She was breathing hard. “It’s a good class. Watch out!” Already, the men were disentangling themselves. They were both tall and young and fit. Footmen, probably. Within the house, the older man was still yelling for a constable.
The carriage and hoofbeats had drawn up before the front steps. “What’s all this?” called a wavering voice. A drunk Corinthian returning from a party, maybe.
“Robbery!” shouted one of the footmen.
“Murder!” called the other.
“Oh, please,” said Irene. “Your master had just a scratch, and you’re perfectly fine.” She was crouching, coiled, her fists ready for another attack.
“I should get the constable,” slurred the voice from behind them. The horse whinnied, nervous.
Jonah had an idea.
“Count of three, follow me,” he said to Irene, hoping she could hear him over the clamor of other voices. The footmen were arguing with each other, the new arrival wasn’t sure whom to listen to, and with a quick count—one-two-three—Jonah sprang. Back down the stairs, to the curricle that stood there with a young man of fashion and a nervous horse. He gave the horse a mighty slap on the flank, and it squealed and reared in its traces.
“I’m sorry!” he called over his shoulder, already running for the fence. He didn’t stop until he’d crossed the street, vaulted the fence, and vanished into the shadows of the square. The hubbub behind him quieted as he crashed deeper into the grassy area, finally halting beneath a spreading tree. He caught his breath there, covering his nose and mouth with a hand to quiet the raspy sound so he could listen for Irene’s approach.
He didn’t hear her. She was just suddenly there. “You don’t have to apologize to someone just because his horse takes him for a bit of a run.”
Jonah drew himself up. “I didn’t. I was apologizing to the horse.”
Irene blinked up at him. “You were apologizing to the horse.” She shoved her half mask up onto her head, a giggle spilling forth. “I should have known.”
Her laugh was contagious. He chuckled. “It was a little ridiculous, I guess. You’re all right?”
“Fine, fine. We gave Rebecca and Valérie enough time to get away, and they got the letters. So…a successful mission.”
“Do we need to get out of here?”
“Once we look a bit different.” She stowed her mask and flipped her cloak to the other side. Now wearing a gray paisley, she looked like a sedate young matron, especially when she put on a pair of spectacles.
“How are those not broken?”
“No glass in them.” She grinned cheekily, then turned her attention to Jonah. He hadn’t worn mysterious transforming garments, but once she hid his mask and folded his cloak and rearranged his neckcloth, he probably looked passably different from the apologizing ninny at the Mayfair house.
The whole time she fussed over him, she glowed. Absolutely glowed, and not because of the sunrise.
She loves this. This exciting life. I can’t take it from her. I can’t ask her to leave it.
She hadn’t wanted the mission, but she’d wanted to help her friends—and by God, it was a good thing she’d come to do that. He envied that kind of trust. That sort of purpose.
I don’t have friends, he’d told his sisters once. Too much trouble. What he’d said wasn’t what he’d meant, not at all. How could he take her from this? What could he offer in its place?
He had no answer when, arm in arm, they walked into the morning. Their steps fell into an easy rhythm as the city awoke around them. Soon they’d be home. Jonah was already dreaming about bed. A few hours of sleep, then a few hours together—all with the door locked and the world at bay.
He could hardly wait.
But when they drew near the Chandler house on Queen Anne Street, it was clear at once that they’d have to wait. A cluster of traffic blocked the street. Two curricles, their lamps wildly swinging as if they’d just pulled to a halt. A steaming, frothing horse harnessed to each—one with a foreleg lifted as if in pain. A beaver-hatted driver leaping to the street. A crowd of shouting, back-slapping men exchanging flasks and banknotes.
“What the devil…?” Jonah couldn’t make sense of the scene. It was like a tiny racecourse had plumped down into the middle of London, complete with bets and drinking. He walked closer, trying to sort out what had happened.
Irene halted. “Shit.” This time, it was she who cursed. “He’s gone and done it. My father has raced your horse—and from the looks of it, Bridget’s broken down.”
Chapter Nineteen
Irene remembered the last mission she’d turned down, after she’d been swept up in the chaos of Newmarket’s famous racecourse. Her father’s pickpocketing, raucous laughter, someone taking bets, a pie-seller and orange-seller. Someone with a chronometer who frowned thoughtfully at it, then looked up at the horses flashing by. Men of fashion and men of modest means and men without tuppence to their names. They were all drawn to a race. They were all drawn to a fight.
This was shaping up to be both.
Victor beamed at Jonah and Irene. “Hullo, hullo! Come to congratulate your old dad, Reenie?”
Stone-faced, Jonah addressed Victor. “I told you he wasn’t ready. I told you.” He drew back a fist, arm taut. Just as when he’d told her I want to tear apart the whole damned world. She caught her breath, not knowing if she wanted him to swing.
He didn’t swing. With a look of disgust at Victor, he let his fist drop, then turned his back on the man. He gave all his attention to Bridget’s Brown, feeling the horse’s mouth, running his hand down the injured foreleg, checking the hoof with a crack. As Irene drew closer, she could hear him murmuring, “You’re all right, boy. You’re all right.”
“Is he really?” she asked.
“No. If your father didn’t ruin this horse, it’ll be a damned miracle.”
She rounded on her father as he collected money and took a pull from a flask. “I told you not to! This horse wasn’t yours to race!”
Victor spluttered whiskey, laughing. “He was born to race! Look how happy he is!”
Happy was too strong a word for the horse, blown and frothed with sweat. Clearly he had run well, and he was born to race. But without a steady hand at his reins, he would race beyond his strength.
“And you shouldn’t be complaining to me,” Victor added. “You had your choice, and you made it.”
“I did nothing of the sort!” Or had she? With her silence to protect her mother and brother from the truth of Victor’s bigamy…had this race been inevitable?
Jonah stood, looking grim. “I’ve got to get this hoof into copper salts right away.”
With practiced gestures, he unharnessed Bridget’s Brown from the curricle, which, Irene now saw, belonged to the Chandlers as well. Victor had made himself free with their possessions. The ends justified the means, and yet he didn’t concern himself with any of the ends. The horse with the damaged hoof. The scrapes on the curricle, the wheel knocked askew. It didn’t matter as long as he got the race he wanted.
God, she was tired.
The other horse still stood, blown and weary, as the half-drunk men congratulated each other in the sunrise hours. “Send back a groom with some water for this horse,” she told Jonah. He nodded curtly, then led Bridget’s Brown slowly to the mews. She felt the horse’s pain, and Jonah’s, with every halting stride. If he could have carried that horse on his back, or in his arms, she knew he would have.
She knew one other thing too: She had failed.
She hadn’t completed her mission today, and she hadn’t protected the person she loved most. She’d become distracted by what she wanted, what she wished for, and look what had happened.
“Damn you,” she told Victor, voice shaking. “Damn you. You had no right to do this.”
“I did you both a favor!” he crowed, waving banknotes in her face. “I showed your Jonah what a good job he does with horses, and I earned enough to pay off your debts. Really, you should both be tha
nking me!”
“My debts? My debts?” Her voice was rising. She stood on her toes, bringing her eyes to the level of his. “Don’t you mean your debts? The people of Barrow-on-Wye invested in you. You are the one who owes them.”
The other men had fallen silent, watching curiously.
Victor’s smile fell. “Ah, but you’re the one paying them back, aren’t you? I never promised to do that. So it’s your debt. You chose to take that on. And you made the choice about this race too.”
The choice about this race? The blackmail about this race, rather. But she couldn’t say that in front of these staring eyes. Couldn’t admit the truth about her deceived mother, about her own illegitimacy.
Just as Victor had planned.
When she only glared at him, he relaxed again, the smile returning to his handsome features. “Anyway, there’s enough here for Laurie’s tuition, at least for one term. It’s a good day’s work, Reenie. Nothing to get so upset about.”
But there were so many days like this. And how a person spent a minute, then another minute, then an hour and a day, was a little piece of how he chose to spend his life.
“You really believe this, don’t you?” Irene asked quietly. “That you’re not hurting anyone. That you’re giving people what they want but are too afraid to pursue. That’s not why you raced this horse. That’s not why you came to London.”
“I’m not hurting anyone, Reenie.”
“Yes, you are. Even without meaning to, you can cause a lot of harm.” She swallowed. “You have caused a lot of harm.”
And she had been a party to it. She’d stood aside, thinking of her own pleasure even as she knew her father intended to hurt people. She’d done it before; she’d done it today. And who had suffered? The people of Barrow-on-Wye. The horse, Bridget’s Brown. And through the horse, Jonah, who was pulled into Victor’s ridiculous sphere only because of Irene.
One of the Chandler grooms was sloshing his way toward them with a pail of water. Brusquely, Irene directed him to the second horse, then showed him the curricle. “Mr. Baird made himself free of it. It’ll need to be cleaned and possibly repaired. As Mr. Baird is flush with funds, I’m sure he’ll see to it.”
Then she strode off, leaving the mess behind. The laughing men, the stupid race, the handful of money. Who they were, why they’d bet, she had no idea. And she didn’t care.
There was only one person she wanted to see now. Untying her cloak, she stalked to the mews in search of Jonah. The stable was in a bustle of grooms now that the missing carriage and horse had been discovered, but once she passed into the partition with the horses, all was calm. The matched bays and Jake stood quietly in their stalls, watching and curious about their stablemate. Jonah had put a halter on Bridget’s Brown to hold him still in the narrow area before the stalls, and he was pounding copper salts with a hoof-pick handle and a clenched-jaw fury.
“What can I do?” Irene asked.
He didn’t look up from his pounding. “He needs water and grooming. Anything would be a help.”
Irene nodded, not that Jonah saw, and grabbed a water bucket. She sidled beside the gelding where he couldn’t kick her, should he be so minded, and held the bucket before him. The horse, steaming and sweaty, bent his head to swallow the water in deep gulps.
“That’s enough for now. We don’t want him to get sick from it. You can give him more in a bit.” Jonah’s tone was curt.
Irene didn’t exactly know how to clean a sweaty horse, so she made a guess. Where Bridget’s sweat was frothy, she poured a little of the remaining water. She then took up a tool that looked like a curved file and ran it over the hide to draw off sweat and water. “He’s still steaming,” she noticed.
“He should have been walked until he was cool. But I don’t think his hoof can stand it.”
Irene craned her neck to look at the troubled hoof. A curse slipped from her lips. To her unpracticed eye, the crack had shot upward, almost reaching the coronet at the top of the hoof.
“Exactly,” Jonah replied. He poured the salts into another water bucket, then crouched to guide the injured leg. When Bridget lifted the hoof, the horse seemed almost to sigh with relief. Jonah pried off the dangling horseshoe and eased the hoof into the bucket. “There you are,” he crooned. “This is familiar. You know what we’re doing.”
The horse settled. Jonah too seemed to relax a little. When he looked up at Irene, his features were still tight, but the anger had ebbed from them. “Thanks,” he said.
“Thanks? For what?”
“For looking out for the other horse. For helping with Bridget.”
“It was the least I could do.” She replaced the file-looking thing and grabbed a currycomb. Cautiously, she passed it over the back and barrel of the gelding. “Will he be all right?”
“That depends on him more than me. If he doesn’t kick, if the infection heals, then the hoof might recover. But if he gallops or kicks and splits the hoof any more…”
Jonah didn’t have to finish the sentence. Irene knew there was only one possible ending.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, knowing it was inadequate.
“Well. I’ll do what I can.” It wasn’t an I forgive you, but then, he didn’t know that the whole race was really Irene’s fault.
“I have to tell you something,” she rushed. “The race…My father taking the horse…It’s because of me.”
The granite returned to Jonah’s expression. “Explain.”
As best she could, she did. Tried to. About the bigamy and the bastardy and the blackmail and…and why should everything terrible in the world start with B at the moment? Bridget’s Brown, and broken hooves, and banknotes and betting.
And worst of all was the blankness that crossed Jonah’s face. “I see,” he told her. “That’s quite a secret your father dumped on you.”
She should never have tried to have a family. Never have tried to belong anywhere but Mrs. Brodie’s Academy, taking mission after mission after mission. At least there she could help instead of hurting. Because, oh, she’d never felt pain like she did seeing the hurt on Jonah’s face.
“You blame me,” she said.
“I don’t blame you for your father’s choices,” he replied. “Not those he made before you were born and not those he made this morning.”
It was the right thing to say, of course. Jonah always said the right thing. But just because he didn’t blame her didn’t mean he was happy with her. That he’d got a good bargain. That he wanted Victor Baird, or any Baird, in his life anymore. His life was in Newmarket. He’d made that clear often enough.
“You’d be justified in the annulment,” Irene pointed out. “I’ve committed fraud. I’m illegitimate, and you didn’t know that when you wed me.”
“I don’t want an annulment, damn it!” he cursed. “I want you.”
“And I want you too. But this is what happens when we’re together, don’t you see? We don’t really belong together. You can’t do the work you love best.”
“But you can,” he said. “I helped you this morning, didn’t I? Protected you?”
“I protected myself,” she replied. “I can, and I did, and I will. And you should protect your own too, because no one is safe. There’s no cocoon. Not for us, not for anyone.” She looked at her knuckles, skinned when she’d flipped a man onto stone steps in the dawn hours. “Not at the academy. Not even for my fellow teachers.”
“Well, hell, Irene. So what? We’re doing the best we can.” Bridget stomped, and Jonah grimaced, holding the split hoof in the copper-salted water. “I’ve tried to be the one person who doesn’t take and ask from you, because your burdens are heavy enough. But that leaves me without you. Are you happy with that?”
She replaced the currycomb on its shelf. Not that Bridget was clean or cool or healthy, not that she could fix him.
“No. I’m not happy with that,” she said. “But I don’t know how else to be.”
“So we’re doing this. Right no
w, when I can’t even stand up and look you in the face because I’m trying to keep this horse’s hoof from cracking into bits.” He sighed heavily. “Why did you marry me? You had a fulfilling life on your own terms. Why wed?”
“I wanted someone to belong to. Someone I could trust. I wanted to know I had a home to return to.”
“Do you have that? Is the way we’ve been living good enough?” When she only stared at him, he added, “Forget the idea of an annulment. Think of this. Ten years from now, do you still want to be meeting every few months at a coaching inn?”
“Better that than nothing at all!”
“Is it? Because I’m not sure about that anymore.” Silence fell, a silence broken only by the shuffle of hooves in straw, before Jonah added, “I wanted to tear apart the world for you, Irene. I don’t want to tear you in the doing so. And I don’t want to tear myself.”
“I don’t want to tear it anymore,” she said. “It’s torn enough. I want to mend it, in some small way. In any way.”
He nodded. “I can’t argue with the importance of your missions. I can’t make you choose. But I can’t…not be your choice anymore. If you won’t choose me, then I’m removing myself from consideration. Live your life. Do your work. It’s worth it.”
Was it, though? She’d given up everything for it. For years. She’d forgotten how to do anything else.
And maybe that was for the best. If she stopped working, everything fell apart. There was no way to find balance.
She didn’t say that, didn’t know how to put it into words. He was the next, then, to speak. “If your work is what you want, do it. If I’m just another obligation, let me take it from you.”
You’re not, she wanted to scream. You’re everything. But he had to live the life he’d promised, with horses and races and land and tradition. And she had to be…away. Elsewhere. Wherever she was needed, undoing the harm that spread whenever she relaxed her vigilance.
They should never have tried to build a life together. The most loving thing she could do for him now was leave, to spare him any more pain.
His Wayward Bride (Romance of the Turf Book 3) Page 21
