Chapter 4
EPSOM DOWNS, DERBY DAY
“Truly, Viveca,” said Saskia, her ongoing annoyance with her surroundings clear as crystal, as she narrowly avoided a drunken lout who was doubtless too sweaty for the good of his health. “I do not understand why you insisted we attend the Derby this year.”
“I thought, perhaps, maybe…” Viveca’s mind grasped for words that weren’t just adverbs strung together. A desperate thought that she could seize upon appeared. “Sirens,” she all but exclaimed.
A one-word lie was surely safe from Saskia’s skepticism.
“Sirens?”
Or perhaps maybe not.
“I was thinking we could drum up some members for the library today.” Viveca sidestepped and avoided not just one, but a gaggle of drunken lummoxes assembled before a thimblerig table. Oh, the reek was enough to put a woman off food for a week.
And here she was defending their presence at an event that was nothing more than an excuse for London to pack a year of dissipation into a mere few days. Londoner’s day out, the Derby was called.
“Library members?” Saskia regarded her as if she’d taken leave of her senses. “At a horse race?”
“Well…” That might not have been the best lie to seize upon.
“Because horse racing and books so naturally go hand-in-hand?” When Saskia wanted to convey sarcasm, there was no one her superior.
“Well, I for one am delighted that you agreed to leave Sirens for the day,” said Eloise from the other side of Saskia. “You two have spent entirely too much time indoors these last two years.”
Viveca and Saskia met Mrs. Eloise Lancaster two years ago when she’d agreed to prepare them for their sudden introduction into society as the sisters of the new Duke of Acaster. Ever since, she’d been like a beloved auntie to them.
Viveca adored her to bits.
Especially when Eloise was rescuing her conversationally, which Eloise did often in her easy manner. The woman was a natural diplomat. Why no one had approached her to achieve peace in Europe was a mystery to Viveca.
Saskia, however, looked as if she wanted to pursue the topic of Viveca’s motivations further, but she was blessedly saved from her sister’s inquisition when the current Duchess of Acaster and their sister-in-law, Celia, joined them.
“Let’s go to the Rubbing House before we make our way to watch the race.
I would like see that all’s well with Dandy’s Delight for the weigh-in. ”
“Of course, dear cousin,” said Eloise, twining her arm through Celia’s. Celia wasn’t only Eloise’s cousin, but also her best bosom friend.
Like Eloise, Celia was an interesting person.
A generational beauty of no minor renown, she’d already been the Duchess of Acaster when she’d wed Gabriel, as she’d been married to the Sixth Duke of Acaster before him—a man who had been a depraved wastrel by all accounts.
And like the teeming horde of determined merrymakers around them, Celia was mad about her horses, so she always ensured their safety and the fairness of any race they were entered into.
Which was why they were four ladies shouldering their way into the Rubbing House.
To the untrained eye, the Rubbing House on Derby Day was pure chaos with the high-spirited Thoroughbreds gathering with their jockeys, trainers, and owners to submit to be weighed, then weights added or subtracted to ensure fairness in the race—or, at least, the appearance thereof.
Horse racing was a notoriously corrupt business.
Viveca supposed an order underlay the chaos, though none she could readily see. But that was Derby Day, wasn’t it?
A sudden shush that began at the far end of the Rubbing House swept over the crowd like a wave.
Viveca lifted onto the tips of her toes to see what all the fuss was about.
She wasn’t kept waiting very long as a path cleared for a black Thoroughbred that was being led by a jockey wearing green and blue silks—Liam Cassidy.
Even Viveca with her disinterest in the sport of horse racing knew that much.
“Ah,” she heard Celia say to Eloise, “Cassanova has arrived. A gorgeous piece of horseflesh if there ever was one.” No small amount of envy in Celia’s voice.
Viveca leaned conspiratorially toward Saskia. “My, oh my, he’s a handsome fellow.”
Sisters could speak thusly of handsome fellows to one another.
Without taking her eyes off the awe-inspiring duo of horse and jockey, Saskia said, “Since when are you interested in horses?”
Viveca snorted. “I was speaking of Liam Cassidy, of course.”
“Oh, him,” said Saskia, distraction in her voice. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Viveca felt her eyebrows threaten to lift off her forehead. Who wouldn’t notice Liam Cassidy?
First of all, there was his sun-streaked auburn hair to draw the eye.
Then there was his long-limbed height, which was tall for a jockey.
And to top all that off, there were his high cheekbones and strong jaw and bright hazel-green eyes and quick, assured smile, which all resulted in one handsome man.
The Greeks had even developed a theorem for it—the concept of harmonious proportions, which involved balance, symmetry, and mathematical ratios.
Simply and objectively, Liam Cassidy’s handsomeness was nearly science.
But Viveca had no opportunity to pursue Saskia’s denial of the obvious, for her sister had become engaged in conversation with Eloise and Celia.
Rather than joining in, Viveca found herself glancing around.
An instant later, she understood why.
Blaze Jagger.
He would be here, of course—and she was looking for him.
But…he wasn’t here.
Yet she noticed a point of curiosity she never had before.
Along with the owners, trainers, jockeys, lords, ladies, and general hangers-about scuttled other figures.
Lads. A fleet of them—small, shadowy, and observant.
Working in unison, she realized. When information was called out regarding a horse, one of these lads dashed from the Rubbing House and was as quickly replaced by another just like him.
As this information had to do with the horses who were about to race, it was no mighty mental leap to guess for whom this information was intended—Blaze Jagger.
The man entertained a bevy of interests, didn’t he?
And she’d made a deal with him—a man who took and laid odds on horse races and ran a gaming hell and a whole slew of matters she had no notion of.
A man who joined a circulating library though he couldn’t read.
Still, she wasn’t particularly shocked at herself for having made the deal.
She was, in fact, the sort of person who would make a deal with such a man to get what she wanted.
She liked getting what she wanted, and so far in her twenty years, life had complied with her wishes.
And now what she wanted was something interesting and novel in her life.
The establishment of Sirens with Saskia was the fulfillment of a dream. Yet…she needed something more.
Though Gabriel and Tessa had founded a gaming hell, they’d also determinedly and deliberately protected her and Saskia from any association with that world.
Even as orphaned children living in reduced circumstances, they’d shielded their younger sisters from the rough life surrounding them.
And though Viveca appreciated all her brother and sister had done for her, she wanted to know something of the wider world.
And hadn’t opportunity presented itself in the form of one Blaze Jagger?
What could three or four or five nights in his company hurt, anyway?
She didn’t want to be a protected little lady all her life.
She wanted fun and excitement.
Perhaps a little passion and danger, too.
For life in the ton was safe—too safe.
She wanted something that increased the rate of her heart.
Even so, she might’ve gone a step too far by insisting they have the tutoring sessions at his townhouse.
They could’ve had the sessions at Sirens.
She could’ve closed off a room for privacy.
But there was one person from whom the sessions wouldn’t have been private—Saskia.
Saskia, of course, would have noticed and asked questions.
Questions Viveca didn’t want to answer.
It wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong or untoward, but for some reason she couldn’t explain, she wanted to keep her dealings with Blaze Jagger to herself.
“Viveca?”
She turned to find three sets of expectant eyes upon her. “Yes?”
Eloise extended her arm. “We are off to our place at the finish line to watch the race, my dear. Mr. Lancaster is keeping our spot, and though my husband is stalwart and true, he can only hold the line for so long against the teeming masses.”
“Of course,” said Viveca, taking Eloise’s arm and ignoring Saskia’s questioning eyes.
An uneasy feeling formed in her gut, for she hadn’t dragged Saskia all this way to watch the Derby.
She didn’t give a fig about the race.
She was here to see Blaze Jagger in his element—and she hadn’t yet.
And as she was the sort of person who saw a goal through to its resolution, she would.
The perfect moment arose as they, at last, reached their place at the finish line. “Oh,” she exclaimed. “I need the ladies’ retiring room—now.”
Before anyone could respond, she was already slipping away. As she disappeared into the crowd, she felt Saskia’s questioning eyes on her back.
But Saskia couldn’t accompany her.
She needed to do this alone.
Which was a novelty for her—this keeping of secrets. She and Saskia told each other everything, shared every part of their lives and minds.
But this…thing with Blaze Jagger—she didn’t yet have a word for whatever it was—must be kept to herself for now.
So, out onto the green of Epsom Downs she ventured—alone.
Though she’d never visited the betting post, she knew where it was located.
All she had to do was follow the largest and rowdiest part of the crowd.
At first sight, it appeared to be a chaotic swarm, lacking all rhyme and reason—arms waving, voices attempting to outshout and generally out-merry one another.
Even riders approached on horse. But what appeared to be pandemonium soon arranged itself into a sort of order as she skirted its periphery.
And in the middle of it all was Blaze Jagger, standing with his back propped against the betting post, loose and arrogant, a little smile catching the corner of his mouth, as if the world spun around him.
And perhaps it did.
He was certainly the center of this world.
The lads she’d noticed at the Rubbing House were rushing up to him, imparting a few words, then dashing away to their business. Her suspicion had been correct. Those lads were connected to Jagger’s enterprise.
A tidy man wearing a worn black suit and round brass spectacles hovered at his side.
He was reading off small slips of paper.
Though Jagger was attending to others around them—not just the lads, but other men, too, who were presumably placing bets—he was listening to the man beside him and nodding, all the while taking the slips and glancing down as if giving them a quick read.
But he wasn’t.
Blaze Jagger couldn’t read.
But no one else knew that about him.
Only Viveca.
She liked knowing something no one else knew about that cocksure man so full of swagger.
He went still of a sudden, then his gaze shifted and landed directly on her.
The breath caught in her lungs between one breath and the next.
Undeniably a ridiculously dramatic response, but she was certain she wasn’t the first person Blaze Jagger’s gaze ever had such an effect upon.
It was his eyes.
Those densely lashed gray eyes of his.
But it wasn’t their mere beauty that impacted the rate of one’s breathing. It was the vim and vigor…the dazzle…the force within.
A force that lit a flame inside her that she couldn’t name, for no other human being had ever sparked it to life.
The little smile at the corner of his mouth found its way to the other corner, and he pushed off the post—and began walking.
Toward her.
Nay, not walking.
Prowling.
The rate of her breath might never return to its former cadence.