by Hope Tarr
“I’ve carried about an image of you since we first met.”
Her head shot up. A look of alarm flashed across her pretty face. “A photograph!”
Rourke’s friend Hadrian St. Claire was a celebrated photographic portraitist in London. Before her marriage, Kate had posed for him, her image imprinted and sold to the public on cartes postales. Ralph had always considered that St. Claire had selected the wrong sister. But that wasn’t what he’d meant.
“I refer to a mental picture.”
“Oh.” She subsided into silence.
Their horses’ heads were almost touching. Taking the opportunity, he reached across, meaning to kiss her. “You’re beautiful, Beatrice. I wonder sometimes that you don’t seem to see yourself as others do, as I do.”
Her breath hitched. She leaned into him. “Ralph, I—”
The rumble of horse’s hooves coming toward them at full gallop had him straightening in his seat and turning his horse’s head to have a look.
A figure in work shirt and breeches rode toward them. The rider neared and Ralph saw that it was Hamish Campbell.
Rourke’s stable manager drew up beside them. He doffed his cap, his weather-worn features wearing a worried look. Likely he disapproved of Ralph’s taking his employer’s sister out riding without a chaperone but was too mindful of his place to say so.
“How now, Hamish,” Ralph said, refusing to have his own good humor put off. “I’ve never known you to take a pleasure ride in the middle of the day, not even as fine a day as this one.”
Dividing his gaze between them, Hamish gave a grave shake of his head. “It’s nay pleasure ride, sir, though I wish it were. ’Tis bad news I’m brought to bear.”
Beside him, Bea drew a sharp breath. “My sister…Lucy?”
Reaching over, Ralph took hold of Bea’s gloved hand, too caught up in comforting her to give a damn what Hamish Campbell or anyone might think. “If you’ve news, then have out with it, man.”
Beatrice squeezed his fingers back. “Yes, please, Mr. Campbell, do not keep us on tenterhooks.”
Hamish shifted his gaze to Bea. “Lady Kate sent for me to bring you back, miss. ’Tis the old pony, Princess. She’s dying.”
PRINCESS WAS INDEED DYING. There was nothing more to be done. The grand old girl was dying, and Bea was afraid if she allowed herself to start crying, she might never stop.
Kate knelt by the horse’s head, her outer coat flecked with straw, her hair a wild mess, the front of her skirts bearing damp patches where mud and moisture had seeped through the knees. The sight tore at Bea’s heart.
“We came as soon as we heard.” She opened the gated stall door and dropped down beside her sister.
Kate looked up from stroking the nut-colored mane flecked with white and turned her tear-streaked face to Bea’s. “Thank you.”
Since Ralph’s rescuing her last winter, Princess’s retirement days had been filled with sugar cones and carrots, with brushings and many, many pets over the paddock fence. Still, that Kate hadn’t even had her back a full year brought fresh tears to Bea’s eyes. Nine months, it was such a bloody brief time to be happy!
“Such a pretty, pretty Princess you are,” Kate cooed, mouth trembling.
Throat thickening, Bea joined Kate in stroking the dying animal. According to her sister, Princess in her prime had been a beauty to behold, the white blaze upon her forehead like a shining star. No doubt Kate’s memory was colored by the rose-tinted lenses of a little girl’s unconditional love, but then that was the wonderful thing about love. It made one see only the very best in another being and, in so doing, brought out only the very best in oneself.
Loving Ralph was having such an effect upon her. And yes, she loved him, not the fairy-tale prince of her fantasy, but the flesh-and-blood man of real life. She’d fallen in love with him nine months ago. If only she could turn back time to that December day they’d stood at the paddock fence feeding carrots to Princess, those pivotal precious moments alone before Kate interrupted them. This time she’d do things altogether differently. This time when Ralph asked her to reconsider, to stay, she would, oh, how she would.
Back then she’d been too confused and prideful to consider that her feelings might run more deeply than a flirtatious friendship, too caught up in the mistakes she’d made to trust her feelings, her instincts or her heart. And now that she did trust herself, it was too late. She was engaged to another man, a good man, a steady man, a man who by virtue of his very predictability assured that her future would be safe and secure. Even were she not spoken for, even were Ralph to magically transform into a marrying man, not even he would wish to wed a woman whose loose morals had caused her to act the strumpet. Tears filled her eyes. It was indeed too late.
Hamish Campbell pulled off his tweed cap and scraped a broad-backed hand through his thinning hair. “She started walking stiff-legged like, putting her weight on the back of the hoof, but we thought it must be the rheumatism. I told Ned here to keep a watch on her.”
“I did,” the boy, Ned, piped up. “Three days ago she was as right as rain.”
Outraged, Bea looked up from the horse. Too late was bad enough, but blatant neglect was too much to bear. “You let her suffer three days without saying a word to anyone?”
She looked over to Ralph, who’d also knelt to examine the horse. Silent, he met her gaze with unreadable eyes.
Hamish spoke up, “Dinna blame the boy. That horse was my responsibility.”
“No,” Kate broke in, amber eyes fierce for all that they were swimming in tears. “Princess was, and is, my responsibility. Had I not been so preoccupied with my bloody stupid novel this past week, I would have found the time to come out and check on her as I usually do. I’m the one who knows her best. One look would have told me that something was dreadfully wrong. I shall never forgive myself.” She sank her head into her open palm.
Ralph gently released the horse’s swollen hoof and rose. “The pedal bone is collapsed. It’s pressing against the sole of the hoof. Even were she able to fight off the fever, we’d have to put her down for lameness.” He fixed his gaze on Kate. “It might be the greater mercy to put her down now.”
Kate swallowed hard and then nodded. “I wish Rourke were here,” she said softly, a tear rolling down her cheek.
“I can wire him for you, milady,” Ralph offered. “He would want to know so that he might take an earlier train home.”
Kate firmed her trembling mouth and shook her head, the old resolve returning. “Thank you, but no, absolutely not. This shareholders’ meeting requires his undivided concentration. There is no point in distracting him from his purpose when there is nothing he or anyone else can do.” Her voice cracked. She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes and looked quickly away.
Bea could bear it no longer. Kate had always been there for her, her comforter and protector. Now that their roles were reversed, there seemed nothing for her to do but watch her sibling suffer.
Rising, she turned away from the sad little scene to Ralph. Taking hold of his arm, she steered them out of the stall and over to the stable door.
Once there, she dropped her voice to a whisper. “We could take the train to Edinburgh, fetch a horse doctor there. It’s worth a try.”
Gaze grim, he shook his head. “It’s too late. There’s nothing more anyone can do.”
“I don’t believe that. You’re so clever. You know so much about horses. You know so much about so many things. You just have to try harder. You just have to want to.” She was spiraling toward hysteria and yet too caught up to care. “Beatrice—”
She planted a hand on either of his shoulders and dug in, desperate to save something, someone, a horse. Kate’s horse. She and Ralph were so good together in so many ways. Saving a horse—surely together they might manage at least that small miracle.
“That horse means the world to my sister. Princess was Kate’s first and only pet. Our father staked her in a card game. He lost, of cours
e. He always loses. You can’t know what having her back has meant to Kate.”
Ralph shook his head. The pitying look he sent her made her want to slap him. “She’s dying, Beatrice. The kindest thing we can do is to end her suffering.”
“How can you say such a thing? How can you be so bloody complacent?” she demanded, and it struck her she wasn’t only speaking of Princess.
In another two days, they would say goodbye as lovers, the sands of her newfound happiness running out like Princess’s halting final few breaths. Perhaps she wasn’t only grieving for the horse. Perhaps she was grieving for herself, too.
“It’s too late.”
Bea refused to hear that yet again, refused to listen. “It is not too late!” She let go of him and dropped her arms to her sides. “If you cared for me, you would do something. You would at least try. But you don’t care for me, do you, Ralph? Beyond fancying what a bloody good lay I am, you don’t care enough to trouble yourself.”
“Beatrice.” Face paling, he reached for her, but she stepped back, shaking her head.
“I’m going back inside to be with my sister. Why don’t you go read your bloody Kama Sutra, diddle a housemaid or better yet, fuck yourself with one of your nasty little toys?”
His stricken face was her final, bitter satisfaction. Turning back inside, she left him standing still as a wax figure.
Soft sobbing greeted her even before she opened the hinged stall door. “Oh, Kate!”
“She’s gone,” Kate announced without looking up, stroking between Princess’ wide, staring eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Kate.” Feeling helpless, Bea let the stall door swing closed. Stepping around the horse, she dropped down beside Kate and pulled her into her arms. “You have every right to be furious.” Stroking her sister’s tangled curls, Bea felt fresh tears falling—for Princess, for Kate, for herself. “Nine months to be reunited, to be happy, isn’t enough, not nearly. It’s bloody nothing.”
Kate pulled back and shook her caramel-colored curls. “You’re wrong. It was everything.”
Bea held her peace. How could she possibly comfort Kate when she couldn’t begin to comfort herself?
“I WISH I MIGHT GET DRUNK,” Kate said sometime later, sipping from the vacuum flask of hot tea Hattie had brought them along with a heavy quilt and flask of Scotch whiskey.
They sat huddled together beneath the quilt, keeping vigil over the passed away Princess. Considering Kate’s pregnancy, Bea really ought to persuade her to go inside where she might draw a warm bath. So far she hadn’t found the heart. Kate must bid goodbye to her precious pet in her own way and in her own time. In the interim, Bea meant to keep her as warm as possible.
She reached out to pull up their shared quilt from where it had slipped off her sister’s shoulder. “I wish you could, too.” She lifted the flask in her other hand, considerably lighter than when Hattie had handed it to her. “Likely it’s a black mark on my character to drink alone, but I’m feeling too bloody bleak to care,” she said and took another swig.
She wasn’t exactly drunk. She wasn’t exactly sober, either. She’d never before imbibed whiskey, but then, this was a wake of sorts.
She swiped her stinging lips with the back of her gloved hand, an unladylike gesture the sight of which would have shocked Aunt Lavinia directly into her grave. But then Aunt Lavinia and London and rigid rules about how a lady, a woman, should behave seemed fairly far away and utterly inconsequential at the moment.
Watching her, Kate remarked, “You were rather hard on Ralph, do you not think?”
Bea shrugged. “You could not possibly have overheard our conversation.”
“I didn’t have to. I saw his face when he came inside to check on us a while ago.”
“Ralph came back?”
Kate nodded. “He did, but only for a moment. You were busy covering…Princess. He looked as if you’d slapped him.”
Bea had felt like slapping him and not only once. Were it not for the proximity of possible onlookers, she wasn’t entirely certain she would have refrained.
“He should have done something. It was he who found Princess and brought her back to you, and yet he behaved as though she was a broken machine beyond fixing.”
Kate’s eyes might be rimmed in red from crying, but she used them to level Bea an unwavering look. “He’s a man, Beatrice, and he grew up rough as did Rourke. To his way of thinking, showing his emotions would be a sign of weakness. Simply because he doesn’t show his feelings or speak of them does not mean he doesn’t feel—care—deeply. Likewise, men on the whole are not terribly good at intuiting a woman’s wants. If you want or need something from him, you’re going to have to put it to him plainly. You’re going to have to ask.”
Ask for what you need, Beatrice.
Bea dropped her gaze and replaced the stopper on the flask, mainly for something to do. “What could I possibly want from Ralph Sylvester?”
Kate blew out a heavy breath, the steam crystallizing in the rapidly chilling air. “That is not for me to answer.” She slid her arm free from the blanket and laid it cross Bea’s shoulders. “But this much I will say. Sometimes our soul mate doesn’t look or behave as we expect, but our instincts, our hearts, never lie. Had I set aside my pride and listened to my heart, I should have known Patrick was my true love from that very first waltz where he stole me from my promised partner and trod upon my toes.”
Bea loved Ralph with the whole of her heart, and yet “charming rogues” like Ralph were not marrying men. For as long as she could remember, a stable, secure home life was the prize she sought. Such a solid if less than stimulating state could only be secured with the Mr. Billingsbys of this world, men who, no matter how sexual inept and physically uninspiring, could still be counted upon to put a ring on your finger and then stand beside you year after year as time lent its crusty, dulled patina to the once shiny band.
But being with Ralph had made her realize there was a great deal more to life than feeling safe. Looking through the lens of the past few days, she tried to imagine what marriage to Mr. Billingsby would be like. Imagining sitting with him in their snug little parlor night upon night—so solid, so secure, so stultifying—sent her lungs seizing.
As if tapping into her turmoil, Kate hugged her tighter. Laying her cheek against Bea’s, she whispered, “Look to your heart, little sister, look to your heart.”
IF YOU CARED FOR ME, you would do something.
Brooding in his bedchamber later that night, Ralph took another sip of Scotch, hoping to dull the day’s pain. For the past nine months, Princess had lived the life of a pampered pet, and Ralph had done his part in spoiling her. He didn’t ordinarily think of himself as an “animal person,” but the very humanlike gratitude with which the grizzled pony greeted the slightest gesture of kindness had plucked at his heart.
But the pony’s loss was only partly responsible for his morose mood. Already it was five minutes past their appointed nine o’clock hour. Judging from her earlier outburst, Beatrice likely wasn’t coming this night or any other. As much as he tried telling himself that didn’t matter, it did. Oh, how it did.
She loved that horse but beyond that, she loved her sister. Though Kate always cast herself as the caretaker, Ralph was coming to see that behind-the-scenes, Beatrice carried out a fair bit of caretaking herself.
How would it feel to relinquish control and let Beatrice Lindsey take care of him? How easy it would be to succumb to the magnetic pull of those big blue eyes, tender lips and soft white hands. How easy would it be to fall down the rabbit hole as had Lewis Carroll’s Alice and immerse himself in the wonderland that was his lady?
Not his lady, not really. Beyond the make-believe world they’d conceived, she didn’t belong to him any more than the books he routinely borrowed from Rourke’s library. In another two days, she would return to London and to the inept but presumably welcoming embrace of her milksop fiancé, Mr. Billingsby. Irrationally, Ralph hated the man more with each pas
sing day.
The light knocking outside his door startled Ralph. Heart hitching, he stood on surprisingly shaky legs. In the event his visitor was other than Beatrice, he made certain to cinch his robe before giving the call to enter. “Come in.”
The door opened, and Beatrice stepped inside. She drew the door closed and turned to face him. “I’m late.”
Any notions of riposting with a glib retort washed away in the flood of relief he felt. “You’re here.” Raw emotion lent his voice a telltale huskiness he hoped she might miss.
She came toward him, a vision in a cream-colored silk robe, the vee-shaped neckline showing a tantalizing glimpse of lace from what must be a matching nightgown beneath. The garments looked like something a bride might wear on her wedding night. It occurred to him that she might have taken them from her trousseau.
“I wasn’t certain you would still come.”
She stopped a foot or so from him. “I wasn’t certain I would still be welcome.” She cocked her head to the side and regarded him. “Am I?”
He nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.” For someone who’d survived for years on silver-tongued cleverness, he was having the very devil of a time getting his words out.
“I acted like a child today. I hope you will for give me?”
Reading the question in her voice, he rushed to reassure her. “You were distressed and understandably so.”
She nodded. “Princess is…was Kate’s pet, not mine. Kate loves judiciously, but those whom she does, she loves fiercely, be they two-legged or four-legged. After Father sold off Princess, Kate, I’m told, was crushed. She never took another childhood pet though she dearly loves animals.”
“I’m sorry they did not have more time together,” Ralph said, and though the sentiment was nothing but sincere, the person he felt most sorry for was himself.
He had only a few more days—and nights—with Beatrice before she left for London and Mr. Billingsby. The next time he saw her, she would be a married woman, forever removed from his touch.