Sport of Baronets (7 page)

“I need to—” He scrambled for the handkerchief, covering himself as a climax racked him.

When the shudders passed, they looked at one another with some marvel.
Nothing permanent
, Hannah had said, but after such intimacy, there was no going back to the way things had been before. For so long, she had thought of him as an enemy. Then the past few days had transformed him into an ally. A friend. A flirtation—and now a lover.

So quickly, her emotions had altered. What name ought she to put to them now?

Again, her heart galloped, and this time it was not aided by frantic lust.

As soon as Bart had cleaned and righted himself, he helped Hannah hop down from the balance and smooth her clothing. “You never removed your hat. Not a hair out of place.”

Tucking back the stubborn strands at her ears, she grinned. “I've never done anything like this.”

He was pawing at his coat, trying to coax it back into shape. “No, I never do anything like this either.” Donning the coat again, he matched her smile. “I shall never be able to look at a balance again without fond recollections.”

“Fond?”

He cleared his throat. “More than fond. Much more.” He picked up their discarded gloves and held hers out to her.

“Will your recollections be—” She paused, wondering if she was bold enough to name the feeling. “Erotic?”

No, she wasn't bold enough. It was far easier to speak of the deed that the emotion that motivated it.

Still, he dropped the gloves.

Snapping them up, he straightened. “Gravity is strong today,” he said gravely. “Right here. Very strong.”

“So I see.”

He pressed her gloves into her hand. “Any word that you put to it, I am sure I will feel when I think of this afternoon.”

The gesture and the words felt like a farewell, and her smile melted.

Oh, she knew they couldn't remain in here forever. The bustle of the track awaited. Race day. Their families' livelihoods.
Nothing permanent
, she reminded herself again. Nothing was permanent. Not a feeling. Not a moment.

Not even a rivalry that had shaped so many of the boundaries of her life.

And if those boundaries were shifting…if she could choose what to do next…

The notion was startling. She had grown used to thinking of change as
someday
or
possibly
. She had not expected it to seize her so suddenly from within.

“I would love to stay”—she stumbled a bit over the words—“but I realize it must be time we return to the Rowley Mile.”

“Yes, it probably is.” He sounded delightfully reluctant as he donned his own gloves and hat. With a gruff exclamation, he turned to the balance pan and removed the weights he had placed there, stowing them in their proper location. “No evidence left behind.”

They left the building in a mirror of their arrival: unlocking the door, leaving the thatched cottage of a building, then securing the entrance again.

Hannah would have liked to close off her feelings as quickly. Matching Bart's brisk stride, she found no distraction. Her sex was sensitive, pulsing with every step. Their easy conversation had faltered; anything they said would be too little. Too frail for what had passed between them. And as they neared the Rowley Mile and the increasingly crowded grounds, it was impossible to speak of anything intimate.

They located Sothern, and Bart reclaimed the reins of his gelding with thanks. As Hannah patted the nose of her mare, ready to remount, the groom spoke up. “Why, there's Morrow, getting our Bridget onto the gallop.”

She turned, squinting into the distance until she identified a groom from her father's stables guiding a brown Thoroughbred onto one of the exercise tracks.

“Did you speak to Morrow when he arrived?” At Sothern's affirmative, Hannah asked, “How is Bridget today?”

“Making more fuss than usual, Miss Chandler, but feeling his oats well. He should have a good run, if you'd both care to watch.”

“Happy to.” Handing the reins back to Sothern, Bart pulled forth his timepiece from the pocket of his waistcoat.
Red satin
. The fabric was forever enchanted in Hannah's eyes.

As she forced her attention back to the gallop, the brown horse splashed through a puddle. His head jerked up, and he struck out with a foreleg.

“Making a fuss indeed,” Hannah said. “It's not like our Bridget to bother about getting his hooves wet.”

At her side, Bart dropped his watch. As it swung from his pocket on its fob, he went as stiff as a pointer scenting game. “My God,” he said. “That's not your Bridget's Brown. That's Golden Barb.”

Before Hannah could make any reply—could even take in what Bart had said—he shot off in the direction of the horse.

She would not let him get away. She stuffed her reins into the hand of the startled Sothern, blurting, “Please—I shall return directly.” Cursing the heavy fullness of her wool skirts, she caught them up about her ankles and dashed after Bart.

The turf was springy and thick, the crowd even thicker. She had to dart around and in front of and behind, shaking off curious stares and calls of “Oy, miss!” The long plumes on her cap bobbed and loosened, patting against her cheek. Once she had to leap sideways to avoid a colt being walked to cool off after a gallop. She didn't care; she moved by instinct, her gaze fixed on the man in the drab coat running toward the dark brown colt he insisted was not the right one.

They were chasing the truth, and she would fight through more than irritating fashions and a crowded track to reach that.

Slower than Bart, she was gasping and had a stitch in her side by the time she reached Morrow and the horse. Pressing at her ribs, she fought to get her breath under control. Bart was already explaining to the wide-eyed groom. When he patted the horse's face, his gloved fingertips came away dark.

“It's true,” murmured Hannah. He was right. This wasn't Bridget's Brown.

With the aid of daylight and the knowledge of what to look for, she picked out the wrongness of the horse's coat.

Though the two colts were much the same size and build, Bridget's Brown was so dark as to be almost black, with the sheen of sunlight picking up lighter hairs at his muzzle and flanks. This horse was the right color, mostly, but sweat had lifted dye and caused it to concentrate in the lines of his muscles. Where Bart had touched the horse's face, rubbing away the dye, the red-brown tinge of a bay coat was revealed.

As if to cement the impression, the colt nuzzled at Bart's coat with the calm of great familiarity. Bart patted his pockets. “No apples today.”

The horse snorted.

“Whoever used dye on a horse,” Hannah muttered, “I hope he was kicked for his trouble.”

“How could this have gone unnoticed?” Bart was saying. Whether to Morrow or Hannah, she was not sure.

“Begging your pardon, Sir Bartlett”—the groom drew up stiff with piqued pride—“but if this colt's been in our stables unknown to me, then the dye was fast before today.”

“The carrots,” Hannah murmured. “He wouldn't eat them. I should have suspected something.” Disbelief made her legs watery. Disbelief, and then its dark cousin, dismay.

She had been so secure, thinking herself wronged but safe. Knowing that Bart's groom was culpable, that Bart's groom had wronged them both—and Russ and Sothern—through battery and theft. That his mother had taken Hannah's money. Meanwhile, Hannah herself had come from the high ground, paying out her guineas for a colt to which she had a moral and financial right. Her family was innocent.

But this was not true. Someone in the Chandler stables had shared in the crime. This was no simple string of deception to be traced and cut off at the source. This was a web, and somehow she was ensnared in it too.

Bart's eyes were too perceptive, and she turned away rather than see anger fill them, or the pity she had once insisted she did not feel herself. Far, far easier to forgive him his sins when he was the only one in the wrong.

And then fear seized her. “Bridget!” She whirled back, searching baronet and groom alike with wide eyes. “What has happened to my colt, if Golden Barb has been in Bridget's stall for two days?”

“Is every colt in the world now yours?” Bart held Golden Barb's bridle in a protective grip.

“That one is,” Hannah retorted. “And so is the one that vanished.” She recalled Bart's description of his conversation with Sir Jubal Thompson, and her insides plummeted, heavy and sick. “He's hurt, isn't he? He's the mystery colt whose hoof was cracked, who will never race again.” She pressed fingertips to her lips, as though that could shove the words back and make them untrue.

But the pity—yes, unmistakably pity—in Bart's eyes told her he shared this suspicion.

“Is there nothing to which Northrup would not stoop?” Bitter anger, frustration, and betrayal welled up within her like acid. It ate away at her calm; it dissolved the confidence, the heat, the pleasure of her time alone with Bart.

Because they could never be alone, not really. They were fools to think a rivalry decades old could be dismissed with a few days of politeness and passion. Years were more powerful, and habits too entrenched. Even if they refused to hurt each other, there would always be someone else to take up the gauntlet instead.

Someone like… “Your mother,” Hannah realized. “She took the payment for this colt. She must have been working with Northrup. She never intended to turn over what was rightfully mine.”

Bart's eyes had gone hard as onyx. “She could not, because it was rightfully mine.”

“So you say.” Her fingers balled into ineffectual fists. “And here you stand with the colt you call yours, smug and content. While I have spent everything I had, only to line the pockets of a gambler and a criminal.”

He narrowed his eyes; she could hardly believe she had let them look upon her body. He opened his mouth to reply, and she could hardly believe she had kissed it. “There is nothing you could possibly say,” she hissed, “except, ‘You are right, Hannah, and I am ashamed. Take the colt home with you.'”

He placed a second protective hand on Golden Barb's head. “I will never say such a thing. I have never lied to you.”

His calm made her want to shriek. “I have not been used to thinking about what I want. And I have not been accustomed to getting angry. But I am angry now,
Mister Crosby
, because you want to take away
my colt
. You know what he represents to me.”

Bart's jaw clenched, and his dark eyes looked like those of a stranger. “But you must realize what else he represents,
Miss Chandler
. In trying to cheat each other, our parents have lamed one horse and could easily have maimed another. There's no
good
here. They have cheated us too.”

“Just because they've cheated us doesn't mean you have to cheat me. I don't need the money nearly as much as I need what I chose to buy with it.” Something of her own. Her choice, her freedom, her power.

She wanted to fall on her knees, to beg him not to fail her. She wanted to strike out like an unbroken colt, because she knew he would fail her all the same.

He did. He turned away from her to exchange quiet words with Morrow, who had remained carefully still during the heated conversation passing around him. The groom slid from Golden Barb's back and—traitor,
traitor
—handed Bart up into the saddle instead.

Bart spoke down to her. “Even so, I shall find a way to pay you back. But for now, I need to take Golden Barb home. Enough harm has been done for today.”

Harm
, he called it. He had said he'd abide by any word she cared to use, had he not? “I should instead call it a betrayal.”

For a moment, a stricken look crossed his features—and then, recalled to himself, a smooth calm returned. He stuffed the swinging watch back into his waistcoat pocket and buttoned the loose, drab coat over the red satin. “As you wish.”

With an easy pressure of his knees, he clucked Golden Barb into motion, and they cut back through the crowd in the direction of Sothern.

* * *

Sothern looked as though he wanted to speak protests by the barrowful, but Bart's dark look was sufficient to quiet the groom. Together they rigged a line to allow Bart to lead his gelding home while riding Golden Barb. “I shall have your tack returned as soon as it's been cleaned,” Bart assured the Chandler groom.

Somehow he and the other groom, Morrow, would have to return to Chandler Hall one horse short. They would manage. No one in Newmarket lived far from the racecourses.

Before Bart rode off, he looked back in the direction from which he'd come. Hannah still stood there with Morrow. One of the only feminine figures at the track this morning, she looked trim and lovely—and positively infuriated. As Bart watched, she batted at the plumes on her cap, then tugged free the long feathers and cast them to the turf.

He turned away, giving a quick pat to Golden Barb's dark-dyed neck. “Let's go, boy.”

The short ride home was made longer by the need to keep both horses at the same pace, a walk. And then the overhanging clouds began to weep, a light shower of tears that made Golden Barb shiver and bob his proud head in irritation.

By the time they reached the Crosby stables, dark dye was beading on his coat. Bart called for aid, and Jack and the still-bandaged Russ rushed to help him unsaddle the pair. While one boy fetched feed and fresh water, Bart handed over the gelding to the other and rubbed down Golden Barb. With each swipe of the cloth, a bit more dye came off, though it might be weeks before it was all gone and he looked like his bright bay self again.

As a quiet trio, Bart and the stable boys made sure the tack was clean, that the horses were dried and curried and fed. Bart never left the stable until his horse was happy, no matter how he felt himself.

He did not want to think about how he felt. He did not want to think at all.

As he passed down the row of stalls, water dripping from the brim of his ruined hat, the chestnut Hannah Chandler had threatened to buy poked forth his head and whickered. Good-tempered, this entire bloodline. “I found your son today, Nottingham.”

The old horse should have been stabled at the family's stud farm. But the other stallions had been sold, the broodmares sold, the buildings closed up.

So quickly, it had all been dismantled. It would be the work of years to rebuild.

Indifferent to these concerns, the chestnut nuzzled Bart's coat.

“No apples with me this time.” By way of apology, Bart scratched behind the horse's ears until the old fellow's head drooped with contentment.

There was no itch someone could scratch for Bart, nothing that could make him forget. Hannah, crushing her jaunty plumes into the dirt. Hannah's voice, accusing him of betrayal after it had so recently cried out in pleasure.

A week ago, he had not known the sound of her voice. Now he had come to crave its every incisive word. He longed for the sight of her. The touch of her.

Once he let himself start wanting things, he wanted far too much. It was not wise. He needed to pay attention to what he had instead of what he wanted.

Or what he had lost.

This colt was meant to carry us both away
, she had once said. But only one person could ride Golden Barb. Only one of them could take him home.

And he belonged to Bart, for God's sake. If someone gave a person—or a relative—money to buy his home, unsolicited, that did not make it theirs. A thing could not be bought if it was not for sale. The Chandlers, with all their money, had forgotten this simple fact.

No, someone had wrongly taken his colt, had dyed it to deceive bettors and owners and jockeys. When theft married deceit, how could it be wrong to undo both at once?

He thought he and Hannah could close the rift between their families, but any attempt they made could only be temporary. One never knew when it would yawn open again beneath their feet.

There was someone, he knew, who had far more to do with this new rift than she had admitted. Rarely did she give a helpful answer to a question. By now, though, Bart thought he had enough answers to ensure she was honest with him about the missing pieces of this puzzle.

“Carry on with your work,” he told the stable boys. “If the horse's behavior shows any change, let me know at once. I shall be in the house, speaking with Lady Crosby.”

* * *

As usual, the first thing Bart did upon entering his mother's bedchamber was cross to the window and raise the sash.

He had paused only long enough to exchange his wet coat and boots for dry ones, and the rain that had dogged his journey home still fell. Droplets spattered the sash, bringing in a damp breeze and the faint scent of wet earth.

Propped with pillows against the head of her bed, Lady Crosby looked up from the book in her lap. “Bartlett.” She set aside the quizzing glass she now used to assist her reading.

He dove right in. “How much of Hannah Chandler's money did you give Northrup?”

The left side of her face sagged and stilled like the right.

“Who injured Bridget's Brown, Lady Crosby?”

“No one,” she croaked. “Bartlett, I am ill—”

“You are only ill when you choose to be. When you handle business—whether or not it's legal for you to do so—you seem healthy and resourceful enough.”

For a long moment, mother and son stared at each other. She was the first to look away. “I need my vinaigrette.”

Striding to her bedside, he found the silver case and flipped it open for her. She took a brief, sharp breath, then nodded.
Done
.

Snapping the case closed again, Bart hesitated, then sat upon the edge of the bed. “I know some of the answers,” he said more quietly, “but I need the rest. I think you have them.”

Today her dressing gown was of red satin. She tugged at its collar and gave Bart one of her half-smiles. “Your waistcoat. We match, Bartlett.”

“We don't match.” He waited again. He would wait until he got the truth, no matter how long it took.

“No one hurt Bridget's Brown.” She picked at her collar, looking toward the open window against which gray raindrops pattered. “He developed a crack in one hoof. Such things happen sometimes.” The slur in her words was thicker than usual, and Bart struggled to make out these quiet words.

“When he did, Sir William Chandler approached me about buying Golden Barb. He had lost his best hope of winning the Two Thousand Guineas, so he wanted to take mine. He said he would forgive the rest of my debts in exchange. I said no.”