Recklessly Yours (7 page)

“Indeed I do, sir.” But it startled her that
he
did. He had never once referred to it, not in all the months following, and that he did now raised a joyful little chorus inside her. “I remember we left Simon and Ivy far behind.”

“You left
me
behind for a time as well, and I had to spur my mount to catch up. I should have guessed you'd be a race enthusiast.”

Careful
. She mustn't make him wonder why the subject had never come up before; he must believe her interest in the turf to be a recent development, as indeed it was.

“In truth, I am not
such
a race enthusiast—not yet. But I wish to be. It seems such an exciting diversion, especially now that our book emporium is being run by an employee—”

“Colin, what are you doing back? We thought you'd abandoned us ages ago.”

A young woman whose golden curls spilled from her bonnet came strolling out the wide double doors of the grandstand. Two gentlemen in top hats followed, trailed by a gangly, towheaded youth who scuffed his feet sullenly. All four crossed the terrace and came down the steps to gather beside the track.

Holly immediately recognized both the blonde and the youth as Lord Drayton's sister, Lady Sabrina, and his brother, Lord Geoffrey, who presently scrutinized her from beneath an untidy forelock. Lord Drayton and his younger siblings, including another brother, Lord Bryce, had attended Simon and Ivy's wedding last autumn. She had never met the two men in top hats, the older one plump and round-faced and the young one leaner though rather pear-shaped.

Before Lord Drayton could reply to his sister, her gaze lighted on Holly. “Miss Sutherland?” She shaded her eyes with her hand. “Miss Holly Sutherland, can that be you? Why, how splendid to see you!”

Her striped skirts billowed as she hurried to the phaeton. Lord Drayton assisted Holly down, and though she prepared to dip a curtsy, the next thing she knew, she'd been captured in Sabrina Ashworth's enthusiastic embrace.

The young woman's zeal took Holly aback. While the Ashworths had seemed to accept Ivy, now a marchioness, into their aristocratic set, upon their first meeting Sabrina Ashworth had spared precious few words for either Holly or Willow.

Lady Sabrina stepped back and held Holly at arm's length. Her delighted expression fell. “Good gracious! What happened to you?”

Holly had forgotten about the state of her walking dress, smudged with dirt here, stained from the flower petals there. Looking down, she spied a small tear near her knee.

“An accident,” she said with a nod. “Neither I nor his lordship was paying attention—”

“Colin, did you run Miss Sutherland over?” A scowl rumpled Lady Sabrina's smooth brow.

“Indeed not, Sabrina.”

“Then how do you account for this?” Her hand shot out, encompassing Holly's tousled state. “Poor Miss Sutherland, narrowly escaping death. And I am to be condemned as a reckless driver? The pot and the kettle, Colin, the pot and the kettle.” She slipped an arm around Holly's shoulders. “What a fright you must have suffered.”

“Only for a moment. Lord Drayton startled me with his approach, and I tripped getting out of the way—”

But Lady Sabrina suddenly tired of the subject, or so it seemed, since she changed quickly to another. “Have you come to see the improvements to the racecourse?”

“I cannot know what those improvements may be, having never been here before.”

“Never? Then I shall enlighten you.” Lady Sabrina linked her arm through Holly's and walked with her back to the steps she and the others had just descended. “We'll begin with the new grandstand. We may only proceed to the second story, mind you, since the work is not completed above, but . . .”

 

Colin watched his sister sweep Miss Sutherland away, unsure if he should be annoyed or relieved. Surely now, with distance between them, his pulse would ease back down to its normal pace.

Not that he believed for a moment that his sister played the accommodating hostess out of purely unselfish reasons, or that she had developed a sudden admiration for Miss Sutherland. Sabrina was toying with him, no doubt devising ways she might use Miss Sutherland to strike back at him for his failure to intervene when their father withheld his permission for her to marry Frederick Cates.

His gut tightened at the thought of her dashed hopes. He supposed he should have come home sooner, instead of lingering in Cambridge, hoping for a breakthrough in his experiments. Then again, if Cates had had any true feelings for Sabrina, he would have shown some patience rather than proposing so readily to another woman. Colin found the man's behavior all too telling . . . but Sabrina wouldn't see it that way. Not yet, while she was still hurting.

Instead, she seemed intent on pressing her advantage with information Colin had months ago predicted he would have cause to regret. At Ivy and Simon's wedding, his astute sister had quietly studied him, noting his every movement and expression, until, satisfied she had guessed the truth, she had confronted him with a shrewd smirk.

It had been the red hair that had first caught his notice. He had always loved thick, fiery curls, and Miss Sutherland possessed those in abundance. He'd never forget that morning soon after the wedding when he, Simon, Ivy, and Miss Sutherland had gone out riding together at Simon's Cambridge estate. Miss Sutherland's cap had gone flying off and her hair had tumbled down her back. . . .

Whether she'd noticed or not, she'd kept riding, urging her mount faster until she had opened a substantial distance between herself and the others. Worried for her safety and leaving Simon and Ivy behind, Colin had spurred his mount to catch up, only to discover her completely in control and barely winded from her gallop. When they'd finally stopped beside the river to rest the horses, she'd turned to him with laughter spilling from her generous lips, joy glittering in her verdant eyes, and her wind-tossed curls dancing like flames about her rosy cheeks.

To this day he didn't know if it had been the red hair, the laughter, or the realization that here was a woman unafraid to express her delight. What a refreshing departure from the icy debutants the society matrons forever tossed in his path, prudish young women who wanted him for his future title and fortune and little else.

That day, he had discovered countless tiny details about Miss Sutherland that he liked—liked exceedingly well. But that hadn't stopped a single, formidable obstacle from standing between them.

He was the Duke of Masterfield's son, and from an early age he'd known it was his duty to marry an heiress, a woman who would bring land and further wealth to augment the Ashworth holdings.

More important to Colin, he was Thaddeus Ashworth's son. He bore a scar or two to prove it, and there was no way in hell he'd ever bring an innocent, ingenuous woman like Holly Sutherland within arm's length of a man like his father.

“W
illow, Ivy, are you ready to leave? The carriage is waiting out front.”

“I'm coming,” Willow called from the bedroom she shared with Holly.

Holly stood at the front window of their suite, holding the curtain aside and peering down. Yesterday, her visit to the Ascot Racecourse had yielded a prize: an invitation, for her and her sisters, to Masterfield Park, the Ashworths' nearby estate and stud farm. The invitation had come from Lady Sabrina, and while her brother had readily echoed his sister's sentiments that the Sutherlands must come on the morrow, a reservation had darkened his bright eyes.

“One more moment,” came Ivy's delayed and distracted reply from the other room. With a sudden concern, Holly hurried into her bedchamber, where Ivy sat hunched at the dressing table.

“Are you feeling ill again?”

Ivy shook her head. The quill she held made scratching noises on the paper in front of her. “I'm just finishing a letter to Simon so I can get it in this morning's post.”

“You haven't been gone two full days yet. What can you possibly have to tell him?”

Willow's giggle carried from the sitting room. “That she
loves
him! But do hurry, Ivy. The invitation is for ten o'clock, and it would be rude to keep the Ashworths waiting. We must maintain the best of relations with them if we are to benefit from their Ascot connections.”

Holly couldn't deny the advantage of being on good terms with the Ashworths. Through them, she and her sisters would have access to virtually all of racing society gathering daily in Ascot for the upcoming races. Neither she nor her sisters quite believed that Colin Ashworth had stolen the queen's colt, but unless Victoria was mistaken that Prince's Pride had not yet been taken from the area, the Ashworths would provide the best opportunities to discover the animal's whereabouts.

Ivy dipped her pen, her sigh sending Holly to kneel at her side. “Surely nothing is wrong at home?”

“Oh, no, it's not that. Not that exactly.” She tapped the end of the quill against her chin. “I just hope he heeds me.”

Holly didn't mean to read her sister's private thoughts from around her shoulder, but words such as
have a care
,
do nothing rash
, and
wait for my return
leaped off the page at her. She laid her hand on Ivy's shoulder. “You're frightening me a little, Ivy-divey.”

“I don't mean to, honestly, Holly-berry. But you remember Victoria's stone, the one she had me recover from Simon's sister last autumn.”

“As if I could ever forget anything remotely related to the stone or to the events of last autumn. Why, it's a wonder you are sitting here talking to me at all.”

Ivy's skin flushed at the memory that still had the power to make them both tremble. “Simon has the stone back again,” she whispered.

Holly's eyebrow shot up in astonishment. “How . . . ?”

“Victoria sent it to him—with Albert's blessing—as a reward for all he suffered in helping recover the stone. She is allowing him to continue his experimentation with its electromagnetic properties and . . .” She trailed off. Setting down her quill, she turned in her chair and gripped Holly's hands. “I'm so afraid he'll blow himself up. He's so impetuous. So damnably enthusiastic when it comes to scientific advancement. And without me to temper that enthusiasm . . .”

“Ivy, dearest, Simon may be a bit rash at times, but he's also brilliant. And if you ask me, he learned some valuable lessons last fall that he won't soon forget. Besides”—Holly smiled at her—“he has more reason now than ever to be careful.”

“Yes, he does, doesn't he?” They both glanced at her belly, as yet revealing no indication of the precious secret within. Ivy blinked rapidly and gave a suspicious little sniffle.

“Besides, I realized something yesterday,” Holly said.

“What is that?”

“I need you for this mission. Victoria and I both need you here, and as more than a chaperone. Colin Ashworth . . . Oh, how do I put this? He is far more forthcoming with you, and with Willow, too, than he'll ever be with me.”

“I can't think why you say that. Surely you don't believe Victoria's suspicions concerning Colin could be true. Do you? I know him to be the most sincere and honorable of men.”

Holly didn't know how to reply, but Willow saved her from having to by appearing in the doorway. “Ivy and Holly Sutherland, how are we to ever find Victoria's elusive colt if you two idle away the entire day?”

Some fifteen minutes later, Holly gazed out the carriage window at the gently rolling vista of Masterfield Park. The property was all she might have expected of a duke's estate, and perhaps more. The house was sprawling but graceful in its proportions, with an ingenious seaming of older architecture with modern additions, so that if Ivy, who had visited here before, hadn't pointed them out, Holly would never have noticed.

But it was the Ashworth stud—the stables, pastures, paddocks—that left her awestruck. She had believed the stables owned by her brothers-in-law to be extensive and well appointed. But even from this distant view, she realized these would dwarf those other stables, as well as outshine them in their design.

As the carriage approached the wide front steps of the house, Lady Sabrina, elegant in a riding habit of deep blue serge trimmed in dark plaid, came down to greet them. “Everyone is already down at the stud. The races are to begin shortly.”

“The races?” Holly exchanged puzzled glances with her sisters. They had known only that they would be viewing horses this morning.

“Didn't you know?” Lady Sabrina leaned around Holly and Willow to regard Ivy at the opposite end of the seat. “It was winter when you visited, Lady Harrow, so I don't suppose there was any reason for my brother to show you the racecourse he installed last year.”

Holly surveyed the riding attire that emphasized Lady Sabrina's trim figure and brought out the vividness of the blue eyes and blond hair that were so like her brother's. “Do you intend to race this morning?”

She emitted a burst of ironic laughter. “If I thought my brother would tolerate it, certainly. But no, my role is relegated to putting a couple of the fillies and colts through their paces, to show off their potential as hunters. Not all of our Thoroughbreds are destined for the racetrack.”

Holly was surprised Colin Ashworth tolerated his sister even in this role, for it did, after all, amount to putting her on display before their guests. Not all men were as open-minded as her sisters' husbands, willing to admit that women were capable of achieving skills equal to those of men. Judging from the sardonic look on Lady Sabrina's face, her brother had probably deemed this a necessary compromise to prevent her from attempting something even rasher.