“How do you figure that, boy?”
“You’ll see, old man, you’ll see.” He opened his eyes and held out his empty glass.
Oliver Warfield gave a grunt of laughter and poured the last few remaining drops of claret into James’s glass.
There was the sound of crashing wood, a scream, and a thud.
Both men were on their feet in an instant, running to the door of the office. They dashed through only to draw up short.
“What the hell?” Oliver Warfield stared down at his daughter, dressed like a boy, her red hair stuffed beneath a woolen cap, lying sprawled on her back, arms and legs flung out, just outside the door, in a trough filled, thankfully, with hay.
“Jessie! What in God’s name happened? Are you alive, girl? Is anything broken? Speak to me.”
There was a small, unconvincing groan.
James just looked down at her, knew she was quite conscious because he saw her eyelashes twitch, and said, “She’s too obnoxious to be hurt. I’ll tell you what she was doing, Oliver. The brat was overhead eavesdropping, lying on her belly with her eyes and ears pressed to the cracks between the beams. Isn’t that right, Jessie?”
3
“SPEAK TO ME, girl!” Oliver lightly tapped his hand against her cheek. She gave another little moan that didn’t fool James for an instant. He said in a voice laden with English arrogance he knew would prompt her to attack him, “Yes, do say something, Jessie. Your father and I wish to get back to our claret. Your interruption was untimely. If you don’t get up, I’ll just have to pour this bucket of water on you. That should make you a bit more alert. I say, Oliver, isn’t there a green sheen to that water? Could that be a bit of slime on top?”
Jessie Warfield opened her eyes even though she didn’t want to. She resisted the temptation to throw the bucket of water in James Wyndham’s face. She would have liked to disappear, but there was nothing for her to do but face the music. “I’m all right, Papa. It was a bad fall, but I was just knocked silly for a little while.” She gave her father a pathetic smile.
“You were knocked silly when you were born,” James said, extending his hand.
She grasped it and let him pull her out of the hay trough. She brushed herself off for a very long time.
“Were you eavesdropping?” Oliver asked. “As James said?”
She brushed herself harder.
“Come on, Jessie, of course you had your ear plastered against the ceiling of your father’s office. You probably wanted to hear if I would give away any racing secrets.”
“Actually,” Jessie said, rising to look James right in the eye, taking the bait he offered with both hands, “you don’t have a single racing secret to interest me. I know more about racing than you do, James.”
“Now, Jessie, James admitted that he might be short-sighted, but he is young.”
“What are you talking about, Papa?”
“Don’t you remember? You said you didn’t want to marry because all men were selfish and pigs and short-sighted.”
“You heard me admit to being shortsighted, Jessie. You heard everything. Refresh my memory. Did we talk about you and your multitude of failings?”
Her eyes fell and he stared down at her. Not far down because she was so damned tall, those legs of hers nearly as long as his. “What the devil do you have on your face?”
Oliver peered closely at his daughter. “Yes, Jessie, what is that stuff all over your cheeks and nose?”
She slammed her hands against her face and took a step backward, hit the back of her knees against the hay trough, and fell into the straw again, arms flailing.
James laughed, crossed his arms over his chest, and said, “I think, Oliver, that your daughter here is trying to lighten her freckles with some sort of concoction known only to females, which makes me wonder how the devil she learned the recipe.”
“Now, James, Jessie’s a female. Why, I remember just last month she couldn’t ride in a race because—”
Oliver Warfield’s voice died a quick, clean death. His daughter struggled out of the hay trough and without another word, fled from the stables, leaving behind her a very embarrassed, silent father and an equally silent James Wyndham.
“Er,” Oliver said, “tell me about the Earl and Countess of Chase. Will they ever visit Maryland do you think?”
James looked distracted, which he was. Jessie’s unexpected fall through the ceiling had amused him and left him feeling the tiniest bit sorry for her. And even when her father tried to come to her aid, he’d only embarrassed her more. And they’d caught her with that goop on her face. It smelled like cucumbers.