Page 50 of Unmasking a Wicked Marquess
“He is well-trained by now,” Edward whispered, for Juliet’s ear only. “I hope you’ve placed your money on him.”
She revealed the smallest of betting slips in her hand with a surreptitious smile.
“Do not tell my family what I have done. Had my father had a horse in this race, too, it could have caused quite the ruckus.”
“Fear not. I will not tell anyone.” He raised her hand to his lips, finding there was something in her confidence in his training abilities that made him long to kiss her again. Unable to kiss her lips in public, he settled for kissing the back of her hand through her glove instead.
Her eyebrows shot up.
“What if someone sees?” she whispered.
“Our families are distracted.” He pulled on their connection and drew her away from the parade ring. Rather than heading towards the platformed seating that was full of people coming to watch the races, he headed towards the more private pavilion, where tables had been set up for drinks and food. He arranged for a table for the two of them and drew Juliet towards the vast window that overlooked the racecourse, still not releasing her hand.
In such a busy room, they were hardly without a chaperone, and fortunately, everyone from the Duke of Darby’s party was down at the track, so no one saw them together. As Edward sat down beside her, he felt a strange sense of freedom, as if he was truly able to be himself when she was the only one beside him.
“You have been quiet all morning,” he whispered after they had ordered tea. He rested his arm on the back of her chair. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing.” Yet her smile seemed somewhat forced again. “You seem happy. I have been observing you with your friends. Lord Webster, for instance, and Lady Clarissa.”
“Ah, yes, they are old friends of mine.” He spoke with ease. When a staff member passed by them, he ordered some pastries for them to enjoy together and was pleasantly surprised to find Juliet’s smile infinitely wider as he turned back to face her. “Having not seen them for a few years, I am enjoying getting to know them again, but I do find people have changed in the years apart.”
“They have?”
“Oh yes. Lord Webster is a man of greater taste than he ever was before. As for Lady Clarissa, well …” He was not sure he could speak of her problems so openly. Lady Clarissa’s mind was a closed book to many people, and now was certainly not the moment to reveal it. “Never mind. Let us talk of something else other than Clarissa.”
Juliet’s lips flattened together, but she nodded.
The tea and pastries arrived, and as they began to eat, their bodies turned towards the windows, and they fell into easy conversation about the horses.
“You have given your life over to the training of your father’s horses, then?” Juliet asked with eagerness, pouring out the tea for them.
“It is my passion,” he explained. “You should have seen me in India. The horses they have there are quite remarkable. I could not resist discovering their own training regimes for the racing there. I even brought back with me two very rare horses.”
“What kind?”
“Marwari.”
“Goodness.” She swallowed her tea and looked up at him. “I have only ever seen them written of in books. Oh, you cannot imagine how jealous I am of you.”
“Jealous? Whatever for?” He laughed at the idea, laying his arm across the back of her chair once more. It was becoming increasingly easy to be close to Juliet. She leaned a few inches towards him as she spoke, and he ran his fingers across the back of her arm, an intimate touch that no one noticed in this busy room.
“Your travelling, your experiences, your knowledge of the world!” she declared with vigour, turning to face him completely. “You have seen many secrets of this world, experienced many wonders. What have I done in comparison?” She sighed heavily. “I have known the world from my father’s house. It is not quite the same thing.” She grimaced.
“It does not make your experience any less worthwhile, believe me.” He shook his head. “From what I know of you already, I imagine you have tried to experience the world in many ways, through books, for instance, through art.”
“I have tried.” She smiled a little. “Yet it is not the same thing. You must agree with that.”
“Perhaps so.” He nodded slowly. “We must seek to remedy it then. Maybe someday you could see the world, Juliet. Maybe I could take you to India, so you could see the wonders there, though be warned, it is not all full of beauty. There are dangerous things, too.”
“Such as?” She seemed even more excited by this idea, leaning towards him a little more as they both ate their pastries.
“Such as tigers that can come in from the jungles at night and into the streets of towns. Such as the heat.” He swore softly under his breath, and she giggled. “You cannot imagine that heat. It feels as if it is clawing at you – as if it were eating you from the inside out. You’ll need a protector if you ever go to India.”
“Are you volunteering to be that protector?” she asked with a flirtatious smile.
“Perhaps I am.” He rubbed his fingers across the back of her arm once more, that touch tantalizing and teasing in its gentleness. She shivered, a pleasant kind of shiver, as she bit her lip, and he was reminded of their night under the stars on that blanket. How he wished he could return to that night now, how he could kiss her and lose himself in their pleasure.
They kept staring at one another, the look so long that neither of them seemed inclined to even think of looking away. He actually considered kissing her. A wild idea entered his head of throwing all rules aside, breaking every ounce of decorum he knew to be right just to be closer to Juliet again.
