Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
LONDON, A FORTNIGHT LATER
These last five years, Liam had attended his fair share of gatherings hosted by the high and mighty haut ton—soirées, salons, musicales, suppers, picnics, hunts, balls…
Take this ball—a ball being thrown by no lesser personages than the Duke and Duchess of Acaster.
As one would expect, it was a sumptuous affair with chandeliers casting brilliant crystalline light, illuminating the ballroom from frescoed ceiling to gleaming mahogany floors and all those in between who danced to lively waltzes, laughed with genuine delight, conversed in all seriousness, drank with abandon, and generally gave over to a night of conviviality.
And he understood why he counted amongst their number. First, his sister had married a duke. That was one reason for the pile of invitations back in his flat of rooms. Second, he was a winning jockey, which was the primary reason for those invitations. People liked a winner.
Plainly, for the aristocrats populating this room, he was entertainment.
After all, he was a luminary of their favorite sport.
Further, he held no illusions that the instant he was toppled off that mountaintop—an inevitability, of course—the river of society invitations would slow to a trickle before altogether drying up.
“You cannot be serious, Cassidy,” said the lord—an earl or a viscount or some such elevated being—who’d edged just a hair too close to him, a glint of desperation in his eyes.
Liam gave an indifferent shrug. He allowed that shrug and the casual smile accompanying it to do much of the heavy labor on nights out in society. “I am serious, in fact.”
“Of course, you’re not.” On a scoff, the lord glanced around the room for effect. “It’s horse racing, and you’re a jockey, of course you influence the odds.”
Liam could only speak the truth. “I have no dealings with that side of the sport.”
“Just tell me, Cassidy.” The lord was growing more fractious by the moment. “Who are you betting on for the Derby?”
“I don’t place bets.” Liam knew some jockeys who did, of course. But that didn’t make it right. “Now, if you will pardon me.” Without waiting for an answer, he pivoted neatly on his heel and made for the periphery of the ballroom.
He experienced a version of that conversation at every society event he attended.
But it wasn’t only the lords who cornered the ever-so-popular Liam Cassidy for their own interests—the ladies did, too. And Liam couldn’t honestly say he’d minded that particular effect of fame all that much.
Take the lady who’d appeared in every room he’d entered tonight ten seconds after him.
She would stand directly in his line of sight, her dark sultry eyes meeting his before sliding away, the shadow of a coquettish smile playing about her mouth.
Seduction, that was what the woman was about.
And in that way, she looked at Liam Cassidy and ultimately saw the thing most everyone else in this room saw when they looked at him—entertainment.
And as his star had ascended and his popularity had grown, hadn’t he been only too happy to provide a night’s entertainment to those ladies in search of a little not-so-innocent fun?
But neither that reason nor any of the others were his motivation for having accepted the invitation to this ball tonight.
He was here precisely because the invitation had come from the Duke and Duchess of Acaster. Sure, it was true the duchess’s stable of Thoroughbreds numbered amongst the best in all England. She even owned Lady Midnight. But it wasn’t their connection through horse racing that him here tonight.
It was the duke, actually.
Well, not him, strictly.
It was his connection to the woman Liam hadn’t been able to put from his mind this last fortnight—Lady Saskia Calthorp.
The logic was simple.
The duke was her brother, which meant she would have been invited.
Which had the odds tipping in favor of her attendance.
Which meant, even now, he might at this exact moment be sharing the same air as her.
The blood had been jittery in his veins all night with the possibility.
The thing was, in all their interactions, he’d played it light and breezy. He’d given nothing away at how deeply she affected him. A skill he’d cultivated early in life—out of necessity. A skill that had carried him on to the highest levels of success.
But Lady Saskia struck a chord through him that sat deeper—that yet resonated.
He wanted to see her again.
He needed to see her again.
Perhaps.
Her answer when he’d asked if she would attend the Derby.
That answer had been sitting at a sideways angle inside him since.
He wanted—needed—something surer.
So, here he was, attending her brother and his wife’s ball.
“If it isn’t the Liam Cassidy himself,” came an unapologetically East-End voice at his back.
Liam turned to meet the direct gray gaze of a tall, rangy man dressed beyond the first stare of fashion into the realm of the extravagant with his velvet aubergine evening attire and pebble-sized diamond stud winking in his left ear.
Blaze Jagger.
“Jagger,” said Liam, sticking out his hand, which the man took.
The fact was Liam had never spoken to Jagger—he kept away from the betting post, in truth—but he had no qualm with the man. After all, he and Jagger were viewed on the same level by the eyes of society—providers of entertainment.
But Jagger, enterprising rogue that he was, had done society one better. He’d gone and married one of their own—Lady Viveca Calthorp, as she’d been. A lady who just so happened to be the sister of the Duke of Acaster and…Lady Saskia.
A small world, the haut ton, and never had Liam been so grateful for the fact. If Blaze Jagger was here, his wife was here. And if his wife was here, then the odds increased that her sister would be here. In the tick between one second and the next, anticipation lit through Liam’s veins.
“Now,” said Jagger, “an interesting rumor pricked my ears concerning the Liam Cassidy. So, you can imagine my utter delight at seeing the man himself gracing this resplendent ball with his presence.”
“Rumors ever abound concerning turf matters,” Liam dismissed.
Jagger’s mouth curved into his rogue’s smile. “Little persistent whispers. And those little persistent whispers have it that you will ride Morningstar in the Derby, but not Daylily in the Oaks.”
A line formed between Liam’s eyebrows. “That so?”
Jagger’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Any truth in it?”
Though Jagger no longer ran the betting posts at the racecourses, he did operate The Archangel, an exclusive gentlemen’s gaming club that took bets on the season’s major races.
Liam understood his next words would influence the betting that had already started.
But as word had already leaked, he saw no harm in saying, “Aye, there’s truth in it. ”
Jagger’s head cocked. “And what truth is that?”
“I’ll be riding Morningstar in the Derby, and an up-and-coming jockey will ride Daylily in the Oaks.”
“That so?”
“Aye.”
And they’d reached the end of the truths Liam would be divulging to Blaze Jagger tonight.
Jagger could find out with the rest of England that the Duke of Rakesley had not one, but two talented jockeys in his stable.
The stable lad, Cal, who had been at Somerton nearly his entire life, had expressed an interest in trying for a jockey.
Not an unusual dream for a lad. So, Liam had worked with him, to see if talent would rise—and it had. In fact, Cal had talent to spare.
So, after the Two Thousand and One Thousand Guineas, once Liam and Rake determined it likely the Duchess of Acaster would race Lady Midnight in the Derby instead of the Oaks, they decided the Oaks would be Cal’s debut on the turf.
The field there would provide the lad with a solid challenge, but he also stood a chance of winning.
“Husband,” came a feminine voice.
Along with Jagger, Liam turned to find two ladies approaching, one of whom was Jagger’s wife, Lady Viveca. The other of whom was…
Lady Saskia.
Until now, Liam had never beheld her in the finery befitting the sister of a duke: her silk gown the hue of a blush-pink rose, overlain with gauzy net threaded through with silver, which caught the light and glittered.
Hair arranged half up and half down, a long thick tendril artfully arranged over her shoulder, leading the eye toward décolletage more abundant than her typical buttoned-up-to-the-chin attire had suggested.
And her usual spectacles sat perched upon her nose.
He found he liked that. Those spectacles spoke to who she truly was.
She would see. Practicality above all other considerations.
“A waltz has struck up,” said Lady Viveca to her husband, her eyes for no one else. “And I find myself in dire need of your hands upon me.”
Liam’s eyebrows threatened to lift clear off his forehead. Had Lady Viveca said what he thought she’d just said?
The subtle sigh issuing from Lady Saskia’s parted mouth and the roll of her eyes toward the ceiling said her sister had and that such proclamations weren’t a novel occurrence.
Roguish smile curving Jagger’s mouth, he took his wife in his arms and waltzed her onto the dancing floor.
Leaving Liam alone with Lady Saskia.
He should greet her.
Or inquire about her health since they last spoke.
Or even ask how her writing was faring.
But all those conversational possibilities lacked urgency and immediacy.
What felt urgent and immediate were the words that had formed in his mouth and were now spilling out… “Lady Saskia, would you do me the honor of this waltz?”
The fact was, though Lady Viveca’s words had been saucy and inappropriate, they’d held the urgent and immediate ring of truth.
An urgent and immediate truth that yet resonated through him.
He wanted Lady Saskia’s hands upon him.
He wanted his hands upon her.
And a waltz was a perfectly socially acceptable means of achieving both ends.