Chapter 14
PRIMROSE PARK, THREE DAYS LATER
It was a sweet little setup Lord Devil had here at his Primrose Park estate just north of London.
No one could say otherwise, and Blaze thought that was just the point.
Lord Devil had had something to prove to the ton—and he had.
Then he’d put the cherry on top and married the daughter of a marquess.
Blaze could only stand back in admiration.
Of course, that daughter of a marquess was Lady Bea and Dev had the good sense to love her and treat her right, so Blaze took no issue with the bloke killing two birds with one stone, as it were.
That he was the brother of Lady Bea was the only reason Blaze was invited to this lavish, little musicale.
Musicale.
The ton could fancy up anything, couldn’t they?
He supposed there would be lots of instruments and singers and the like. They would be the best of the best for the aristocrats.
He snorted.
All Mam had to do was close her eyes, open her mouth, and let the voice of heaven pour forth to transfix a room.
A footman holding a silver tray loaded with coupes of champagne appeared at his side. “Would you care for a libation, sir?”
Sir.
Blaze had come up in the world, hadn’t he? Started life as bastard, then, inevitably, came the other titles—scamp…scoundrel…rogue.
Now he was sir.
Not capital S sir, but it would have to do, for he wouldn’t be holding out any hopes of a knighthood any time soon.
He took a coupe, and the footman moved on.
Truth was, he didn’t have much use for spirits. He’d learned early he didn’t need them in order to be exactly who he was. Still, he’d hold onto the coupe, or he’d be prodded every two minutes to take one.
As he kept to the edges of the crowd who were mingling before the musicale started, he noted more than a few familiar faces.
In fact, if he were to hazard a guess, he’d reckon he knew a good eight out of ten of the lords wandering about.
And of that eighty percent, a good seventy-five percent owed him money on any given day or night, whether that be from horse race or The Archangel.
As their ladies were swanning at their sides, those lords tended to avoid Blaze’s eye.
The ladies, on the other hand… They tended to like what they saw when they beheld Blaze Jagger. It wasn’t a boast, but a fact, and he didn’t take it personally. They weren’t out to seduce him for himself from behind their flirtatious fans, but rather the idea of him.
Except that couldn’t be said for all the ladies in attendance at tonight’s musicale.
There was one here who knew him for himself.
Viveca.
She was why he’d arrived early.
Though he shouldn’t be here.
This wasn’t his world, whatever angles he used to push in. He would forever stand at its shadowed edge. A place that suited him just fine.
But Viveca… This was her world.
She belonged.
And there was some part of him that needed to see her in it.
So he could let her go.
He’d given this some thought and saw it was necessary.
He’d tupped her, for one.
Tupped?
He didn’t like the word for what he and Viveca had done—and that was part of the problem right there.
Tupped should have been the right word.
It had always been the right word.
But with her, it wasn’t, for it hadn’t been an act they’d done.
What they’d done, they’d shared.
And he’d never felt that before.
Then there’d been last night.
A paying off of the debt he owed her.
Sure, fair play.
But really, what it had been was a disaster of the unmitigated variety.
For it wasn’t the tup—for lack of a more accurate word for what they’d shared—that had revealed him himself fully to her, but last night.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever experienced a night that had unraveled so fully and irrevocably beyond his reach.
It had only been meant to give her that little taste of East End rough she craved, but it had ended with her meeting the family.
Blow him down.
And all the while, there had been him, craving her. The knowledge of that tup in his mind, and his body aching for another round.
And in the end he’d given in to that craving, hadn’t he?
Because that was what one did with Viveca.
One gave in.
He’d kissed her.
He shouldn’t have.
He couldn’t not have.
His body had been trembling with the need all night.
So, tonight, he needed to see her here, with her folk, where she belonged.
Then he could leave and be with his folk—where he belonged.
Ahead, his attention caught on a lively group of nobs.
They stood out in being a good ten to twenty years younger than the rest of the lords and ladies milling around.
These were the younger set, and they’d assembled themselves around one man—Liam Cassidy.
The light from the chandeliers caught his sun-streaked auburn hair and lit it bronze.
The sort of hair that grabbed the eye. He didn’t need his easy smile to enhance his looks, but there it was, drawing in every person who met it.
It was the sort of smile that made folk think it was made specially for them.
The smile of a politician, that smile. Except Blaze didn’t think it was.
He had a gut for the ingenuine, and Cassidy’s was the real thing, for he didn’t use it to further his place in the world.
Though Blaze suspected, Cassidy would use it to further his place into a lady’s bed. Well, what fellow wouldn’t?
Naw, Cassidy didn’t need that smile to get where he was in the world. Beneath all that loose-limbed lankiness and ease, Cassidy had grit and skill, the strength and determination to win.
And these last two years—this being his third season in the game—he was winning races and raking in the blunt. If he kept on track and didn’t get on the wrong side of the wrong folk, Cassidy would be the best of the best—a legend.
All this Blaze saw from the outside, for he didn’t know Liam Cassidy. Never met him, and it made little difference to him if he ever did.
Which was a good thing, in further fact.
Cassidy wasn’t a waster, which boded well for all that blunt he was accumulating with his wins and that legacy he was striving for.
Good man.
God’s truth, Blaze was getting bone tired of dealing with wasters, buggers, and rotters.
He’d already decided to give up his place at the betting post, in fact.
The Archangel, though, that was the long game.
And now that they were expanding their horizons and opening a club in Brighton, he saw a future where they could open Archangels in other towns where rich folk liked to congregate and spend money.
It was an idea, at least, and an avenue to explore, as he hadn’t the faintest idea yet if it would meet with success.
But that was the point.
The adventure of it.
Not knowing what lay around the next corner was what got the old heart pumping and the blood fizzing in the veins, wasn’t it?
He came to a stop just beyond the edge of the grouping when a fellow leaned over to whisper into a lady’s ear and a line of sight opened up. There, facing him but, like everyone else, listening to whatever Cassidy was going on about—some horse race or another—stood Viveca.
Blaze’s heart did that funny thing it had taken to doing whenever he so much as clapped eyes on her and flipped over in his chest.
Ah, but didn’t she look like one of them in all her finery—sea-blue silk dress and thin gold chain with a delicate pearl pendant.
Wasn’t that what he’d come here to see?
For here she was, plain as day, in her element…with her folk.
Now, he’d seen it; he could leave.
But a single word had planted itself in his mind and had his feet moving forward and joining the group—and drawing a few surprised eyeballs.
He was Blaze Jagger; he drew the eye, too.
Anyway, a word wouldn’t leave him be.
Adventure.
Viveca wasn’t exactly like these folk, was she?
Her heart, too, raced at what lay unseen around a corner, didn’t it?
She was an adventurer to her bones.
She was like him.
Really, though, she was a paradox—and it was driving him a little mad.
That was what she was—no one thing.
The woman contained multitudes.
And along with his swell of admirers, she was hanging onto Liam Cassidy’s every last word, wasn’t she?
An odd feeling flared through Blaze.
If he had his feelings accounted for correctly, he would say it was fury—a feeling he now experienced on the rarer occasion than he once did. But he knew it when he felt it—his hands clenching at his sides…his jaw tensing.
The odd thing about it, though, he’d never experienced fury in relation to a woman he’d tupped.
But then Viveca wasn’t just any woman and what they’d done—shared—wasn’t mere tupping.
Facts established.
A breath of silence ticked past, and into it arrived Viveca’s clear, confident voice. “Mr. Cassidy, have you considered writing a memoir?”
The way she asked the question, combined with the way she was looking at Cassidy… She found the sod too interesting by a mile.
There went Blaze’s fists and jaw again—clenching.
A lazy, lopsided smile appeared on Cassidy’s face. “I’m no writer, Lady Viveca.”
Blaze did, in fact, enjoy the odd sparring bout in the ring. But never had he felt so compelled to punch the smile off a man’s face outside it.
“You wouldn’t need to be,” said Viveca in that undeterred—and undeterrable—way of hers.
“We would have someone else do the writing. All you would need do is simply tell your story. The public adores you. You’re handsome and dashing, and everyone agrees you’re the best jockey of your generation. The book would fly off the shelves.”
Cassidy gave a self-deprecating laugh, but Blaze sensed the unease within.
Cassidy was finding out—as everyone eventually did when dealing with Lady Viveca Calthorp—that she wasn’t about to ease up.
“I don’t inhabit the rarified air of Singleton and Chifney just yet. I need a few years to prove out.”
She held out her hand. “You have a deal, Mr. Cassidy.”
Even as Cassidy shook hands with Viveca, he said, with no small amount of bemusement, “I do?”
“As this is only your second full racing season,” she said, nodding, “Sirens Publishing will be in touch in three years about your memoir.”
“In three years, then.” Cassidy had the look of a man who had just survived a midnight stroll through a hurricane.
And didn’t Blaze just know the feeling?
Cassidy might be thinking he’d come through the other side of that hurricane, but Blaze knew better.
In three years’ time, Cassidy would be writing a memoir with Sirens Publishing.
Blaze made a note in his mind to learn everything there was to know about Liam Cassidy.
Or…he could leave it.
After all, he had no claim on Viveca.
Wasn’t he just a bit of East End rough to her?
Well, she had proposed marriage to him.
But he’d—rightly—turned her down.
Of course, he had.
She hadn’t truly meant it.
Then why was it like a little stab in the center of his chest every time he thought about it?
He needed to leave—now.
He had a nose for trouble, and it was barreling his way.
Just as Blaze made to turn, Viveca’s head angled so her gaze was now pointed in his direction.
Nay, not merely in his direction.
Those bright, intelligent eyes landed square on him, and his feet lost their ability to move.
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, the expression on her face transformed from mere enjoyment into something no one could mistake for anything other than unadulterated delight.
At the sight of him.
And his face, well, its first impulse was to return that delight.
And his feet, their impulse was to take a step.
Toward her.
Which was why he held his face in check and took a step back.
Then another.
He only just caught a question entering her eyes before he pivoted.
He needed to leave.
However, he was met full in the face by Lady Bea.
“Brother,” she said, low, so her voice wouldn’t carry, “we need to talk.”
Crikes.
When a woman spoke those words with that firm look in her eyes, best a man followed when she swiveled and started walking.
Along the periphery of the room she led, cutting a sharp left down an empty corridor, and not stopping until they’d entered a quiet study and she’d shut the door behind them.
She led them to a small balcony, the fresh country night air still, the stars for a ceiling.
The country would bore Blaze to bits within five minutes, but he could see its appeal for some.
“The other day,” began Lady Bea, hip cocked against the stone balustrade, arms crossed over her chest. “I thought it was interesting that you’d expressed curiosity about the sisters of your business partners after two years. But then I thought it would only be natural, too.”
Blaze nodded for agreement’s sake. “Can’t think of anything more natural.”
Lady Bea’s eyes narrowed. “Blaze,” she said in a warning tone. “I saw the way you and Lady Viveca were looking at each other just now.”
“You should get your eyes checked.”
“Are you trifling with her?”
If Blaze had learned one thing in his seven-and-twenty years, it was knowing when a jig was up. “Are you laboring beneath the ill-conceived delusion that Lady Viveca Calthorp needs protection from me?”
“The notion does occur to me, yes.”
“Has it also occurred to you that I might need protection from her?”
A flummoxed second later, Lady Bea shook her head on a wry laugh. “I suppose that possibility could equally exist.”
Though her answer validated his point of view, Blaze knew when he was deflecting.
The fact was Lady Viveca did need protecting. She was too honest and direct for this world. Too bloody inquisitive and fearless, too.
The fact was he felt quite ferocious with this need to protect her.
Another reason he needed to leave.
He couldn’t stay here at Lady Bea’s polite musicale with this ferocity roiling inside him.
Besides, he’d seen what he’d come to see—Viveca in her world—hadn’t he?
Now, he could go.
“Lady Bea,” he said, “I’ve got a bit of business back in London, so it’s time for me to roll on.”
She pushed off the balustrade and closed the distance between them.
“Blaze, if you and Lady Viveca were to—” He opened his mouth to deny, deny, deny, but the forestalling hand she lifted stopped all denials in his mouth.
“If you and she were to form an, erm, affinity, please go about it judiciously.”
Judiciously?
Too late for that.
So, he pecked a light kiss on Lady Bea’s forehead as his farewell and was in the corridor in a matter of seconds.
But he didn’t go the way he’d come.
Instead, he strode in the opposite direction—toward the exterior door at the end.
He wouldn’t be returning to any room occupied by Lady Viveca Calthorp.
He just might do something injudicious.
Like walk straight up to her and finish the kiss he’d started three nights ago.