The Sport of Baronets Read online

  He slid from his gelding’s back, then helped Hannah dismount. She did so with the lightness of long practice, hopping down using the slipper stirrup and a clutch of gloved hand in gloved hand.

  She was far too quick about the matter, in Bart’s opinion.

  They gave both sets of reins to the waiting Sothern, then stepped onto the turf. Frequent spring rains had coaxed the grass into riotous green life. It cushioned one’s footfalls and sprang back pleasantly.

  “Golden Barb would like this track,” Bart observed. Within the white railings, the course was trimmed shorter, but the grass was still thick enough to avoid the muddiness that made the bay colt paw his protest. “He has trained me to keep him away from mud, but he runs well on grass.”

  “He runs well everywhere. I have seen him exercise before.” Hannah stood outside the railing, her fingertips resting on the barrier. “Humans are meant to train the horse, not the reverse.”

  “It goes both ways.” He fumbled at his fob, pulling out the center-seconds chronometer he always carried to the track.

  “Is that so? How has your horse trained you?”

  Bart held the silver-chased watch, eyes tracking both the watch’s second hand and a likely-looking chestnut breezing along the track. “Golden Barb has won my loyalty with his own and with his excellent work, so that I in turn will work with anyone to get him back.”

  “Even me?”

  “Especially you. He’s won you over too, hasn’t he?”

  She became occupied with pulling a notebook and stub of pencil from a pocket in her skirts. “I…I don’t know as much about him as I would like to.”

  Hmmm.

  Squinting up the track, she added, “We shall find him.”

  “Do you think so?” Bart noted her use of the pronoun we. “I’m afraid I didn’t learn much of use yet.” He described his conversation with Sir Jubal.

  Hannah wrinkled her nose in thought. “That is odd. I would like to have a look at this mysterious visitor with the sadly cracked hoof.”

  “Surely you wouldn’t know the horse?”

  “I doubt it, since it sounds as though he’s not local. If he’s a London colt, my brother Nathaniel might remember clapping eyes on him before. Without distinguishing marks, though, it will be difficult to trace a brown horse.”

  “We don’t need another mystery,” Bart reminded her. “We’re down one colt, and just because Sir Jubal is up another doesn’t mean there’s any connection.”

  For a minute or two, they studied the passing Thoroughbreds and riders in silence. Hannah made a few notes in her book, and Bart consulted his watch to time the speedy chestnut, then a dark bay that wasted far too much energy fighting his jockey for his head.

  Bart was not a poetic man. He would rather gallop than read a sonnet, would rather trot than recite. But this—this was his idea of poetry. While others took pleasure in the silky flow of words or the patter of meter and rhyme, he found joy in hoofbeats. Each gait had its rhythm, and each horse its own variation on the gait.

  In five days’ time, there would be a superb horse race.

  He slipped his watch back into his waistcoat pocket, then held out an arm to Hannah. She stashed her book and pencil, then slid her fingers within the crook of his elbow. Did she grab at his arm a bit when she did?

  Quite all right. More than all right.

  “What did you learn since we last—ah, last spoke?” Bart asked. Spoke wasn’t the last thing they had done, and Hannah’s quick sideways glance showed that she remembered their kiss as well as he did.

  “I intended to speak to the staff of our stables, but my Bridget seemed odd yesterday,” she said. “Bridget’s Brown, that is. He would not touch the carrots he usually loves, though he ate an apple readily enough. The grooms said he ran better than ever, so he doesn’t seem ill. He should be ready to race in a few days’ time.”

  “What has that to do with us?”

  “Very little. Sorry.” She offered a small smile. “That occupied my attention yesterday afternoon, but none of it is relevant. My father is pleased by the odds on Bridget. So what incentive has he to consult a constable about Golden Barb’s location? He has lost nothing.”

  “Because he used your money.”

  “Which was what I wanted.”

  “Even so.” Bart’s free hand clenched. “And my mother took the payment from his messenger. I got her to admit as much, though she said she has paid it out on debts already. When I asked what she knew of Northrup, she collapsed onto the bed and said I must stop hounding a poor invalid—which means she is hiding something.”

  “How sinister.” Hannah’s tone did not reflect the expected distaste. “So she plotted with your groom to take Golden Barb—so she could both sell the colt and keep him? What good does that do if she cannot race him?”

  “She had an apoplexy within the past year. Her brain cannot be presumed to function in the most logical fashion.”

  “That’s rot. Her body is frail, but she’s as wily as ever. Wilier, even, because now she’s got you underestimating her.”

  “Oh, I don’t do that, believe me. To the contrary.” He had been overestimating his mother for too long. If she would steal from her own son, from their own stables…

  Then nothing was more important to her than getting money. More, more, more for gambling.

  “What would you do if we found Golden Barb?” Hannah broke into those thoughts.

  “Race him, of course—if I could find another jockey. Northrup was to ride him in the Two Thousand Guineas. But Golden Barb was bred to race. He loves to race.”

  “And what if he wins?” She sounded hesitant.

  “Then I would race him again. Just as I would race him again if he lost.”

  Her footsteps were quiet on the grass. “What is the purpose of it all for you? Simply to make money?”

  “The chances of winning enough money through racing are small. But a champion can be brought to stud, and the stud fees can make up for the expenses of his racing years.”

  “So you hope your colt will race so well that he can spend the rest of his life mating.”

  One of Bart’s boots caught on a clod, making him stumble. “That…does not sound like such a bad fate for man or beast.” Her light touch on his arm seemed weighty.

  “But I think,” he continued, “what you are asking is why. Why do I want to race him at all? And the answer, I suppose, is that I was bred to it as surely as he was.”

  “I think…” she echoed. “I think I was too.”

  “A Chandler? Indeed you were. Though my family has detested yours for decades, there’s a heavy portion of respect mixed in as well.”

  The barrier of their feuding families had ceased to bother Bart greatly, but it was enough to pull them both up short. Hannah swung beneath the white railing, habit skirts trailing on the spring-damp grass, and stood to face Bart opposite it. “Golden Barb was to carry both of us away from a life we don’t want.”

  “I want my life.” His reply was hasty, stumbling. “That is—mostly.” It had gone threadbare about the edges.

  He had choices, to be sure. He could have returned to the land in Lincolnshire, where he had tenants. He could have taken the reins from his steward and… No, he could not stop thinking in terms of horses for a moment. He could no more be a farmer than he could be a ruthless rogue.

  “And what is it about this life you don’t want, if you think you were made for it from birth?” he pressed. “What would you do if Golden Barb stood before you right now? Would you race him? Or would you ride him to London and throw yourself into the Season you seem to admire so much?”

  She trailed her right hand along the railing. “Yes. I would race him. I would decide when, and I would choose his trainer and his jockey. And when he won, it would be my victory. Because the chances that I, on my own, will ever win a damned thing are all but nonexistent.”

  “So you want the same things I d
o.”

  “No, you want the same things I do.”

  “Surely it is the same either way.”

  “Is it?” Her fingers squeezed his, tightly enough to be uncomfortable. “I’d like to be able to leave if I want to. And if I stay, it will also be because I want to. Do you see?”

  The power of choice was what she wanted, in short. “I do see,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

  He swung beneath the railing and stood at her side. “If you’re given your head, I have no doubt you will win at whatever you attempt.” He held out a hand, and she placed hers in it, ducking with him back beneath the white boundary to stand outside the course.

  They leaned upon the railing, still touching, as they watched the horses gallop. White rails drew the eye down the gentle slope of the mile and through the dip before the heave to the finish. The wide ribbon of turf narrowed, slowly, slowly, to funnel the horses to the final post.

  There was so much more he wanted to say, but the pressure of Hannah’s fingers silenced him. The last thing he’d said had, he thought, been right. He did not want to ruin the moment by following it with something wrong.

  And anything that made her feel limited would be wrong. It would be wrong even to hold her hand if she did not want her fingers in his grasp. He had seen too many men treat women as lesser beings. He had seen too many women thwarted, made harsh and shrill with frustration.

  Maybe Lady Crosby had been such a one, tied to the family estates. Had she wanted the responsibility? She had never tried to push it onto Bart. But until her apoplexy, he had never tried very hard to pull it away. Routine was easier. Familiar too.

  Hannah made a powerful argument for its opposite.

  “I used to wonder,” she said softly, “what you were like. What London was like. I couldn’t really hate you because I did not know you—and yet I could almost hate you for getting to leave. And I could almost hate all the women you danced and flirted with too, for being where and what I wanted to be.”

  “You wanted to flirt with me.” The words made blood rush hotly through his veins.

  “Well…” She cleared her throat. “The idea of you. I didn’t know you at the time.”

  “What do you want of me now?”

  She stopped walking and turned to face him. “To begin, I want another look at whatever marvelous waistcoat you are wearing today.”

  “Ah. Happy to oblige.” With fingers made clumsy by haste, he slipped free a button of his coat to give her a better look.

  Her freckled nose crinkled in a grin. “Red satin. Why do you hide it beneath a coat so plain?”

  “A drab coat is practical for one who spends a great deal of time with horses. The fine waistcoat lets me feel I’m still myself underneath.” He leaned closer to her ear. Fine wisps of gold-brown hair pulled free to peek from beneath her cap, and they danced as he murmured, “I am far more exotic and mysterious than the world realizes.”

  She pressed a gloved hand to her cheek, but it did not hide the blush. “Oh.” Her breath came short and shallow.

  He savored the sight. Every bit of it. “Perhaps,” he said, laughing, “I am overstating the truth. To be honest, I simply like red.” His own fingers traced the line of her sleeve, hidden from the view of onlookers by his body. “And—I like this green. And the shade of your hair and your eyes. I like those too.”

  This ought to have been far more difficult than asking a woman to dance, but instead it was easy. Under the silver-blue of a cloudy sky, bounded by track and cushioned by grass, everything fit together exactly as it ought.

  Including—especially—Hannah’s hand, slipping into his waistcoat pocket to stroke the muscles of his abdomen until he shuddered. “Let us find a place to be alone,” she breathed. “And I hope you will show me more of what you like.”

  Yes, yes, good God, yes. “If you will promise to do the same,” he said, “then I know exactly the place to go.”

  Chapter 6

  They made some excuse to Sothern; Hannah hardly knew what. Bart was everything friendly, speaking with the groom briefly before Sothern led the horses away.

  “We have an hour,” Bart murmured. His dark hair glinted with silver, his eyes with promise. “There is a place we might go on the July Course, if you’ll accompany me?”

  In a heartbeat. Without question.

  “Yes,” Hannah said.

  Little used until the summer months, the July Course was a dogleg off of which jutted the straight dash of the Rowley Mile. On the Rowley Mile, where the Two Thousand Guineas Stakes would be run in a few days’ time, jockeys and trainers and owners paced off the subtle topography of a course that changed with every rainfall and every baking sun. Anything for an advantage in the Two Thousand Guineas or any of the other chances to prove one’s worth.

  Hannah was happy to leave it all behind for an hour, to stride through the grounds with an entirely different sort of topography on her mind.

  She and Bart drew up before a white building that looked like a long cottage, with a thatched roof and half-timbering about the windows. “The jockey room?” she asked.

  “And the weighing room and the winner’s enclosure,” he confirmed.

  Hannah had rarely wandered into such secret sections of the course. But this didn’t seem like a building that belonged to the sport of kings at all. It looked more like a country cottage, down to the window boxes of spring flowers struggling to bloom.

  But it was more than it seemed. It was a place to get ready for a race, a place to return in triumph. When a person was here, anything could happen. She might win anything, anything at all.

  “It’s perfect,” she decided. “Unless it is locked. Then it loses a large part of its perfection.”

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s locked.” Bart did something complicated and furtive with the handle of the door, then pushed it open. “There we have it. It’s all right to enter. I’m a member of the Jockey Club, and you’re my—ah, my guest.”

  “This building is for jockeys, and you are not an actual jockey,” Hannah pointed out.

  “You can’t be sure of that. You have never seen me ride.”

  The final word sounded salacious. Or maybe everything sounded salacious. “I can tell even so, because you’re far too…large.”

  His brows lifted. “You win.”

  “I think we’ll both win.”

  “I like the way you think.” Ushering her inside, he locked the door behind them.

  They found their way into the weighing room, a plain space that would bustle during the summer season. Right now it was quiet and empty, cool and still and smelling faintly of soap and wax. Dominating the center of the narrow space, a great balance hung from the ceiling. On one side hung a seat of metal mesh; on the other, a weighing pan on which brass counterweights could be placed to check the jockey’s weight.

  She stripped off her gloves and tossed them onto a bench, and he did the same. His hat followed.

  “There are fewer comforts than I had hoped,” he said. “But the seat offers possibilities. May I help you into it?”

  When she agreed, he caught her about the waist and lifted her into the seat, quick as a hop.

  It sank until her feet rested on the floor. “I weigh more than a jockey.” She sighed.

  “You shall have a far better ride.” He opened cupboard doors until he found the stash of brass counterweights. Hannah watched, anticipation drawing her nipples tight, as he added a gleaming weight to the pan, then another, and her feet rose from the floor. She floated, weightless and balanced between ground and air, between the memory of past kisses and the expectation of more to come.

  As she hung in the seat, Bart stepped back and raked her with a molten gaze. “I imagine you,” he said, “with your collar undone. With your habit shirt unbuttoned and your hair unpinned.”

  She swallowed. “That is a lot of undoing.”

  “It is.” His mouth curved. “And then I would watch your hair fal
l over your collarbone and into the shadow between your—well…”

  He gestured vaguely, although his eyes were intense with desire. The contrast between passion and reserve was irresistible, sending heat through her every limb. Had she thought the room was cool? She wanted nothing more now than to be stripped.

  Sense lingered, though. “If we undo too much, we will not be able to correct it in time,” she said. “But—whatever we can do without undoing too much…”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Beautifully reasoned. This will allow us to be much more creative. But I do think I can safely shrug out of my coat.” He did so, tossing aside the dull garment. The red satin of his waistcoat gleamed, sleek and liquid over the strong lines of his body. His shoulders, broad in their shirtsleeves, looked capable of carrying anything.

  She stroked him with her gaze, down, down, to the snug buckskin breeches that revealed the lines of his arousal. He must be vibrating with eagerness; she certainly felt as though she was. “Might I…” She trailed off.

  “Yes.” He stepped closer, and she explored the planes of his chest, his ribs. She grabbed at his shoulders and traced the line of his hip bone. She tantalized him—and herself—by outlining his hardness. By dragging her nails along the buckskin fall of his breeches, making him groan.

  As she touched him, he kissed her. It was amazing, the number of ways he found to kiss her without removing her clothing. He kissed the line of her neck; he kissed her temples. He bent his head to kiss the swell of her breasts, and she gasped at the erotic pressure through the layers of her clothing. When her eyes closed, when she pressed herself into his touch, he kissed her lids with such tenderness that she wanted to yield all, to take everything.

  He drew back to arm’s length, and her eyes struggled open. She was drugged by sensation, craving more.

  “What do you want for yourself?” His gaze was steady and dark, like a river. She wanted to float away on his words, his touches.