by Shirl Henke
Then he saw Wescott talking to the youth who was riding his entry. The sorrel was long-legged and sleek, obviously from excellent bloodlines. The fine arch of her neck indicated some Arabian in her ancestry. If he won the horse, what the hell would he do with her? A grin tugged at his mouth as he considered for what price he’d sell Gypsy Lady back to Emory Wescott.
“What are you thinking?” Elise asked.
“How much Wescott would be willing to pay to keep his sorrel.”
“Don’t be too cocky. Remember Santiago told me that Wescott’s mare hasn’t lost a race since that boy started riding her.”
Shelby studied the youth who was slight but held his mount’s reins with complete self-assurance. His features were obscured by the brim of his slouch hat beneath which he wore a bright green bandanna tied in the fashion of a black field hand, but his coloring was too light even for a quarter blood. Something nagged at Samuel as his eyes swept over the youth, but then the boy was swallowed up in the crowd.
Elise led the way to the vantage point she had chosen, about a mile across the meadow. The bluffs above the Missouri River were, for the most part, flat with a few gently rolling hills, but pockmarked in this vicinity by small ponds, caused by a collapse in the ceilings of the limestone caves that ran throughout the area. Some of the pools were seventy feet deep and all were surrounded by dense vegetation just now beginning to turn green with the warm kiss of spring.
When they neared the stand of timber around the sink pond, the shot signaling the start of the race rang out. They turned to watch the horses take off on the arduous three-mile course. A small black took an early lead but the nattily dressed youth riding him was pushing him too hard for his lead to last. As they expected, Quinn held Red Hand back, letting the others churn through the mud. By the time they swung past the wide-open stretch of the track that arced around the grassy meadow, Wescott’s sorrel and the big dun were neck and neck.
When they neared the southern edge of the sink pond, Elise said indignantly, “Look how the dun is crowding the sorrel. That rider ought to be disqualified.”
“You know these races don’t have rules, Liza,” Samuel replied, watching the skill with which the boy was avoiding the jostling tactics of the larger rider. But when the big man began to use his coiled rawhide whip trying to unseat the youth as they went into the turn, Samuel cursed and rode toward them.
The two horses were dangerously close to the steep muddy embankment of the sink pond and the dun’s rider was trying to force Gypsy Lady down into the water. For a moment it looked as if the game kid would outdistance his tormentor but then the mare’s hind foot slid in the mud, throwing her off stride and the dun caught up again with a mighty lunge.
The big man raised his whip for another punishing blow that would surely send the sleek mare and her rider plunging down the steep brushy incline headlong into icy water of unknown depth. Samuel came bursting through the grass from the opposite side to intersect the dun. Seizing the rider’s whip he tore it from the man’s grasp, in the process almost unseating him. The big man turned in his saddle with a snarled oath as the other contestants began to fly past them and onto the homestretch. While he and Shelby struggled over the whip, the boy attempted to guide the mare away from the lip of the pond but the ground was covered with slick green mud and the horse could find no purchase.
Samuel heard the combined screams of horse and rider as Gypsy Lady slid, on her haunches, toward the water. Halfway down the mare’s progress was broken by a thick oak sapling. The impact sent her rider tumbling out of the saddle and down the slope toward the pond.
Forgetting the dun’s rider, Shelby leaped from his stallion’s back and began scrambling down the bank. His opponent viciously kicked his horse into a gallop, overtaking the pack, and then slamming his way through the horses ahead of him until he was approaching Quinn’s bay which was just taking the lead.
Wescott’s jockey hit the water with a splash and a bloodcurdling screech with Shelby a moment behind. Despite the warm spring morning, the water was cold. He had to pull the boy out before he was immobilized and sank. The youth flailed ineffectually as Samuel slid to the water’s edge, grasping a sapling to keep from ending up in the icy drink himself.
“Calm down, dammit! Grab my hand,” Samuel yelled, bracing himself at the water’s edge and struggling to get traction as he reached for the small thrashing figure. He succeeded in grasping the youth’s wrist as the boy splashed toward the bank. The thought flashed through his mind that the youth’s arm was incredibly slim to control a racehorse over such a rough frontier track.
Samuel pulled on that arm and reached for the boy’s leather belt, all the while blinking water from his eyes. Just before his vision cleared, his palm came in contact with something full and soft and quite unmistakable beneath the voluminous folds of wet shirt. A breast—a woman’s breast! The nipple was hardened and distended by contact with the icy water. It was outlined brazenly beneath the wet cloth that clung like second skin to her body.
He blinked again and focused his eyes. “You!”
Olivia cringed as he let out a thunderous oath and impaled her with his saber sharp blue glare. She tried vainly to gain her footing on the slippery rocks at the water’s edge. It was no use. His grip on her arm tightened as he reacted, jerking her forward so she lost her balance. With a loud smack she landed full-length against the hard warm wall of his body, knocking them both down onto the muddy bank. He growled another particularly vile expletive as a big wad of mud-smeared dark red hair plopped onto his face.
Spitting it out of his mouth and yanking it away from his eyes, he glared at her incredulously. “You do have the damnedest ways of running into a man that I’ve ever seen, Miss St. Etienne.”
Struggling vainly to wad her wet hair back beneath the bandanna which had slipped off, she replied breathlessly, “Oh, dear, we’re back to surnames again. Does that mean you no longer consider us friends?”
He pushed up with both elbows braced in the mire behind him and looked up at her with a sardonic lift of his eyebrows. “Considering our rather compromising position at the moment, some people might think we’re a hell of a lot closer than friends!”
She was straddling his lower body, her buttocks pressed against his fly so that her slightest movement ground her pelvis against him in an exceedingly improper manner and an even more improper location. “Ooh!” Olivia tried to wiggle off him as his eyes raked her with a sudden blaze of lust.
Lord above but she was beautiful. He had seen her bedecked in embossed muslin when he danced with her in the Chouteaus’ ballroom, but soaked to the skin, muddy and filthy, clad in boy’s clothes, she was even more bewitching. The baggy tan trousers and oversized gray homespun shirt had now metamorphosed into second skin, clinging to every inch of sweet saucy curves. Amazing that a woman so slim could have such magnificently flared hips and rounded buttocks and such high pert breasts. His palm still burned from touching one, feeling the hard nubby point of its nipple. Samuel felt himself growing hard as she wriggled to escape him, slipping and sliding in the muck.
Quickly, lest she see the effect she had on him, he rolled up and rested his forearms on his bent knees. “That bastard on the dun could’ve broken your neck!”
“He’s not the first one to try. As you can see, I’m still intact.”
There was more than one way to take that remark. He scarcely had time for the cynical thought to surface before she rushed on.
“I’ve raced Uncle Emory’s fastest horses on tracks from here to the East Coast. I hardly ever lose—wouldn’t have today if Gypsy hadn’t lost her footing before I could slip past that miserable dun.”
Samuel stared in dumbfounded amazement, watching those pretty little haunches work as she clambered up to where her mare stood patiently waiting. She boasted as arrogantly as a swaggering sixteen-year-old boy. “You’re actually proud of sneaking around dressed in britches,” he accused.
Olivia turned back to him stiffly.
“Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve won a fortune for Wescott Stables. I learned to ride as a small girl. The duke of San Giorno himself gave me my first pony when I was four years old,” she said, soothing the frightened mare. “As to the disguise”—she shrugged—”it’s not my fault men are so insecure they’re afraid to let a woman compete.”
“Afraid?” he echoed, bristling.
“Afraid,” she pronounced smugly. “I’ve never lost once at the St. Louis track in our three years of racing.”
He ground out, “Well, you have now. What kind of guardian would allow his ward to take such risks for money?” As the breeze picked up, she began to shiver harder. Before Olivia could answer his accusatory remark, Samuel jack-knifed up and seized her by one grimy little hand. “Come on, let’s get you wrapped up in my bedroll blanket before you take a lung fever.”
Olivia felt herself being pulled up the steep slippery slope behind Samuel. “Wait”—she tried to jerk free—“I have to get Lady—”
She never got to finish the sentence. The earth simply seemed to move beneath her feet. When she went down, her arm was nearly yanked from its socket. Her fall created a chain reaction, the abrupt yank throwing Samuel off balance, causing him to lose his footing.
In a blur he went down on top of her and they rolled halfway to the bottom of the incline again, arms and legs entwined, fortunately coming to rest against the mushy softness of a large rotted log. Her small wet body trembled beneath his big warm one as she looked up into his eyes.
“Your concern for keeping me warm is most admirable, Monsieur Colonel, but do you think this is quite proper?” she teased, unable to keep a straight face. The devilish lights dancing in those green eyes gave way to laughter bubbling up inside her.
Shelby looked down into her face and shook his head, then threw it back with a loud rumble of laughter. “You are the most damnable female I’ve ever met, Olivia.”
His mouth hovered over hers. A small smudge of mud brushed against one side of her lower lip. He felt an urge to lick it clean and taste the soft pink skin of that mouth.
Olivia smiled up at him, forgetting her earlier pique, even forgetting the cold misery of her drenched clothes. She had never felt so warm, so safe, so protected in her entire life. She willed him to kiss her.
Samuel lowered his mouth. The tip of his tongue snaked out to flick away the tiny daub of mud, then his lips brushed hers. Before he could deepen the caress a loud halloo echoed across the meadow. The race was over and someone had come in search of them.
“I think we had better find that blanket for you,” he said thickly as he stood up and helped her to her feet. “Let’s not retrace our path through that mudslide.” He led her in a diagonal line up the slope using rocky and brushy ground to gain purchase until they crested the rise a few yards behind where his roan stood grazing peacefully.
Samuel quickly untied the blanket and wrapped her in it. As she stood shivering, he climbed back down the hill and led Gypsy Lady up.
Olivia was relieved that her mount seemed unharmed. “Oh, Gypsy, you good girl. Thank heaven you’re all right,” she exclaimed as she knelt to examine the mare’s forelegs.
Samuel looked across the meadow to where a group of people approached them. Upon seeing Olivia’s long red hair, several of the men exclaimed in anger and a loud buzzing spread through the crowd as its mood grew more ugly. Lyman Simms, the track proprietor, had a black scowl creasing his forehead so deeply it looked as if he had been hit with an ax. A tight-lipped Emory Wescott drove his phaeton just behind, followed by several highly scandalized Creole gentlemen, including one race participant, who until that last turn, had been soundly outridden by a slip of a girl. The only ones who looked happy to see Samuel and Olivia were the smiling Quinns. Santiago must have won.
“Just what the hell is going on here, Miss Olivia?” Simms asked, although he could plainly see for himself.
“Looks like Ollie is a lady,” one Kaintuck said with a raucous laugh, to which his companion jibed, “Dressed in britches, she shore ain’t no lady.”
“After such an affront, Monsieur Wescott and his jockey should be banned from all future horse racing in Louisiana Territory,” Georges Jadot said spitefully.
Several other men chorused agreement, but Simms’s voice rose above the cacophony. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it for myself,” he said, turning red-faced away from Olivia, who struggled to hold the blanket around her shoulders. “You know I ought to bar you from racing here again, Emory.”
“Now, Lyman, the girl’s a natural jockey. You’ve seen her ride dozens of times in the past years and she’s never lost a race.”
“She’s a female. It ain’t fittin’ and I will not have it on my track,” Simms said stubbornly.
“The hell with what’s fitting. Can’t you gentlemen see the lady’s half-frozen?” Samuel interrupted angrily.
“Yes, certainly, certainly,” Wescott replied. “I shall see to my ward, Colonel. As to our wager, I’d like the opportunity to make you an offer for the mare.”
“Uncle Emory, you bet Gypsy Lady!” Olivia exclaimed, horrified.
“If you hadn’t lost, I’d still have Gypsy, and I would’ve won that splendid blue roan,” Wescott said testily, then turned unctuously back to Shelby. “About the mare—”
“I’ll be at Quinn’s warehouse tomorrow. We can settle up there,” Samuel replied, wanting nothing more than to get out of the wind and into some clean, dry clothes. Olivia looked as if she could use the same, but the stubborn little chit had stomped over to the mare and swung up into the saddle as nimbly as a stableboy. She looked down at her guardian, still furious over the bet, then shifted her gaze to Samuel and smiled as if daring him to challenge her right to the horse. He turned away from Wescott and walked over to her. Even muddy she was delectable. “Get home and into a hot bath, urchin,” he whispered.
“You could use one, too,” she said with a husky laugh. “Now we’re almost even. I saved your life. Maybe you saved mine—if I still don’t take lung fever and die.”
Samuel stood watching her ride away, bemused. He did not see the calculating look in Emory Wescott’ s eyes. Elise Quinn did and it troubled her.
* * * *
“Emory was sure the big loser today,” Santiago said as they strolled into the front parlor of their new house, flushed with his success at the race. Although nowhere as grand as the Chouteaus’ home, it was tightly constructed of stone with two-foot-thick walls to hold the merciless summer sun at bay, two-stories high with six bedrooms to accommodate their growing family and frequent visitors.
“I really wanted to get my hands on that bastard who rode the dun. He could’ve killed Olivia,” Samuel said.
“He knew better than to stick around after everyone found out that boy he rode into the sink pond was really Wescott’s ward,” Elise said, chewing on her bottom lip pensively.
“What would make a responsible man risk his reputation by allowing a woman to race his horses?” Santiago asked.
“What respectable woman would agree to do it?” Samuel countered.
“She’s certainly proven herself capable in past races,” Elise responded, feeling the need to defend her sex against male prejudices. “We women aren’t the frail helpless creatures you men would like us to be,” she added sweetly. “Remember it was you, dear husband, who gave me my first lesson in riding astride.”
“Not in men’s clothes,” Santiago replied.
“Not at first, but I wore them, anyway,” she countered.
Quinn sighed and Shelby laughed, both knowing it was useless to argue further. With a nod of her head, Elise swept from the room, headed upstairs to check on the children. A rap on the front door brought Santiago to his feet. He opened it to one of Postmaster Easton’s young riders, Nathaniel Everett.
The boy nodded politely and swallowed, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “Mr. Easton thought you’d want to have this as soon as possible, Colonel,” the boy sa
id, holding up a black-edged envelope for Samuel.
A strange sense of foreboding gripped him as he felt the weight of heavy velum paper in his hands. As he slowly tore open the envelope, Santiago thanked the messenger and saw him out the door.
The words on the page danced before Samuel’s eyes as he read the terse message from Worthington Soames with disbelief and a disquieting elation:
Dear Samuel,
It is my tragic duty to inform you that your wife is dead. Leticia and Richard were enroute to the Miller plantation when the boat on which they were traveling ran aground and sank in the swollen spring current...
Samuel scanned the rest of the letter, fastening on the senator’s signature at the bottom of the page. He must be prostrate with grief.
But you are not, some demon of conscience taunted, for along with the thought about his father-in-law came another one, utterly unbidden—Olivia St. Etienne returning his passionate embrace in Chouteau’s garden.
God above, what sort of monster am I that I feel relief and think of another woman when I learn that my own wife is dead? But then the somber voice of reason reminded him that it was Tish’s relentless ambition that had killed his finer feelings for her just as she’d killed at least one child they’d created. Had he sunk to her level then, so cold and ruthless that he could see only his own advantage in another’s tragedy?
Feeling his brother-in-law’s hand on his shoulder, Samuel turned, breaking free of the melancholy self-examination as Santiago said, "Bad news, I take it." Quinn poured two shots of whiskey while Samuel reread the letter. He offered Shelby a glass and waited patiently.
“Yes and no.” He combed his fingers through his hair and cursed. “Which is a hell of a thing to say. Yes, it’s bad. Tish is dead. Drowned in a boating accident while she and Richard were enroute to the Miller plantation on the James River. Poor devil, he’s probably beside himself with grief because he wasn’t able to save her.”