Much Ado About You

“Oh dear,” Tess moaned. “I hate the racetrack, I hate it, I just hate it. Every time a horse goes down I think of all the horses that Papa lost, and how dearly he loved them, and the agony of putting them down…”

“I know just what you mean,” Imogen said, reaching out and taking her hand tightly. “Remember how he wept when Highbrow had to be shot?”

Tess nodded. “He was never precisely the same again.” People were rushing all over the racetrack. Horses were being led off. Clearly the accident had been a serious one. Tess had a terrible longing to rush out to Lucius’s carriage and return to his house. Go back and check the linen and forget that the life of the track, with its glories and tragedies, ever existed.

“No, you’re right,” Imogen said. “Papa was never the same after Highbrow. All the money was gone, for one thing.” She obviously remembered, suddenly, and glanced at Tess. “Not that anyone blamed you, Tess. He should never have listened to you in the first place. You were nothing more than a girl.”

“Well, he never did listen to me again,” Tess said woodenly.

The door opened and Lucius was standing there. Tess started up with a gladness that she couldn’t conceal, but he was looking at her sister.

“Imogen,” he said, and it was the first time he had used her first name.

Imogen rose from her seat. Her face had gone pale, but her voice was steady. “Draven?”

Lucius nodded.

“Was he riding?” And then, without waiting for an answer: “He was riding Blue Peter.”

Lucius took her arm, and said, “We must go to him now.” He looked at Tess, and she snatched Imogen’s pelisse and bundled her into it, her hands trembling as she buttoned the front.

“He was riding Blue Peter,” Imogen repeated, looking white about the lips. “But he’s alive—isn’t he alive?” she gripped Lucius’s arm as he was opening the door.

“He’s alive,” Lucius said. “He wants to see you.”

But Tess saw something in his dark eyes that Imogen wouldn’t have recognized, and her heart sank.

The rain had stopped, leaving a clean smell in the air. The crowds were rapidly thinning. People rushed off, carriages jostling with gigs, fleeing in all directions to warm houses, sweltering pubs, cozy villages nearby.

They half walked, half ran through the people strolling away, all of them talking of the accident.

“He went down like a log in a firestorm,” one man said.

“The odds were eight to one against ’im,” another voice said. “Why the devil would he risk his skin at odds like those?”

Imogen didn’t look as if she could hear anything, to Tess’s relief. She said in an oddly calm voice, “Where is he? Where have they taken him?”

“He’s in the stables,” Lucius said.

“Is he—” But she started running now, dropping Lucius’s hand and picking up her skirts. With one look, they ran after her, Tess’s bonnet falling off her head. Years later, the only thing she could remember of getting to the stables was her sharp sense that without her bonnet everyone would see her hair and know—know what?

The lost bonnet was irrelevant once they walked into the stables. Draven was lying on a cot, clearly the bed of one of the stable hands who guarded the stables at night.

He looked up at them with such a cheerful expression that Tess’s heart bounded, and she turned to Lucius with delight. But when she grabbed his arm, he was looking at Imogen with such an expression of pity in his eyes that she looked at the cot again. Imogen had thrown herself on the ground beside her husband.

“I’ll need a little nursing, I expect,” Draven was saying, his voice feeble but jovial. “I know you want me off the racetrack.”

Imogen touched him, her hands trembling. “Does it hurt? Has someone summoned a doctor? Do you have a broken limb, Draven?”

“A rib or two, I expect. Won’t be the first ribs I’ve broken. And the pain is less now. I can bear it, Immie.”

“You promised that you wouldn’t ride Blue Peter,” Imogen said, holding his hand tightly. “You promised, Draven, you promised!”

“I couldn’t do it,” he said, and his eyes fell away from hers. “I had to ride him, because Bunts wouldn’t do the job.”

Imogen realized she was crying because Draven’s face blurred before her. Was he even whiter than he had been a moment ago? Why was he lying so still?

“Where is the doctor?” she cried up to Lucius.

He bent down beside her, and she met his eyes. “Call a doctor,” she said, her voice faltering as she said it.

“The doctor saw him as soon as he fell,” he said.

What she read in his eyes turned her heart to stone.

“It’ll be all right,” Draven said with something of his old jaunty confidence. “I’ll need to mend for a while. The important thing is that Blue Peter is fine. I’ll promise the little wife that I’ll never jump on that horse again, how’s that?”

“Nor any other dangerous animal,” Imogen said, striving to smile at him as tears fell onto his cot.

“I didn’t mean to ride,” Draven told her. “You ask Felton. I was talking the jockey into doing it; he was an old woman to act as he did. I had him convinced, I did. And then he just lost heart at the last moment, and I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to win, Imogen.”

“I know you did.” She clutched his hand against her cheek. “Oh sweetheart, I know you did.”

“And it wasn’t just to win either,” he said, struggling almost as if he would sit up, but he lay back.

“Are you in pain?” she whispered. “Oh, Draven, does it hurt?”

But he shook his head. “That’s how I know I’ll be all right, Immie. I’ll be all right. I was worried at first, because it hurt so much, but then the pain went away, and I knew I would live. I’ll win next time, darling.” He took his hand away from her and cupped her cheek. “I’ll win a cup and we’ll have a grand house in London, as grand as anything your sister has. And a royal box too.”

“I don’t want that,” Imogen said, turning her face to kiss his hand. “I don’t care, Draven. I only ever wanted to marry you. I always loved you, from the very moment I saw you.”

“Silly girl,” he said. He didn’t seem to be able to raise his head anymore.

Imogen bent over him, putting her face against his chest. She could hear his heart beating, but it sounded a long way away. “I saw you coming across Papa’s courtyard. You were so beautiful, so alive, so—yourself. Your horse had just won the Ardmore, do you remember?”

“Twenty-pound cup,” he said. But he was blinking. “I can’t see so well, Imogen.”

A sob choked her voice, and she didn’t answer immediately.

“I haven’t—have I?” he asked.

Imogen raised her head and cupped her husband’s face in her hands. “I love you, Draven Maitland. I love you.”

Something in her face seemed to tell him the answer to his question. But he asked it again, his eyes fixed on her, “Immie. Do I really have to die?”

And when she didn’t answer, just leaned down and kissed him on the lips, he merely said, “My Immie.”