“Between horse and rider, one of the two has the better eye for choosing the best distance for the take-off spot, and often it’s the horse. A sensible rider will trust the horse and intervene only if he thinks the horse’s choice will be lacking.”
Deene watched as in the distance horse and rider cleared the last hedge from a place just a hair too close to the jump to be in perfect rhythm. “Aelfreth is a good jockey.”
“He is good, but he’s on a young horse with a lot of speed, power, and discernment. Unless Aelfreth knows something the horse does not—the ground is not as solid as it looks, the land slopes away immediately following the jump, there’s a hard turn into the next obstacle—then he’s better off letting William build up confidence in his own judgment over the next two weeks.”
“So William learns that if Aelfreth makes a suggestion, there’s good reason for it,” Deene concluded. “Can the horse learn that in two weeks?”
Eve’s expression was doubtful. “He can learn it in a single outing with the right rider, but Aelfreth keeps changing the game. For this jump, he makes a suggestion, for that jump, he sits back until the last stride and then tries to make a correction. For the next two jumps, he battles the horse for the decision, and so on. They cannot go on like this.”
Another phrase laden with double meaning.
“Can you explain this to Aelfreth?”
“She has.” Bannister spoke up from several feet away. “But when the lad’s flying at a four-foot hedge at a dead gallop, it’s a different proposition than in the schooling ring.”
Deene resisted the urge to punch his senior trainer. “I rode dispatch, need I remind you, Bannister, behind enemy lines in all manner of conditions. I comprehend the difficulties.”
Eve’s gaze remained on the horse and rider trotting over the field several hundred yards away. “I have wondered, Deene, if you would not be the better rider for this race.”
“She has a point.” Bannister’s tone was that carefully neutral inflection observed when an employee cannot raise his voice to an employer, or speak the words “I told you so.”
“I weigh twice what Aelfreth weighs, I’ve never done more than hack the colt or school him in the arena, and it’s too late in the game to make such a change in any case.”
And there again, his words were fraught with meaning. Whatever the ramifications of this race for Deene’s marriage, it was far too late to back out of his wagers. Word had gone out in the clubs, the side betting was heating up, the course had been rented, the stewards chosen, and the plans laid. Bannister had managed to get a spy to Dolan’s stables, and if anything, Goblin’s year of rest and conditioning had put the stallion in fine form.
What else had Deene expected? That Dolan would risk everything he held dear on some broken-down nag?
“I find I am peckish.” Eve looped her arm through Deene’s. “Will you accompany me up to the house?”
“Of course.” But he could not help one last glance at Aelfreth, a glance Eve had to note.
“You cannot lecture him now, Deene. You must show confidence in Aelfreth, so he will show confidence in himself and in the horse.”
“How is it you understand this? I’ve probably spent a great deal more time on a horse than you have, and yet I cannot find the words to explain what makes perfect sense when it comes out of your mouth.”
She smiled, a tired, sad version of her usual good cheer, and Deene wanted to howl with frustration.
“I understand because I have crawled, Husband, and been proud of myself for even that accomplishment.”
“We all start out crawling—”
She shifted her grip, so they were holding hands, something they hadn’t done in days. “Come sit with me.”
A vague uneasiness took hold of Deene’s insides. They needed to talk, to come to some understandings, to start over… but the wrong talk, the wrong understandings, and he had every confidence Eve would be off to visit her siblings indefinitely. When Deene was in Town, Eve would be in the country. If he went north shooting in the autumn, she’d depart for Portugal within days of his return. His parents had managed for decades with such arrangements, and Eve had made no secret that she’d originally wanted a white marriage.
He sat beside his wife, despair crowding him more closely than the small woman immediately to his right.
“Do you recall that I once suffered a bad fall, Deene?”
Deene, Deene, Deene. She no longer called him Husband, much less Lucas.
“Quite some years ago, yes. I am pleased to note you don’t seem bothered by it now.”
“Every time I get on a horse, I’m bothered by it, but not the way I thought I would be.”
This was a confidence, a precious, unlooked-for break in the marital clouds. “What do you mean, Evie?”
“I could not walk, you know. I did something, something to my… hip, my back, I’m not sure what, but it hurt like blazes just to breathe. There were times…” She stared hard at a bed of roses coming into bloom, while beside her, Deene did not dare move. “There were times I wanted to die. I could not get to the chamber pot without assistance, Deene. My life became a balancing act, to eat and drink enough to sustain me, but not one bit more, because everything one takes in… you understand?”
He nodded, not wanting to understand, but comprehending the extent of her indignities clearly.
“I could not walk, I could not use crutches, even, but one day I realized I could not bear for my mother and sisters, much less the servants, to see me in such a condition. I could not… I could not walk, so I started crawling. I crawled first on my elbows and one knee. This is not dignified, but it will serve with some practice. Louisa came upon me once thus, crawling back to my bed. She became Cerberus at the gates of my personal hell, ensuring that if I said I did not want to be disturbed, by God, nothing disturbed me.”
“Evie…” He covered her hand with his own. “I did not know.”
“Nobody knew the real extent of my incapacity, not even Louisa, though she likely guessed. I crawled for weeks, then I hopped, then I used canes, and I learned something, something you learned riding dispatch.”
“I learned nothing riding dispatch save to choose the best mount I could find, say my prayers, and ride like hell.” He could not have let go of her hand in that moment to save his own soul.
“You learned that you could not worry over the whole ride. You could not face covering twenty miles by a setting quarter moon behind the lines with no provisions and a tired mount. You could face only the terrain between your present location and the stream across the valley, or between the woods where you caught your breath and the next church steeple. You lurched, dashed, slunk, and crawled if you had to, from one shadow to the other.”
She’d described it exactly, the race against the dawn, the darting from shadow to shadow, the soul-deep weariness that made the senses sharper, not more dull.
“You’re saying we’re riding dispatch?”
“With this race, Deene, your lads, your jockeys, Bannister, even the damned horse look to you for their confidence. I could not allow you to lecture Aelfreth just now when what he needed was a smile, a whack on the back, and some ribald remark unfit for ladies’ ears.”
Such remarks abounded, there being endless parallels between riding horses and a man’s sexual endeavors. “You’re saying I have to get us all to the next steeple in safety.”
“I should not presume.” She was still staring at the roses. “Your people would ride to hell for you, but I feel I have by my actions contributed to the household’s sense of—”
He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Hush. We’ll manage. We are managing.” Barely.
She turned her face into his shoulder, not bothering to argue.
“Evie, will you stay with me?” He nearly whispered the question, so much did he dread the answer. His heart started a slow pounding in his chest when she did not immediately offer him reassurances. “Evie?”
She drew back a litt
le. “We will get through this race, Deene. Until that finish line is crossed, other obstacles are just going to have to wait, aren’t they?”
He did not experience this as a reprieve, not even when Eve led him up to their rooms and undressed him to his skin, not even when she tugged him toward the bed then let him watch while she removed every stitch of her own clothing.
She was making some statement having to do with confidence—her confidence, perhaps, and it did not reassure Deene in the least. They hadn’t coupled since Deene had last made advances to his wife, but this time—for the first time—Eve made all the advances.
She straddled him, the tail end of her braid tickling Deene’s groin in a peculiar little dance she could not possibly have planned. While she feathered her thumbs over his nipples, Deene tried to memorize the angle of her brows, knit in concentration while she studied the effect of her touch on his flesh.
“We are similar in this regard,” she announced, studying his puckered nipples.
“And similar in the pleasure it gives us.”
She leaned forward and stroked her tongue over one of his nipples, then pinched him lightly with her teeth. “I like it when you do that to me. Do you like it when I do it to you?”
He could not find the words. He cradled the back of her head with his palm and silently asked her for more of the same attentions. Before she was done with him, she’d put her mouth to his cock, tasting and teasing him as if he were something served up on special occasions at Gunter’s, making the muscles in his groin and belly ache with the force of his arousal.
And yet, he did not ask her to have done with him, to slip her hot, wet flesh over his and put them both out of their misery.
Evie, will you stay with me?
Maybe this was her answer; maybe she would make damned sure she conceived an heir for him, and their obligations to each other would be at an end.
It was not fair, that she’d be so obstinate, that she’d make such demands on him, that his best efforts to keep all the promises he owed should come at such a cost.
It was not fair to him; it was not fair to her. The solution Deene had envisioned, a gentleman’s agreement undertaken with ungentlemanly determination, began to waver before his eyes. Eve shifted, and then her mouth was gone, leaving a need to join with her that came from Deene’s very soul.
When she would have mounted him—a novel boldness, coming from her—Deene rolled with her, so she was beneath him—so she could not get away.
Before he was done loving her, her cries of pleasure were swallowed in his kisses, her fingernails scored his back and buttocks, and her tears wet his chest.
And yet, he could not ask her again: Evie, will you stay with me?
* * *
A race meet was an oddly democratic event, with there being no ability to keep any particular segment of society off the premises—and no incentive for doing so. The crowds segregated themselves such that the festivities might be enjoyed in a station-appropriate manner, with half-pay officers and their doxies enjoying indifferent ale, cards, and one another’s company in one pavilion, while in another, the shopkeepers on holiday could bring their ladies for an outing, and in a third, the cream of society would lounge about with servants tending to every comfort.
Eve envisioned it all through new if tired eyes as she and her husband scanned the scene the day before King William was to meet Goblin.
“The place will be thronged by this time tomorrow.”
Deene did not sound happy about this, but unless he was in the stables bantering with his lads or in conversation with the horse, he hadn’t sounded happy about much of anything lately. He sat on his gelding, his frown conveying displeasure at all and sundry.
“William has run before crowds in the past, Deene. He seems happy enough to be here.”
Aelfreth had hacked over earlier in the day at a leisurely pace, with Deene escorting on Beast, and Bannister on another gelding.
“He’s happy because he had his audience with you, Evie. He was about to start weaving in his stall until he caught sight of you on your mare.”
“He was pleased to see the mare.”
This earned her a smile from her husband. Not a blinding display of teeth and mischief, but a grin that acknowledged a shift in their private dealings.
Eve could not keep her hands off her husband, and the situation was vexing. Having once initiated marital intimacies with him, she found it impossible not to take advantage of a wife’s privileges in the company of a generous, creative, and lusty husband. If Deene’s attentions had pleased her before, they left her positively witless now, a situation she suspected he exploited to further confuse her priorities in matters outside the bedroom.
Which they discussed not at all. Eve leaned forward and patted her mare.
“Let’s ride the course, Deene. All the rain is likely to have affected the footing.”
His smile faded as his gaze swung out over the rolling green terrain around them. “Goddamn rain.”
“William is not a delicate flower. He and Aelfreth have been galloping in all sorts of weather and managing more than adequately.”
“Dolan’s arriving.”
Eve followed her husband’s line of sight, where two grooms were leading a big, restive gray down past a row of stalls.
“A handsome animal.”
“The horse or his owner?”
“I meant the horse. Mr. Dolan’s looks are a matter of indifference to me.”
Deene’s mouth flattened, making Eve wish she’d kept the last comment to herself. There was never a right thing to say, but there were so many wrong things to say. Marriage like this was wearying and fraught, and though she tried to tell herself otherwise, the quagmire they found themselves in wasn’t simply a function of facing the financial consequences of the bet Deene had made with Dolan.
Eve waited until their horses were ambling along toward the scythed swatch of grass before the first jump, a fairly low stile meant to get the race off to a safe and uneventful start, to inform the horses that it wasn’t to be a test of pure speed on the flat.
“Will you tell me the rest of your wager with Dolan?”
Now Deene petted his horse. “What makes you think there’s more to it than the small fortune already hanging in the balance?”
Not a small fortune, a very great fortune by most people’s standards. “That fortune is more or less a windfall in the form of my settlements. You didn’t have it two months ago, and you’ll likely manage if you don’t have it two months hence. Such a wager should not be costing you your sleep night after night.”
“Why are we discussing this now, Evie?”
She fiddled with her reins. “You are hedging, which confirms my sense you have not been entirely honest with me.” To give her husband time to consider his answer, she urged her mare into a canter—one rarely trotted in a blasted sidesaddle—and headed for the second jump.
It was at some distance, to allow the horses to gather speed early in the race—to tempt them to gather too much speed—and set on the top of a small rise, which would also encourage the jockeys to ask for a tad too much effort, given that the land sloped away sharply on the back side of the jump.
“What else do you think I’ve wagered, Wife?”
A question for a question. Eve was not encouraged.
“Something you are hesitant to tell me because you think I won’t understand.”
“It isn’t that you won’t understand.” Deene frowned at the jump. “At least the footing on this one will be solid.”
It would, because the jump was on a rise, but the footing at the top and bottom of the rise would be mushy, perhaps dangerously so at speed—all the more reason not to rush the fence, and why did everything—every blasted thing—seem like a comment on Eve’s marriage?
“So tell me, Deene. I will not pitch a tantrum here on my horse. You know me at least that well.”
He glanced over at her and sent his horse toward the third jump, a brush
fence, the first of three such on the course. This was a straightforward effort, but it lay in the shade of a line of trees, and therein lay the challenge. A horse’s eyes would not adjust for changes in lighting as quickly as the rider’s would, and thus a jump in shadow might or might not be as evident to the mount as it was to the jockey. A smart jockey would give the animal time to sight in on the obstacle. An overeager jockey would consider the jump to be one of the easier on the course and rush the fence.
“I hate this kind of question,” Deene observed, scowling at the jump. “We should have practiced such efforts more consistently with William.”
“We vary the timing of his workouts throughout the day, so the shadows lie in different places and at different angles. Do you think I cannot understand the concept of honor, Deene? I know you and Dolan are at daggers drawn over your niece’s situation.”
“You called her our niece when last this issue arose.” His tone was devoid of heat—carefully so.
They did not argue, which meant they also did not discuss, which meant Eve felt her marriage slipping from her grasp. She cantered on toward the next fence, a big, stout oxer—a jump with both height and spread—in the form of a sort of tabletop stile. The wood was dark, solid looking, and the jump was meant to intimidate, though there was nothing in the approach, takeoff, or landing that would challenge a fit horse—provided the jockey’s confidence didn’t waver.
“The trick fence,” Deene said. “The fourteenth fence is the same. Perfectly straightforward but sitting at the end of a long approach, looking massive and daunting. I hate trick fences.”
“Every fence can be a trick fence. The next obstacle is the water, which might be the worst thing about the course.”
When he met her gaze, Eve found concern in her husband’s eyes. “You’re worried about the footing, aren’t you, Wife? You always worry about the footing.”
“Footing is how I came a cropper all those years ago. It’s how my mare bowed two front tendons. It’s how I ended up crawling to the chamber pot.” She blew out a breath while her husband merely looked at her. “This race is upsetting me, Deene, but not because you may have wagered more than we can afford—or not just that. I question why we’d put a good animal at risk, why we’d put Aelfreth at risk. I know this isn’t a lark for you, but…”
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