“I want to know what hangs in the balance with this race, Lucas, because I do not want you carrying the burden of this wager all on your own shoulders. You’ve allowed me to contribute to William’s training, and that means a great deal to me. Allow me to contribute something as a wife as well.”
He fell silent, his expression grave. The unease inside Eve grew greater as she concluded that whatever he was about to tell her, it might yet not be the full extent of what he was risking with this race.
“I’ve wagered William. If I lose, William becomes Dolan’s possession. If Dolan loses, I get Goblin—and the money. Mustn’t forget the money. Shall we return to the stables?”
He’d wagered a one-in-a-million horse, a horse to whom Eve was quite attached, and a fortune into the bargain. Eve said not one word. She turned her mare for the stables and cantered along at her husband’s side, trying not to cry.
For herself, for the horse, and for the man whose honor—or whose wife—had compelled him to engage in such a wager.
Deene sat among blankets on a pile of straw, his back against the wall, his arms around his drowsy wife.
He should have told her the whole of it earlier in the day, but her expression had gone so bleak when he’d admitted they might lose William. He’d not been able to say another word. And yet… silence was not serving them either.
“I should have told Anthony to send the coach back for you.”
She stirred in his arms. “If you’re staying, I’m staying. The child hasn’t been born to the English countryside who hasn’t snatched at least a nap in some obliging hayloft.”
Below them, Beast shifted in his stall, giving a little wuffle at the sound of Eve’s voice.
“I can understand your willingness to pass a night up here with me, Evie, but how is it you come to know so very much about how to ride a course like the one out there on the downs?”
When he’d reflected back on their most recent ride over the course, he’d realized Eve saw the entire challenge like Wellington saw a potential battleground, anticipating moves, choosing options, and analyzing the exercise on a level Deene himself had been oblivious to.
“I used to talk to Devlin and Bart endlessly about their cavalry exercises, about how a battle could turn on horsemanship. Boggy ground played a role in the French defeat at Waterloo, and Devlin is convinced Wellington knew it would when he put his artillery up along the ridge.”
“A grim thought.” The feel of Eve’s hair tickling his nose was not grim. It was dear and precious and soothing.
“When I was a little girl I’d talk to Papa about the hunt meets and his cavalry days. It was one of few ways to gain his notice when I had so many older siblings competing for it. I would interrogate him at every turn about the good gallops and the bad falls.”
Deene kissed her temple, an image of a very young, diminutive Eve on the fringes of the loud, busy circle of otherwise tall and robust Windham family members coming to mind. “And then you fell and lost more than just the ability to waltz with every swain in the shire.”
He was holding her close to his body, so he felt something go through her. A shudder, a shiver, something. She’d come close on at least two recent occasions to telling him more about her fall, but he hadn’t known how to encourage her confidences when he wasn’t being entirely honest with his own.
“I must go for a walk.” She tried to rise. He prevented it by virtue of kissing her cheek.
“Not without me.”
“Yes, without you. Sometimes a lady needs a little privacy, but I won’t go far, and I’ll look in on William.”
She was going to find a convenient spot in some clump of bushes, racetrack facilities being next to nonexistent.
“Don’t be gone long. We’ll be up well before first light.”
“Which assumes we sleep at all.”
He let her have the last word, let her disappear silently down the ladder, and felt the prayers start up again in his mind:
Please give this marriage the chance it deserves.
Let no harm come to horses or riders tomorrow.
Let there be a harmless explanation for the horrific and false disarray in which Anthony presented the Denning family finances.
Let there be an end to the mess between Deene and Dolan, and let it be an end that didn’t cost him his niece, his wife, and his honor, much less his available coin and his prize stallion.
The litany grew longer before Deene spied Eve’s blond head coming up the steps in the weak slats of moonlight making patterns through the barn siding.
She tucked herself in very close, and from the feel of her—from the heat and the tension in her—Deene knew immediately something was afoot.
“Evie? What’s amiss?”
“Husband…” She was breathing rapidly and trying to whisper. “Husband, we must hurry. Somebody is going to drug poor William, perhaps with a quantity of somnifera, and I fear they’ve already done Aelfreth a bad turn.”
“You stay here.”
“Eve, I cannot allow Dolan’s henchmen to drug William.”
Her head came up, and she peered at him closely in the moonlight then leaned in and whispered into his ear.
He went still. She leaned in again, but he framed her face in his hands, kissed her soundly on the mouth, and pronounced her brilliant. They could solve the problem of Aelfreth’s hangover in the morning, but for now, time was of the essence.
By the time they were back in their hayloft, Eve once again bundled into her husband’s arms, Deene wasn’t feeling quite so sanguine.
“We’ve thwarted this plan, Wife, but it still leaves us with a considerable handicap tomorrow if Aelfreth is in no condition to ride.”
“You could ride him, Lucas. You know that course inside and out, you know your colt, and you’re every bit as skilled as Aelfreth.”
She was loyal. She’d not suggested Bannister or one of the other lads; she hadn’t hesitated to put her faith entirely in her husband. She hadn’t mentioned that Deene was far more weight than any jockey would be, and she hadn’t once considered the most logical choice to get the beast around the course safely.
“We have another option, Evie.”
“Bannister isn’t in fighting shape, Deene, and he’s been focusing more on Aelfreth than on the horse, and furthermore—”
Deene kissed his wife. Kissed her soundly enough to get her attention, almost soundly enough to lose his focus on the matter at hand. “Not Bannister, Eve Denning. The best chance that horse has of making it around the course in record time is the woman I’m holding in my arms right this minute.”
He spent another hour arguing with his wife, his marchioness, his lady, and his love, and in the end, she agreed to trust his judgment. In this, Deene reflected—though perhaps in little else—she was going to trust him, and he was not going to let her down.
“The steward is coming to look over the horse,” Kesmore reported. “For God’s sake, get her hair stuffed under that handkerchief.”
Kesmore was looking thunderous but said nothing more, which was fortunate, because otherwise, Deene
