Regret Not a Moment (17 page)

“Let’s just say I know my place,” John said with a chuckle, leaning forward to give Devon a peck on the lips.

In response, Devon wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him to her for a more prolonged embrace. Their tongues intermingled as the heat from their bodies inflamed their passion.

“Shall we go upstairs again?” Devon asked breathlessly. “Since we don’t have any servants yet to be scandalized by our behavior.”

“We just got up!” John laughed. “I thought you were anxious to see the stables.” But his halfhearted objection was contradicted by his actions. With one easy motion, he swept Devon into his arms and, in a replay of the threshold ceremony of the evening before, carried her up one of the curving staircases that flanked the entrance hall. The master bedroom lay in the middle of the gallery that overlooked the foyer, and John carried Devon there now, kicking the door closed behind them and throwing her playfully onto their still-unmade bed. As Devon sunk into the soft goose-down mattress, her pink silk robe fell open, exposing her long white legs and the dark triangle that lay at their apex.

John hesitated a moment at the edge of the huge carved four-poster bed, enjoying his wife’s beauty. Then he leaned over and slowly pulled off the pink velvet tie that encircled Devon’s waist, causing the robe to fall open entirely. Devon slid out of the robe and threw it toward the foot of the bed, reaching to pull John down beside her as she once more reclined into the pillows. John removed his own navy silk robe and let it drop to the floor, eager for the touch of Devon’s body against his.

He lay beside her and rubbed his hands over her soft body, sinking his lips into the crook of her neck. He felt Devon’s tongue slip into his ear, her warm breath sending shivers down his spine. He trailed his hand up the length of her body and softly covered her breasts, teasing the nipples until they stood erect. Devon gasped with pleasure at John’s touch, spreading her legs wider to invite him into her. They found each other’s lips, and with a long kiss, John eased his way over Devon until his own legs were between hers, his erection at the mouth of her sex.

Devon tried to draw him into her, but she felt John resist.

“What is it?” Devon mumbled, her voice thick with desire.

“You’re not protected, are you?”

“No…” she moaned in reply. “But it’s a safe time.” Devon tried to pull John back to her, but still he resisted.

“Darling, there’s never really a safe time.”

Devon was tempted to argue further, but a memory stopped her. The memory of John’s face when he’d learned of her supposed pregnancy. For a few days it had seemed as though their love was doomed. Devon could not forget the rift that had briefly existed between them. John was simply not ready for children. Things had been so perfect since the moment at the American embassy dinner party when their eyes had met across the table and John’s desire had been rekindled. Then, later, when he’d learned that she was not pregnant, it had been difficult for him to hide his relief. Oh, everything he’d said had been properly regretful, but it had been easy for Devon to see that there was no genuine regret. At first, it had bothered Devon that he should be so relieved. But the happiness of the ensuing days of their honeymoon had almost obliterated the hurtful memories. And it reassured Devon, in her inexperience, to learn that they could weather a crisis in their marriage and emerge with their love intact. Her anger at John had passed like a summer storm, leaving behind it the fresh, giddy feelings that had existed before, made even more poignant by the threatened loss of them.

Devon was certain that John would one day want to have children. In the meantime, she could understand his desire to have some time on their own. With a sigh, she reached toward the bedside table and withdrew the small rubber device that the doctor in New York had given her. She slid off the bed, put the pink robe around her, and went into the bathroom. As she inserted the device, she glanced outside the window at the bright, sunny garden behind the house. Beyond that, horses grazed in a field. As far as she could see, the land was hers. Hers and John’s. It gave her a wonderful feeling to know that she and he formed a unit.

Exiting the bathroom, she threw off her robe and jumped back into the bed.

“There now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” John teased.

“I can see that the wait didn’t dampen your ardor,” Devon smiled.

John covered her mouth with his and pushed her back onto the pillows. Devon could feel herself growing aroused again, almost as though there had been no interruption. She closed her eyes and felt herself sink into the sensuality of the moment, enjoying the salty taste of John’s skin against her tongue, the feel of his fine brown hair against her breast. He skimmed her arm with feather-light kisses, stopping at the pulse inside her elbow. Then he shifted his attention to her torso, running his tongue from her breastbone to her navel. Devon felt chills of desire spread downward. He moved lower, teasing the insides of her thighs with his tongue. Then, with exquisite languor, he moved upward until she was writhing with impatience for him. He slid his lean, muscled body on top of her. She could feel his arousal, and she twined her legs around him, pulling him against her. Unable to wait any longer, he entered her. They moved together in pleasure like two perfectly matched dancers. Their movements grew more urgent, breathless, dizzying. Devon’s muscles locked as she felt herself approach a shattering climax. John quivered within her as he tried to contain himself until she had attained her pleasure. When he sensed that she was ready, he resumed his long, steady strokes in and out of her, driving her into a frenzy with the sweet friction. He felt her open herself fully to him, and then they abandoned themselves to the sensations that swept their bodies. At that moment, it seemed as though their love was a palpable entity unto itself. An indelible bond that would never be broken.

“She’s gorgeous, there’s no denying,” said Willy O’Neill, head trainer at the Willowbrook stables. He pronounced the word “gau-jus,” his Irish brogue still evident, despite more than thirty years in America. Willy’s leathery, wrinkled face looked like a gnome’s. He had a bulbous nose, a wide, thin-lipped mouth, piercing blue eyes recessed under fuzzy caterpillars of graying eyebrows, and two tufts of hair above his ears that stood straight out from his balding head like wings. The phenomenon was a result of his nervous habit of putting on and removing a battered green baseball cap that inexplicably bore the insignia
BROOKLYN DODGERS
. As far as anyone knew, Willy had never been anywhere near Brooklyn. But no one teased Willy about the hat. Willy was not a man that people teased. He was over fifty, but he had about him an air of vigorous pugilism that discouraged familiarity. His short stocky body was pure muscle, and he was secretly proud of the fact that he had no paunch despite a ration of Irish whiskey each afternoon and each evening before bed.

Willy was the undisputed king—dictator, really—of Willowbrook’s stables. His word was law, had been law since the Hartwicks had hired him twenty-eight years ago, when he had been the wunderkind of the horse-training world. And it was only thanks to him that the farm had managed to retain its good reputation despite the loss of the Hartwick fortune. The Hartwick horses were not seen as often as they had been prior to the stock-market crash, but those few that competed performed impressively, and past champions were still in demand for breeding. But even Willy’s best efforts were not able to make the vast estate profitable. Willowbrook Farm, which had the capacity to house eighty horses, was down to only thirty horses since the reversal of the Hartwick fortune. Of that thirty, however, only five were currently racing. Seven were being trained for racing, and the rest were allowed the more leisurely routine of breeders.

All that was forgotten, though, as Willy studied the filly before him. He knew everything there was to know about horseflesh and what he saw now pleased him. The smile on his face was a rare sight to those who worked under him. His smiles were almost never bestowed on people, only horses, and then usually only when Willy was alone with the animals.

Now Willy straightened up and released the leg of the chestnut filly before him.

“Gau-jus! And the leg’s as good as new.” He nodded an acknowledgment to sixteen-year-old Jeremiah Washington, the exercise rider who had helped to work the filly through her temporary lameness. Although Willy’s reticence had never allowed him to express it, he recognized in Jeremiah a kindred spirit. A true horse lover. One who had a special feeling for the animals, a link of understanding with them that was not a learned skill but a natural gift.

Willy patted the horse on the flank and nodded again to Jeremiah, a signal that the filly should be put back in her stall. The rigid hierarchy of Willowbrook Farm was second nature to Jeremiah, so rather than return the filly to the stall himself, he handed her to a groom, who in turn checked to see that the stable boy had properly cleaned the spacious enclosure and had spread enough fresh straw on the floor. The routine was not designed to satisfy egos; rather, it had grown from need. Willy needed the exercise boy at his side as he checked the legs of each horse. Jeremiah, in turn, needed to see what Willy was seeing, so that he would not he surprised by weaknesses that might turn up during training. Furthermore, Willy and Jeremiah tailored the routines of each horse according to its strengths and weaknesses. Grooms attended the horses, each day picking their hooves clean, currying their manes and tails, brushing them, and ensuring that their tack was cleaned after each use. Stable boys fed the horses and kept the stable immaculate.

But it was Willy himself who checked to see how the horses were eating. Now he looked into the tub of the filly’s feed bin to check its contents. It was empty. Good. When a racehorse didn’t eat, it meant trouble. The first thing Willy did in such a circumstance was take its temperature. As a result, Willy’s morning routine, which began every day at five o’clock, consisted of examining each horse from head to toe, then checking each horse’s feed bin. Later, he would ask Jeremiah and the other exercise riders to jog the horses.

“You do it when they’re dead cold, first thing in the morning,” he had instructed Jeremiah upon his promotion from groom to exercise rider. “That way you can see if he’s nodding.”

Nodding occurred when a lame horse hit the bad foot at a jog. The head would bob up or down at that point, depending on whether the injury was in a rear or front leg. A sound horse’s head, in contrast, would remain straight throughout the exercise.

Despite cutbacks in staff and horses, the white-painted building, an L-shaped structure with eleven-by-fifteen-foot stalls on both the outside and inside, was spotless. Aisles that ran the length of the building were fifteen feet wide, meaning plenty of light and space in which to attend to the horses. Tack was kept in a meticulous state in a small rectangular building a few yards from the stable.

The employees, Willy included, lived in a small white dormitory a few hundred yards from the stables. But Willy never socialized with the men who worked for him. His quarters—consisting of a one-room living/dining/kitchen area, a bathroom, and a bedroom—bore no mark of his personality except for the bottle of Irish whiskey that was always present on the kitchen table. There was no hint of Willy’s past, why he had come to America, or who his parents were. If he had ever been married, he never spoke of it.

On this morning, there was particular tension in the air, for all the stable workers knew they would be meeting the new owners of Willowbrook. Willy had, of course, made no concessions to this occurrence, not deviating from his routine one iota. Jeremiah wondered how the older man felt about the change. He wondered if the new owner, a Yankee, would understand the way things were done in horse country. Would he know that the trainer was the law in the stables? Would he know that people usually worked for the same employer for their entire lives? Family loyalties between servant and master intertwined in a synergistic hodgepodge common in the South, but rare elsewhere.

“What’re you dreamin’ of, boy? Take the bandages off his legs.” Willy’s impatient voice interrupted Jeremiah’s reveries.

Startled, Jeremiah focused on the colt whose lead rope he was holding. Gently, he unwrapped the bandages on the colt’s legs. The colt had placed second in a race the week before, something the new owners would undoubtedly be happy to learn, and it was customary to bandage the legs for some time after a race.

“Looks like the swelling’s gone down,” Jeremiah noted.

Willy’s response was a grunt that could have meant anything, but which Jeremiah knew meant satisfaction.

After a moment of running his calloused hands over the horse’s flank and withers, Willy asked, “The burning?”

“Better. Almost gone. “’Cause it’s been so dry, I guess.” Racing on sand tracks usually burned the hair off the back of the horses’ fetlocks, then irritated the skin underneath. Infections could result in wet weather because the wound never really dried.

“Yeah. You’re a good old boy, ain’t you.” Willy patted the horse’s flank and nodded for him to be rebandaged and put back into the stall.

“A beauty.”

Willy and Jeremiah turned to see who had uttered the words. Standing several yards away in the doorway of the barn were the new owners of Willowbrook. Both were wearing riding clothes, jodhpurs and boots and plain white shirts. Neither wore a jacket. They were a dazzlingly handsome pair, Jeremiah thought. He had seen both of them before, of course. Mr. Alexander had spent considerable time in the stables prior to buying Willowbrook, and Miss Devon had been a frequent visitor of Mr. Hartwick.

Now Devon walked toward them and said, “Hello again, Mr. O’Neill, Jeremiah.”

The adolescent nodded back shyly. “Ma’am,” he said.

Willy stood up straighter, but just nodded in acknowledgment of the greeting.

“We’ve met before, Mr. O’Neill,” said John, walking toward the older man and extending his hand. Willy took it, shook it as briefly as possible, then dropped his own hand back to his side.