The Bartered Bridegroom Read online

  “That is all I ask, Miss Oakes.”

  She glared at him for his lack of gallantry, but she also chided herself for being so silly as to have expected any. Another rattle came from farther down the row of stalls, and one lad called to another, making Katherine squirm where she stood. “I will not do anything illegal or immoral,” she cautioned, licking her lips and hating to hear the almost-agreement poised there.

  “Nor would I ask it of you. I will only want a small favor. An introduction, perhaps. Or a dance partner to rescue me from some aging ape-leader with a hideous countenance.”

  “Oh,” Katherine said with some relief. “I could do something like that.”

  The

  Bartered

  Bridegroom

  Teresa DesJardien

  To Paula Kimball:

  Who paid $10.00 for my very first

  completed manuscript.

  Thanks for starting this

  whole writing-career madness!

  Author’s Note

  Sometimes I make up place names just so I can have the fun of peopling them with anyone I fancy. Therefore, Severn’s Well and Meyerley Creek are both fictional. So are the racing meets called Helmman and Tremayne, although Epsom Downs is real and existed at the time of the Regency.

  In this story I refer to “the City” with a capital “C.” This is referring to the “Square Mile,” that portion of London that once resided entirely within Roman walls. The City is arguably still the heart of London and is properly indicated with the capitalization.

  Chapter 1

  Katherine Oakes opened her eyes slowly and looked up from her position flat on the ground. Four equine legs towered over her, and a man with an astonished expression knelt at her side. It was instantly clear that the man was attempting to come to her rescue—the last thing she wished. No, the last thing was having been dragged to London at all, but having this man discern her secret—that she was a woman in men’s clothing— came a close second.

  But it was already too late to save the moment—the man kneeling over her prostrate body had opened her coat and lifted her shirt in a misguided effort to allow her to get her breath back, and now was staring in astonishment at her breasts bound by a length of linen.

  “Yes, yes, I am a woman,” Katherine rasped at the man, even as she snatched her shirt ends from his hands and struggled to sit up. If she hadn’t had the wind knocked out of her, the words would have been a snarl. The man stood and took a step back, clearly nonplused by the revelation of her true gender.

  There was no sense in denying what he had already seen, Katherine acknowledged grimly to herself. If not denials, then flight was in order. She made as if to stand, but a wave of dizziness struck her. Her head swam, and her side throbbed, but after a few deep breaths, now possible, she felt her head clearing.

  “You are Katherine Oakes!” the man said, in much the tone he might have said “You have three heads.”

  Katherine stuck her chin in the air, pleased when no further dizziness touched her, but the gesture had to look silly with her sitting knocked to the floor inside a horse’s stall at the bloodstock market, Tattersall’s. “I am Miss Oakes,” she agreed, then paused to take another deep breath, glad to have got her wind

  back. “And I would thank you to keep your voice down, please.”

  “You do not want anyone to know you are a girl!” the man said, still sounding astonished.

  “Of course not.” Katherine gave him a dark look as she scrambled to her knees. To her chagrin some gentlemanly impulse overcame the man: He offered her a hand up.

  She ignored his hand and stood on her own, only momentarily unsteady on her feet. He took another step back, his expression slowly evolving from astonishment into disapproval. Which was unfortunate, for he was more attractive when he wasn’t scowling. Well, truth be told, he was attractive even when he was scowling, for his well-shaped lips had only thinned a little over his slightly squared jaw. His pale blue eyes—that pale blue seen at the zenith of the sky on a crisp spring morning—were surrounded by lashes made gold on the ends by the muted light inside the horse stall. His hair was cut close to his scalp, yet somehow implied it would have a wavy texture were it allowed to grow long; it was a military cut, made to fit under a helmet or perhaps an officer’s cap. He was not particularly tall, but he had a breadth of shoulder that made him appear so. Certainly the man held himself like an officer: shoulders back, chest up, expression disapproving.

  “You have the advantage of me, sir. You must give me your name,” Katherine said. She blushed to hear the demand in her own voice. It was an unfortunate habit of hers that she charged when good sense told her she should retreat; the result of being an only daughter with three brothers.

  Apparently the man did not care for her tone either, for when he sketched her a bow, it was shallow and clipped. “Benjamin Whitbury,” he said baldly.

  “Oh!” Katherine said before she could stop herself. She could not imagine how he knew her name, but she certainly knew his. He was not just Benjamin Whitbury, but Lord Benjamin Whitbury, a second son accorded the style of “lord” because he was the son of a marquess. He was first in line to inherit the title of the Marquess of Greyleigh should his older brother perish. More than that, though, Lord Benjamin Whitbury’s name was included among all the latest on-dits. There was a scandal attached to him—no, several. Something to do with his family members all being mad, and something to do with him having been forced to resign his commission in the ... Army? Navy? Whatever it had been, she recalled the whispers about him had been made in very shocked tones.

  His expression darkened, no doubt in response to her exclamation. “And now you will explain, Miss Oakes,” he said, and it was his turn to charge instead of retreat, “why you are dressed as a boy, and why you were knocked breathless on the floor of my new purchase’s stall.”

  Katherine half turned to the horse, the animal now munching from a clutch of hay. “You bought Fallen Angel?”

  “I did, if it is any of your concern.”

  Katherine reached out to run a hand down the horse’s neck, swallowing the bitter regret that rose in her throat.

  “Miss Oakes, I asked you a question.”

  Katherine swallowed again, and glanced around. The sides of the horse stall were taller than she was, leaving her little to see beyond the opening Lord Benjamin blocked. She guessed this awkward conversation went unnoted by anyone else, which was all to the good. If anyone came along the row of stalls, she would do her best to flee before they could find out what Lord Benjamin had already discovered of her gender.

  “I came to say one last good-bye,” she answered him finally.

  “Good-bye?” Lord Benjamin echoed.

  “I own . . . owned her.” Katherine bit her lip as she patted the horse, determined not to cry, certainly not in front of this man who had caught her out.

  Lord Benjamin moved a step closer to the horse, the movement making it possible for him to see Katherine’s face although she still refused to look up at him. If he felt sorry for her, if he heard the waver in her voice, nothing about his expression implied as much. “That doesn’t explain what you were doing on the floor, out of breath.”

  “She kicked me.”

  “The horse?”

  “Of course the horse. Who else could I mean? The Mayor’s wife?”

  Lord Benjamin’s expression flickered for a moment, although Katherine could not have said if it was with amusement or annoyance. “Did you deserve it?”

  Now Katherine did glance up, to scowl at him. “I did not! One of the other lads dropped a bucket just as I turned in to the stall, and Fallen Angel kicked out from being startled.” Katherine gingerly felt her side wher
e the animal’s hoof had caught her a glancing blow. No broken ribs, she thought, but there would already be a multicolored bruise spreading across her left side.

  “Then I came along, saw you struggling to breathe, and now find I’m speaking with a woman, not a lad. Why the disguise?” Lord Benjamin crossed his arms, a gesture of impatience. The movement caused the fabric of his coal to stretch over wide shoulders.

  Katherine took her gaze from his person, feeling a little shaken, no doubt from the horse’s kick. She leaned into Fallen Angel’s neck, pressing her forehead there. She could refuse to answer, but the truth was she could not afford to aggravate this man, because she was going to have to beg a favor of him. “My papa forbade me to come here.”

  “As well he should. Females do not come to Tattersall’s. It is not a place for ... refined ladies.”

  “I know,” Katherine said bitterly. She stood back from the horse, offering one last pat. She threw her gaze up to meet Lord Benjamin's, and she hoped it didn’t look as much a defiance as it felt. “The disguise was the only way I could come here without making a fool of myself.”

  She did not add that making a fool of herself had happened a lot lately, and that her father was already looking upon her with a jaundiced eye. “I just wanted to say good-bye to my horse. I suppose that sounds very foolish to you.”

  He uncrossed his arms and did not answer her at once. “No, not foolish,” he said after a long pause. “You obviously did not wish to sell it,” he added, making it a question even though his voice was neutral. Katherine could not tell what expression settled on his face, because he bent down to retrieve a boy’s brown cap that lay at her feet. When he rose, he held it up. “Yours, I presume?”

  She nodded and started to reach for it, but he placed it on her head for her. He angled his head, assessing her, then shook it. “You do not look anything like a boy, you know, even with your hair combed back like that.”

  Katherine ducked her head, only to raise it again a moment later. “I can walk like a boy, and I can lower my voice. I am quite practiced at it—” The shock on his face stopped her in midsentence.

  “You have done this ... this masquerade before?”

  Katherine looked at the horse, then the floor, then the open space beyond Lord Benjamin. If she caught him off guard and shoved him a bit, she could just slip around him and be gone before he could think to hold her here.. . .

  His hand closed on the arm of the boy’s coat she wore, as if he’d read the thought in her eyes. “I do not know what games you play at, Miss Oakes, but I must insist on escorting you home before this ... this folly of yours escalates to where it can completely discredit you.” He seemed flustered for a moment, unable to find the words. “By all that’s holy,” he burst out as if he couldn’t help himself, “you must have a care for your family’s reputation if not your own!”

  He could not know his words echoed those of her family— even, in these latter years, her brothers, those scamps who had first thought, years ago, of disguising Katherine in lad’s clothing in the first place. Oh no, this was hardly the first time she had dressed like a lad; she had done it many times before, dozens of times.

  Her brothers had thought it hysterically amusing at first when, at the age of seven, Katherine had said she wanted to see a horserace.

  They had thought it “impish luck” when she had predicted the winner of two out of five races that first day they had taken her in their carriage to view the racers thundering past.

  But by the time she was eight, her predictions were no longer a game, and the trips to the races had become regular.

  “One out of three!” one schoolmate had declared, agog in wonder upon having wagered exactly as Katherine had said he ought, and having a plump purse to show for it. “The gel can call one out of three winners!”

  “Most days. She has her off days, of course,” Jeremy had conceded. “Horses get sick, and we all know jockeys sometimes rig the results, or—”

  “Why, the best punters in the world pray to call the races so well!” his friend had interrupted. “The gel’s a nonpareil! Do you think I might adopt her? Or marry her?”

  While Katherine was not fey, her brothers came to solemnly acknowledge she was endowed with a God-given eye for horseflesh and for calculating odds, for spying signs of equine ill health, for judging spirit, or nerves, or a winner’s heart. Her talent was a gift, undeniably.

  Unfortunately, one day their father finally learned that his daughter was not excessively fond of picnicking, as he’d been led to believe; she and her brothers—while they might take a hamper with them—were not dallying in the woods or by an idyllic stream; one day he saw them himself at a race course. He saw Katherine chatting with lowly grooms, saw her waving at a leering old rouй who happened to own a racehorse, and saw her brothers treating the entire affair with a casualness that spoke of long-standing circumstance.

  After seizing the two eldest by an ear each, and hauling the entirety of his family back home, Sir Albert had learned to his further horror that his sons had been conveying his youngest child to the last place on earth any attentive father would approve that a daughter go, and doing so for years. Despite protestations that thirteen-year-old Katherine was chaperoned by a brother at all times, Sir Albert declared an absolute end to the race-going journeys.

  Katherine’s schoolroom tutor, the aged Vicar Harntuttle, was ordered to keep the girl busy at her books. “We’ve been too lenient with her,” Sir Albert declared. “It comes from having no woman in the house since Katherine was a mere babe, when her mother passed.”

  Katherine was forbidden to accompany her brothers to races or anywhere else not expressly approved by Sir Albert, or to engage in any pursuit “unbecoming for a young lady.” It did not matter how much Katherine sobbed over the loss of her best, most favorite pastime. Filled with guilt at his prior ignorance, Sir Albert insisted she was not to set her dainty little slippers near racing soil ever again.

  Katherine’s brothers had gone back to school filled with terror at their father’s wrath ... and yet—with the resiliency of youth—had returned home once again in the summer, hatching thoughts on how to thwart parental wishes. Clearly, Papa’s dictates or no, a God-given talent such as Katherine’s must not be wasted—and, besides, their quarterly allowances were, they felt, rather paltry. They made a pact. Katherine’s talent must be exercised; they simply needed to be more discreet than they had been before. And they would live by Papa’s own edict, to the literal letter....

  With all the illogic of the youthful, her brothers asserted among themselves that Papa had declared Katherine’s slipper- shod feet were not to set a single step near a racecourse . .. but he’d never said she could not clomp about the courses in boy’s boots. He had not wanted his daughter seen at the races—and so she never was again, at least not without a disguise that made her appear to be a lad, an assortment of their castoffs that made her look much like every other lad wandering among the bustle of the local races.

  Her brothers had taught her to walk like a boy, and to speak in a common vernacular. They had also maintained stoutly—in the face of Vicar Harntuttle’s infrequent questioning otherwise—that Katherine ought maintain her short hair. It would have been nice if Katherine’s hair had not been quite so singular in its dark, rich auburn tones—but combing it straight back from her forehead helped. Her hair was mostly hidden under a soft cap anyway, a cap always pulled low over her pretty brown eyes. The usual chaos at any race served the masquerade well, for what was one small “lad” who only observed or asked a few questions in light of all the toffs, jockeys, drunks, owners, and eager-eyed wagerers that swarmed everywhere?

  For Katherine it was liberating, intoxicating even, that freedom to move anywhere she liked, even those areas that would have been closed to her had she been wearing a gown and bonnet. She avoided the jockey’s changing room, but not much else. Nothing meant more to Katherine than being able to be there, to see it all, to smell the scents of
the stable, to hear the colorful language of men at work and play, to be able to often guess how these magnificent runners would place at race’s end. Even backing a pack-trailer, a loser, was a part of the thrill, for what was a wager without risk? The risk was part of the game, the challenge.

  What was watercoloring, or stitching, or playing the pianoforte compared to standing at a race rail, cheering on your favorite, flushing with pleasure when the longshot came in to collect the winning plate or purse?

  Still, even if they had not been caught out by Papa, eventually their sport would have ended. Nature turned Katherine’s body from that resembling a lad’s into a woman’s, and time only made her more and more fetching to look at. The three brothers had grudgingly known for a while what Katherine had not wanted to believe: that her days in lad’s clothing were at an end.

  Shortly after they firmly told her as much—refusing to budge even one more time despite her tears, arguments, and plans to better hide her womanly form—Jeremy had joined the army. Something in the brothers’ alliance had broken down then, and that had been the absolute end of their race-sharing ways.

  One day soon after, Lewis had asked Katherine to predict a race just from the news sheets—and she’d leaped at the one connection she had left. From that day forward, she’d never again been allowed to see the horses run. with only the news sheets and brothers’ reports to keep her keenest interest alive, but it was better than nothing.

  Her brothers might have been surprised, even a little ashamed, to know how much it had hurt her when her place in the world had shifted from under her feet. Seemingly overnight, despite being able to recite the entire ancestry of half a hundred horses and the immediate lineage of hundreds more, she’d had her favorite sport removed, whether she would or no. It counted for nothing that she’d cheered at her brothers’ sides for a hundred victories. It did not matter she had been the undisputed source of monies that had long padded the allowances granted the boys by their father. No, against all she’d come to know and love, Katherine had suddenly taken on a new shape, and that newness must be protected, sheltered, and kept clear of the language and “rough sorts” that peopled the turf.