The Devil You Know (The Devil DeVere #3)(33)

No, surely he would wait and play out his hand now that he thought he held the trump card. If he carried out his threat as she presumed he would, where would that leave her? Her name would be besmirched in the broadsheets. The scandal would be unbearable.

Yet she was even willing to live with a ruined name if she could only obtain a separation from Reggie, but deep down, she knew he would never agree.

To do so would give her freedom—the chance to move on with her life and the option to remarry one day. Though that option was furthest from her mind, it was one of very few alternatives available to any woman in reduced circumstances—to remarry or to live as a dependent relative. Both filled her with dismay. Unbidden, a third unthinkable alternative flashed through her mind, along with images of last night that filled her with an empty ache.

One night in his bed, and she was forever changed.

Diana found herself in an inexplicable, and moreover, inextricable tangle. The only certainty was that her mare would run in the race today. Perhaps she would take the money and simply disappear. She clung to that thought as desperately as to a lifeline.

Although her mind was still preoccupied, she forced herself to return to the present, back to the races. She focused on the leading grooms as they brought out the first group of horses and the jockeys who were mounting up.

“Where is Lord DeVere?” she finally asked, curious that he had yet to show when his stallion, Prometheus, was about to run.

“Ah! There he is!” Annalee pointed. “In the red and black silks.

And Hew in the red and gold.”

“DeVere is riding?” Diana asked.

“Did you not know?” Edward replied. “Says his man Pratt took ill this morning. That’s the third last minute change in riders, by the by.”

“What do you mean?” Reggie demanded.

“Hew was to jockey Prometheus, but now it seems he’s to ride Diana’s mare, Cartimandua, and O’Kelly replaced his main jockey as well. I hear he dismissed the man on the spot not an hour ago.”

Reggie’s eyes bulged as he squinted at the field, and Diana thought his color resembled something close to puce .

Diana recalled DeVere’s dead calm in learning of Reggie’s scheme to fix the race and almost laughed aloud. So that’s what he was up to when he said he had matters in hand. Devious devil, indeed! He had managed to relieve the very jockeys Reggie had attempted to bribe.

Although his action did nothing to guarantee the outcome in anyone’s favor, it certainly evened up the playing field. Reggie had been a fool to challenge a man like DeVere and an even greater one if he thought to threaten him.

“The mare? What the devil is she doing on the field?” Reggie demanded, his bugged-eyed gaze tracking the horses and jockeys.

“I have entered her,” Diana answered him with a defiant thrust of her chin.

“The hell you say!”

“Don’t worry, you need not fear for your interests,” said Ned, mis-interpreting Reggie’s rage. “Hew is one of the best riders out there.”

“But if they each win their trial, Hew and DeVere would challenge one another,” Diana remarked.

“It would, indeed, make for an interesting contest.” Edward laughed. “Hew desires nothing more than to defeat his brother who has taunted him with a promise to buy his coveted colors in the Seventeenth Dragoons if Hew can rout him. Lord Reggie, did you not also have a horse in the running?” Ned asked. “It looks like they are about to commence.”

Reggie rose to his feet with a strangled sound. “Johnson and Centurion should have been out there already! Tell them to hold the races, Edward. I must see what’s amiss!” Reggie departed the stands at a panicked dash.

***

“There now, ye beastie,” the gravelly voice crooned to the big bay stallion nervously pacing inside his box.

“You there! Who the devil are you?” Lord Reginald demanded of the stranger. “And what are you doing with my horse? Centurion should be out on the field already. Where’s my man, Johnson?”

“Johnson?” The large man in black turned to face him, revealing a crooked nose and a scarred face. “Is he your chap then, guvn’r?”

“He’s my jockey, not that it’s any business of yours,” Reggie snapped.

“Is that so?” The man released the horse and began picking his teeth with a silver toothpick. “Well it seems yer man Johnson has come by a little accident.” He nodded to the corner of the box where the groom lay face down in the straw. “These stallions be unruly, dangerous beasts, ye ken. ‘Tis a lucky thing I come along when I did or ‘e might well ha’e been trampled to death.”

Reggie entered the horse’s stall with a tortured cry. “Dear God!

Jemmie! My poor lad!” Rolling the jockey onto his back, he discovered Johnson’s face pulverized beyond recognition. Raising Johnson’s head onto his lap, he screeched, “Don’t just stand there like an imbe-cile! Get a physician!”

“Why I’ll be ‘appy to oblige you, guv—just as soon as I take care of me own unfinished business.”

Reggie blanched, his body trembled. “You did this! Who are you?

Who sent you?”

“Who am I?” The man gave him a black-toothed smile. “Let’s just say I’m a special messenger.”