“You can’t know that something as ephemeral as temperament came from the maternal side,” Mayne said.
“I certainly do,” Josie said. “And I’m not alone in that opinion. Racing Journal noted that Eclipse’s offspring follow their mother more readily than their father. Why do you think that none of them were as great a racer as he was?”
“Because some combinations tend to highlight defects in the line,” Mayne pointed out. His eyes were narrowed a bit and he didn’t look quite as lazy as he usually did. “And frankly, how can you say that King Fergus wasn’t as great a racer?”
“Because he wasn’t.”
“His sire line has some of the greatest horses in this country!”
“Eclipse’s offspring were temperamental—vicious even—because he was put to stud with twitchy mares. Every single one of them!” Josie stated. “The fact is that you can’t dictate what qualities will come from where. We had Nectarine, a lovely bay, brownish red with white feet and a white blaze. He was fifteen hands at the least. Our broodmare Gentian had shown that she could throw a winner, but every single colt he sired on her had a short pelvis. And that came from the bay’s mother.”
“There are always exceptions,” Mayne persisted. “As I said, some combinations highlight defects. Who knows whether that short pelvis really came from the bay’s mother? Your Gentian might have had a whole family of hobbling sires in her line. After all, record keeping was hardly adequate in Scotland twenty years ago.”
With a little cough, Billy scooted sideways and out the door of the stable.
“As a matter of fact, we were keeping record books,” Josie said, scowling at Mayne. “My grandfather detailed every horse that passed through his hands. I can tell you without hesitation that Gentian didn’t have a short pelvis anywhere in her line.”
“There will always be exceptions to any case, but a breeding program has to be organized around a principle. I’ve seen enough evidence for this idea that I’ve designed next year’s program around it.”
Josie rolled her eyes. “No wonder you haven’t had a solid win in two years.”
“An unjust observation. After all, I haven’t even started this breeding program.”
“May I see it?”
“Are you going to be kind?”
“Do you want kindness or a win? Don’t be an—” She caught herself.
“I suspect my new wife was about to call me a name,” Mayne said.
“Never,” Josie said, although she was guiltily aware that husbands didn’t like to be called asses. She’d almost forgotten about being honey-sweet.
But a moment later, reading his breeding program, she forgot it again. “You’re dreaming if you think that you’ll get a good match from breeding Selkie with Tisane. You forget that I know Tisane. She raced against one of my father’s horses two years ago at the Kelso races. She would have won, except that she didn’t care enough.”
“That wasn’t the reason,” Mayne protested.
“Yes, it was,” Josie stated. “I had the distinct impression that Tisane was a little afraid of being run over. That is not something that you want to redouble by breeding her with a stallion who has no spirit.” She stroked Selkie’s nose to apologize for the insult.
“You can’t expect the characteristics of the parents to transmute perfectly into the sire line. I’m not worrying about these horses having poor performances because it’s their parents’ qualities that will skip into their progeny.”
“Absolutely absurd,” Josie said again. “I’d think you’d been out in the sun too long if you were standing before me. Do you really think that children take after their grandparents only? What about you? Are you expecting our daughter to look like your mother? I think not!”
“I hope not,” Mayne said. “I adore my mother, but she has a voice like a bullfrog.”
“According to you, our daughter will inherit a bullfrog’s temperament, then,” Josie said. “Luckily for her, your theory is utter drivel.”
Mayne burst out laughing. “Now I’m going to start praying that our daughter’s temperament doesn’t take after her mother’s!”
Josie blinked at him and then realized she’d forgotten. Utterly forgotten that she was a honey-sweet wife.
Mayne was still laughing at her when she saw something change in his eyes. He glanced down the long, empty corridor of the stables. No one was there except for a few horses drowsing in their stalls as flecks of straw floated through the shafts of sunlight. “I’ll show you the lofts,” he said, taking her hand.
“The lofts?” Josie questioned, and then reminded herself to be nice. Very nice. “Of course, darling,” she said. “Whatever you wish.”
He took her over to the ladder against the wall. Then he paused. “Are you able to climb a ladder?”
Josie rolled her eyes and then nipped up the ladder so that he wouldn’t have time to examine her bottom. As a consequence, she went up the rungs so quickly that her slipper caught at the top and she fell sprawling into a pile of hay.
Laughter sounded behind her and she had the prickly sense that he was gazing at her bottom, so she flipped over.
Sure enough, he was standing at the opening, legs spread, looking about as delicious as any man had the right to look. His pantaloons clung to his legs as if they were painted there. It just wasn’t fair, to Josie’s mind, that he came by that body of his naturally, and she…
He didn’t bend down and pick her up; instead he squatted down next to her, just as if she were a small girl who’d fallen in the grass. “What are you thinking about?”
“Your legs,” she said honestly.
He snorted with laughter. “You’re thinking about my legs. Legs? What’s there to think about?”
Suddenly she was feeling it again, that lovely sweet singing low in her belly, and the racing in her blood that made her feel just right in her body, not plump, not awkward—just right. She turned on her side and put her hand on his knee. “Don’t you know?”
“No.”
“You’ve probably heard symphonies of praise about your body. I don’t want to make you any vainer than you already are.”
He laughed again, a dark soft sound deep in his throat. “Believe it or not, among those women to whom you refer so casually not a single one mentioned my legs.”
“They must have been blind,” she said. It was hard to ignore the muscles bunched in his thighs. They made her want to dance a little waltz, right here in the straw. And by the look of his eyes, he knew it.
“Now you,” he said slowly, “you didn’t have the hundred lovers that I was lucky enough to experience.”
She pouted, the kind of pout that pushed out her lips. His eyes caught there and she felt more like dancing than ever. “One of the many unfair things about being a woman rather than a man.”
“You missed nothing by it. That’s what I wanted to say. Nothing. Not a single woman praised my legs.”
“Well, what did they praise?” she asked, surprised out of her haze of desire for a moment. “This is a most improper conversation,” she added, looking at his grin.
“You, Josie, are quite often improper,” her husband said. “I think it’s a congenital trait. In fact, I would guess that our daughter will be at risk of getting herself thrown out of the ton for impropriety if we don’t watch her closely.”
He had given in, albeit silently, on the breeding program, Josie realized. He had listened to her and he meant to change his program on the basis of her logic. No one ever had done such a thing before, surely not her father, who laughed at her every suggestion until she stopped making them.
“Your legs are beautiful,” she said, with a shaky little catch in her voice. “I—” But she couldn’t think how to phrase what she meant. Something about the muscles and the hardness of him and the way he was everything she wasn’t: powerful and yet graceful, with no unnecessary bits or blobs about him.
“The odd thing is that I would say the same to you, but never of myself,” Ma
yne said, and he really did sound puzzled. His hands were stealing up her skirts and she let it happen.
“My legs—” she said, and broke off. There was no point in detailing her feelings about that.
“Soft and curvy,” he said, his fingers discovering just that softness. The dancing feeling was back, so strong that she almost twitched her hips. “Your skin is as white as a petal. I know that’s not very original.” His hands were on her thighs now. He was over her, and she closed her eyes because there was something in his face that made her feel…
Odd.
“I think I like you here the best of all,” he whispered. His fingers were under her, shaping her bottom. The very bottom she had scampered up the ladder so that he couldn’t see. “It’s got the kind of curve that could make a man burst into tears, you know, Josie?”
“No,” she whispered.
He was kissing her neck. “Your thighs make a man want to sink into you, sip you, taste all the sweetness you’re hiding.”
“Oh,” Josie breathed. She had her hands in his rumpled dark hair, but his head slipped away and then he was there, tasting the sweetness, and the muddled pleasured joy of it spread through her body.
It wasn’t all that much later when she was shuddering, her dress around her waist, and she didn’t even care that the sunlight was there and he could see everything, not when his eyes were wild and dark, and telling her—
“If even one of those hundred women, Josie—”
It hurt a little bit, so she squirmed. But it hurt and felt good at the same time.
“What about the hundred women?” she said. “Not that you should be bringing up such insensitive subjects—Ouch!”
“Does that hurt?”
“No, I just enjoy pain—Bloody hell!”
He stopped, and a stricken look crossed his face. “It’s too soon. I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry, Josie, I—”
She stopped him before he started babbling. “Just stay there,” she ordered him. He froze. She wiggled a little, letting her body get used to the intrusion of him. “All right,” she said.
“All right what?”
“You can—” She waved her hand. “You know.”
He looked as if he were frozen in place.
“Come in a bit more,” she said ungraciously. “Isn’t there any language for this sort of thing?”
He choked on a laugh, and then slowly inched forward. Hair fell over his face and he looked so dear that she smiled and didn’t even notice that he was stealing forward again.
“Are you extraordinarily large?” she asked a second later.
He seemed to have trouble getting his voice, but then he said, “I don’t really know.”
“Well, all those women must have told you, although I do think that we should stop talking about them,” she observed.
“I was trying to tell you, Josie, that if even one of those women—not that there were a hundred, because there weren’t—but if even one of them had…” He gave a funny little sound in his throat. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
Josie arched her back again. “It feels good.”
He angled his hips in a different way.
“That,” she gasped, “feels better than good.”
So they enjoyed that for a bit, until they had a rhythm. It was almost like dancing, to Josie’s mind, except that she was terrible at dancing, and she seemed to be all right at this. In fact, she didn’t think that Mayne had any complaints. She was discovering all sorts of things about him that she liked. The two little hollows on the side of his hips, for example.
“I like your ass,” she told him, clutching him there.
He gave that choked kind of groan again and arched up, bracing himself on his arms so that he could look down at her. Josie knew her hair was all damp with sweat but she didn’t care. He’d ripped her gown so he could kiss her breasts, and so she arched up toward him in invitation. He laughed, and panted, and tasted her again, and then said: “Just what sort of a lady uses the word ass, Josephine?”
“Did you want to marry a lady?” she said, not caring about that because she could feel all her moorings to the earth starting to float away. Waves of delicious heat were rolling from her toes to her fingertips and she didn’t really care what he said as long as he kept thrusting into her in just that way.
Mayne looked down at her and forgot to answer the question. Because when Josie looked like that, all cream and roses, panting and sweaty and sweet, clutching his ass with both hands and wrapping herself around him, he didn’t want to marry a lady.
But he didn’t forget the other thing he had to tell her; he just waited until they had collapsed into a sweaty little heap. Then he pulled Josie on top of him so the straw wouldn’t give that gorgeous cream skin of hers a rash, and said it into her hair.
“If one of those hundred women had had your body, Josephine My Wife, I wouldn’t be married to you, and that’s the truth.”
“Huh?” She sounded startled, so he said it again.
“I wouldn’t have been able to leave her. I probably would have had a duel with her husband, and killed him, and then had to leave the country.”
“Well, I’m glad that didn’t happen,” she said, sounding skeptical. “You must be blind so I’m sure you would lose in a duel.”
He smiled into her hair. “You’re the blind one.” She smelled like a saucy woman, everything he’d ever dreamed of. Not that he’d had enough brains to dream about someone as intelligent as Josie.
“Just think. I might have ended up married to someone who really understood horse breeding,” she said.
“Vixen.”
“I’m not a vixen. I’m your honey-sweet wife.”
He snorted. “Must have got yourself mixed up with my other wife.”
Josie lay on top of him, face buried in his shoulder and thought about how sweet she was going to be to him. Just as soon as he stopped saying stupid things. “You don’t have any other wife,” she observed. “You’ve been too busy bounding from skirt to skirt like a jackrabbit looking for a carrot.”
He gave her a little pinch. “I think I was looking for a rabbit hole.”
The enjoyment in his voice cued her in. “That’s debauched!” she said. “I’m no rabbit hole for your pleasure.”
“Hmmmm,” he said, sounding a bit sleepy. “And I have a carrot for you…”
It was all so ridiculous that she couldn’t even bring herself to point out how debauched his language was, and that clearly he’d learned his odious jokes from all that hell-raking behavior. Instead she just stroked his hair because it sounded as if he might be going to sleep.
And she didn’t want to wake him.
39
From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the Twenty-fifth
I saw her…and I wanted her. And yet she was everything I was not: clear and beautiful in soul and body, as chaste as the snow and as virtuous as an angel. Would she—could she—marry me? That was the challenge I set myself now. Not to soil an angel, but to marry her. To win her heart, win her hand, win her place next to mine.
Ah, Dear Reader, what do you think of my chance of success?
One week later
Whitestone Manor, Surrey
Josie awoke and grinned at the ceiling of the matrimonial suite of Whitestone Manor. Otherwise known as the seat of the Earl of Mayne. And that of his countess.
As of this morning, Josie had officially kept the Earl of Mayne in her bed for seven nights. And seven days, if you counted what happened in the library yesterday. She moved her legs experimentally and winced a bit. Unfortunately, the pain persisted. Of course, it didn’t persist all that long.
Every time Mayne…well, every time they began, she said ouch, and had to resist an impulse to push him off. But he was always slow and sweet in the beginning, and whispered apologies in her ear, and did other things with his hands. And before she knew it, her body would decide that she didn’t mind the invasion after all.
In fac
t, the very thought of what her body liked and didn’t like made her blush.
The door swung open. “His lordship thought you might prefer breakfast in your bed,” her maid said cheerfully. “And a package has arrived for you from London.”
“My book!” Josie said, sitting up and reaching for it. It wasn’t just any book either. It was Hellgate’s Memoirs, that depraved story that everyone in London had read except herself. Now that she was married, she ordered it straight from Hatchard’s.
It was a beautiful edition, bound in red leather, stamped in gold. She opened up the first page. I have lived a life of immoderate passion, she read. Delicious! A little too florid for Mayne, but…
When she reached for her hot chocolate a few seconds later, it had gone stone cold and apparently an hour had passed.
Mayne had no idea how much gossip about his life she knew. She knew everything. The Tatler had reported in detail the affaire that he and the beautiful actress, Octavia Regina, engaged in. From what she could see, Octavia was detailed under the name Titania in Hellgate’s Memoirs. It made it a bit odd that they were both quoting A Midsummer Night’s Dream the previous night…but that was the nature of coincidence. Odd.
An hour later she was absolutely sure. She was holding in her hands a florid, but detailed, record of her husband’s various escapades over the past twenty years.
Josie took Hellgate’s Memoirs with her into the bath, after her maid inquired the second time about hot water. She couldn’t identify all the women. The story of Hellgate’s short marriage was clearly a tarradiddle, placed there to disguise the fact that Mayne’s life was laid bare on the page.
The morning dwindled into luncheon, and when her maid brought word that his lordship was going into Chobham and wished to know if she would accompany him, she merely shook her head.