Chapter 7

The logic went thusly.

Filthy Habit had won.

Which meant…

Lord Ormonde had won.

Which could only mean…

Tessa had lost.

Her eyes, stubbornly affixed to the finish line, refused to believe what had so clearly and definitively transpired before them.

Ormonde's Filthy Habit had nosed just ahead of his closest competitor at the crucial moment and won the Derby.

So many around Tessa were ripping loose with wild whoops and roars, jumping up and down, waving jubilant arms in the air. Even Gabriel was hugging—hugging!—the Duchess of Acaster, who was the widow of the late Sixth Duke of Acaster and, as such, now a tangential part of their family.

Tessa had only seen her brother hug one person—their mother—and that had been when she was near to drawing her last breath.

And now she'd seen him hug two people.

Right.

The point was that everyone was caught up in the moment.

Everyone—except Tessa.

She'd decided it best to remain very, very still…while her mind spun and raced through the order of events yet again.

Ten seconds ago, Filthy Habit won the Derby.

Which meant…

Ten seconds ago, the Marquess of Ormonde won the Derby.

Which meant…

Tessa had lost the wager.

Which meant…

She would have to pay her debt.

One night in the marquess's bed.

A shiver traced through her, crawling through nerves, pooling in an uneasy pit in her stomach.

How arrogant…how smug…how sure she'd been that he would lose.

How…foolish.

She had no one to blame but herself.

She'd provoked and goaded Ormonde—unnecessarily.

Except…it had felt utterly necessary to provoke and goad him.

A golden marquess needed to be provoked and goaded.

Now she would have to suffer the consequences of her provocation.

Suffer?

Though she had no evidence to support this theory, she harbored the inconvenient doubt that anyone had ever suffered in the Marquess of Ormonde's bed.

Again, the bothersome shiver.

"Tessa!" The exclamation was quickly followed by a bouncy hug from her youngest sister Viveca, pulling her from the prison of her worries. Though seven years younger, Viveca could've been Tessa's twin with her silvery blue eyes and silky red-blonde tendrils that ever wanted to escape and run off with the breeze—hair that Tessa tamed into submission every day with a tight chignon that brooked no arguments…hair that Viveca let do as it willed. Viveca was ever the sister who expressed herself with freedom and not the slightest hint of self-consciousness.

The opposite of their other sister, Saskia, who was stepping back and regarding Tessa with a slight cant to her head and a narrowing of the eyes. "Sister," she said, "is something amiss?"

Saskia—ever observant, ever reasonable, and ever direct with her observations.

Beneath the question, however, lay concern. Through childhood, Tessa had been as a second mother to Saskia and Viveca. Every member played a role in a family, and that was hers. As a result, Saskia and Viveca were attuned to her moods in the way of daughters with their mothers.

"Oh," she began, trying for breezy, "I need to be getting on to the betting post."

Saskia's eyebrows gathered. Viveca's followed. Tessa wasn't known in the family for breezy.

Mrs. Fairfax, the widowed cousin of the Duchess of Acaster and the woman who had taken up the cause of introducing Saskia and Viveca into society alongside the duchess, didn't seem to notice the tension vibrating between the sisters as she asked in her perfectly easy way, "Did your horse win, Lady Tessa?"

Such an innocent question.

"Erm, yes," said Tessa, before instantly doubling back on herself. "No."

All three heads canted in question.

"It's a matter of some complexity."

"Oh, speaking of horses," said Viveca of a sudden. "Lord…" Her eyes squinted as she searched her mind. "Oh, what was his name?" Viveca never had been exact with names. "Anyway, a lord invited me to stroke his stallion behind the Royal Reform Club after the race. Shall we go?"

An aghast moment passed as Mrs. Fairfax gasped, Saskia snorted, and Tessa blinked.

Stroke his stallion.

Surely such a proposition could have but one meaning.

Tessa met Mrs. Fairfax's luminous brown gaze and found confirmation there.

"I believe," began the other woman in her sensible way, "now that the race is over, we should begin making our way toward our carriage so we can avoid the traffic back to London."

Viveca gave a little frown of disappointment. "I'm certain Lord Whatsit's stallion must be quite glorious."

"Lady Viveca," said Mrs. Fairfax in as stern a tone as Tessa had ever heard from the woman. "Every gentleman on God's dear earth thinks his stallion quite glorious."

Tessa suppressed the snort that desperately wanted release.

"Well, anyway," continued Viveca, "the gentleman himself is somewhat dashing, even if his one front tooth is showing a spot of rot." She shrugged a resigned shoulder. "We all like a little sweet, don't we?"

Oh, how Tessa dearly loved her sister.

But, oh, how her sister needed to be gone from this den of iniquity.

Mrs. Fairfax apparently thought the same, for with clear purpose, she stepped between Saskia and Viveca and neatly threaded her arms through theirs. "Shall we locate my dear friend Mr. Lancaster, then find my cousin and your brother to let them know we're leaving?" They'd taken a few steps when she tossed over her shoulder, "And Lady Tessa, I look forward to you and I furthering our acquaintance in London—soon."

Tessa knew a command when she heard one.

Three seconds later, Mrs. Fairfax disappeared into the raucous crowd with her sisters.

Which left Tessa alone with thoughts that circled and spun like a whirlwind…

Filthy Habit had won the Derby.

Ormonde had won the Derby.

Ormonde won their wager.

And she would have to pay.

She couldn't run from it.

Although, as her feet began moving, that felt precisely like what she was attempting as she shouldered and shoved her way through the dense crowd that flowed toward the racecourse like a spring river rushing wild with winter's heady snowmelt. She needed open air where she could draw a proper breath and have a proper think. So, she kept her head down and kept pushing, one determined step at a time, tamping down panic.

Panic would get her nowhere.

At last, she reached the outer edge of the crowd and broke free. Winded and surprisingly sore, she braced her hands on her knees and sucked in a deep breath.

There.

At last, she was able to breathe.

Now, perhaps, she could think and find a way out of this mess she'd waded into with Ormonde.

"Lady Tessa?" came an unfamiliar feminine voice at her back. Tessa braced herself before turning to find a woman she'd never met approaching, a smile on her mouth, but business in her eyes.

Dark of hair, the woman was of middling height and so slight a strong gust of wind could blow her away. But her piercing gray eyes sent a clear message that she was more than the sum of her physical parts. Like a thin blade of steel that gave the appearance of fragility, this woman held substance and the honed ability to cut. Tessa would wager on it.

She nearly groaned.

Nay.

She was never wagering again.

"You are Lady Tessa Calthorp, correct?"

"Correct," admitted Tessa, grudgingly. How she longed for the days when she'd merely been Miss Tessa Siren.

"I thought you must be."

"Was it the cravat and waistcoat that twigged you to my identity?"

A corner of the woman's mouth lifted into the semblance of a smile. "Your reputation as a sharp one precedes you."

"And you are?" Tessa was in no mood for games.

"Lady Beatrix St. Vincent," said the other woman.

A beat of silence ticked past as Tessa waited. The lady had three seconds to state her business before she started walking.

"You don't often attend racing meetings, do you?"

Tessa blinked. Unexpected question, that.

"I mean, given your business interests, one would think to see you around the racecourses."

Who was this woman, anyway? "I'm part owner of a gaming hell. I have nothing to do with the races."

"Ah, but your gaming hell is heavily invested in the Race of the Century."

"That's my brother's venture."

Lady Beatrix's head canted, contemplatively, as if she were carefully storing away each and every word issuing from Tessa's mouth for future use. "So, you're not aligned with your brother, the duke? Is there a rift at The Archangel?"

Uncharacteristically, Tessa snapped before she thought. "Of course not."

The other corner of Lady Beatrix's mouth lifted, the smile feline and keen. She wasn't the least affected by Tessa's show of temper.

The time had arrived to end whatever this was transpiring between them.

An interrogation?

Before parting words could pass Tessa's lips, however, Lady Beatrix held up a finger and said, "The Duke of Rakesley's Hannibal won the Two Thousand Guineas." A second finger joined the first. "And the Duchess of Acaster's filly Light Skirt won the One Thousand." A third finger. "Now, the Marquess of Ormonde's Filthy Habit has taken the Derby. That's three of the five entrants for the Race of the Century secured."

Although Lady Beatrix wasn't telling Tessa anything she didn't already know, the facts spoken aloud had her heart jumping into a sudden gallop and a pit of anxiety opening in her stomach. There was her breath coming shallow and unsteady again.

It wasn't the facts in the plural sense, but rather a single fact.

Ormonde's Filthy Habit had won the Derby.

And she had a debt to pay.

Lady Beatrix's brow gathered with concern. "Lady Tessa, are you feeling all right? You're looking rather peaked, if I may say."

"Oh, well?—"

"Here." She threaded an arm through Tessa's. "What you need is a lemon ice."

Not two minutes later, the sweet had been procured from a nearby stand and Lady Beatrix was watching to make sure Tessa ate it. Tessa wasn't sure why, but she felt strangely touched.

"Feeling better?" asked Lady Beatrix, her intelligent eyes missing nothing.

"Much," said Tessa, handing the sweet over. "You can finish it if you like."

As Lady Beatrix took the ice, an abrasive aristocratic voice that sounded sauced to the gills cut through the air, "If it ain't my dear, sweet daughter!"

Now, it was Lady Beatrix gone pale as her eyes squeezed shut. As if in doing so she could will away the man presently barreling toward them, offering the crowd no choice but to give way.

The Marquess of Lydon—a habitué of The Archangel, his specialty being betting heavily and losing at every game he put his hand to. The man was a wastrel to his dissolute core.

And he was Lady Beatrix's father.

The resemblance was visible in the gray hue of their eyes and their long, straight noses. But there the similarity ended. Where Lydon was ruddy with drink, Lady Beatrix was pale with a smattering of freckles across her nose. Where the father carried a keg of weight around his middle, the daughter was thin and lissome as a stalk of wheat. Where Lydon laughed in forced merriment, Lady Beatrix observed her father in quiet judgment.

She didn't like her father, that was clear.

"Father," she said, her mouth so tight it could hardly emit the word.

A long and boisterous laugh rumbled from Lydon's belly. "I see you're the same as ever."

It wasn't a compliment.

Tessa decided now would be the perfect opportunity to take her leave. She'd taken two steps backward when Lady Beatrix's gaze shifted and pinned her in place. "Father, may I introduce you to Lady Tessa?—"

Lydon's jollity fell away like a mask. "I know the chit."

"Lord Lydon," said Tessa in greeting.

"Now what?" he blustered, his ruddy face gone beet red. "You're here haranguing my daughter about a few flimsy pounds of blunt?"

Tessa didn't consider a sum of one thousand to be a few flimsy pounds but considered it best to keep the observation to herself.

"I told you," he continued, "I would settle up on the first of the?—"

"Father," exclaimed Lady Beatrix, who had gone almost as red as her father with a blush that surely reached the tips of her toes. "'Twas I who introduced myself."

Lydon sniffed and jutted his chin toward Tessa. "You've got to keep your eye on her sort. Those gaming hell folk are money grubbers one and all."

Tessa took no offense. A lord as deeply in debt as the Marquess of Lydon would feel as much.

"Her sort?" Lady Beatrix shimmered with distress. "She is the sister of the Duke of Acaster."

Lydon snorted and waved a dismissive hand, shaking his head as he turned on a wobbly heel and shambled into the crowd before disappearing.

Leaving Lady Tessa alone with Lady Beatrix, who looked shamed by the exchange.

Tessa couldn't depart without a mollifying word. "I'll never be a puzzle piece that clicks into place with the ton." She added with a shrug, "And that is all right with me."

The last needed to be said, for it was true.

The sharpness reappeared in Lady Beatrix's eyes, signaling a return of her composure. "But, Lady Tessa, that's the beauty of the unique position you occupy in society. You don't have to fit in. You are the rare lady who can be entirely her own woman."

Tessa snorted. "Her own foolish woman."

The words had flown from her mouth before she could contain them.

Lady Beatrix's gaze narrowed. "Have you done something foolish, Lady Tessa?"

She would have caught that word—foolish.

And, yes, she had.

Ormonde.

An answer she would keep to herself.

"You don't strike me as the foolish type."

That got another snort from Tessa. "Apparently, foolishness doesn't have a type."

Lady Beatrix smiled. "May I quote you on that?"

"If you must," said Tessa.

Before she could ask what she'd just agreed to, Lady Beatrix bid her a good day and disappeared into the crowd that had in no way thinned, even now that the race was over.

Tessa hadn't been alone for three seconds when a familiar figure cut across her path.

The Duchess of Acaster.

The woman Gabriel had been hugging minutes ago.

"Your Grace!" she called out on impulse.

The duchess pivoted, turning the blazing glory of her smile onto Tessa. She inhaled a shallow gasp, such was the power of the Duchess of Acaster's renowned beauty, with her thick sable hair and luminous amber eyes and porcelain skin. One couldn't properly brace oneself for its impact.

And Gabriel—a man who wasn't demonstrative with his physical person—had been hugging her.

Right.

As she and the duchess began exchanging the usual greetings, Tessa questioned why she'd sought the duchess's attention.

Except she knew

It was the embrace.

She wanted to understand why her brother had embraced this woman, for he wouldn't embrace just any woman.

Tessa's eye snagged on a figure in the distance—a gentleman half a head taller than everyone else. Had she caught a glimpse of golden hair peeking out from beneath his hat? Or a wide set of shoulders, built for muscling through a Derby Day crowd?

"Did your favorite win?" asked the duchess, cutting into Tessa's thoughts.

She was simply continuing the conversation Tessa had started, but Tessa was feeling suddenly tetchy, her feet itching to move, for that distant figure had been familiar—too familiar.

But she must reply, of course. "For me, the horses are incidental. I've never observed Derby Day in person."

"And has the day been to your satisfaction?" The duchess looked as bored as she. Idle conversation was decidedly dull sport.

"Actually, I—" Tessa's gaze caught on the figure, and her mouth snapped shut.

Ormonde.

No longer far away, but in the near distance…and getting nearer, his eyes locked onto…her.

He came to a stop before them, and the breath in Tessa's lungs became stuck.

Was he here to gloat? For that was certainly triumph singing in his summer-blue eyes.

Was he…oh…was he here to claim his one night?

As the duchess began to make introductions, Tessa interrupted. "The marquess and I are acquainted."

The duchess's eyebrows looked as if they would lift off her forehead as her gaze flicked back and forth between Tessa and Ormonde. She was adding one and one together and clearly arriving at two.

And the subtle smile curved about Ormonde's mouth…

It held more than triumph.

Arrogance.

One would expect as much from a victor.

But his smile held something else, too—something solely for her.

Determination.

If she'd harbored the slender hope that he would forgive her debt without claiming it, like a gentleman should, all such hope was immediately dashed.

Then he bowed, pivoted, and strode away. Was that a swagger she detected in his step?

Who was this Marquess of Ormonde?

"You're acquainted with the marquess?"

Tessa realized she was staring at the back of the man.

Or, more accurately, the backside of the man.

My, but he was built solid as a marble monument to Adonis.

She tore her gaze away. "He's a member of The Archangel," she said, careful of her words.

Disbelief shone in the duchess's eyes. "So, that was about business?"

Dread snaked through Tessa. "That was about a debt—a debt that must be paid."

Speaking the words aloud transferred them from the theoretical to the concrete—imbuing them with substance.

This debt…

It existed.

It must be paid.

"Your Grace," came a masculine shout.

A young gentleman with a shock of coppery hair and a too-bright smile was practically tripping over his own feet in his haste to get to the duchess. The Earl of Wrexford. Tessa had noted him at The Archangel. Not a spender, this earl. He came for the company of friends rather than the gaming.

Tessa took the opportunity to slip away, unnoticed. She had no intention of being trapped in conversation with an eager young lord who only wanted to bask in the glory of the Duchess of Acaster.

Yet as she moved through the crowd that had finally begun to thin, she realized she was walking in the direction opposite the one the marquess had taken. Instinct urged her to pick up her pace and run.

She stopped.

Run?

When had she ever run?

When had she ever taken the coward's way and patiently waited for the ax poised above her neck to drop?

She couldn't live that way.

She would have this debt settled.

She swiveled and began striding, certainty in every step even as she experienced a wobble in her core.

Ahead, he appeared, engaged in conversation with a small group of gentlemen. Her gaze roved over his back—again. Following the width of his broad shoulders and his golden hair between his shoulder blades, confirming he was still as solidly and massively built as he'd been three minutes ago.

Right.

She cleared her throat when she'd drawn near enough and said, "Ormonde," before she lost her nerve.

His name hardly emerged loud enough to be detected above the din of the crowd, but he heard it and glanced over his shoulder. Surprise flicked in his eyes.

"I believe we need to discuss the settlement of a debt, my lord."

The statement emerged clear and direct and without a hint of the wobble quivering through her.

He turned toward the group. "Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me."

Then Tessa was walking—striding—in silence by Ormonde's side. They weren't precisely walking as a pair, for her arm wasn't linked through his, but she felt him all the same. A sort of energy that pulsed between them, as he led her through the crowd that didn't make it easy and around the back of a building that appeared to be a stable.

And she was alone with this massive, built man.

She was a tall woman, but her head had to tip back so she could meet his eyes—eyes that gave the impression of openness due to their similarity to a clear blue sky, but which were, in fact, the very opposite.

One couldn't read what lay behind the Marquess of Ormonde's eyes.

She swallowed, her throat gone dry. "About the debt…"

"Yes?" he asked, carefully.

Expectation glinted within those summer-blue eyes.

And she understood what that expectation was.

He expected her to try to beg off.

"Shall we get the debt settlement over with tonight?"

Debt settlement?

She couldn't very well call it what it was.

The one night in your bed.

Though she was being bold and brave, she wasn't that bold and brave.

Debt settlementwould have to do.

A subtle smile curved about his mouth. "Over with?"

She nodded and tried not to swallow—and failed.

His gaze drifted down and followed the undulation of her throat above her cravat.

Of a sudden, she was too hot.

He leaned forward as if to invade her space, and she offered up a silent prayer of gratitude to her past self who had deemed it practical for her to wear a wide-brimmed hat to the Derby. Even so, she froze, her back pressed against the wall, catching his scent above the horsey smell that permeated the air of Epsom Downs.

He planted his hands to either side of her head and angled his face, the smile on his mouth still there…

Still determined.

Then he shifted and before Tessa understood what he was about, he ducked beneath the wide, distancing brim of her hat and she felt his warm breath on the patch of skin just below her earlobe. Her insides flipped and fluttered before deciding to ignite and now she was thanking the heavens for this wall at her back, for without it she would surely collapse into a molten puddle.

His lips moved against her ear. "Not yet," he muttered.

Then he pulled back, met her gaze one last time, and pushed off the wall.

And he was gone.

Now Tessa knew what a house on fire felt like.

Ablaze.

Entirely engulfed in flame.

Not yet.

If not yet, then…

How soon?