseph.” Deene’s tone held banked humor. “You are excused. Find Louisa and try not to lose your composure entirely.”
“Louisa awaits us on the rise, the better to plan my commitment to Bedlam as this race unfolds.” He kneed his horse off to the right, leaving Eve riding beside her husband to the line that would mark the start of the race.
Dolan’s gray was dancing around beneath his jockey, looking barely sane, gorgeous, and quite put out with the idiot holding onto his bridle.
“Evie?” Deene halted Beast, who seemed content to come to a bleary-eyed stop amid all the mayhem and tension of the impending race.
“They’re waiting for us, Deene.”
“Let them. Turn William as if you’re letting him study the flags and pennants. Let him see the crowd as he’ll see it when he roars up to the finish.”
Not a detail. Eve had lectured herself at length not to forget this at the last minute, and here she’d gone…
“Listen to me, dearest, most precious wife, but pat the horse while you do, because Dolan is looking this way.”
Eve thumped William soundly on the neck, as a male jockey might.
“You will win this race not because we have money riding on the outcome. I assure you we can afford the loss, and we don’t honestly need the coin if we win. I promise you this. You will win this race not because it means we keep William—he’s already covered every mare I could possibly put him to. I promise you this as well.”
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