Imogen looked at her sharply. “I see that you and Felton are behaving in a quite newlywed fashion.”
“What do you mean by that?” Tess asked.
Her sister laughed. “You know precisely what I mean, Tess. Draven didn’t say anything, but I’m certain that he felt as keenly as I did the shame of finding you two kissing behind a closed door, for all the world like a housemaid with the first footman.”
“That is an unkind assessment,” Tess said, a flush rising into her cheeks.
Imogen’s eyes flashed. “If the shoe fits…You didn’t get all that color in your cheeks from jostling amongst the legs and fielders in the stables, as Draven and I were doing. No, you were up here in your plush little birdcage, allowing yourself to be mauled by your rich husband. I wonder at you, Tess.”
Tess looked at her. “And I at you, Imogen.”
“At least I married for love,” she snapped.
Tess could feel fury rising in her bosom. There was no one in the world who could make her as angry as her own sisters, and Imogen was doing an excellent job of deliberately provoking her. “Now you have gone from being unkind to coarse! In case you were unaware of the fact, I married quickly partly to quell the scandal caused by your marriage.”
“Lady Griselda seems quite unperturbed by my sudden marriage,” Imogen retorted, straightening her bonnet. “She tells me that marriage by special license is quite envied. Isn’t this an utterly divine bonnet? Lady Clarice gave it to me; she had only worn it two or three times and didn’t care for it. Of course, you will never have to wear a hand-me-down again.” This time there was pure spite in her tone.
“My understanding is that Lucius saved you from the scandal of a Gretna Green marriage,” Tess said. “In fact, that he gave Lord Maitland the money to buy a special license.”
Imogen waved her hand airily. “Naturally Draven does not carry hundreds of pounds with him at any given time. He’s not a merchant, you know.”
Tess’s heart was beating so fast she could hear it in her ears. “Neither is Lucius. And I’m sorry if you find my choice of husband disagreeable.”
“Oh, I don’t! But it’s sad to marry for love, and then have to watch one’s sisters making matches based on a man’s pocketbook.”
“I didn’t marry Lucius for that reason,” Tess said, keeping her voice controlled with a severe effort.
“I know,” Imogen said, “I heard about Mayne.” For the first time there was a flash of genuine sympathy in her eyes. “I’m sorry about that, Tess.”
Tess couldn’t even think what Imogen was talking about, and then remembered that she had been jilted by the earl.
“I don’t mean to be so beastly,” Imogen continued. “I can’t think why I could be mean to you, of all people, for marrying under those circumstances. It’s utterly loathsome of me!” She looked so dismayed that Tess felt her anger wane.
“It’s all right,” she said, giving Imogen a quick hug. “I didn’t marry for love, and Lucius is terrifyingly rich. It’s all true.”
“Yes, I am quite lucky to have avoided that, aren’t I?” Imogen said, and that savage little undertone was back in her voice.
Another group of horses pounded by their stand. “I must pay attention,” Imogen said walking to the front of the box and sitting down. “Blue Peter will be up any moment. Lucius has all his hopes riding on him.”
“What is he like?” Tess said, settling into a chair next to Imogen. She felt that an interlude of talking about horseflesh would be soothing for both of them.
“Blue Peter? You wouldn’t like him,” Imogen said.
“Is he unpleasant?”
“Very,” Imogen said with feeling. “He tries to bite everything that comes within his reach, and he’s too strong in the neck and shoulders. He’ll be unridable soon. The boys are nervous and don’t want to train him. The other day a ragamuffin threw a ginger-nut at him, and he almost kicked the fence down between himself and the boy.”
“What a shame,” Tess said. “How sad. How old is he?”
“That’s it; he’s only a yearling. Imagine what he’ll be like as a two-year-old. But Draven loves the animal. He won’t hear of his being cut.” She was silent for a moment.
“Papa would have said he’s too young to race. Perhaps the strain is too much for him.”
“Papa had many antiquated ideas; Draven researches these things quite, quite carefully. They’ve been racing yearlings in England for years. Draven is far more educated than Papa ever was about these matters.”
“I cannot see how a Cambridge degree would help him distinguish the effect on a horse of racing in its first year,” Tess objected.
“Trust me,” Imogen said loftily, “Draven is an entirely different sort of horseman from our father. For one thing, Papa never won, did he?”
Tess bit her lip. To her, the similarities between their father and Draven Maitland were obvious, and extended to the fact that Maitland had never (to the best of her knowledge) won a large cup, or indeed, managed to support himself without considerable help from his mother.
There was another howl; the race was already over.
“I missed that one entirely,” Tess remarked, wishing that Lucius would return. There was something wrong with Imogen, and she wasn’t certain how to talk to her about it. If only Annabel were here! Annabel was so good at finding out secrets.
“Races are getting shorter and shorter. Draven says that’s because the legs are fixing most of the races by controlling the betting.”
“I’m sure,” Tess said. “But how are you, Imogen? Is marriage to Lord Maitland everything you dreamed it would be?”
“But I told you; he is all that is gracious and wonderful,” Imogen said.
But Tess felt there was something wrong. Imogen’s eyes didn’t shine in the way they used to, before she married Draven. She kept saying that everything was wonderful, and yet—
“Are you quite certain?” she persisted.
“Of course I am!” Imogen said with a short laugh.
“Is it comfortable living with Lady Clarice?”
A shadow crossed Imogen’s face. “I can see Annabel and Josie regularly. Every day, if I wish. But as soon as Draven wins his next golden cup, we shall move to our own establishment, naturally.”
“That must be difficult,” Tess said, putting a hand on Imogen’s.
Imogen looked at her and grinned, and suddenly there was a flash of Tess’s old, passionate sister. “Lady Clarice can be rather troublesome. But I find that since I began reading Catullus to her in the mornings, she has began considering me cultivated, and that makes all the difference.”
“I’m sure Miss Pythian-Adams would be happy to lend you a text or two,” Tess said.
Imogen shuddered. “Miss Pythian-Adams is a very odd woman. Do you know, she actually thanked me for taking Draven off her hands? As if I could have had a greater wish in life than to marry my dearest husband!”
“Of course,” Tess murmured.
But Imogen didn’t seem to want to talk about her marriage anymore. “What is it like being married to Mr. Felton, Tess? Draven describes him as virtually the richest man in all England!”
“It’s confusing. I find it quite mystifying, sometimes, to think where the day has gone, because it seems to take enormous amounts of time to do something as simple as talk to the housekeeper about meals, then there’s the gardener, and the accounts—of course, I don’t keep the accounts, but I try to look them over. In all, it’s a tremendous amount of work.”
“But you look happy,” Imogen said. “Your eyes are happy, Tess.” There was a moment’s silence, then: “I think you must have fallen in love with your husband.”
Tess froze for a second. “Perhaps someday.” She caught sight of Lucius walking through the crowd toward her, with Draven at his side. “They are returning!”
The crowd moved aside as Lucius approached. Lord Maitland looked just as handsome, in a different sort of way: his eyes shining an audacious
blue, gesticulating widely as he explained something to Lucius—something to do with Blue Peter, no doubt.
Watching him, Tess even felt a queer sort of affection. After all, Draven was family now. He was Imogen’s husband, and though she could have wished Imogen had married a different sort of man, and in a different way, there was no overlooking that Imogen had wanted nothing but Draven from the moment she saw him.
She took Imogen’s hand in her own and squeezed it. “I’m so glad that the two of you wed,” she said impulsively. “I’m afraid that you would have suffered true unhappiness had things been different.”
Imogen looked at her. “Yes, I likely should have done,” she said. But there was something in her tone that made Tess frown again.
Lucius sat down beside Tess. Draven was still talking, something about the filly who would be running against Blue Peter and what a groom had told him about that filly’s diet; he sat down next to Imogen and simply switched the flow of his conversation from Lucius to Imogen.
Lucius leaned close to her, and said, “I would say that the subject of oats and apples has been exhausted.”
Tess smiled, but she felt sad for Imogen. Lucius’s hand was just touching her back, but the very touch of his fingers made her body sing with the memory of what had happened a mere hour ago.
She looked up at him and knew they were both thinking the same thing. “Shall we take a small stroll?” he asked. “I gather that Blue Peter will not race for an hour or so, and you have not so much as left the box.”
Tess glanced at Imogen. Draven was describing a two-year-old filly with a white stripe on his nose and “that look, that calm, alert look, you know what I mean. I could take her to the Ascot, but my mother, dammit, I expect she won’t—” Imogen was looking at him and nodding.
Tess turned away and took Lucius’s arm. A moment later, they were threading their way through crowds that smelled of tobacco, spirits, and excitement. He put his arm around her, protecting her, possessive and warm, and Tess—who felt absolutely no need for protection, having practically grown up amongst crowds of jostling men of just this stripe—felt a streak of joy in her chest that was so sharp it almost hurt. She stopped. He stopped, perforce, and she looked up to his face and said, “Lucius.”
“Hmm-hum?”
But what he saw in her eyes made amusement shine in his own, and he bent his head. “Did you wish to say something private, my dear?”
“Is your carriage in the vicinity?”
He answered her with a smile, then—regardless of the utter impropriety of the action, tipped up his wife’s face and kissed her: swiftly, one hard, demanding kiss, so swift that no one really noticed, since their faces were trained to the track, and the horses pounding their way through the dust.
Only one person saw them, and that was Imogen, watching them from the box while Draven talked. “You see, when the group near the rail began to speed up,” her husband was saying, “the filly pulled to the outside and shot ahead as if she were…”
Imogen saw that Lucius was looking down at Tess as if she were terribly, terribly precious, laughing at something now, his arm tight around her as if to keep the crowds from ever touching the precious Mrs. Felton.
“If only my mother understood a horse’s investment potential,” Draven was saying, as much to himself as her, because when that particular note of rage sounded in his voice it was always to do with his mother. And Imogen had learned quickly that there was nothing she could say that would better the business. Lady Clarice showed no signs whatsoever of loosening the purse strings now that her son was married. Indeed, as she told Imogen, not unkindly, it was for her own good.
“He puts every shilling I give him into his stables,” she had told Imogen. “I don’t begrudge him the money, but my dearest husband agreed with me that Draven does not have an eye for a winner.”
“Draven has an excellent eye,” Imogen had said stoutly. “It’s only a matter of time until his stables are the finest in all England.”
“I would be very happy for him,” his mother had agreed, and then she had changed the subject.
“Draven,” Imogen interrupted him now, “would you like to go for a walk?”
He leaped to his feet. “Of course you wish to see the filly, don’t you? You can hardly help me talk my mother into releasing the funds unless you’ve seen her yourself, can you?” He hauled her to her feet with scant grace. “Good thought, Imogen.”
At least he remembers my name, Imogen thought rather disconsolately.
Chapter
33
The footmen saw them coming, and this time Lucius didn’t give a damn what they thought about what he was doing with his new wife in the carriage, given that the horses were unhitched and stabled for the afternoon. With one jerk of his head he sent them flying in different directions, not to return for at least an hour. He pulled open the door himself and let down the little steps.
On the top step, Tess turned and smiled at him over her shoulder. “You are coming with me, aren’t you?” she asked, so throatily that he almost scooped up her perfect little rounded bottom and threw her in so he could slam the door behind them.
“I’m right behind you,” he said.
It wasn’t until she was lying back on the seat and he was sliding into her warmth, her head thrown back, one arm around his neck, the other over her head, that Lucius Felton realized—something.
Something important.
He couldn’t put it into words, though. All he could do was drive into his wife, giving up any semblance of control he’d ever had over his emotions. She was under him, arching up, twisting under his hands as his fingers shaped her breasts, crying out…He could feel his own face changing, his teeth bared as he struggled to maintain control.
And then, suddenly, he realized that with Tess there would never be control.
He reached down and touched her slick, soft warmth and her eyes opened wider, wider…
“Lucius!” she cried.
And he gripped her hips, with the joy of a Bach hymn pouring through his soul, gripped her hips and pulled her higher and let go, let go, let go…
He could feel his face tightening and shaping itself in ungentlemanly ways, a guttural sound coming from his lips, a burst of noise, of pain, of joy.
She had one arm curled around his neck, and she was not lethargic now. She was boneless. Her hair spilled down the side of the seat; her lips were ruby red from kissing.
“What if you hadn’t come to Rafe’s house?” Lucius asked her suddenly. “What if you hadn’t come?”
“Mmmm,” Tess said. Then she sat up. “Imogen!”
Lucius sighed.
“Imogen is going to know instantly what we were doing,” his wife said anxiously, trying to wind her hair into some sort of a pile on her head, presumably so that she could jam a bonnet on top of it.
Lucius grinned. “Your sister and her husband were passionate enough about each other that they actually eloped. I’ve no doubt but that they’ve stolen away an afternoon or two themselves.”
There was a dim roar in the distance and a great pounding roar of hooves rounding the corner. Tess stopped trying to wind up her hair and lapsed back against Lucius’s chest again. She didn’t want to ever leave. She wanted to stay here with Lucius, in their little velvet-lined chamber, with her head on his shoulder and the wonderful melting feeling of delirium just past…she snuggled against him and listened to his heartbeat. It was steadier now, not galloping along.
“I don’t think they talk very often,” she said.
“Who?” He sounded sleepy.
“Imogen and her husband.”
“He talks,” Lucius said with some feeling. “He spent a good hour this afternoon talking up the points of some hellish animal he has running in the Cup. When we went to look at it, damned if the brute hadn’t eaten a chunk of his stall. He was spitting wood chips in all directions. The stableboys are terrified of him.”
“Imogen desperately wants him to win,?
?? Tess said, snuggling even closer and smelling the soap-clean smell of Lucius’s chest. “Apparently Maitland lost twenty thousand pounds at Lewes last week.”
“Silly chump,” Lucius said, his hand tangling in her hair. “The jockey was trying to back out when we were down there, saying he was afraid the horse would pull his arms from his sockets. Maitland was threatening to race the horse himself; said he was bound to win.”
“He can’t do that,” Tess said. “It sounds as if the horse is mad.”
Lucius had pulled on his shirt but left it untucked when he sat down with her, so Tess slipped her hand under the white linen and slid them through over the rippled muscles of his chest. Under her ear, his heart beat steadily. “I’m so lucky,” she whispered into his shirt.
But he heard her and smiled over her head.
Tess sat down next to Imogen, knowing without question that her cheeks were flushed rose, and her hair looked nothing as smooth as it had in the morning.
Imogen threw her a jaundiced look that said without words: kissing behind the stables, were you?
Draven had bounded to his feet the moment they opened the door. “Finally!” he said. “Since you’re here now, I’ll just check how Blue Peter is doing once more. I want to make sure the jockey understands how important this is. He was showing signs of being cowardly earlier.”
“A yearling and a new stableboy,” Lucius commented. “Perhaps you would do better to consider this a trial run.”
But Draven shook his head with his customary intensity. “No, I’ve decided to take the purse from winning this race and buy that two-year-old filly that Farley’s offering for sale. I must have her. She’s a beauty, bone-deep, and she’ll win the Ascot this year, I’m certain of it.”
“I thought Blue Peter was going to win the Ascot,” Tess said.
Draven nodded. “That’s possible too. Very possible. Lovely horses, both of them. But the two-year-old has a bit more experience, and I fancy she has a slightly higher flank. A beauty, she is, and Imogen agrees with me. We went to the stables while you were walking—where were you?” he asked Lucius. “I looked all about for you because I wanted you to see the animal as well. Would be a lovely investment, but Imogen and I couldn’t find you anywhere.”