A Most Unusual Match. Sara Mitchell

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СКАЧАТЬ Secret Service and humiliating them as they had humiliated her Grandfather and ruined his life.

      But instead her mind reached back to the instant Mr. Stone had touched her. Strength, vitality and authority wrapped around Thea as securely as his fingers enclosed her arm. The impulse to confess everything had overwhelmed her senses, a terrifying prospect. Worse than the dreaded vertigo, she had been tempted to cling to a stranger, because…because unlike her reaction to Edgar Fane and despite all common sense, she had been drawn to Mr. Stone like penny nails to a powerful magnet.

      There. She’d admitted the truth, to her conscience at least.

      The whirling inside her head abruptly diminished.

      She supposed she ought to be grateful. Regardless of Devlin Stone’s too-perceptive gaze, apparently he only muddled her senses. If thoughts of him lessened the vertigo, she’d recite his name a hundred times a day.

      Cautiously Thea straightened and headed for the hotel.

      An hour later, dressed for her afternoon at the races, she left Mrs. Chudd reading a book and sipping fresh limeade. A spare woman with iron-gray hair, Mrs. Chudd was exactly the sort of chaperone Thea required: indifferent, and incurious. After confiding to her about the spells of vertigo, the woman had nodded once, then remarked that she wasn’t a wet nurse but if called upon would do her duty. Today, her “Mind you use your parasol else you’ll turn red as one of those Indians,” constituted Mrs. Chudd’s only gesture at chaperonage. At least this was Saratoga Springs, where guests discarded societal strictures like a too-tight corset.

      After leaving a note of apology for the desk clerk to have delivered to Mrs. Van Eyck, Thea joined a dozen other guests in queue for one of the hotel wagons headed for the track. She felt awkward; there were those who disapproved of the entire horse-racing culture, denouncing the sport for its corruption and greed. Until she arrived at Saratoga, Thea had never paid attention one way or the other, though she remarked to someone at her dinner table how thrilling it would be to watch the powerful creatures thunder down the track at amazing speeds.

      Today, however, was a hunting expedition, not a pleasure excursion. The tenor of her thoughts stirred up fresh guilt. After three weeks Thea could mostly block the insistent tug by remembering how her grandfather looked behind bars the only time she visited him in that foul hole of a cell. Voice cracking, fine tremors racking his stooped form, Charles begged her not to return. Because she saw that her presence hurt him beyond measure, Thea gave her promise.

      Promises made to loved ones must be kept.

      No matter how despicable her actions now, she would never break her word like her father with all his picture-postcard promises to come home, or abandon anyone at birth like her mother did Thea. Richard Langston and Hetty Pickford—what a legacy. Yet never once had her grandfather condemned their only child for the behavior of her parents.

      Impatient with herself, Theodora glanced down at her blue-and-white costume, self-consciously running a finger over the perky red braid trimming the skirt and basque while she turned her mind to the afternoon ahead. A tingle of anticipation shot through her at the prospect of matching wits with Devlin Stone again.

      She’d thought long and hard while she changed into her present costume. For some reason Mr. Stone had singled her out of a crowd of thousands of available, far more beautiful females. Based upon Thea’s admittedly scant personal knowledge of romantic liaisons, all that was necessary to assure a gentleman’s continued pursuit would be to indicate her willingness to be pursued. Very well, then. With a bit of pluck and a whole bucketful of luck, through encouraging Mr. Stone’s interest in her, in turn she hoped to procure enough insight into Edgar Fane’s habits to at last secure an entrée into the scoundrel’s inner circle of friends. She refused to crawl home in shame and defeat.

      Her tactics troubled Thea. If she ever blew the dust off her Bible and strove to establish a better communication with the Lord, she would doubtless spend many years on her knees, begging forgiveness for the sordidness of her present behavior. Even though he did not approve of her decision to pursue justice, Grandfather had understood her motives. Hopefully God would understand, as well, and help her achieve her goal. He was, after all, a God of justice. If You help me now, perhaps I’ll believe You’re also a God of love. If God helped her in this quest, perhaps she could also forgive Him for allowing her parents to abandon her, and an innocent man to be flung in jail.

      But if she couldn’t procure justice, and restore Charles Langston’s faith, she saw no reason to waste time on her own.

      As for Devlin Stone, she would ignore the prickle of attraction, maintain her distance with the laughing quips and smiling rebuffs that had thus far served her well with other flirtatious men. By the time Theodora Langst— The mental lapse stabbed her like a hatpin. For the rest of the way to the track she mentally repeated her assumed name—Theodora Pickford, Thea Pickford…Miss Pickford—and envisaged herself the privileged heiress whose beauty, grace and supreme self-confidence had won the love of a dashing Englishman. Is Neville a baron, or an earl? Inside her frilly lace gloves Thea’s palms turned clammy; she gripped her lace parasol more tightly.

      Her cause was just, her purpose noble, she reminded herself staunchly in a mantra repeated often these past weeks. The only person who would be hurt by her actions was the man who deserved it. Sometimes the end did justify the means.

      It was ten minutes until post time when the load of passengers descended onto the velvet green lawns surrounding the racetrack. The crowd streaming into the grandstands looked to number in the thousands, not the hundred or so Thea had naively anticipated. Spotting Mr. Stone would be more difficult than she’d anticipated. Stalling, she opened her parasol and hoped she looked as though she expected her escort to appear any second. Beneath broad-trunked shade trees, jockeys fidgeted while trainers saddled the horses for the next race. Striped tents fluttered in a stray breeze, shading hundreds of race goers. Dust filmed the air. At one end of the sweeping slate-roofed grandstands she noticed a separate, open-sided structure full of odd-looking little stalls on stilts.

      “What’s going on over there?” she asked a passing gentleman studying a copy of the Daily Saratogian.

      “Betting ring, ma’am. But that one’s only for the gents. Ladies’ betting is up on the top landing, rear of the grandstand. You a maiden filly, right? Well, you’re in luck. Track was closed last year. But you can see for yourself the people have spoken, and the sport of kings is back at Saratoga. You go on up there, purchase yourself a ticket. Rensselaer looks good in the Travers. Good luck to you, miss.”

      “Thank you,” Thea said faintly, staring after the man.

      Older, shadowy emotions stirred inside, greasy splotches of childhood memories. One of the cards her father had sent to her years ago had been postmarked “Saratoga Springs.” Now, though surrounded by faces full of excitement and nervous anticipation, for some reason she had to fight the urge to weep. In the distance a bell clanged several times, and the surge of humanity pressed upon her, sweeping her up in their rush to reach the stands.

      Theodora, you dinglebrain, what were you thinking? She would never reach the stands, much less succeed in locating Devlin Stone in this sea of faces.

      Abruptly she turned, elbowing her way through all the bodies rushing in the opposite direction. Breathing hard, she at last reached a broad dirt avenue, and her gaze fixed upon the less-peopled stables to the southeast of the track. Perhaps over there she could snatch a moment or two of privacy, just enough to stiffen her spine again and set her to rights. She wasn’t deserting the field of battle, nor abandoning her quest. She just needed to hush a few unpleasant voices from her childhood, and to come up with a more workable plan to locate Devlin Stone.

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