His guilt was heavy; he never should have left her. It was all his fault. He’d been only concerned with himself. And so he pulled back her hair now and yelled at her bent head, “Why the hell did
n’t you call for help if you felt ill? Why did you leap out of your bed when you heard me outside? Have you no brain at all?”
She finally stilled. He pulled her back against him. The weight of her breasts on his crossed arms felt very nice, but he could take it now. He’d worked himself nearly to death last night to be able to take it now.
Her breathing was calmer, she was relaxing more against him. Her hair was tousled and smelled of jasmine since Martha had washed out Georgiana’s scent. “How do you feel?”
It was the oddest thing. He could feel her thinking. Finally she said, her breath warm against his arm, “I don’t want to die at the moment and that’s good. But my belly feels like it’s raw.”
“You’re far too obstinate to die anytime in the next fifty years. All right now, I’m going to heave you back into bed.”
When he’d pulled the covers to her waist, he gave her some tea that had steeped since the previous night. She sipped it and nearly rose straight off the bed. “Oh goodness, that tea has vampire teeth.”
“Yes, I thought it might do the trick. Cleared your head right out, didn’t it?”
She breathed through her nose as the world tilted, then felt her belly calm. Jason eased her head down on the pillow. “I’m all right now. I don’t know what happened—”
He said, “I’m thinking now you weren’t feeling ill. You got out of bed to come and spy on me, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, it doesn’t sound very noble, but that’s the way it was. I’ll tell you now, Jason, I wouldn’t have if I’d known what would happen.”
“Consider it the wages of sin.” He stood beside her, pulled the covers to her chin, and realized his arms were still warm from her breasts. He frowned. Everything, he’d learned, was temporary in life, and sometimes, like now, it was a damned nuisance.
He was backing away from her bed again.
“What is the matter with you, Jason? Are you going out again?”
“What? Oh, no, I’m going to bed. I added a bit of laudanum to the tea. You should be asleep in two minutes. Don’t worry about anything.” And he was gone from her bedchamber, closing the door quietly after him. She heard his boots in the corridor.
She was asleep, belly and head calm, within the next minute.
It was a hot morning in July. Jason could smell the freshly scythed grass from the open breakfast-room window. It filled him with contentment, that, and the fact that there were now six mares in the stables, hopefully all of them pregnant, all of them sent by friends or friends of friends or friends of relatives.
“Isn’t it nice having such lovely big families?” Angela said at the breakfast table. “This is a note from your aunt Arielle, Hallie. She writes that the duke of Portsmouth will be contacting you and Jason about two mares to be covered by Dodger. He also wants to breed his favorite stallion with Piccola next year.” Angela raised her head.
Jason appeared distracted. “Yes, Angela, lovely.”
Hallie licked some gooseberry jam off her toast, looked at him, and sneered. “What is this? You wish to run away in the morning?”
Jason tapped his fork on the plate, picked up a slice of bacon and ate it. He rose. “I have work to do,” he said, and was gone.
“The young master seems to have a lot on his mind,” Angela said. “Perhaps Petrie will know what’s going on.”
“Petrie is a clam when it comes to Jason. As wily and subtle as I am, even I couldn’t get a thing out of him.”
“Perhaps Petrie needs a more mature hand, one that makes a lovely fist.”
“Hmm. I never thought about threatening him,” Hallie said.
“I will begin with wearing a soft glove over the fist.” Angela left the breakfast room humming.
Hallie looked down the short expanse of breakfast table and saw that Jason had left most of the food on his plate. What the devil was wrong with him? He seemed jumpy lately, as if, somehow, he were in some kind of distress. This wasn’t good. She had to find out what was going on with him. After Angela was done with Petrie, Hallie would push her own gloved fist in his face.
But Petrie was nowhere to be found. As for Jason, Lorry, their new jockey, told her, he’d ridden off in the old gig.
An hour later, nearly high noon, Hallie dressed in one of her split skirts, grinned down at her reflection in her shiny boots, and took herself to the stables. There was always so much to be done.
There were only two mares in the paddocks, both asleep where they stood, their tails flicking gently. It was later than she’d thought. All the lads were out exercising the horses. She walked around the corner of the stable and stopped dead in her tracks. Jason was forking hay into the back of an open wagon, his movement rhythmic and graceful.