Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Though rumors of Sir Abstrupus Bottomley’s eccentricities abounded, the pipe organ music had been unexpected.
Yet as Liam took in the ballroom so dimly lit that one would call it atmospheric, no one else in attendance appeared to feel so—not even the couples whirling across the dancing floor to music that could only be described as dirge-like.
Of course, everyone else in attendance—the whole of the English racing world as far as he could tell—likely hadn’t noticed the unusual music, for they would’ve been bewildered by all the other eccentricities on display: footmen dressed in proper serving attire but wearing papier-maché horse masks…
servers circulating through the crowd atop ponies, as they held reins in one hand and silver trays bearing drinks in the other…
the fact that the dancing floor wasn’t gleaming mahogany but dense, close-cropped racing turf.
In the context of those curiosities, what was a little pipe organ music?
Liam could only admire Sir Abstrupus’s commitment to the theme.
His gaze wandered across the ballroom—again. This would’ve been the tenth or hundredth time. He’d lost count.
And, still, he hadn’t found her.
Simply, Saskia wasn’t here.
As the hour hand was swiftly approaching midnight, he might have to accept she might not come at all.
He hadn’t won today.
She would’ve seen that.
And though he’d wanted to win his last race, badly, Morningstar’s safety took precedence over glory.
Saskia would understand.
Still, he’d been disappointed not to have seen her at Doncaster. But apparently her sister had taken ill, so they’d returned to Endcliffe Grange.
Yet he’d held out the hope he would see her here. He had something he wished to say to her—many somethings, in fact, but one something, in particular—and her presence was a necessary element to that discourse.
On the opposite end of the dancing floor, a flash of strawberry-blonde caught his eye. His feet were on the move with a permission of their own, his heart picking up speed against his ribs, a feeling closely resembling joy taking wing inside his chest.
However, as he drew near, he found that strawberry-blonde head of hair belonged not to Saskia, but to her sister, Tessa, the Marchioness of Ormonde. A quizzical smile curving her lips, she said, “Have I surprised you in some way, Lord Bolton?”
Reflex had his jaw tensing—Bolton—but his reliable charming smile came to his rescue. “I mistook you for someone else, my lady. My apologies.”
Her brow lifted. “Did you now?” she asked. “I wonder who that could be?”
Though he didn’t know the marchioness beyond the odd casual social conversation—after all, her husband was Rake’s best bosom friend, so naturally they’d occupied the same rooms on several occasions—he thought he might’ve detected knowing in her direct silvery-blue gaze that bore no insignificant similarity to her sister’s.
Though a sister, this woman had raised Saskia—and had imprinted no few characteristics onto her, too.
Before he could summon a suitable response for Lady Ormonde, a thin, reedy voice that could’ve hailed all the way back to the crack of civilization sounded at Liam’s back. “Here we have the young Earl of Bolton, formerly of Liam Cassidy fame.”
He turned to find a slender rail of a man staring up at him, his pale blue eyes sharp as a wren’s, his frizz of white hair appearing to vibrate with barely contained energy incongruent with a man of his years, which had to number near the century mark.
This man could be none other than his host. “Sir Abstrupus,” said Liam with a bow.
Strictly speaking, an earl didn’t bow to a baronet, but even a king would find himself bowing to Sir Abstrupus.
Like a king, Sir Abstrupus wasn’t one to suffer mundane niceties. “You didn’t win out there today.”
Liam had heard a version of those exact words practically from the moment he’d decided to retire Morningstar from the race. “The safety of the horse always comes first.”
One bird-like eye narrowed. “I knew your great-grandfather.”
“Oh?”
“Ghastly man.”
Liam blinked. “I’ll have to take your word for it, I’m afraid.”
“You prefer it thus, God’s truth.” Sir Abstrupus’s head tipped left, then right. “You’re nothing like him. It’s in the eyes.”
“Thank you…” Liam wasn’t sure if he was stating or asking.
Another glimmer of strawberry-blonde appeared at the edge of Liam’s eye, and his heart gave a hard thump, then quickly settled. The beholder of this head of strawberry-blonde hair wasn’t Saskia, either, but rather her other sister, Lady Viveca.
Sir Abstrupus couldn’t help but notice, too. “Now who might that be, perchance?”
“Lady Viveca,” replied Liam. “The Duke of Acaster’s youngest sister.”
“The one who up and married an East-End chancer?”
Before Liam could answer, Blake Jagger stepped into the breach. “Aye, that she did, and the lady hasn’t regretted it for even a minute since.”
Sir Abstrupus eyed Jagger from gleaming boot to saffron silk top hat with appreciation in his magpie eye.
“You and I are going to be friends, aren’t we?
” Of course, Sir Abstrupus would see a kindred soul in Jagger, as both men were no strangers to flamboyant sartorial choices.
The lavender paisley of his waistcoat rivaled Jagger’s for ostentation.
“Tell me, Mr. Jagger,” continued Sir Abstrupus, “have you ever tried naked lady lily tea?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“But haven’t you wished to?”
“Can’t say that either.”
“Well, you’re in for a rare treat.”
While Sir Abstrupus signaled the nearest pony-riding server in his bid to introduce Jagger to the gustatory delights of naked lady lily tea, Liam turned to Lady Viveca, who had joined them. “Are you feeling recovered from your earlier indisposition?”
He supposed that was the way a lord would ask a lady about such things.
“Oh, indeed,” she said in that breezy way of hers. If one didn’t know better, one wouldn’t think she’d suffered even the faintest hint of indisposition.
“Have you just arrived?”
He was asking none of the questions he wanted to ask, but was damned if he knew of a discreet way of getting to them.
“A little while ago,” she replied. “Blaze and I were, erm, exploring Sir Abstrupus’s conservatory, which took us quite some time.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed, noting a telling flush of the décolletage and brightness of the eye about Lady Viveca.
Well.
He wouldn’t be pursuing that line of conversation. “And Lady Saskia…” he said, leadingly. “Did she arrive with you?”
“No.”
“Will she be arriving later?”
“Saskia won’t be arriving at all.” Lady Viveca’s gaze narrowed on him. “You know how she is.”
What struck Liam only that instant was he did know how Saskia was.
And he knew she wouldn’t want to be here.
One second hardly ticked into the next before his mind was made up.
His feet already on the move, he tossed a hasty, “Good evening,” toward Lady Viveca.
Then he was out the door and off to the stables to saddle Homer.
Only a few miles separated Chateau Bottom’s Roost from Endcliffe Grange, so even after riding down unfamiliar Yorkshire roads in midnight dark, he was handing Homer off to a lad at the Grange within the half hour.
He almost made straight for the front door.
But if he knocked on the front door, his request to see Saskia would go through one servant, then another and another, until it reached her, then her reply would follow the same path back to him and it would be half an hour gone and he would be none the closer to seeing her.
Another way suggested itself as more like to produce quicker results.
He began circumnavigating the perimeter of the house, his eye on the lookout for a promising lit window on the first floor.
What he hadn’t been prepared for was the rooster.
While not aggressive, the fellow clearly considered himself the master of these grounds and all interlopers subject to careful supervision.
In other words, Liam had a rangy, old rooster determinedly dogging his every step.
Oh, and the rooster liked to crow.
The inhabitants of the Grange must’ve been long accustomed to the bird’s sporadic outbursts, for no one had emerged from the house to determine if an intruder stalked the premises.
A small mercy, that.
At last, on the backside of the manor house, Liam found the window he sought—one aglow with mellow candlelight through gauzy curtains.
Saskia would be in that room.
He picked up a pebble and tossed it—tap.
He waited.
The curtains didn’t twitch.
Another pebble…another tap…again, no movement.
The rooster crowed, as if giving voice to Liam’s frustration. He picked up a pebble that might’ve been more accurately characterized as a stone, wound his arm back, and let fly—thunk.
A second later, the curtains fluttered, a shadowy form having materialized behind them. Diaphanous fabric swished aside and, hands cupped to the windowpane, Saskia peered through.
Again, the rooster crowed, this time in celebration—or was that Liam’s wishful imagining?
He brought his hands to his mouth and called out on a hushed shout, “Saskia.”
She remained still.
“Saskia,” he called, louder. “Open the window.”
A fraught moment later, she lifted the window and poked her head through the opening, her hair falling in a curtain around her. “Liam?”
“Aye.”
“What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t come to Sir Abstrupus’s soirée.”
“I came to the race.” She sounded a mite defensive.
“Saskia?”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you going to invite me up?”
A beat of silence that stretched too long met his question.
Unable to take the suspense an instant longer, the rooster crowed.
“All right,” she said, finally.
“All right?”
“All right.” Hesitation wavered about her. “But, Liam?”
“Aye?”
“Don’t let Rodney in with you.”
“Rodney?”
“The rooster.” A beat. “You can find your way?”
“Oh, aye.” Liam’s best charming smile found its way to his mouth. “I never met a kitchen door that didn’t open for me.”
As he pointed his feet in the direction of said kitchen door, Rodney fast on his heels, he might’ve heard a snort at his back.