Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Flummoxed.
That word would just about accurately describe Liam at the moment.
Bewildered would, too.
While he didn’t know exactly what was happening here, he knew one thing: Arabella was telling bald-faced lies.
Or Lady Saskia Calthorp.
Or whoever the bloody woman purported to be today.
Head cocked, he took in the woman standing before him.
In broad daylight, she presented herself as an altogether different woman from the one he’d encountered in the Drunken Piebald.
This woman’s hair was pulled back in a tight chignon.
Her mouth was tighter, too. In fact, everything about her was tight.
He’d known her light hair to have been strawberry-blonde, but the sun burnished it more gold than red.
Watchful behind round spectacles, her blue eyes held a silvery quality. But her mouth…
It was the same—kissable.
That mouth was undeniably Arabella.
Yet the woman, when taken as a whole, was undeniably not Arabella.
Last night, he’d suspected it, hadn’t he? That Arabella wasn’t who she said she was?
And when he’d rested his head on his pillow, with the immediacy of a lightning strike, it had come to him precisely who Arabella was—a lady.
How had he known?
Only a Lady lady made it to her four-and-twentieth year without ever having been kissed.
But she wouldn’t be making it to her twenty-fifth year in her unkissed state, for they’d kissed.
Well, she’d kissed him.
Then…
He’d kissed her back.
Where was the harm in a kiss, anyway?
Except he kept thinking about that kiss.
She hadn’t known what a kiss was. She’d thought it one mouth pressing against another. Of course, that was all an outside observer of a kiss between two other people would see, so it followed said observer would think that was all a kiss was.
But a kiss was no minor thing.
A kiss, done right, was so much. It was hot and breathless and physical. And beyond the physical, a kiss done right revealed one person to another.
His kiss with Lady Saskia had been passionate and pure and oddly sweet.
Yes, though barely begun, that had been a kiss done right, for it had revealed that below her falsity, what they’d shared last night was no simple game of pretend.
Which was why he was so irritated that she was standing before him with her hand extended as, not Arabella, but…
Lady Saskia Calthorp.
Through the wool in his ears, Liam heard Rake take his leave.
Still, the woman who wasn’t Arabella was waiting for him to shake her hand.
He let her hand go unshaken. He had something to say. “About last night—”
Her unshaken hand took up her pencil and tapped it against her open journal. “Shall we begin?”
Exasperation flooded through him. “Shouldn’t we talk—”
“About your first horse race?” She nodded eagerly. Too eagerly. “It’s starting the story in the middle, which is generally a good place to begin a narrative. We can always circle back to your earlier life once we’ve hooked the reader.”
Liam wasn’t sure if they gave out awards for acting, but this woman deserved one, as her silvery-blue eyes remained guileless behind her spectacles and her pencil hovered above paper, ready to record his every word.
She almost had him doubting himself.
Could last night have been a dream?
His gaze slipped to her mouth—lips that weren’t plump as some, but not thin, either.
He knew the taste of those lips…the feel of them.
Last night had been no dream.
In fact, it was turning into something of a nightmare.
“Yes.” Her nodding picked up pace. “The middle is where we shall start.”
It had been some number of years since Liam had felt this unsettled. Like the ground beneath his feet was sand during an earthquake. No hope of it firming. One simply had to ride it out.
Right.
He cleared his throat. “I started racing five years ago.”
“Five years ago,” she repeated as she scribbled words across the page. “Is that before or after you broke your leg?”
Again, the ground shifted beneath his feet. “That’s not common knowledge.” His forehead was likely arranged into a scowl. Did the blasted woman have to record every word he spoke?
“It was mentioned at the inn where I’m staying.”
“The Drunken Piebald.” A strange feeling of triumph surged through him.
There.
She’d admitted she was staying at the Drunken Piebald.
Her gaze lifted. “Molly mentioned it.”
Something intriguingly unknowable passed behind her eyes. But it was the note that sounded in her voice when she spoke the name—Molly—that had his head tipping to the side.
That Molly sounded tart—and not like the sweet cherry sort.
His mouth curved into an unapologetic half-smile, the sort of smile one might characterize as charmingly roguish.
And why shouldn’t it?
He had nothing to apologize for.
Except those dealings from five years ago in combination with his dealings with Arabella last night might’ve created an impression in this woman’s mind.
An impression that might not shoot too wide of the mark when it came to his dealings with the opposite sex.
Still… “The broken leg doesn’t go in the memoir.” He wasn’t asking.
Lady Saskia exhaled sharply through her nose. If he wasn’t very mistaken, she was annoyed.
He liked that.
Let her navigate some shifting sands beneath her feet.
“I understand you are ignorant of the concepts of crafting story, but conflict drives narrative.” How magnificently and unabashedly condescending she was. “Readers like to see characters fall, then pull themselves back up.”
He spread his hands wide in faux apology. “But you’re forgetting one thing.”
If she were a horse, she would’ve snorted. “And what is that?”
“I’m not a character, Lady Saskia. I’m a flesh and blood man.”
And didn’t she know it, he didn’t say.
He didn’t need to.
She’d heard it.
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, and he experienced a thrill of triumph. At last, he’d broken through her infuriatingly cool hauteur.
He seized his moment. “If my injury became common knowledge amongst owners and jockeys, they would see it as a weakness.”
“But you’re not weak.”
Something in him liked hearing her say that. “They would go after my leg on the turf.”
“How so?” The sincerity of her interest showed in the subtle narrowing of her eyes. She was so interested, in fact, that she’d forgotten to keep writing.
“Jockeys would urge their horses’ bodies into my left side to get at me during races.”
Her brow darkened. “But that’s…that’s dangerous.”
“Aye, it is.”
“It’s unconscionable.” The woman was proper outraged.
“Perhaps.” He wasn’t quite willing to go that far. “The fact is everyone seeks an advantage on the turf.” He shrugged. “That’s how the game is played.” He waited while she scribbled down his pearls of wisdom. “So, we’re agreed, then?”
“What are we agreeing to, exactly?”
“The broken leg doesn’t go into the book.”
A slow tick of time loped past, then she nodded. “Does it still hurt? Your leg?”
The question took him slightly aback. “Sometimes, after a race,” he admitted. “But everything hurts after a race for a few days.”
“I suppose it is a physical sport.”
He wasn’t sure when it had happened but a shift had occurred—an alteration to the elements between them.
As if, somehow, the genuine was peeking through the plain deception of the woman before him.
As if, at last, the true version of Lady Saskia Calthorp had introduced herself, a woman who was intelligent and genuine.
He found his gaze slipping toward her rose-pink mouth. He’d kissed that mouth. And interestingly, he wanted to kiss it again—even after all the lies it had spoken.
Lies.
That mouth belonged to the woman who was denying their kiss.
That mouth wouldn’t be kissing him again.
A pity, that.
There had been something different, something especially alive, in her kiss.
In the near distance, the lad returned with his mount. “There’s my three-year-old for the season—Morningstar,” he said, pointing. “You might want to write that down.”
Lady Saskia’s pencil began moving.
“Shall I give you a foretaste of what he can do on the turf?”
Her gaze startled up. “I, erm, I think…” Her journal snapped shut. “I think I have all I need to get started.”
“Oh?” That couldn’t possibly be true.
Still, she nodded.
“Well, it was a pleasure meeting you, Lady Saskia.”
The flicker in her eyes said she’d caught the irony in his voice.
He pivoted and strode onto the track, where he grabbed the pommel of Morningstar’s saddle and jumped onto the Thoroughbred’s back smoothly and efficiently. As he urged his mount into motion, he knew…
She was watching.
A charge sizzled through him.
If she was going to watch, well, then he would give her a show.
Once Morningstar had trotted half a lap, Liam urged him into a canter.
It wasn’t just his body that went lighter in the saddle when his mount increased his speed.
When riding a superior animal like Morningstar—one possessed of perfect conformation, smooth action, power, and speed—a feeling of freedom took wing inside him as if he and the thousand pounds of power and strength below him were at one in purpose and drive.
Though he wouldn’t be opening Morningstar up properly right now, this feeling had to be what birds experienced as they soared through the air, unbound by gravity.
He loved being a jockey.
It was a gift to be able to do this every day—to win at it.
He loved that, too.
But today was different. While he was well accustomed to riding for an audience of thousands, today he was performing for an audience of one—Lady Saskia Calthorp. Showing off for her, really. Not for what her pencil would record of him.
For her.
Too soon, however, the time arrived to cool Morningstar down.
A smile not just on his face, but running the length of his body, Liam returned to the stretch of railing where he’d last spotted Lady Saskia—only to find her gone.
The smile fell from his face, leaving a wake of disappointment.
He’d wanted to meet her in the eye and find that look ladies got when they watched him ride—appreciation…
desire. He wanted to see if his prowess on the turf brought out the Arabella inside her.
He snorted. No small amount of arrogance and pride in that want. So be it. He was a competitor at the top of his sport. He enjoyed being acknowledged as the best. And, aye, he’d wanted to see that acknowledgement in Lady Saskia’s eyes.
“Morningstar is looking sound for the Two Thousand Guineas.”
Liam twisted in the saddle to find Rake approaching. “We need train his starts with a field of other horses.”
Rake nodded. “I’ll have Wilson assemble a field tomorrow.”
From the way Rake was looking at him—head cocked…a bit of distance in his night-dark eyes—Liam intuited a conversational shift coming and steeled himself.
“Word has it you’re publishing a memoir,” said Rake, as if offhand. “How did that come about?”
“It’s a long story.”
Rake’s brow lifted. “And you’ll be spending the racing season in Lady Saskia’s company?”
“Something like that.”
Rake wouldn’t long tolerate these non-answers Liam was giving, but truly, he hadn’t yet worked out for himself how those questions and their inevitable answers fit into his life.
“Why did you think her name was Arabella?” asked Rake. He would’ve caught that.
Liam had hoped he hadn’t. He tried for dismissive. “I got her confused with someone else.”
A sardonic smile lifted the corners of Rake’s mouth. “There can’t possibly be two women in the world like Lady Saskia Calthorp. I would think her one of one.”
One of one.
The woman was certainly that.
Rake turned serious. “She asked about your childhood.”
Muscle by muscle, tension traced through Liam. If he’d been mounted, the horse would’ve sensed that tension and shaken his head. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her to ask you.”
Liam nodded slowly, his mind racing.
He would need to have another chat with Lady Saskia Calthorp.
A rule-setting chat.
Sooner, rather than later.
Tonight.