Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32
June, with a genteel nod, left the group of suitors’ mothers and crossed to a nearby refreshment table, where she procured two tall glasses of lemonade. But instead of carrying them through the admiring crowd to her daughter, she strode purposefully to Max’s side. “Thank you,” she said, handing him one of the sweet-tart drinks, the other to Livia, her voice quiet. But he could see the steel in her eyes which were so like Cally’s, and he knew she was as full of fury at Hugo as he was. “I seem to be thanking you again for rescuing my daughter.”
Aware of the eyes of the suitors’ mothers, who still stood in a small group eighty feet away, whispering among themselves, Max gave her a low bow. “While I would prefer she was in no danger,” he said to June as he straightened, “I am glad to have been of service.”
Mrs. Vann, staring at Max, paused mid-whisper. Mrs. Yardley looked surprised, as if she wouldn’t expect Max to have anything to do with the family of a young woman who rode in horse races, then her round face shifted, the surprise turning to avarice.
Livia gave June and Max a knowing grin. “What do you want to bet they can’t decide whether to cut your acquaintance, June, over the horse race, or to curry your favor because you are on such good terms with a royal duke?”
Max wondered if the women would still attend the early luncheon June was hosting back at the house.
‘Not supper?’ Max had asked yesterday when he’d heard about the luncheon.
‘Nope,’ Cally had said. ‘The dance tomorrow night starts early. There’s no time for folks to have a leisurely supper party. So’s Ma arranged for a luncheon.’ She gave him her mischievous grin. ‘You reckon she thinks it might turn into a victory celebration?’
‘I reckon she might just think that,’ Max had said.
Taking a long sip of the delicious lemonade, its sweet taste taking the dust from his mouth, his mouth marveling at the way the people of the nineteenth century had with the drink, Max scrutinized June, wondering how she felt about the suitors’ mothers, and made a discovery that had him giving a surprised, quiet laugh. “You wanted her to ride in that race in front of all her suitors and their mothers,” he said in a low tone.
A twinkle came to June’s eyes, reminding Max again of her mischievous daughter.
He turned his back on the suitors’ speculating mothers, shielding Livia and June from their gazes. “You wanted them to see that side of her. You want a husband for her who won’t try to rein her in.”
“And what manner of husband would you be, Maximilian?” June’s smile might be quiet, but her gaze was as shrewd as Livia’s.
“A husband who cherished her,” Max said with a fierceness that came from his soul. “A husband who would protect her when she got in over her head.” His hand clenched around his glass. “A husband who understood there were no such things as reins when it came to a wife.”
“A most excellent husband, indeed,” June said.
Back at the house, after the two racehorses were rubbed down and fed, both given a good portion of oats as a reward for a good race run, and before the Jameses’ friends and Cally’s suitors had begun to arrive to celebrate her win at June’s luncheon, Max lingered in the stable.
He would skip the luncheon, he’d decided. His feelings toward Cally were too raw. And too obvious. Nor was he in any state to be polite to her suitors.
He and the James family had too many other complications as it was to invite another one.
Cally—still surrounded by friends from her youth outside Apollo’s stall, her silver trophy being passed around, others asking what she planned to do with the ten gold coins she’d won—glanced back at him as she and the others left for the house, her pretty face inscrutable.
Max—hot, sweaty, and aching from his leap from Ares, or rather, from landing on Kuthbert at the end of the leap—strode to the feed room at the other end of the large stable and found a stack of hay bales. Taking off his dirty, long-sleeved shirt and setting it aside with his blood-spattered leather gloves, he pulled on a borrowed pair of work gloves and began to pummel the bales with his fists, taking out his still-simmering fury at Hugo.
Thud , his fist struck the hay. Sunlight slanted in through a high window, the scent of oats in the warm air. Thud thud thud , hit, hit, hit, kick, the need to set Hugo straight, to ensure he didn’t come after Cally again, filling Max’s thoughts, filling Max’s heart.
Some family he had, he told himself, bits of hay flying. Sweat glistened in the sunlight on his skin. Some great-great-great-grandfather. It had been one thing to know the family’s history, including Hugo’s. It was another to see a direct-line ancestor try to kill an innocent young woman in cold blood.
“Evil Prince Hugo had someone hidin’ in the sagebrush beyond the far side of the racetrack, didn’t he, prince?” that young woman said quietly behind him, making him jump, something about the way she called him ‘prince’ no longer seeming like a way of keeping her distance, but an endearment every bit as special as ‘Miss Calico.’
He turned, sweat streaming down his forehead.
She stood there in her riding clothes, looking like a heroine straight out of the Creede television show, her dark-brown split skirt still dusty from the race, her violet-hued blouse still neatly buttoned to the neck but now sweat stained, her long, dark braid hanging over one shoulder from beneath her brown cowgirl hat. Her pretty face was grave, those blue eyes boring into his as he wiped his brow with his bare forearm.
Too angry still to talk, he nodded.
“That’s what happened to you,” she said. “You rode off the track into the sagebrush.”
“I rode between Kuthbert and you,” he said, the memory of it sending tension pounding through his whole body. If he’d been a moment later, if he hadn’t realized what he’d seen. If he’d delayed his reaction for only a second or two… “You were the one he was aiming at.”
She nodded, slowly, thoughtfully. “Evil Prince Hugo wanted to win.”
Max exhaled, embarrassed for his family. Embarrassed for himself. What must she think about him, who came from such a family tree?
Family, he knew, meant everything to her. “I knew he was bad,” he told her, forcing himself to meet her gaze. “The stories I’d heard growing up…” He took a step toward her, praying she wouldn’t flinch away from him. “But to shoot a young woman so he could win a race…”
She took her own step, then another, stopping when they were face to face. A hint of rosewater came upon her horse-and-leather scent. The jubilation that had filled her whole body at the racecourse was gone, her grave expression deepening as she searched his face. “Thank you,” she whispered. Her hand reached out, tentative, and she pressed her palm to his bare chest.
Max sucked in a breath.
“I think the winner of the race deserves a congratulatory kiss, don’t you?” she said in a near whisper, shifting closer, the tomboy in her voice dropping away, the demure young woman taking its place, though it was different somehow, a melding of the raucous Cally and the ladylike Calliope, the sound like silk down his spine, over his skin, everywhere her voice touched him.
A touch like a heated spur.
“I do,” he said and grasped her firm waist and bent his head to hers, all thoughts of anything but her lost beneath the feel of her. “I think the rescuer who stopped a gunman deserves a congratulatory kiss, too, don’t you, Miss Winner of the Race?”
“Why, yes,” she said and raised her lush mouth to his.