Chapter 5
Well, well, well.
Lady Viveca Calthorp.
Blaze might’ve expected as much.
And maybe he had, for he was wearing his finest suit—a violet-blue superfine that caught the gray in his eyes and gave them a purplish tint.
This suit, with him in it, turned heads.
This suit spoke of money and power.
Not the power of an aristocrat, but the power of an East End rogue who’d come up a rung or two in this old world.
An altogether different sort of man from a soft lord.
The man wearing this suit would’ve led quite a life.
Lady Viveca wouldn’t be one to miss that message.
Crikes, but wasn’t she fresh as a daisy in springtime in her white muslin dress and strawberry-blonde hair loosely tied below a wide straw hat to protect all that delicate ivory skin from the sun.
And the way those open blue eyes were watching as he approached…
Not with trepidation or judgment or wariness, but with curiosity and interest.
He’d be a liar where he stood if he said he didn’t like provoking the interest of Lady Viveca Calthorp. She wasn’t a lady whose interest caught just anywhere.
“Come to place your wager at the betting post, Lady Viveca?” he called out once he’d come within shouting distance.
“As a matter of fact, I have.” She dug inside her reticule, and her hand emerged holding a palmful of guineas. “Will this do?”
He gave a low whistle. “It’s a start. And who’s your pick for the win?”
Even through the Derby Day odors of muck, shite, and sweat, he caught her scent of sweet vanilla.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said on a laugh. “What are the names of the horses? Aside from Cassanova, that is.”
“Why not Cassanova? You could do worse. Liam Cassidy’s riding him, and both are in good fettle, according to my sources.”
“Your sources?” She lifted her pristine, white-gloved hand and pointed around. “Is that what all those lads are that are scampering about?”
He nodded. “They’re my touts.”
“Touts?”
“Most used to be jockeys, so they know the game, top to bottom. Some call them spies, but they’re more a web of communication.”
Her brow lifted with more than a smidge of skepticism. “If you say so.”
“Now,” he continued, getting back to the original conversation. “The safe money today—and like as not for the rest of the season—is on Liam Cassidy and Cassanova. Unless anything untoward should befall them, of course.”
Her eyebrows crinkled together. “That sounds suspiciously close to a threat.”
“From me?” He shook his head. “Naw. That’s years of indifferent observation, Lady Viveca. Folk got a lot of blunt riding on the racing season from more angles than you can imagine, and they don’t like it when one bloke takes all the winnings.”
“So they harm the horses and jockeys?”
“Or pay the jockeys off, if they can manage it,” he said. “But then, Cassidy won’t be going against his brother-in-law’s stable, now will he?”
It was common knowledge that Cassidy’s twin sister was the Duchess of Rakesley, making his brother-in-law the duke, whose horseflesh was the top contender every season.
Lady Viveca hesitated, as if she didn’t want to ask her next question.
Blaze felt himself tensing, because if he knew anything about this lady, it was that she was going to ask it, anyway.
“Do you take part in such happenings?” came the inevitable question.
He shook his head. “Those sorts of nefarious dealings aren’t my style. I stick to my touts and pay attention to what folk are saying. I don’t have a single horse in any of these races.”
He could see her weighing up his words behind those open blue eyes and testing them for the truth. At last, she nodded. “I see.”
“So,” he said, “will you be putting all those pretty guineas on Cassanova, then?”
She shook her head. “I shan’t.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, that’s boring, isn’t it?”
“Minting money is boring?” That was certainly news to him. He’d taken to seeing how high he could build his mountain of blunt.
“Where’s the excitement in betting on a favorite? Can I bet on second or third place?”
“Lady Viveca, you’re talking to Blaze Jagger.” He spread his hands wide. “You can wager on anything, and I’ll lay you any odds you like.”
It was only after he spoke those last words, that various possibilities of meaning appeared to him.
They seemed to have appeared to Lady Viveca, too, for she blinked. But game lady that she was, she recovered right quick. “What are some of the names of the horses competing today?”
“Well, you’ve got Rotter.”
She nodded.
“And French Tart.”
“I like that one.”
“There’s also Dandy’s Delight and Champers to name a couple more.”
She gave it a moment’s thought. “French Tart for third, and as much as the name Rotter amuses me, I must go with Dandy’s Delight for second. He’s my sister-in-law’s horse, and it would be disloyal to wager otherwise.”
Blaze nodded. “A lady with a code.”
He liked that.
She held out her hand, coins glinting in the afternoon sun, and he took them. “You’ll return after the race to collect your winnings? Or I could give them to you when we meet again.”
At his townhouse on Tichborne Street.
That was where they would be meeting again.
For his reading lesson next week.
And there they wouldn’t be surrounded by an unruly mob.
They would be alone.
“Oh, no need. I’m not going anywhere,” she said, all breezy as she pleased. “I’ll watch the race from here and collect my winnings on the spot.”
Well, blow a man down.
One would expect a lady like her all wrapped in muslin and lace, the white ribbon of her straw hat fluttering in the breeze, to speak such words all shy and demure.
One would be wrong.
The way they sounded coming from Lady Viveca’s pretty pink mouth was more like a gauntlet being thrown down, with a dare in there for good measure.
“You might not win, you know that?” He was probably baiting her, and shouldn’t, but he couldn’t resist. “That’s the point of a wager. Not the win itself, but the promise of it. That uncertainty, it hets the old blood up. That’s what folk get addicted to.”
“But not you?”
“Naw.” He laughed. “I’ve got my other vices.”
“Such as?”
“Now that would be telling,” he teased.
“And you would prefer to show?”
Speechless, that was what she’d struck him. Just for an instant. Then a guffaw roared from the pit of his gut.
There were no circumstances on God’s green earth that he would be arming this woman with that information.
Information she could use against him.
Information he might want her to use against him.
Now, where had that thought come from?
“Shall we stand at the railing for a better view of the race?” she asked.
He swept an arm wide. “Lead the way, milady.”
As he followed in her wake of sweet vanilla, he supposed a gentleman would’ve offered his arm. Well, that wouldn’t be him for two very solid reasons.
First, he wasn’t a gentleman.
A fact established.
Second, rogues like him didn’t take the arm of a duke’s sister in full public view on Derby Day.
Now, what a bloke like him and the sister of a duke might get up to outside full public view was a matter best left unexplored with this particular sister of a duke.
He wasn’t forgetting she was the sister of the duke who was his business partner.
Anyway, the lady was surprisingly adept at needling and muscling her way through the crowd, and it was in no time that Blaze found himself beside her at the white railing.
She glanced up, squinting against the late-day sun. “Do you enjoy the races?”
“I enjoy all the blunt I make from the races.”
“Fair play.” She turned her attention to the turf and leaned forward into the railing. “The horses are all gathered at the line.”
In the distance, a man lifted the starting gun into the air. A few seconds later, the crack of the shot sounded and the horses were off.
The truth was, Blaze had only watched one or two horse races in his entire life. He was always busy at the betting post, laying and taking odds until the very last second of the race, his touts keeping him informed, so the instant it was over, he was able to pay out and start counting the take.
Today wasn’t far different, as his touts had found him here, and were feeding him morsels of information while his man, Hayes, held down the betting post.
Except today was different.
Today his mind was distracted by the woman at his side.
Lady Viveca Calthorp was a bloody distracting woman, too, with her lovely profile and pretty pink mouth and her scent of hot cross buns, which kept drifting into the air around him.
How was a fellow to think with such a sweet bit of womanhood within bloody reach.
She’d asked about vices.
Well.
How easily this woman could become one of them.
He needed to be careful.
He got all this in the three minutes it took the ponies to run their race and the crowd whipped up into a roaring frenzy.
A tout ran up and mumbled the results in his ear. The finish line was too far away for them to know who’d won by sight.
He glanced over and found Lady Viveca watching him. “And?” she asked expectantly.
“Cassanova for the win.”
“Of course.”
“Rotter for third.”
She exhaled an annoyed huff through her nose.
He couldn’t hold her in suspense a moment longer. “And Dandy’s Delight for second.”
Her eyes widened. “Truly?”
“Yea.”
She didn’t hesitate. On a yip of pure, unsullied joy, she sprang forward and threw her arms around his neck, hopping up and down in celebration. Blaze’s arms found themselves returning the favor and wrapping around her, leaving his hands no choice but to settle on her waist.
Actually, they’d had a choice.
They could’ve settled on her arms or shoulders.
Then again, they could’ve settled on what he was sure was a plump little bottom beneath her white muslin dress.
So, her waist was a compromise.
And her body moving up and down was doing things to his body—very specific, enlivening things.
Well, a very specific part of his body, that was.
Namely, his partially enlivened cock.
Next, those pretty pink lips of hers were delivering a kiss to his cheek and he couldn’t help wondering if her nipples were the same rosy shade.
Her arms still wrapped around his neck, her head angled back enough for her to meet his eyes. Thrill shone within those open blue depths—and something else, too.
Something that had his enlivened cock swelled to half-mast.
Awareness.
Of him.
Of her in his arms.
The world—and his place in it—had always clipped along at a breakneck pace, but now it slowed.
That had never happened to him before.
In fact, nothing that occurred when he was in the vicinity of Lady Viveca Calthorp had ever happened to him before.
She was a different sort of person, and when he was around her, he was a different sort of person, too.
Different from the Blaze Jagger the world knew him to be.
Different from the Blaze Jagger he knew himself to be.
Her head had tipped subtly to the side, like she was studying him. He shouldn’t give a toss—he was the sort of fellow folk had an opinion about—but he found himself asking, “What is it?”
“Your diamond stud,” she said.
“What about it?”
“I really like it.”
“Like a bit of rough, do ya?” Somehow, he’d dug out the wherewithal to recover a remnant of his swagger.
She didn’t blink. “I like you.”
His mouth opened.
His mouth closed.
It opened again. “Lady Viveca.”
“Yes?”
“You can’t go around saying things like that to a fellow.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t. But I do like your diamond earring. I find it quite invigorating.”
“Invigorating?”
“Dashing, too.” She tilted her head. “A gold hoop would make you look too much like a pirate.”
Like he should’ve done already, he moved his hands to her shoulders and set her physically away from him by a good twelve inches.
“I have business to conduct”—he felt the anxious presence of Hayes hovering a few feet away—“and you need to get back to your folk.” He sounded as stern as he’d ever heard himself. “They’ll be worried.” He dug into a coat pocket and palmed a handful of guineas. “This should cover your bet.”
She accepted without counting her winnings—without even glancing down, in fact. Her gaze narrowed. “I’ll see you next Wednesday?”
He needed to say no.
He needed to break the entire deal off.
“You’re not regretting our bargain?”
Yes. He needed to say yes.
“I will be at Tichborne Street at ten o’clock in the evening next Wednesday.”
And with that, she turned on her heel and disappeared into the raucous crowd before he could speak a single, contradictory word.
He’d made a mistake.
He didn’t make mistakes often, but he’d made a momentous one when he made a deal with Lady Viveca Calthorp.
It was that misguided sense of nobility that got him.
As if Lady Viveca needed protecting.
That was where he’d gone wrong.
Noble? Blaze Jagger?
Naw.
That wasn’t him.
Now, he was stuck in quicksand.
He had to go through with it.
Otherwise—and he felt this to the very marrow of his bones—Lady Viveca Calthorp, with her open blue eyes and pretty pink mouth and cast-iron will, would pursue him to the ends of London.