Much Ado About You

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Lucius said, “And if I remember correctly, this would be the same Newmarket in which a horse named Petunia galloped her way to the finish line?”

  “Highbrow never finished,” Tess said abstractly, watching Lucius’s horses.

  “He stumbled and broke a leg,” he said, remembering now. “He had to be shot.”

  “And that is why, Mr. Felton, I shall not even venture an opinion about your horses. Because it is all poppycock, frankly. Anything can happen in a race.”

  “Humor me,” he said.

  She looked up at him. His face was utterly arresting, utterly silent, contained. He looked like a person with no need for human companionship, someone whose serenity was more than skin-deep. “We must find the others,” she said, letting a trace of irritation enter her voice. After all, Mayne was courting her. Perhaps he had planned to propose to her at this very moment, and here she was, gallivanting about and making imprudent statements to Mr. Felton.

  “Miss Essex,” he said, and his voice had a deep steadiness that made her nerves mount even higher.

  “I’d like to return to the box,” she said. “My sisters must be wondering where I am.” But she had a sense of fair play, after all. “Very well. I’m not at all sure how your bay is feeling. But look at the way that one—”

  “Royal Oak,” he said.

  “How Royal Oak is walking. He’s too hot; he’s not comfortable; and I think he may be hungry. Has your groom been sweating him?”

  “He tells me it’s necessary to keep the horse’s flesh off,” Lucius said with a frown.

  “I find it barbaric. Both purging and sweating. If I know anything about horses, Mr. Felton, it is that such methods make them feel ill.” She began walking toward the box where their party presumably waited.

  But he stopped her with a light touch to her arm. “I was under the impression that your father was a great proponent of purging, Miss Essex. I heard him argue the case vehemently at the Derby two years ago.”

  “My father did advocate such methods,” she said after a moment. “I did not agree with him.”

  Mr. Felton’s gaze was so vivid that she almost closed her eyes to keep him out.

  They entered the box to find only Annabel and Mayne, who seemed to be on terms of the easiest companionship.

  “They’ve all trotted off to the refreshment hall,” Annabel explained. “Lady Clarice encountered one of her very best friends, Mrs. Homily, who informed her that they are serving truly delectable Yorkshire ham in the hall.”

  “Everyone?” Lucius asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Except for Lord Maitland, who, I believe, is in the stables,” Annabel said, smiling at Felton in a roguish manner. “Won’t you both join us, unless you too are eager for ham?”

  From the moment Tess sat down beside the Earl of Mayne, his black eyes were sparkling with secret messages. He was truly interested in her ability to ride, she realized. He found her ability to control a racehorse intoxicating.

  His courtship had taken on another note, a deeper, surer note. He wasn’t talking flummery, but kept telling her casual little details about his stables and his household. He was speaking less as a man experienced in the fine art of dalliance and more as a man genuinely interested in his companion.

  He was five hundred times more attractive for his candor. That, combined with his gypsy-eyed beauty, made him a formidable wooer indeed. Yet Tess couldn’t help listening to Annabel chatter to Mr. Felton. Annabel, of course, was a formidable wooer as well. In fact, she should probably just start thinking of Mr. Felton as a brother-in-law from this moment forward.

  “My mother had a restless soul,” Mayne said. “She rode like the wind, even sidesaddle. In England, young ladies only ride sidesaddle, Miss Essex. But I know that in Ireland women sometimes ride astride. Forgive my ignorance on the subject of Scottish customs, but have you ever ridden astride?”

  “Of course not!” Tess said tartly. She and her sisters hadn’t ridden so for well over a year, and to reveal those occasions required an excess of candor.

  Mr. Felton turned suddenly and looked at her. He had beautiful eyes: like those of a curiously intelligent wolf. She blinked, wondering how he knew she, Annabel, and Imogen used to fling themselves on horses and ride astride—but only on their father’s land, where they couldn’t be seen. There was a faint smile in his eyes that called her bluff.

  He said nothing, turning back to the track without a comment. She was acutely aware of his broad shoulder. While Mayne’s shoulder occasionally brushed hers as he handed her a program, or pointed to a certain horse, Mr. Felton didn’t touch her at all.

  “The downs behind my estate in Yorkshire are exquisite,” Mayne said. “Many times I have ridden there for an hour without seeing a cottage. One feels as if it is Arcadia, a golden place without worldly occupations.” He lifted her hand to his lips, his eyes holding hers. “I should very much like to introduce it to you, Miss Essex. I warrant its beauty will make you forget the moors of Scotland.”

  The mute invitation in his eyes was unmistakable. “There is a lovely little apple orchard behind the racetrack that has some resemblance to my own orchard, Miss Essex. May I entice you into a short walk in that direction?”

  Tess felt as if some sort of paralysis had seized her mind. Did she wish to accept his proposal? Annabel looked around Felton’s shoulder; she had a gleam in her eye that confirmed Tess’s sense. Mayne was going to offer for her in that orchard. And she should accept. After all, no one else had made a serious proposal, and her sisters must be brought out.

  “Actually,” Mr. Felton interrupted, “I was about to beg Miss Essex to allow me the pleasure of escorting her to the track.” He was on his feet again and holding out his hand. “I would like to introduce her to a horse if she has no objection.”

  “Miss Essex need not put you to the trouble of introducing her to animals,” Mayne said with a pointed glance at his friend. “I have already asked her to walk with me.”

  “Do stay here with us,” Annabel said to Mr. Felton, her voice a stream of honey.

  Tess felt a pulse of exasperation. Didn’t their suitors understand that Mr. Felton showed little interest in her as a woman? If they didn’t see it, she did. Mayne had ignored all four of the races that had just occurred, but Felton’s eyes hardly moved from the track, no matter how handsomely Annabel cajoled him. Felton was quite like her father in that. It was a chilling thought.

  As she might have expected, Felton gave his friend a genial smile that made it clear he was in no way poaching on Mayne’s territory. “I’ll return Miss Essex safe and sound in a mere two minutes. I am considering adding a horse to my stables, and Miss Essex is a remarkable judge of horseflesh.”

  Mayne cocked an eyebrow but obviously recognized that the businesslike tone of his friend’s voice posed no threat to his courtship. From Tess’s point of view, the only thing that differed between Felton’s obsession for horses and her father’s was that Felton showed some signs of valuing her opinion.

  Actually, it would be best if Mayne learned that a wife was not one to be herded hither and yon at his command. “I will return in a mere moment,” she said, rising and taking Mr. Felton’s arm. She was rewarded with a smile that transformed a face that tended toward bleakness.

  Mayne had smiled at her fifteen hundred times in the past hour. Each smile was a caress, an endearment, a signal of his intentions, of his status as her future husband, in truth. Yet Felton’s smile left her shaken.

  But he has no intention of wooing me, Tess reminded herself. As if to prove her point, he walked directly to the track. “What do you think of that horse?”

  It was a gray with dappled spots. As they watched, it took a few big, happy strides before the groom on its back pulled him up short so the horse twitched all over, shook just a bit, causing the groom’s knee to pull loose. Tess laughed.

  “I thought so too,” he said with satisfaction.

  She looked u
p at him. “I haven’t said a word.”

  “You read the horse’s face. I looked at yours.”

  There was a stinging moment when their eyes met before she turned away. “I should—”

  The gray pranced off, to win, she was quite certain of that.

  They returned to the box directly. Mr. Felton didn’t take her arm, or smile at her again, or make any sign in the least that—that—

  “May I take you to the orchards?” Mayne asked as soon as they returned, his voice purring with intention.

  Tess looked instinctively at Mr. Felton. For once, he didn’t have his opera glasses trained on the track. Instead, he was looking at the two of them, and she knew that he was quite aware of the earl’s intentions—and he had no plan whatsoever to counter them.

  Instead, he turned away and sat down next to Annabel, who greeted him with a piece of artful flummery and a chuckle. It seemed to Tess that he turned to her sister with pleasure.

  Tess stood up and placed her fingers delicately on the earl’s arm. She could feel the weave under her fingers, a wool so delicate and expensive it felt like satin. “I would be most pleased to walk with you,” she told him, looking through her eyelashes.

  She did not look back at Mr. Felton.

  They walked a short distance to an apple tree and paused. It was quite as if she were in a play, really.

  Mayne picked her an apple; she graciously accepted. He kissed her hand; she looked into his face. He asked her the question; she assented (quietly dropping the apple). He begged permission, and then brushed a kiss on her cheek. She smiled at him, and he kissed her again, this time on the mouth. It was very pleasant.

  She tucked her hand back under his arm, and they walked back, future man and wife.

  Or rather, earl and future countess.

  Chapter

  15

  They were all curled on Tess’s bed, each with her own bedpost to lean upon, Tess and Josie at the head, Imogen and Annabel at the foot. Josie had a book with her, of course, which she was reading by the candle set on Tess’s bedside table.

  “I just can’t quite believe it,” Imogen was saying, staring at Tess as if she had suddenly grown horns. “You’re going to be married, Tess. Do you remember how we used to fear that no one would marry us? Here we’ve been in England less than a week, and you’re already affianced to an earl. You should feel quite triumphant.”

  Tess found herself curiously uncertain when it came to thinking of herself as a married woman; she kept forgetting that the proposal had happened altogether. Definitely she didn’t feel triumphant.

  “Our worries were connected to Papa’s inability to take us to London,” Annabel pointed out. “I don’t think any of us doubted our marriageability.”

  “My new governess, Miss Flecknoe, would say that was an utterly improper comment,” Josie commented, raising her eyes from her book. “I can say that without hesitation because Miss Flecknoe finds any realistic assessment of relations between men and women improper.”

  “I have something to say,” Imogen said. Her cheeks were flushed rose, and she was hugging her knees.

  They all looked over at her, even Josie.

  “Draven kissed me. He kissed me.”

  “Are you referring to the falling-out-of-the-apple-tree story, or did you accost the man again?” Josie asked.

  Imogen was clearly too happy to bother chastising her little sister. “He kissed me at the races. Out of the blue. I think he’s beginning to love me!”

  “You show a touching confidence in kisses,” Josie said acidly, returning to her book. “Miss Flecknoe wouldn’t agree with you. She says that when gentlemen are agreeable they are invariably hiding ulterior motives. Although,” she added reflectively, “I’m not at all convinced that Miss Flecknoe has a clear understanding of the motives in question.”

  “But Imogen, Lord Maitland is promised to Miss Pythian-Adams,” Tess said gently.

  “You can say what you wish,” Imogen said, with a toss of her head. “I asked him to accompany me to the track so that I could watch the horses more closely, and he did—”

  “I knew you were behind it somehow,” Josie put it.

  “The reason we were together is irrelevant,” Imogen snapped.

  “Don’t tell us that your motives were not highly improper,” Josie taunted. “Why didn’t you go to the stables? You could have tumbled off a hayrack into his arms.”

  “Josie,” Tess remarked, “your tone is rather distasteful.”

  “We were walking toward the finish line,” Imogen said, “and Draven was saying such intelligent things about the horses we passed…you can’t imagine. I think he knows everything there is about horses. And then he decided to put fifty pounds on a filly in that very race. The book-maker took his money, and it seemed only a moment later—he’d won! And then he kissed me, because he said I was good luck.”

  Tess bit her lip, trying to think what to say, but Annabel waded in. “Draven Maitland is the very image of Papa, Imogen. Are you quite certain that you would wish to spend the rest of your life talking about fillies and watching your husband throw all the money in the house at the track?”

  “He’s not in the least like Papa,” Imogen said, hugging her knees.

  “Actually, I believe Imogen has a point,” Josie said. “Father would not have wandered about the track kissing other women after he was promised to mother. He was a man of honor.”

  “So is Draven! He was simply overcome by emotion,” Imogen protested. “He is utterly different from Papa because Draven actually knows what he’s doing when he bets. He has a system, you see, and he understands horses in a way that Papa never did.”

  Tess leaned her head back against the bedpost and stared up at the deep blue canopy above their head. She wondered whether their mother had felt the same about her husband. Imogen’s eyes glowed with pride and adoration when she talked of Draven’s system and his knowledge of horses.

  Even Josie seemed momentarily defeated. “Well, just don’t forget about Miss Flecknoe’s notion of propriety in your further pursuit,” she said, but her voice lacked sharpness.

  “I gather you do intend to pursue Lord Maitland, regardless of Miss Pythian-Adams?” Annabel said, frowning at Imogen.

  She raised her chin. “We are meant to be together.”

  “In that case,” Tess said, “you might want to stop being quite so apparent. Don’t stare at the poor man so much. I’m sure you make him uncomfortable.”

  “Stare at someone else,” Annabel agreed. “Make eyes at Rafe or Mr. Felton, if you have to. Jealousy can be a powerful motivator in a man. And Josie, please do not inform Miss Flecknoe of the particulars of this conversation.”

  “I will try not to regard Draven more than—than once in a great while,” Imogen said. Her tone indicated a certain doubt in her own abilities, but Tess decided to let it pass.

  “Tess is marrying the earl,” Annabel said briskly. “Imogen is pursuing Lord Maitland, and Josie is happy in the schoolroom.”

  “Happy is overstating the case,” Josie corrected her. “No one could be precisely happy with Miss Flecknoe hounding one from morning to night. She’s dreadfully fearful about the horrid habits I have developed, because of growing up without a governess.”

  “Such as what?” Tess asked, with some interest.

  “Reading,” Josie said with a sniff. “She thinks reading is an anathema. If Miss Flecknoe had any idea that Imogen was accepting kisses from Lord Maitland, she would likely have to do a ritual exorcism.”

  “Well, one of us must needs grow into a proper and decorous young lady,” Annabel said, “and it’s too late for the rest of us, so you had better do it. Just to prove my unseemly nature, I might as well tell you that I’ve been doing little else than think about what Lady Griselda said of Mr. Felton—to be specific, of his fortune—and it’s my belief that I am making progress in his esteem.”

  “You needn’t marry Mr. Felton,” Tess said. “I’m quite certain that Mayne
will sponsor you onto the season, if you don’t wish to stay with Rafe and Lady Griselda, who also seem eager to chaperone you.”

  “Yes, but Mr. Felton is here,” Annabel said. “What if I find that Lady Griselda is right, and Mr. Felton is the best catch in London, and I’ve wasted my time?”

  “Mr. Felton has no title,” Tess pointed out, “and you have been saying for years that a title was of vital importance to you.”

  “I shouldn’t have been so finicky. The truth is that money is the only really important currency in the world.”

  “I think you should wait for the season,” Tess said. “There’s no need for such a sacrifice.”

  “What sacrifice?” Annabel said with an easy shrug. “I am not the sort of woman to find myself hopelessly attracted to a slender, artistic young man, and Mr. Felton has a—”

  “Miss Flecknoe would not approve of whatever you are about to say,” Josie observed, raising her eyes from her book again.

  “Pray, don’t repeat it to her,” Annabel said. “I was merely going to point out that while I would find it difficult to admire a willowy husband, Mr. Felton’s physique is muscular rather than otherwise; his figure is admirable, and he has not lost his hair. And I rather like the tawny-haired look of him. It would be like having a pet lion around the house.”

  “That’s an absurd comment,” Josie said. “Mr. Felton in no way resembles one of the great cats. Not that you would know, since none of us has ever seen anything other than a drawing, but he—” She paused. “Well, perhaps a panther. I believe they have that sleek and dangerous look.”

  Tess bit her lip.

  “Unless,” Annabel said gently, looking straight at Tess, “you have any particular objection, Tess?”

  “Why should she?” Imogen wanted to know.

  “Because there is always the chance that Mr. Felton has taken Tess’s fancy,” Annabel told her. “I thought I saw—”

  “You saw nothing,” Tess said hastily. “I have no feeling one way or the other for Mr. Felton. Of course, you should marry him.”