“You’d throw yourself upon the mercy of some dragonfaced matron and her seven children? How could that be satisfying to a woman of education and good breeding?” His gaze played over her face. “And what if your beauty puts you at the mercy of a philandering husband or lecherous son?”
Ignoring his second surprising compliment to her looks, she glared at him. “You assume that everyone has
your
morals, sir.”
“Those aren’t my morals,” he snapped. “But many men have them, and I’d hate to see Roger’s sister fall prey to such.”
There it was again, his reference to her as Roger’s sister. Did he really feel guilt over what had happened? The day she’d confronted him at Turnham Green, he’d shown a great deal of remorse, but she’d assumed that was only in front of his family, whom he didn’t want to think ill of him. Yet here it was again.
She snorted. It wasn’t remorse he was showing, but arrogance. How typical. The way he strutted around town laughing at death, as if Roger’s accident hadn’t touched him one whit, made her steaming mad.
Besides, his offer of marriage didn’t fit his character. Though she didn’t move much in society, she had heard about the Sharpe brothers’ exploits with women. Why did he want to marry all of a sudden? And why
her
?
She didn’t for one minute believe that he genuinely wished to make amends. He hadn’t tried to do so since the letters he’d written to Poppy right after Roger’s death. And this would be an extreme way to make amends—to leg-shackle himself for life. No, he must have some ulterior motive. She just didn’t know what it was.
Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t marry him for any reason.
“As flattered as I am by your eagerness to improve my circumstances, sir,” she said in a cutting tone, “I’m afraid I must decline your offer. The only thing I want from you is a chance to race you. If you’re not interested in that, I see no reason to continue this conversation.”
Lord Gabriel looked frustrated, which gave her a wicked satisfaction.
The dance was ending, thank goodness. She would find Pierce and leave, now that she knew her invitation had merely been a ruse.
“What if I agree to a different race?” he said, as the last notes of the waltz sounded. “Not on the course that killed your brother, but on another course.”
She stared at him in surprise. “A carriage race,” she said, to confirm what he meant.
He led her from the floor, covering her hand with his. “Between you and me. If you win, I’ll race you at Turnham Green as you’ve been plaguing me to do.” He shot her a challenging glance. “But if
I
win, you let me court you.”
She sucked in a breath. She might get her race at Turnham Green after all. If she won this new race he was proposing.
“You can even pick the course,” he said.
Her blood began to pound. If she picked the course, she’d have an even better chance of winning. And wouldn’t that be delicious—to beat him twice, especially after all his presumptuous talk about marrying her? He’d never be able to hold his head up around his friends again!
“Any course I like?” she asked.
He nodded. “You could even use the same one you ran against Letty Lade.”
Not a chance. She’d raced Lady Lade at Waverly Farm, when the Lades had come to have a mare covered by one of Poppy’s studs. She and Lady Lade had raced down a dirt track only a mile long. Expecting the notorious Angel of Death to race her along
that
tame course would be embarrassing.
But another sprang instantly to mind. “What about the one near Ealing that you and Roger raced all the time?” And that she’d driven her curricle along a hundred times. Roger used to bring her over there when he wanted to practice, and she was the one he’d practiced against.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “You know about that?”
She feigned nonchalance. “Roger always talked about his races against you. It annoyed him that he couldn’t beat you more often.”
“He beat me often enough,” Lord Gabriel said tersely.
Just not when it counted.
They were halfway around the room from the corner where Pierce was standing, holding two goblets of punch and watching her with narrowed eyes.
She ignored her cousin. “So is it a bargain? We race the course near Ealing?”
Lord Gabriel’s gaze bore into her with unsettling intensity. “Do you agree to my terms?”
She hesitated. But really, how could she not? It didn’t matter that his terms involved courtship—she was going to win. Her horses knew that course well. He might have a fast rig, but so did she, and she had the advantage of being smaller and lighter than he.
“I agree to your terms.”
A smile broke over his face that nearly took her breath away. It was truly vexing how handsome he could look when he wanted.
“Very well then,” he said, “the course near Ealing. Is this Friday too soon for you?”
That gave her little more than three days to prepare, but it would suffice. “Certainly, as long as it’s after one p.m., so my grandfather thinks I’m off on my afternoon ride.” Slowing her steps as they neared Pierce, she lowered her voice. “And don’t tell my cousin. He’ll go right to Poppy with it.”
A knowing look crossed Lord Gabriel’s face. “Does that mean we’re to have a secret race? Just the two of us?”
Something in Lord Gabriel’s lazy smile put her on her guard. And made her heart pound the teeniest bit faster.
She scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Pierce has to be there. Someone must make sure you don’t cheat.”
“For God’s sake—”
“But I won’t tell him until the last minute. That worked well when he brought me to Turnham Green.” She lifted her chin. “I can get Pierce to do whatever I please.”
“Except not tattle on you to your grandfather,” Lord Gabriel said dryly. “I suspect there are limits to even Devonmont’s indulgence of your whims.”
“None that I’ve reached.”
“Yet.”
Lord Gabriel didn’t understand her friendship with her cousin. She was practically a sister to him.
But as Pierce came up to them, too impatient to wait for their approach, she wondered if there
were
limits to his indulgence.
“Good evening, Sharpe,” Pierce said in a cool voice. He thrust a goblet at her. “You said you were thirsty.”
“Indeed I am. Thank you.”
Pierce glanced at Lord Gabriel. “I was surprised to see you two dancing, Sharpe, given Virginia’s dislike of you.”
“That’s water under the bridge,” Lord Gabriel said with a dismissive smile.
Virginia eyed him askance. The man had an annoying tendency to believe whatever suited him.
A gentleman sauntered up to join them who looked familiar, and both Pierce and Lord Gabriel stiffened at his approach.
“Well, well,” the man said, taking in the little group with a gaze of keen interest, “what a surprise to see you here, Sharpe. You missed the race today.”
Lord Gabriel shrugged. “No reason to come. I knew Jessup’s filly would win.”
“What do you say to that, Miss Waverly?” the stranger said with oily condescension. “Too bad you didn’t consult with Sharpe. Your grandfather could have saved himself the trouble and just kept Ghost Rider home.”
Virginia took an instant dislike to the man. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t believe I know you.”
Pierce stepped in to introduce the man as Lieutenant Chetwin. “Chetwin was the one who raced his rig against Sharpe’s at Turnham Green,” he added.
“Ah, yes, I remember.” Another reckless scoundrel willing to do anything for the thrill of it, no matter whom it might hurt. She was surprised that Pierce knew him, though. He’d never mentioned the man.
“Tell me, Miss Waverly,” the lieutenant said with a smirk, “is Sharpe still balking at racing you?”
“I hardly see how that is any concern of yours,” she said coldly.
That banished his smirk. “I merely wondered if he’s as skittish about racing you as he is about racing me. I keep trying to convince him to race again at Turnham Green, but he won’t. Last time, I had to insult his mother to prod him into threading the needle.”
“And yet I beat you,” Lord Gabriel drawled, though his eyes glittered. “If not for clipping that boulder and destroying my phaeton the first time we raced there, I would have beaten you twice.”
“Yes, but not hitting the boulders is rather the point, old boy,” Lieutenant Chetwin sneered. “Don’t you agree, Miss Waverly?”
Was the dreadful man referring to her brother’s death? “It seems to me that
winning
is the point, sir. And you lost.”
Lieutenant Chetwin’s gaze turned frigid. “Only because one of my horses’ hooves picked up a stone, as Sharpe well knows. And because I had the good sense to pull back before I could be dashed upon the rocks.”
She was stunned into silence at the reference. What sort of boor trampled on someone’s grief?
“That was beyond the pale, Chetwin. But then, you never did learn how to speak properly to a lady,” Lord Gabriel growled.
Chetwin flicked a dismissive glance over her. “A lady doesn’t challenge gentlemen to races she never intends to run.”
“I
do
intend to run it!” she said hotly. “As soon as I beat Lord Gabriel in Ealing on Friday!”
The moment the words left her mouth, she could have kicked herself.
“If you’ll excuse us, Miss Waverley agreed to stand up for this next dance with me,” Lord Gabriel said, and whisked her back onto the floor.
This time the dance was a reel. Appropriate, since her mind was reeling.
Lord Gabriel had defended her to that nasty Chetwin. And until she’d blurted it out herself, he’d kept her secret about the race, too, when he could just as easily have countered the lieutenant’s insinuations by bragging to the man about it. Given his apparent flair for the dramatic, that was rather strange.
He caught her about the waist to dance her up the line and said, “Sorry about that, Miss Waverly. Chetwin is an arse.”
“I agree. Why does he hate you so?”
A muscle ticked in Lord Gabriel’s jaw. “I won a race against him in front of his entire cavalry regiment and humiliated him before the men under his command. He’s resented me ever since. That’s why he keeps badgering me about racing him at Turnham Green again.”
“That’s no excuse for his behavior to
me,
” she said before they were separated again.
When they were together in the dance again, he drawled, “You reminded him that I beat him. That’s reason enough for him to dislike you. Why did you do that, when you purport to hate me, too?” His eyes gleamed at her as if he had drawn some spurious conclusion from that.
She sniffed. “If anyone is to criticize you, Lord Gabriel, it’s going to be
me,
not some vile fool whose mission in life seems to be making trouble.”
He laughed, and the dance separated them again.
After that they spoke no more, but she was very aware that something had shifted between them.
The lieutenant’s words drifted into her mind:
Last time, I had to insult his mother to prod him into threading the needle.
Was that really why Lord Gabriel had raced that vile fellow—because of an insult to his mother?
It didn’t change anything, of course. But it did . . . well . . . mitigate it somewhat, since his parents had died scandalously.
She’d heard all the rumors ages ago about the late Lord and Lady Stoneville. The official story was that Lady Stoneville had killed her husband by accident, then killed herself out of grief, but all sorts of other tales abounded. That their eldest son, the present Lord Stoneville, had murdered them for his fortune. That Lady Stoneville had killed her husband out of jealousy over one of his many indiscretions.
No wonder Lord Gabriel had felt compelled to accept the man’s challenge.
She frowned. How could she make excuses for him? He was a reckless fool with no sense of decency, an arrogant rogue who thought she ought to be grateful that he wanted to marry her . . . And a man who’d lost his parents in a horrific way at seven, and somehow still managed to find some joy in life.
She glanced at him as they turned with their alternate partners in the dance. The woman he was twirling beamed up at him, and he grinned back.
All right, so she could see how some women
might
find him charming. He had a way of making a woman feel she had his entire attention when she was with him.
Every time the dance brought them back together, he smiled, and every time he did, her pulse gave a little flutter.
Clearly she didn’t get out into society nearly enough. Her pulse had no taste in men whatsoever.
They finished the dance, and he led her from the floor. “Since the cat is out of the bag,” he said, “what will you do about your cousin?”
“Leave Pierce to me. I’ll meet you Friday at one-thirty. Just make sure you’re there.”
Pierce could squawk all he wanted. She would race Lord Gabriel, and she would win—first at Ealing, then at Turnham Green. Then she would put him and his fine looks and wild reputation out of her mind for good.
Chapter Three
H
etty Plumtree had been sitting in the library of Halstead Hall for at least an hour. Her youngest grandson should have been home by now. The rest of the family had returned from the ball at Marsbury House some time ago. And given what they had told her, she did not know what to think of Gabe’s continued absence.
But then, he never behaved as expected. The rapscallion had a rebellious streak that ran all the way to his toes. She remembered one time when he—
“You didn’t need to wait up,” said a voice practically at her elbow.
She jumped, then swatted at him with her cane. “Are you trying to give me heart failure, sneaking up on me like that? Where did you come from anyway, you little devil?”
Her six-foot-two grandson laughed and pointed to the open window behind her. He bent to kiss her cheek, and she smelled the musky scent of horses on him. He must have lingered in the stables to groom his own mount, which alarmed her. He only did that when something had disturbed him.
“Where have you been?” she snapped. “Everyone else has been home for hours.”