“I would like that. Very much,” she managed to say. He probably had not meant to offer something so wanted, so sweet—but he had.
He glanced at her again. “It is just a horse. Just a race.”
She pursed her lips, any feelings of gratitude fading. She wondered if he knew what it was to really care for anything outside himself, and decided it was unlikely.
“I would like to go to Epsom Downs all the same,” she had said from between tight lips.
“I will come for you at one o’clock,” he’d said.
So what if his offer had been made for some reason other than merely to please her? He probably had no idea how much Fallen Angel had meant to her. How could he know that Katherine had once hoped the mare would be the first block in the horse-racing stud she’d dreamed for years of someday building? He could not know.
All the same, she was delighted she would get to see the mare run, even if Fallen Angel was no longer owned by her. It
would be gratifying if the horse raced well, a vindication of her eye for judging horseflesh.
Katherine sighed again, and stood away from the window, reaching to pull from her hair the pins that held the yellow ribbon in place. For just a flash of a moment she recalled Miss Violet Mansell’s long blond tresses, so cleverly arranged and pinned beneath her bonnet. She also recalled the admiring look Lord Benjamin had given her.
Katherine turned to her looking glass, and was a little surprised to see a small frown sitting upon her wearied features. “Being betrothed is exhausting,” she said to her reflection. It was less exhausting being betrothed to Cyril, even working to keep it a secret, she silently added.
Her reflection regarded her, and stuck out its tongue.
She gave a small, self-deprecating laugh, and decided that, in reality, it was fighting against the situation she was presently in that was so wearying.
“Then stop fighting. It will only last for a few weeks. You might as well try to have what enjoyment the situation allows,” she advised herself.
Her reflection lost the small frown, and nodded in agreement.
Chapter 11
Papa has offered the use of his coach, as that will sit five comfortably,” Miss Oakes told Benjamin when he came the next afternoon to take her to Epsom Downs.
Benjamin nodded, a quick glance telling him the other occupants of the coach would be Miss Oakes’s three brothers.
Jeremy and Lewis were a few years older, and Mercer born later in the same year as Benjamin; it was hardly a strain for the coach-jostled party of five to find common matters to discuss as they rolled toward the racing course. In fact, Benjamin soon came to the conclusion that Miss Oakes’s brothers were all fellows of obvious goodwill—and then he wondered if their goodwill would yet extend toward him if they knew he was never going to marry their sister. He certainly would not mention the fact.
Already used to the more casual manner the entire Oakes clan seemed inclined to follow, nonetheless Benjamin did not know quite what to make of it when their driver pulled the coach beside the racing course rail, and the Oakeses all then went into a flurry of activity. From the basket they had brought along, Jeremy brought out quill and ink, Lewis produced a folded collection of news sheets, and Mercer brought out a largish journal that he handed to his sister, along with an ink- stained apron.
Benjamin stared, a little nonplused and a little fascinated, as Miss Oakes donned the apron, a full one that covered most of her gown, and her brothers proceeded to read the racing information aloud, practically shouting over each other. Mercer held the bottle of India ink, in which Miss Oakes frequently dipped her quill, in order to scratch quick notes into the now-open journal on her lap.
“On this horse in the third race? Devil’s Pride?” Lewis said, glancing up from a news sheet to his sister.
“Out of Devil’s Folly and Much Heart,” Miss Oakes responded at once, without looking up from her notes.
Benjamin blinked in surprise, for Miss Oakes was exactly right regarding the horse’s sire and dam.
She shook her head. “Bad choice, I fear. He will be in the rear of the field. He ran Friday last. He has no stamina for two races within a week.”
“Sanctuary?” Lewis inquired with a doubting grimace, pressing a scrap of paper to his leg and snitching his sister’s quill long enough to jot a quick note there.
“Sanctuary? Out of Scourge and Maybelle. Ran five times, all in Ireland. Brought over by the Earl of Donbury. Has a new jockey, Sam Dean—but Mr. Dean is good and his horses tend to respond well for him. Sanctuary’s history is a bit uneven.” Miss Oakes gave a little shrug. “Good for a long shot, but at no more than a third place finish, I would wager.”
Jeremy looked up and grinned sheepishly as he caught Benjamin’s eye. “Do not mind us,” he said with a crooked grin. “We are deciding how to place our wagers. I know it’s not very ladylike and perhaps we ought not encourage, er, this, er, activity .. . thing is, Katie’s very good at predicting. She really is. You’ll see.”
Apparently Lewis required no more input from his sister, for he scurried out of the coach and skipped off with paper scraps fluttering, in pursuit of an oddsmaker.
“What did the Repository say about the fifth race again?” Jeremy asked Mercer in a low voice.
“I am writing, not deaf or dumb. Ask me,” Miss Oakes said without looking up from her notes.
“I was trying to leave you alone. But since you are inclined to be curt, I shan’t mind my manners either. So who’ll show in the fifth?”
“Tempest to win, Windblower to place, and Lasdun to show,” Miss Oakes rattled off without glancing up, her quill pressed to her lips as she considered some facet of her notes.
“Lasdun it is,” Jeremy said, then also climbed down from the carriage.
Miss Oakes finished making her notation, blew on the fresh
ink, then closed her journal. Her lips were still pursed from blowing when she looked up to once more observe Benjamin, the shape of her mouth reminding him he had once kissed those lips—and had enjoyed it far more than he ever would have expected.
“The Repository?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting high.
“’Tis her nickname,” Mercer, sitting next to Benjamin, supplied. “’Cause she remembers everything. She’s like a walking repository of information, you see.”
“Charming.”
“How much did Katie tell you to put on Fallen Angel?” Mercer asked Benjamin as he recapped the bottle of ink.
“She did not tell me anything. I chose for myself how much to wager.”
“Oh.” Mercer looked dubious. “Well then, how much?”
“One pound. To place,” Benjamin answered. One pound too many, he thought sourly. Earlier in the day, he had pawned a set of carved deities he’d brought back from his one and only voyage to Jamaica and his second best pair of Hessians, more than doubling his purse’s weight by adding almost three pounds to it. He’d known he could hardly attend the race and not wager on his own horse, so he’d found a way to raise the necessary blunt.
Actually, he longed to make at least the one wager on her, while she still belonged to him. Even if he lost the pound, he knew there would be a day when he would look back and be glad he had backed her. He’d know that for one day he had played at the gentleman’s game of owning a racehorse, bought by money no one else had earned but him.
“I am glad you did not wager on her to win,” Miss Oakes said. “She has great potential, of course, but she’s untried in paying races. Where a purse is concerned, sometimes the jockey begins to communicate all the wrong signals to a horse. Fallen Angel might be uneven to start, but I dare to hope her record will even out with experience.”
“Truly?” Benjamin asked. If Miss Oakes noticed any skepticism in his tone, she did not indicate as much.
“Although, I must say,” she went on, “if you were to run her at the Helmman in Kent three days hence, I would expect her to outdistance the other horses likely to appear there. Helm
man’s is far enough in the country that it tends to attract more of the
new or minor racers. I predict Fallen Angel will not long be among that set.”
She spoke with such utter confidence—like a man. but in womanly tones. It was disconcerting, and hardly feminine. If she had shown this ... acumen in front of other gentleman, it was no wonder that she had been dubbed a hoyden. “Bluestocking” almost hit the mark as well, although her passion was less for Greek and Mathematics than the unlikely matter of racing horses.
Benjamin felt his mouth thin with annoyance, but he was not entirely sure why. Miss Oakes's intense study of horses and how they placed in their races was irksome, yes . . . but he sensed that most of his restlessness really came from dallying like this. He ought to be spending his waking hours seeking employment, not discussing races.
He’d given his whole morning over to calling on his brother’s London solicitor, and beginning the promised process of readying Miss Oakes’s land. Only to learn the land that was promised to come from her papa as dowry could not be touched, as he’d more than half expected despite the betrothal agreement.
“When you are married, the land is under your control then of course." the solicitor had told him, and gone on to explain that until that time only the land directly inherited by Miss Oakes via her grandmama could be altered in any way, and that only to make improvements.
So he had begun what he could. A steward was to be hired to oversee that drainage paths were dug and a new receiving pond built. And if there was to be any hope of growing feed for horses from Miss Oakes’s own crops, as a careful list from her had specified, they would have to plant before the summer was too far advanced.
Benjamin had felt a small, nagging scruple at informing the solicitor that all costs were to be directed to Sir Albert Oakes— but that gentleman had said it was to be so. Her father had told Miss Oakes she could pay him back “when you tum a profit,” and if his daughter had seen the doubt in his eyes, it had unquestionably only served to double her desire to prove him wrong.
Expending so much energy on the lady’s business and not his own was what had really provoked Benjamin’s sour mood, of course, but knowing that and being able to put it aside were two different things. He had made her a promise, so he would fulfill it, but that did not mean he had to pretend to like it. When Fallen Angel’s race, the fourth, had been run, he would insist they return to London. He had work to find. He did not need to be sitting here, idle, wagering money he could ill afford—and being told how to wager it by a mere slip of a girl who liked to pretend she had an expertise at calling winners.
“I must walk,” Benjamin declared suddenly, the coach suddenly feeling too close a confine. He remembered his manners enough to belatedly offer, albeit reluctantly, “Would you join me, Miss Oakes?”
She put aside her journal. “I would like it indeed, Lord Benjamin.”
He’d rather hoped she would say no, but was starting to realize that Miss Oakes was unlikely to ever do what he would have her do.
All the same, as they strolled along parallel to the carriages and people lining the railing that surrounded the racing course—exchanging nods with those willing to acknowledge them—Benjamin felt his tension lessen. After all, he was used to far worse than simple snubs—he was used to being called a madwoman’s son, and his own captain had called him a “coward and a thief’ when he had accepted responsibility for the crime he had not committed. What was a turn of the head or the presentation of someone’s back against those more egregious insults?
“I am sorry,” Miss Oakes said at his side, with a wistful smile hovering around her lips. She had donned gloves to cover her ink-stained fingers, her right hand now lightly on his arm. She had left her apron in the coach, once again revealing her gown of fetching palest green, almost white in the sunlight, which looked fresh against the far darker green of the grass at their feet.
“Sorry? For—?”
‘That my character is so contrary that half of London offers me the Cut Direct. It cannot be pleasant for you.”
He did not respond at once. Miss Oakes? Taking the blame for the snubs they received onto her own shoulders? And not with a martyred air, or a great gnashing of teeth, or tears of self- pity, but only a simple apology.
“Alas,” he said, pushing aside his own ill humor and striving for lightness, “my own contrary nature has offended the other half of London. How shall we go on?”
She looked up, searching his face, and then she gave a small laugh, an inviting sound. “I suppose there is nothing to be done but to separate, each to their half of London,” she offered, tilting her head so that the brim of her chip bonnet managed to shade her eyes from the afternoon sun, but which left her mouth sun-kissed.
A strange pang went through Benjamin, some curious emotion that tangled with a sudden urge to lean down and kiss her upturned mouth in imitation of the sun’s caress.
He came to a halt, the impulse filling his thoughts, blotting out a reasoning voice that wondered if there would be much scandal if they shared a public kiss, here in the sunlight.
Miss Oakes stopped beside him, her body turning toward him in that invitational manner he’d swear she scarce conceived, let alone did on purpose.
“Lord Benjamin—?” she started to inquire, but her words stopped abruptly. She stared up at him, and he down at her, and for some absurd reason it felt entirely right to take her face between his two hands. He did it because he wanted to and be damned the reason. He wanted to know if he had imagined the sweetness of her kiss, and suddenly he knew he meant to find out.
He slowly lowered his mouth, giving her time to retreat if she wished, but she remained still, a questioning look deep in her brown eyes. He brought his lips to hers, meaning only to lightly press there.
Her mouth yielded to his, and with a sinking feeling that ought to have been despair but was something else entirely, he stopped thinking and only felt. Felt anew that she had been kissed before; then he longed to kiss her in such a manner that all other kisses would be forgotten by her. What had been meant to be only a mere brushing of lips, grew deeper, hungrier. It sent a shiver not only to the nape of his neck but also down his spine and spread in his belly as a kind of warmth.
A horn blew in the distance, announcing the first race was about to run. Abruptly a sense of time and place came back to him. He stepped back, his hands springing from her face as though she had suddenly gone aflame and burned him. He just managed to swallow a gasp.
“I. .. It is my turn to say I am sorry,” he managed, his voice a touch unsteady. “But I... this makes the betrothal look true enough . .His voice trailed away as he tried to read her reaction from the wide-eyed stare she gave him.
“Oh,” she said on little more than a breath. “Oh yes, I see.” She gave a quick, self-conscious glance around. “I think it worked to a nicety.”
Benjamin looked up, seeing many eyes turned their way. He swallowed hard. “I hope I did not embarrass you.”
“No!” she said, turning away quickly in the direction of the coach. “No, but... I would like to sit down now.” She turned at once, and did not look to see if he followed.
He had embarrassed her—devil take him, he’d embarrassed himself. Not five minutes earlier he’d been filled with animosity toward her, letting her know in how he moved and spoke that her little pastime annoyed him. He’d been annoyed that she was so relentlessly singular in her behavior. Too, that he’d been forced to conduct her business. That he was forced to use up precious time, time better spent seeking employment.
Then his annoyance had given way to something else, to the point where he had kissed her in a field, before an audience of hundreds. Worst of all, kissing her anew had not realized his hope that their first kiss had been but a fluke of sensation and reaction. He would swear his nape and his fingers and toes were tingling—tingling, for pity’s sake.
Benjamin shoved his hands in his coat pockets, trying to ignore the sensation. He just man
aged to resist the impulse to kick out at a clump of grass—but he’d be hanged before he’d go back to the coach, to sit across from Miss Oakes and her damnably kissable mouth.
He spun in the opposite direction, moving his thumbs to reside in the empty watch pockets of his waistcoat in a falsely casual pose, and strode as quickly as he could, without actually running, away from Miss Oakes.
Miss Violet Mansell was prettier than Miss Oakes, Benjamin decided not an hour later as he smiled across the table between them. She has a larger dowry, too, he thought as he glanced from Miss Mansell to her escort for this race day, Mr. Cullman.
At Benjamin’s right sat Miss Oakes, thanking Mr. Cullman for inviting them to join him and Miss Mansell for refreshments beside the race railing.
“It was my pleasure, Miss Oakes,” Cullman said, smiling at her, using that smile to flirt with her again, to seduce her by degrees. “These race days are always so tediously dull between runnings. The least we can do is refresh ourselves with a little wine, a little bread, and thou. Your delightful company, that is.”
Miss Oakes smiled and blushed, and Benjamin forced his features to remain politely blank, not to register the tendril of repugnance that snaked through his belly.
He might not have thought to bring wine—even if he could have afforded it, let alone the servants to serve it as Cullman had arranged—but Benjamin knew he served Miss Oakes a better dish: He was here to be sure the lady did not end up as the final sweet on Cyril’s plate this day.
As he crossed his arms in something close to a pout, Benjamin reflected that he could refuse to eat or to sit at Cullman’s table—but then he would just be hungry, thirsty, and neglectful of Miss Oakes. It did not matter that she apparently had decided she was not speaking with him—since she had not said one more word to him since he had kissed her—only that they were presenting the false front to which they had agreed.
The Bartered Bridegroom Page 14