Page 478 of From Rakes to Riches

One six-inch step at a time, they negotiated their way through the cramped foyer. “It’ll be hard and lumpy, you know,” she said, again trying for lightness.

He snorted. “Not anything I’m not already used to.”

Now, it was Gemma who snorted.

Liam wasn’t complaining—and neither was she. They might be sleeping on hard, lumpy beds, but they were living a life of their own forging.

What were a few hard, lumpy beds compared to that?

Through the near-empty taproom they shambled, one unbalanced step after another toward a—blessedly—short corridor, at the end of which stood the innkeeper with an exasperated frown, room key grudgingly extended. He seemed to be having second thoughts about accommodating this motley duo of lads. Gemma snatched the key away before he could change his mind.

“If that will be all,” said the innkeeper as he pushed around them, the words trailing in his wake.

Left alone, Liam lifted a single, silent eyebrow, and Gemma inhaled a chirrup of laughter as, together, they took in the room. A single, narrow bed filled one corner, the stand for a jug and washbasin the other. A table and chair were positioned beneath what looked to be a sizeable window. Thank goodness for small miracles as that pane of glass would provide Liam’s only view beyond these four walls for the next month.

“Ah, blessed bed,” he said, crossing the distance on a few short hops before lowering himself and swinging first his good leg onto the hard, lumpy surface, and then the broken leg more gingerly.

The surgeon had told him he’d been lucky the fall from the Thoroughbred hadn’t broken the bone clean through. From what the man had been able to tell by pressing and digging into the wound with his fingers, the bone was fractured, which still needed ample time to heal, but Liam wouldn’t be permanently lamed—as long as he stayed off it and didn’t injure it further. A directive that Gemma had been struggling to enforce.

While Liam settled upright onto the bed, Gemma got to the business of transforming the room into her brother’s home for the foreseeable future. She dragged the jug and washbasin stand to position it within easy reach. Same went for the chamber pot beneath the bed. All he’d have to do was lean over to reach it.

Liam was tall for a jockey. Everyone commented on it, but still he’d been making a name for himself as a rider with his sensitive hands and light touch with the bit. Until he’d been thrown from one particularly surly beast and landed at an angle just wrong enough to break his leg.

Wrong enough to nearly break every single one of their dreams.

Except Gemma wasn’t about to let that happen.

So, they’d journeyed to the wilds of Suffolk anyway—to be near the Duke of Rakesley’s famed racing estate, Somerton, as they were being paid to do. Even though Liam couldn’t exactly try for a jockey position in Rakesley’s stables with a broken leg.

It was a problem.

But not an insurmountable one.

Gemma was determined.

She dragged the room’s only chair next to the bed and took a seat. “All set?” she asked.

“As much as I can be,” her brother groused, shifting his bottom an inch this way, then that, until he eventually settled. His gaze landed on Gemma, and a stubborn light entered his eyes—one she’d come to know well this past week. She readied herself for a battle.

“Now, Gemma,” he began.

She held up a hand to stay the words in his mouth. “Don’t.”

But of course, he continued. “I don’t see the purpose of us being here.”

This…again. “We were hired for a job?—”

“Iwas hired for a job,” he corrected.

“—and,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “we’re here to see it through.”

“Deverill hiredme, Gemma.”

She shrugged. A minor detail, that. “Deverill wants information about Rakesley’s stables.” She spread her handswide. “Ishall provide it.” She shifted forward, rigid with determination. “This is our chance, Liam. We can’t walk away from the money Deverill is offering.”

£50.

It was a lump sum of money that only came along once in a lifetime—if one was lucky.

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