Page 16 of Lessons for Marquesses
She spun about.
Mr. Drearden shifted under her height. “My friend meant no ill. He was merely attempting to assuage you, ineptly, I concede. And I did receive your money in good faith, wishing to honor your father’s commitment to the Stakes. However, I was made aware of my error by the Marquess of Eastwick.”
Anger lit up her spine like a wick on a canon. “Eastwick?”
“Miss St. Clair, Lord Eastwick’s grandfather founded the Fordyce Stakes. His family has supported the racing interests of England and Newmarket since the Restoration.”
In her veins she felt the strength of a king’s brigade. Her hands were steel, not flesh. Her heart a substance not yet discovered, incapable of breaking. Her limbs were sinews and muscle of a thousand Minions. If now was not the time to indulge in fury, when?
“Where is Eastwick?” she asked.
“That I do not know. His objections were conveyed via post.”
The snake!Crawling on his belly, too afraid to face her.
“I will have my annual payment returned.” At Mr. Drearden’s hesitation, she said, “Go on, sir. You’ve no need for it now.”
After a protracted time, he handed her a draft for two hundred pounds.
Georgiana had always wondered of the ability to hate. To despise. Were there not worthy qualities to be found in a person, even in an enemy, if one endeavored to discover them?
Not possible with the Marquess of Eastwick.
Tucking the draft in her coat, she smiled. “I never realized until now how stimulating hate is to a soul. It positively fortifies. Good evening, gentlemen.”
Where did a snake hide?
Not in a garret over a butcher shop in Newmarket’s rookery but Georgiana forced long strides in that direction when she wished to mount her warhorse and ransack every building until someone gave up the Marquess of Eastwick.
Not even close to satisfying the ferocity that seized her, she admitted, but the next step was an assembly. Kitty needed to dance with a duke before she died.
The snake might be there.
She would spend her lifetime to find him.
But the sooner, the better.
CHAPTER FIVE
First Night’s Assembly
Newmarket
Lady Caroline Tuftonstood a ballroom’s width away.
Most women would have faded amid the crush of lavish silks and powdered wigs, in the languid movements of champagne and quizzing glasses. Over the violins and bubbling conversation, most women would never be heard. But Nicholas could hear Caroline as she dipped her golden head, parted her pink bowed lips, and allowed the softest laugh to grace her partner’s ears. A man who wasn’t her husband.
Her eyes were green; that he could never forget. Eyes that met his for a moment and then flicked away. Did she recognize him? No one else had.
Her figure was still petite, still lush. Caroline had been a gift of perfection, held in his hands for the briefest time and stolen from him.
He should have felt his heart, standing here with his memories. But his heart had been relegated to pumping blood and nothing more, through war and killing, bedding women,fighting the ghosts. Until the young man in the Hazard Room. Then he had felt his heart.
Nicholas stared into the watered-down punch. He tossed it into a potted plant and poured whiskey from a flask.
“Could stand better refreshment,” a man said beside him. A viscount with an insatiable need to wager. “Anxious to see your horse Palliard run, Mr. Wolf. Reports from across the pond are laudable. Suspect you’ll not keep him a secret? Let him stretch his legs tomorrow?”
Palliard had been an ungainly yearling, nervous and unlikable, when Nicholas had received him from England at his New York home. He’d taken to the colt when his trainer had recommended gelding him and hoping for a hunter.
