Sport of Baronets (11 page)

“Allow me.” Nathaniel reached for the quills.

“No need, thank you. It will take only a moment to tidy this.” She was already crouching, her face hidden. Only the smooth back of her light print gown was visible, and that great crown of russet hair picking up golden-red sunlight.

Nathaniel hesitated, half crouching himself—but Sir William made an impatient sound. “Sir Jubal awaits. If you're coming?”

Nathaniel unfolded himself, cracking an elbow on the underside of the table and smothering a curse. He always felt a bit out of place in Sir William's world, wrongly sized and out of step.

It hadn't always been that way. But it had been that way so long that Nathaniel had almost forgotten that things had once been different.

Maybe Sir William had too.

Holding open the glass-paned door with one boot and an outstretched arm, Nathaniel made way for his father. With the agility of long practice, the baronet steered his cumbersome chair out from the study onto a stone path paved smoothly for wooden wheels.

And Nathaniel followed in the lines his father had so carefully laid out.

* * *

Rosalind kept her face turned demurely toward the floor until the French door had swung shut again. Crawling forward one tiny nudge at a time, she peered around the legs of the large table.

The Chandlers were moving steadily down the path to the stable. Away from the study. Good.

It only took seconds to tidy up the mess of quills she had created by way of excuse. Rubbing at her elbow to reduce the tightness of her old scars, Rosalind then took up a fresh sheet of paper and dipped the quill again. After folding the paper and inking the direction, she smoothed it out and scrawled:

Anweledig,

Several horses have fallen ill. They might not be able to race in the Derby.

Should she say more?

What more could she say? She considered the possibilities, quill poised over the paper.

Alpha and I have no idea what is causing the illness.

Nathaniel Chandler
—no, she called him Gamma in letters to Aunt Annie
. Gamma returned from London with good news, muddy boots, and an unlikely tale of a milkmaid.

Gamma's blue eyes are full of mischief and plans. I should like to know what is on his mind.

This last thought was as sweet as it was irrelevant. Rosalind's snipped and abandoned friendships and posts lay about England like a shawl full of dropped stitches. She had been a housemaid time and again, a governess for family after family. There was no sense in regretting any of these departures when each hole, each break in the pattern, was only one among many.

But she did regret them. All of them. She was tidy by nature, and she would rather knit than unravel.

No, she would add no more to her brief letter right now. She wiped the quill and set it aside.

After sanding the paper to dry the ink, she folded the note to Aunt Annie and slid it into the bodice of her gown, along with a gummed wafer. Once she knew more, she would complete the letter. Tonight, in her small bedchamber, with the stub of a pencil.

When she had an opportunity, she would shuffle her letter into Sir William's others and take it to the post. Just one bit of correspondence among the many she had written for the man who thought he owned her loyalty.

Just one, to the person who truly claimed it instead.

Order Theresa Romain's first book
in the Romance of the Turf series

A Gentleman's Game

On sale February 2016

Theresa Romain is the bestselling author of historical romances, including the Matchmaker trilogy, the Holiday Pleasures series, and the Royal Reward series.
The Sport of Baronets
is a prequel novella to her racy new Romance of the Turf trilogy of Regency romance. Praised as “one of the rising stars of Regency historical romance” (
Booklist
), her highly acclaimed novels have been chosen for the Smart Bitches Trashy Books Sizzling Book Club, featured in the DABWAHA tournament, and deemed “Desert Isle Keepers” by All About Romance. A member of Romance Writers of America and its Regency specialty chapter the Beau Monde, Theresa is hard at work on her next novel from her home in the Midwest.

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