Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
It occurred to Saskia that she might’ve been standing a hair too close to Liam Cassidy.
Ridiculous thought, really.
They were conversing.
People stood close when they conversed.
All right, maybe not within touching distance, as they were standing now.
For within touching distance lay another sort of distance…
Kissing distance.
A lopsided smile curved a corner of his mouth. “Even winning jockeys don’t win every race.”
Charming, that smile.
But she could hardly pay it any heed.
Something else had caught her attention. “You have a…” She touched her own left cheek to mirror his right. “You have an injury.”
“Battle wound,” he said, the notion of battle wounds having no effect on his lopsided smile.
“From a few days ago, correct?” she asked. “Another jockey struck you with his whip during the Two Thousand Guineas?”
“Heat of the moment stuff.” An indifferent shrug followed.
“Is that something you would do to an opponent?”
“I don’t use the whip.”
Her head tilted to the side. “I thought all jockeys used a whip as a matter of course.”
“Not me.” His smile tipped into the unapologetic. “Not that I don’t get physical on the turf. Large bodies in motion and everyone striving for first, one’s inner brute rises to the surface and fights if he’s to have any chance at winning.”
She didn’t know how to respond. It wasn’t his words that were foreign to her way of thinking, but the light in his eyes as he spoke them.
Nay, not uncomplicated light.
Fire blazed within as he spoke.
And though Saskia’s mouth had no response, her body did. As if that the heat in his eyes sparked and connected to a heat inside her—conflagration.
That word again.
“Cassidy!” came a shout. “Get yer arse to the Running Horse. Least you could do is spring for the first round.”
Cassidy good-naturedly waved the man and his band of fellow revelers on. “Aye, right you are.”
Saskia’s brow lifted. “First round?”
“Of ale,” he said. “As the loser.”
“You came in second place.” A surge of unexpected defensiveness rose inside her. “That hardly makes you the loser.”
“Ah, there you're mistaken.” His eyes glinted with a flash of steel. “Second place is the worst sort of loser.”
Criminy.
Behind that charming smile of his, this man was serious about winning.
She cleared her throat. “Well, then, I won’t keep you from your celebrations. I should be—”
“Leaving?”
She nodded.
He appeared to be searching his mind for something to say, and Saskia half hoped he would find it, because, well, she wasn’t ready to take her leave.
His smile suddenly brightened. “But aren’t you here for research purposes?”
She nodded, slowly, as one who sensed a trap being laid, but couldn’t yet see it.
His smile released into full brilliance.
She might need to shield her eyes.
“Then you’ll be wanting to come with me.”
A disbelieving laugh sounded through her nose. “For research purposes?”
“Aye, most definitely.”
Oh, the charm that glittered about him.
And something else, too.
Something that willed her to say yes.
She couldn’t help but be infected by it. And, really, wasn’t he correct? Wasn’t what happened off the turf just as important as what happened on it for the purposes of the memoir? Or, if not just as important, almost as important?
Which made it still important.
Necessary, even.
Further, congratulations and commiserations had been flooding in from every direction as they conversed. While Cassidy had ignored them, Saskia how saw they could no longer be held at bay. Everyone wanted a piece of Liam Cassidy, and the time for revelry was nigh.
Understanding came to her. A horse race was composed of three phases—the tense lead-up to the race; the race itself; and the aftermath, a release of emotion that flowed toward jollity and the need to revel.
The need to release all that excess emotion with one’s fellow man and a mug of ale—or several.
At last, though she likely shouldn’t, she nodded her assent, Liam waggled his eyebrows, and they were shouldering their way through the intensifying crowd, off to revel.
These last five years that she’d been a lady, she’d attended every manner of function society had on offer—musicales, recitals, soirées, salons, midnight suppers, hunts, balls—but never had she reveled.
One of the leading activities of a post-race revel, she fast learned, was a great number of toasts.
“Here’s to a swift horse and a slow bailiff!”
“Here’s to you as good as you are, and here’s to me as bad as I am!”
And in a pinch, a shout of, “Wassail!” would do.
All these toasts were made by owners, jockeys, and any random celebrant willing to purchase a round of ale or whiskey and hold up their glass.
Lots of laughter in a revel.
Shouting, too.
And women.
Women of all sorts, from high to low, graced the taproom of the Running Horse—Lady ladies to ladies of the night and every other sort of woman in between.
Women who didn’t bother to acknowledge the quiet, bespectacled woman at Liam Cassidy’s side in their haste and determination to be near him… to catch his eye…to win his smile.
This rankled, Saskia didn’t mind admitting.
She was both a woman and a Lady, and it was almost as if she didn’t exist as she detached herself from the Liam-Cassidy orbit and away to the periphery of the taproom.
All the better so she could observe the phenomenon, she told herself, even as that small part of her yet prickled with irritation.
Did spectacles render a woman so entirely invisible and…and…sexless?
Liam Cassidy, on the other hand, was neither sexless nor invisible. His second-place finish on the turf today did nothing to diminish his public’s appetite for him, which he hardly appeared to notice.
Which wasn’t to say he didn’t like the attention. He did, very clearly. But he didn’t notice his place in the center, because it was expected. It was the usual. It was the place he always occupied.
Saskia edged toward the doorway that led to the staircase that took one to the upper rooms. One of those rooms was hers for the night, as she’d arranged at no small expense when she’d arrived with her hastily packed bags.
After all, she’d collected ample information for research purposes tonight and had become quite obviously superfluous to events.
She’d made it halfway up the stairs when a voice sounded at her back. “An early night, then?”
Her foot froze mid-step, and she twisted around. Though a few steps lower, Liam Cassidy’s gaze met hers nearly eye-to-eye. A butterfly fluttered through her stomach. “I’d hardly call half ten an early night,” she found the voice to say.
A ready laugh eased from him. “Half ten is most definitely an early night at Newmarket. It’s even morning for some.”
She supposed she sounded like a prig. So, priggishly, she went on. “I’ve an early morning.”
The words had the opposite of their dismissive intent by impelling him up the stairs to join her. “Then I shall escort you to your room, milady.”
He looked disinclined to take no for an answer.
And when she dug deep, she found herself disinclined to give him that answer.
Still, she was irritated, and though she couldn’t precisely express why, her next question hit the air on a decidedly tart note. “Have you always liked the attention?”
His head whipped around, and his expression could’ve been characterized as nothing less than taken aback. “Pardon?”
“Attention,” she repeated. “You appear to thrive on it.”
Perhaps she’d expected him to react defensively—perhaps she’d wanted him to—but he shrugged, unoffended. “Not at first.”
Curiosity had her asking, “Why is that?”
“I wasn’t always keen on being known.”
“Were you hiding?”
Opaque emotion passed behind gold-flecked green eyes, and his brow crinkled subtly, his air of carefree reveler gone in an instant. “Why would you ask a thing like that?”
She blinked. What was this conversation they were now having? How had they arrived here?
Were you hiding?
That was how.
But why?
Liam Cassidy was one of the most famous men in England. It wasn’t possible for him to hide, even if he wanted to. But…
Fame hadn’t always been his companion.
She opened her mouth to pursue this improbable conversation when his smile reappeared. “I simply meant the attention can be overwhelming.”
He was lying—and he wasn’t.
The attention his fame brought him could be overwhelming—the truth.
The lie, however, could be located in the word simply.
A word that could deflect from that which one would keep hidden.
Behind that simply lay more.
He’d been hiding.
For reasons to do with his past…
To do with the upbringing he refused to discuss.
Saskia felt that certainty deep in her gut.
The brilliance of Cassidy’s smile returned tenfold, all opaque emotions and obscuring simplys secreted away. “Then I saw the life all the attention affords me…” Another shrug.
“And you like that life?”
“There are worse lives to lead.”
There.
Within those words sounded the voice of experience.
Liam Cassidy had led a worse sort of life—and had no intention of revealing or revisiting it—not for her and not for his adoring public.
They reached door number 7. “This is me.”
A specific glint entered Cassidy’s eyes—one she knew. “Shall I see you safely inside?”
The breath suspended in her lungs.
Yes.
Her body demanded she say yes.
Perhaps he was being gentlemanly; perhaps he wasn’t. Either way, no safety lay in that yes.
She dug inside her reticule, then held up her room key. “Enjoy the rest of your evening, Mr. Cassidy. Your public waits.”
Then she inserted the key into the lock, entered her room, and shut the door behind her.
Alone…
Safely.
Safely, that was, until she opened her eyes, noticed the figure in her bed, and promptly screamed bloody murder.