Fox River (18 page)

“Yes, I’ll marry you,” I said.

“At the end of July. When your family comes to visit.” It was not a question.

“So soon?” I wondered if I could prepare that quickly. I wondered what my mother would say.

“We’ll have time for a wedding trip if we do it then. But I have to be back in the fall. I can’t miss the season.”

“Not even for me?”

He stroked my cheek. “I’m Master of Foxhounds. This is something you’ll have to understand.”

And I did. I was marrying a way of life, not simply a man.

“A small wedding or a large one?” I said.

“Shall we marry at Fox River? Outdoors in the gardens?”

“In the evening, when it’s starting to cool. Then we can ask as many people as we like.”

“Done.” Only then did he pull me close again. “We’ll go to Italy. I’ll show you Venice.”

I had always dreamed of a wedding trip to England, but he sounded so pleased with himself that I gave up that dream on the spot. Where we went wouldn’t matter, anyway, because we would have each other. And besides, surely no one in Venice chased foxes. For the trip, at least, I would be the only “vixen” in Ian’s little world.

When he kissed me this time, I melted against him.

Later, inside and in the presence of the Joneses, Ian gave me an emerald ring that matched, almost perfectly, the earrings my father had given my mother. I was certain it was a sign that our marriage was written in the stars.

C
hristian chose to walk home from Ashbourne along an unfamiliar path. He knew he wouldn’t get lost, but there was no reason to hurry, no real life yet to rush back to.

He found his way without incident. At the swimming hole on Jeb Stuart Creek, where he’d often spent summer afternoons, he sat on a rock and listened to an owl hooting somewhere in the distance. It was better than thinking about Julia.

An owl had hooted the night before his father died. He hadn’t thought about it for years, but he remembered now. The owl, who must have roosted close to the Carvers’s quarters, had awakened him. He had gotten out of bed to look for it and stumbled over his father’s unconscious body. Gabe had collapsed on the floor, too drunk that particular night to make it to bed.

Gabe wasn’t a mean drunk. Most of the time he simply passed out. The next morning he was gruff but never abusive. This time, awakened too soon, he was angry. Without realizing who was sprawled on top of him, he lashed out with a fist. Then he lapsed back into a drunken stupor.

Christian hadn’t been quick enough to avoid his father’s attack. He cried out, but Gabe was already unconscious again. Christian dragged himself to the window, sobbing more from anger than pain, and the owl had continued to hoot.

The next day he had a black eye and a swollen cheek, which he’d explained away as a stable accident, but Robby knew better. At eleven, Robby, immature about some things, was wise in the way of adults. He knew how much Gabe’s drinking embarrassed Christian.

Gabe was the finest trainer ever to set foot on Claymore Park. He was funny, intelligent, nearly as charming with people as with horses—but only when he was sober. He wasn’t sober often, except when he was on the job. When he needed to be alert and focused to work with the horses he loved, he could be. But when he needed to be sober for his son, he couldn’t.

Gabe had embarrassed Christian in front of Robby more than once, lurching drunkenly, stammering on about people Robby had never known, crying about his dead wife. Robby, who had his own problems with his father, had recognized Christian’s humiliation and expressed sympathy. The two boys had grown closer.

The day that Christian showed up with the black eye was different. Robby threatened to tell his father what Gabe had done, and the two boys fought. Christian understood what Robby didn’t. Because Gabe was so talented, Peter Claymore managed to look the other way when it came to his drinking, but if Robby brought it to his attention, he would have to do something. And the something might well be to fire Gabe.

“Things have a way of working out,” Christian told his friend. “Maybe he won’t drink as much now that he knows what he’s like when he’s drunk.” He convinced Robby not to tell Peter, but years later, he still wondered if silence had doomed Gabe to a fiery death. By covering up the depth of Gabe’s illness, had Christian lit the match that burned down the barn? Because that very night Gabe had overindulged again, probably from sorrow for giving his son a black eye. And perhaps to protect him, he had fallen asleep on a cot in the tack room. With a cigarette in his hand.

The rules at Claymore Park were clear. No one smoked near the barns, not within fifty yards. And anyone caught was sent on his way. Gabe smoked the way he drank, in uncontrolled binges. After a day at work, he came home and smoked a whole pack, one cigarette after the other as he fumbled over his first six-pack of the day. Christian had never seen his father smoke in the barn, but Gabe
always
smoked when he drank. And clearly he had been drinking that night. Found along with the remains of his body were the scorched remnants of aluminum cans.

Gabe’s final six-pack.

By the time the fire was detected, Gabe was dead and the barn well on its way to incineration. Jinx and the other stable staff got most of the horses out, but they lost a prize stallion and a mare who had foaled that morning. Peter’s extensive trophy collection, elaborate scrapbooks, priceless records and ledgers, all went up in smoke. So did Christian’s past and present, and for a while he was afraid his future had, as well.

Then Peter Claymore had stepped forward to say that Christian could stay at Claymore Park as long as he wanted. Forever, if he chose. Christian had been profoundly grateful.

Although Robby wanted him to live at the house, Christian had elected to share Jinx Callahan’s quarters. Jinx reminded Christian of his father, and the Callahan lifestyle was nearly as casual. The old man, never married, had taken Christian under his wing.

Had he moved away, Christian would never have become close to Julia or Fidelity, certainly never been blamed for a murder he hadn’t committed. Perhaps without the turmoil of the trial and Christian’s conviction, Robby might not have driven his car into a tree.

The lives of the four friends had been woven together as densely as the fibers of a blanket. Nothing could be picked loose or undone without eventual disintegration.

Now, staring at moonlight on the still water of the creek, the owl hooting somewhere above him, he thought about the day Fidelity and Julia had really entered his life. He had been preparing for the Middleburg Spring Races, and suddenly his whole future had changed.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Robby watched Christian brushing Night Ranger, a dapple gray colt with a white mane and tail who was the pride of Claymore Park.

“Why do you keep asking?” Christian stepped back to look at his handiwork. The colt’s coat was gleaming, but he wasn’t yet satisfied.

“I don’t understand the point of these events.” Robby stood and stretched his six-foot-two body. In the years that Christian had known him, Robby had grown into a young man who usually got a second look from young women. Neither Christian nor Robby had completely filled out their lanky frames, but now, as they entered adulthood, the promise of fulfillment was there. Even though eighteen-year-old Robby spent more time hunched over a desk than riding or playing tennis, he still had the look of a young athlete.

Nineteen-year-old Christian, on the other hand, had always been rail-thin and lightweight enough to race for Claymore Park, although clearly that time was ending. He still turned plenty of heads, though. Between working for Peter and attending community college part-time, he had little time for dating, but women interested him more than he let on.

“You’ve never understood the point of any horse events,” Christian said. “You have to love horses, which you don’t. You have to love competition, which you don’t—”

“I have to love Claymore Park, which I don’t.”

“Don’t say that.”

Robby picked at a splinter sticking out of the wall. “I don’t, not the way you do. If I thought I had to live there forever, I’d go crazy.”

Robby’s relationship with his father wasn’t an easy one. Peter had high expectations where his son was concerned. Robby wanted to study physics next year at one of the Ivy League colleges. Peter was proud of his son’s considerable academic achievements, but he still expected Robby to come home once he’d finished and stake a claim at Claymore Park. Christian was afraid that just wasn’t going to happen.

“There are half a dozen top-notch universities in driving distance,” Christian said. “American, George Washington, Georgetown…”

“I know the list.”

“You can get a job at one of them once you’ve finished graduate school, or in D.C. at some agency doing research. You can still live at Claymore Park.”

“Only if you promise to stay on and run the place.”

Christian liked the sound of that. He looked up to say so, and over the stall door he stared into the most beautiful pair of blue eyes he’d ever seen.

“Hello, boys. Remember me?”

Robby turned. He didn’t say a word.

“Oh my, have I changed that much?” The blonde unlatched the door and slipped inside.

Robby found his voice. “Fidelity?”

“Well, it’s not exactly like I had plastic surgery, Robert Claymore. I’m the same old me.”

Christian recognized her now. The Sutherland family was a fixture in Ridge’s Race, and South Land was a neighbor of Claymore Park. As boys, he and Robby had often played with Fidelity and her girlfriend Julia Ashbourne on lazy summer afternoons. In the days before adolescence had complicated the simplest things.

Now he remembered a party at Ashbourne with fireflies in old Mason jars and two giggly preteen girls. Fidelity, mouth filled with braces, had waylaid him behind an ancient catalpa tree and kissed him until his bottom lip bled.

He was grinning when he spoke. “You’re hardly the same old anything,” Christian said, admiring her. He calculated that Fidelity was seventeen and in glorious bloom—somewhere between bud and full flower. Her blond hair fell below her shoulders in luminous waves; her complexion was pale and perfect, her body…Well, her body filled out a pink sweater and designer jeans in a way that left him feeling as if he’d already run his race.

“You missed me, Chris?” She smiled, flashing tiny perfect—and very expensive—teeth. “I’ve just been up the road at Foxcroft.” Foxcroft was a pricey school for the horsey set. Debutantes in jodhpurs and breeches.

“Where’s your friend Julia?” he said. “Don’t you two go everywhere together?”

Fidelity gazed down at her nails. Apparently she didn’t like what she saw, because she polished them against her sweater. “Not to school, we don’t. Her mother sends her to public school, even though they could afford better.” She looked up again, as if she realized what she’d said. “Oh, I’m sorry. You probably went to public school.”

He grinned. “Yeah. I even l’arned to read and write a little.”

She laughed, the tinkling of a brook. “You always were a funny boy. And Julia’s here somewhere. She stays away from the stable.”

“She doesn’t like horses?”

Fidelity shrugged. “She’s afraid of them. She doesn’t ride.”

Christian thought that odd, since Ashbourne had some of the finest pasture land in the county.

Fidelity, who obviously wasn’t afraid, stepped closer and casually stroked Night Ranger’s muzzle, as if he wasn’t worth as much as her father’s Mercedes. Her Scarlett O’Hara drawl was as exaggerated as everything else about her, and worked every bit as well. “I hear you’re going to ride this old nag today.”

“You heard right.”

She turned to Robby. “How come you’re not riding, Robert?”

Robby shrugged. “Because I don’t care who wins. Chris does.”

“I like a man who doesn’t have to prove himself.”

Christian watched his friend turn red at the compliment. She turned back to Christian. “And I like a man who does.”

“In other words, you like men, period.”

“Oh, you’re clever, aren’t you?”

“Fidelity?”

Christian looked up and saw a dark-haired beauty in a royal-blue jacket outside the stall and knew immediately who she was. He had seen her around high school, although she had been too young to be in any of his classes. “Hey. Julia Ashbourne. Long time no see.”

“Christian.” She smiled shyly. “And Robby. Hi to both of you.”

“There’s room for you,” Fidelity told her friend.

“I’d rather stay out here. I don’t want to spook him,” Julia said.

“Good thinking.” Christian realized he hadn’t quite finished pulling Ranger’s mane, and he still had to polish his boots before weighing in and donning Claymore Park’s green and gold silks. But he wasn’t ready to take his eyes off either girl. They were Snow White and Rose Red, a visual fairy tale.

“What a gorgeous horse,” Julia said. “But he’s so big.”

“He has to be to get over those jumps.” Reluctantly Christian went back to work.

“You really don’t ride?” Robby asked her. “No kidding?”

“I…Well, we didn’t keep horses. My mother didn’t want them on the property. Didn’t you ever notice?”

“Julia’s mommy is a little touched in the head.” Fidelity didn’t say the words unkindly.

Julia defended her mother. “Horses are a lot of work, Fidelity. You know they are. And Maisy didn’t ride. What was the point?”

“Who’s Maisy?” Christian asked.

“My mother.”

“You call your mother Maisy?”

“Everyone calls her Maisy.”

Christian remembered a warmhearted, friendly woman who looked like a rock band groupie. He supposed that he had called her Maisy, too.

Another voice joined the chorus. “How’s it going, Christian?”

Christian saw that Peter had come up beside Julia in the doorway. “I’m almost finished, sir.”

“I could finish for you, if you’d like. Or I could send your audience away to improve your concentration.”

“Better eject them. I still have to change.”

“You work Chris too hard,” Fidelity told Peter in her magnolia blossom drawl. “A man has to have time for fun.”

The way she said it sounded like an invitation. Christian realized he was smiling.

Peter laughed. “Miss Sutherland, do your parents stay up at nights worrying about you?”

“You want the truth, Mr. Claymore? They haven’t had a bit of sleep since I turned thirteen.”

“And where have you boys been since that momentous day?” Peter asked Robby and Christian.