“Races are getting shorter and shorter. Draven says that’s because the legs are fixing most of the races by controlling the betting.”
“I’m sure,” Tess said. “But how are you, Imogen? Is marriage to Lord Maitland everything you dreamed it would be?”
“But I told you; he is all that is gracious and wonderful,” Imogen said.
But Tess felt there was something wrong. Imogen’s eyes didn’t shine in the way they used to, before she married Draven. She kept saying that everything was wonderful, and yet—
“Are you quite certain?” she persisted.
“Of course I am!” Imogen said with a short laugh.
“Is it comfortable living with Lady Clarice?”
A shadow crossed Imogen’s face. “I can see Annabel and Josie regularly. Every day, if I wish. But as soon as Draven wins his next golden cup, we shall move to our own establishment, naturally.”
“That must be difficult,” Tess said, putting a hand on Imogen’s.
Imogen looked at her and grinned, and suddenly there was a flash of Tess’s old, passionate sister. “Lady Clarice can be rather troublesome. But I find that since I began reading Catullus to her in the mornings, she has began considering me cultivated, and that makes all the difference.”
“I’m sure Miss Pythian-Adams would be happy to lend you a text or two,” Tess said.
Imogen shuddered. “Miss Pythian-Adams is a very odd woman. Do you know, she actually thanked me for taking Draven off her hands? As if I could have had a greater wish in life than to marry my dearest husband!”
“Of course,” Tess murmured.
But Imogen didn’t seem to want to talk about her marriage anymore. “What is it like being married to Mr. Felton, Tess? Draven describes him as virtually the richest man in all England!”
“It’s confusing. I find it quite mystifying, sometimes, to think where the day has gone, because it seems to take enormous amounts of time to do something as simple as talk to the housekeeper about meals, then there’s the gardener, and the accounts—of course, I don’t keep the accounts, but I try to look them over. In all, it’s a tremendous amount of work.”
“But you look happy,” Imogen said. “Your eyes are happy, Tess.” There was a moment’s silence, then: “I think you must have fallen in love with your husband.”
Tess froze for a second. “Perhaps someday.” She caught sight of Lucius walking through the crowd toward her, with Draven at his side. “They are returning!”
The crowd moved aside as Lucius approached. Lord Maitland looked just as handsome, in a different sort of way: his eyes shining an audacious blue, gesticulating widely as he explained something to Lucius—something to do with Blue Peter, no doubt.
Watching him, Tess even felt a queer sort of affection. After all, Draven was family now. He was Imogen’s husband, and though she could have wished Imogen had married a different sort of man, and in a different way, there was no overlooking that Imogen had wanted nothing but Draven from the moment she saw him.
She took Imogen’s hand in her own and squeezed it. “I’m so glad that the two of you wed,” she said impulsively. “I’m afraid that you would have suffered true unhappiness had things been different.”
Imogen looked at her. “Yes, I likely should have done,” she said. But there was something in her tone that made Tess frown again.
Lucius sat down beside Tess. Draven was still talking, something about the filly who would be running against Blue Peter and what a groom had told him about that filly’s diet; he sat down next to Imogen and simply switched the flow of his conversation from Lucius to Imogen.
Lucius leaned close to her, and said, “I would say that the subject of oats and apples has been exhausted.”
Tess smiled, but she felt sad for Imogen. Lucius’s hand was just touching her back, but the very touch of his fingers made her body sing with the memory of what had happened a mere hour ago.
She looked up at him and knew they were both thinking the same thing. “Shall we take a small stroll?” he asked. “I gather that Blue Peter will not race for an hour or so, and you have not so much as left the box.”
Tess glanced at Imogen. Draven was describing a two-year-old filly with a white stripe on his nose and “that look, that calm, alert look, you know what I mean. I could take her to the Ascot, but my mother, dammit, I expect she won’t—” Imogen was looking at him and nodding.
Tess turned away and took Lucius’s arm. A moment later, they were threading their way through crowds that smelled of tobacco, spirits, and excitement. He put his arm around her, protecting her, possessive and warm, and Tess—who felt absolutely no need for protection, having practically grown up amongst crowds of jostling men of just this stripe—felt a streak of joy in her chest that was so sharp it almost hurt. She stopped. He stopped, perforce, and she looked up to his face and said, “Lucius.”
“Hmm-hum?”
But what he saw in her eyes made amusement shine in his own, and he bent his head. “Did you wish to say something private, my dear?”
“Is your carriage in the vicinity?”
He answered her with a smile, then—regardless of the utter impropriety of the action, tipped up his wife’s face and kissed her: swiftly, one hard, demanding kiss, so swift that no one really noticed, since their faces were trained to the track, and the horses pounding their way through the dust.
Only one person saw them, and that was Imogen, watching them from the box while Draven talked. “You see, when the group near the rail began to speed up,” her husband was saying, “the filly pulled to the outside and shot ahead as if she were…”
Imogen saw that Lucius was looking down at Tess as if she were terribly, terribly precious, laughing at something now, his arm tight around her as if to keep the crowds from ever touching the precious Mrs. Felton.
“If only my mother understood a horse’s investment potential,” Draven was saying, as much to himself as her, because when that particular note of rage sounded in his voice it was always to do with his mother. And Imogen had learned quickly that there was nothing she could say that would better the business. Lady Clarice showed no signs whatsoever of loosening the purse strings now that her son was married. Indeed, as she told Imogen, not unkindly, it was for her own good.
“He puts every shilling I give him into his stables,” she had told Imogen. “I don’t begrudge him the money, but my dearest husband agreed with me that Draven does not have an eye for a winner.”
“Draven has an excellent eye,” Imogen had said stoutly. “It’s only a matter of time until his stables are the finest in all England.”
“I would be very happy for him,” his mother had agreed, and then she had changed the subject.
“Draven,” Imogen interrupted him now, “would you like to go for a walk?”
He leaped to his feet. “Of course you wish to see the filly, don’t you? You can hardly help me talk my mother into releasing the funds unless you’ve seen her yourself, can you?” He hauled her to her feet with scant grace. “Good thought, Imogen.”
At least he remembers my name, Imogen thought rather disconsolately.