Texas Loving (The Cowboys) Page 21

  “Crusader is my horse, so finding a rider for him is my problem. You and your family have done more than enough for me already. I should never have imposed myself on you.”

  Eden’s expression changed abruptly, and she looked away. “I’m glad you did. I’ve never forgiven myself for telling you about your birth. I was a fool not to see it would ruin everything instead of helping. I’ve never stopped being sorry.”

  Edward put his hand under her chin and lifted her head up until she had to look him in the eye. “It was a terrible shock, but I’m glad you did it. The viscount was miserable knowing he’d maneuvered his only son out of his rightful position in the family. Patrick will make a far better earl than I ever would. As for me, I now have the answers to a lot of things I never understood. It may take a while, but I’ll end up being happier not trying to be somebody I’m not.”

  “But I drove you from your family with nothing but a horse to show for all those years of hard work. And I led you to believe coming to Texas would make up for everything. How can you forgive me for that?”

  Edward couldn’t hold back a smile. “You never made me think Texas was anything but a good place to start over, a place where not knowing my father’s name wouldn’t be held against me.” He didn’t tell Eden he’d come to Texas because of her.

  “Has it been?” Eden asked.

  “Your brothers gave me a job when I didn’t have any real qualifications, and your father has faith I can protect you from whoever is threatening the family. You have done everything you could to help me with Crusader. Now it’s time for me to stand or fall on my own.”

  “But without a jockey—”

  “That’s for me to worry about,” he said, cutting her off. “You have your own horse and your own race strategy to plan.”

  It was hard to keep his distance from her when she looked up at him as if he were so much more than a novice cowboy trying to figure out how to do a job that was about as far from what he’d expected his life to be like as Texas was from London. If there was the remotest chance his future would include Eden, he had to come up with a jockey who could ride Crusader rather than fight him. He would wait until they went to San Antonio. Maybe some horse would turn up lame, and he could hire the jockey.

  “I’ve got to get Crusader back to the barn,” he said. “Your brothers have been very kind to give me time to train him, but I have a job to do.”

  They fell into step as they walked back toward the ranch. Their talk turned to the mundane topics of daily living, but being with Eden was never mundane to Edward. She was becoming more and more necessary to him, even as he was becoming more and more aware of the distance between their stations in life. Unless he could win the race, it would be too wide to span.

  “What are you going to do with your horse today?” Finn asked Edward as they were finishing up breakfast.

  “Train him as usual,” Edward replied.

  “What’s the point when you don’t have a jockey?”

  Eden didn’t know Finn as well as she knew some of the other hands who worked on the Maxwell ranches. For one thing, he’d been hired while she was in England. If Suzette’s pregnancy had been without incident, she might never have had occasion to decide she disliked him. Hawk said he was a good hand, but the way Finn treated Edward was more than enough to cause her to dislike him.

  “I have until about an hour before the race to find one,” Edward told Finn. “I intend to ride him until we get to San Antonio. If I can’t find a jockey, I’ll ride him myself.”

  “You’ll never win,” Finn said.

  “Why do you say that?” Eden asked.

  “Every jockey in the race will do his best to see he doesn’t. It would ruin their reputations if a spindly-legged foreign horse won carrying an amateur as big as Edward.”

  Eden was aware of the competition between the jockeys as well as the owners, but she’d never thought of them as a threat. “What would they do?”

  “Anything they could to make sure Edward didn’t win.” Finn paused. “No, that wouldn’t be good enough. They’d have to make sure he didn’t finish the race. They wouldn’t want him to beat any of them.”

  “I’ve ridden in roughly run races many times,” Edward said.

  “In England against people like yourself,” Eden pointed out.

  “Don’t think all Englishmen are gentlemen,” Edward said. “Some of the most unscrupulous men I know are titled aristocrats.”

  Eden had asked Edward to wait while she finished putting the breakfast things away so they could go to the barn together. She’d hoped Finn would have gone out to work by now, but he and Brady had stayed to finish extra cups of coffee. Finn said the extra chill in the weather made him especially appreciative of the warmth of the kitchen. She was of the opinion that he was taking advantage of Hawk and Zeke’s absence to go easy on his work. Finn didn’t feel he ought to have to go to work before Edward did, but it wasn’t her place to say anything. Hawk and Zeke would have more than enough to say when they got back if they believed any of the men had been slacking off.

  “Rinse your cups before you leave,” she said when she was ready to go.

  Finn jumped to his feet and rinsed his cup almost before the words were out of her mouth. “I don’t want to miss the show,” he said with the toothy grin she disliked.

  “What show?”

  “Gentleman Edward astride Spindly Legs.”

  “He’s an excellent rider,” Eden said, tired of Finn’s attempts to provoke Edward. “I rode with him many times in England.” Determined to give Finn as little opportunity as possible to reply, Eden hurried from the house.

  Some mornings in the Hill Country were particularly invigorating, and this was one of them. The weather had turned cool without being cold, the humidity had dropped, and a welcome breeze came out of the west. The drying leaves rustled on the trees, a promise that in a few weeks the ground would be thick with them. A clear sky forecast a brilliant day and a night full of stars. If it were not too cold, maybe they’d sit on the porch after supper. It was about the only time during the day that she and Edward had to themselves.

  She’d always thought the barn Zeke and Hawk had built was a substantial building. It wasn’t until she’d seen the stables at Worlege that she realized the barn here had been intended only to keep the horses out of the worst weather, not protect them from the elements altogether. Large openings under the eves provided plenty of fresh air while keeping out wind and rain. Divided by a wide aisle with six stalls on each side, the barn was the largest on Maxwell land. It was intended primarily for mares around foaling time and any horses needing special care or attention.

  She was surprised when she didn’t see Black Cloud’s head sticking out over the stall door. Having spent the first years of her life in the open, the mare was always anxious to leave the barn. Crusader, in contrast, was usually lying down.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” Eden said as she approached Black Cloud’s stall. “I can’t have you picking up Crusader’s lazy habits.”

  “He’s just saving his energy,” Edward said, defending his horse.

  “It won’t do him any good,” Eden said. “Black Cloud will—”

  She broke off when she saw the mare standing in the back of the stall, her weight resting on three legs, swinging her head slowly from side to side. Eden opened the door and entered the stall. When the mare didn’t come to her immediately, she knew something was wrong. She patted the mare on the neck.

  “What’s wrong, old girl? Are you feeling out of sorts this morning?”

  The mare nickered softly but didn’t move.

  “Don’t you dare come down with colic. We’ve got a race to win.” She took hold of Black Cloud’s halter, intending to lead the mare from the stall. The mare didn’t move, didn’t put her weight down on the left foreleg. Eden looked down.

  That’s when she saw the blood.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Her gasp brought Edward to Black Cloud’s stall at a
run. “What’s wrong?”

  Eden had sunk to her knees on the hard ground, looking at the long gash that ran down the back of Black Cloud’s foreleg. The blood had coagulated and become matted with hair and straw.

  “She must have cut herself on one of her shoes.” Even as she uttered the words, Eden knew that was unlikely. Horses injured themselves running or working, not lying down in their stalls.

  “Bring her out of the stall where I have enough light to look at it,” Edward said.

  Black Cloud wouldn’t run in the race—Eden had known that as soon as she saw the blood—but that wasn’t important. She just hoped the injury wasn’t crippling. She didn’t think she could stand to put the mare down. She stood, took hold of the halter, and held her breath when she tugged. She shuddered with relief when Black Cloud followed her out of the stall, favoring her leg only slightly.

  Eden led the mare the short distance down the center of the barn through the swinging double doors into the morning sunlight. Edward was right behind her with Finn and Brady only a few steps away. Brady looked staggered, but it was impossible to tell what Finn was feeling. For Eden, fear for her horse was paramount. There would be other horses and other races, but there would never be another Black Cloud.

  The moment she brought the mare to a halt, Edward bent down, lifted the injured leg, and looked at it.

  Eden watched over his shoulder. “I can’t imagine how she did that with one of her shoes. Could it have been a nail?”

  Edward looked up, anger in his eyes. “She didn’t do this to herself. Somebody cut down the middle of the tendon sheath with a knife. A little more, and you’d have had to put her down.”

  Nausea nearly overcame Eden. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would do such a thing to Black Cloud. Even though her horse was the favorite to win the race, she couldn’t convince herself one of the other owners would have hired someone to eliminate the competition. Worst of all, she’d slept soundly in her bed while someone had stolen into the barn and incapacitated her horse. “Can we save her?”

  Edward’s expression softened. “The injury isn’t as bad as it looked at first, but she’ll never race again.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Eden said, nearly weeping with relief. “I just don’t want to lose her.”

  “You’ll have to be very careful with her, but I’m sure she’ll live to give you many speedy colts. Maybe one of them will win that race for his mama.”

  Eden spent the next hour helping Edward clean the wound and bandage it. Finn searched for clues as to who had attacked her horse. She sent Brady to the Broken Circle to tell her father there’d been another attack.

  Despite the brightness of the early morning sun, a cool breeze rustled the leaves of a nearby grove of oak, ash, and sycamore trees. A pair of wrens and a warbler fluttered about scratching for food while a field mouse darted among the dry grass, his little cheeks bulging with seeds. Several horses in the corral had pushed their heads through the fence rail, more interested in the possibility of a treat than in the drama surrounding Black Cloud. It seemed incongruous to Eden that anything so terrible could have happened against this pacific backdrop. “I don’t understand why we didn’t hear anything. Dad says a horse is a perfect watchdog and will let you know when strangers are about.” “Only the ones that keep some of their wild nature,” Finn said. “You pen a horse up in a barn, teach it to be handled by anybody who comes into the barn, and before long it accepts the presence of strangers as readily as you or me.”

  Eden hated to admit that Finn knew more about her horse than she did, but Black Cloud could be ridden by anyone, handled by anyone. She was a perfect racehorse. And that had nearly cost her her life.

  “I want you to be on the lookout for anything that seems unusual,” Eden said to Edward and Finn once Black Cloud was back in her stall. “I don’t know who did this or why, but I saw a man watching me from the ridge several mornings ago. I didn’t think much of it because of the race, but this may be part of the attacks that have been happening to nearly all the Maxwell ranches.”

  Finn adjusted his hat. “I’d better be getting to my work. I don’t suppose your father will like finding me sitting around twiddling my thumbs.” He looked at Edward. “I expect you’ll be here when he comes. You still have to exercise your horse.”

  “That can wait until tomorrow,” Edward said.

  “No, it can’t,” Eden said. “Even one missed day will slow him down.”

  Finn leered at Edward. “He doesn’t have to be as fast now, does he? He just lost his most serious competition.”

  Hot chagrin burned through Eden when Finn put into words the thought that had flashed into her mind after Edward so expertly diagnosed the injury. Even if he could have left his room without her knowing, he had too much integrity, too much love and respect for horses to do such a thing. “You can’t possibly think that Edward—”

  Finn’s leer deepened. “Of course not. An English gentleman would never sink to anything as low as that. Besides, with him sleeping in the house, I expect he couldn’t leave his room without your knowing.” Finn paused. “He did stay in his room, didn’t he?”

  Eden couldn’t believe Finn could be suggesting what he seemed to be suggesting, but apparently Edward had no doubt.

  “You say one word disparaging Eden’s reputation, and you won’t have to wait for one of her brothers to make you regret it.”

  “I’d never disparage Miss Maxwell,” Finn said. “It’s just that you seem to know an awful lot about tendons.”

  “Edward would never do anything so cruel and underhanded,” Eden said.

  “A man never knows what he’s capable of until he is brought to the point where he believes he has no other choice.” Having delivered himself of that thought, Finn turned and left.

  “You can’t believe that I—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Eden assured Edward. “Finn is just trying to cause trouble.” Despite being certain Edward would never attack her horse, she couldn’t ignore the fact that Black Cloud’s injury provided the perfect solution to his problem. She shook her head, ashamed of her thoughts.

  “I’ll withdraw from the race,” Edward said. “If Finn believes I would injure Black Cloud so I could win, other people will think the same thing. As he pointed out, it’s obvious I’m the one who benefits.”

  “What about all the other owners?”

  “They aren’t living on the ranch with access to Black Cloud any hour of the day. They aren’t so familiar to all the horses that they could walk into the barn with no sound beyond a welcoming nicker. They probably don’t know enough about a horse’s anatomy to be able to cut into a tendon without severing it. They haven’t just lost their jockey and their best chance to win the race.”

  Another person might have said Edward was building a case against himself, but just looking at Edward’s rigidly controlled features was all Eden needed to know he was innocent. Having been brought up in a society where personal honor was more binding than the law, he was practically stiff with mortification that his integrity should be questioned.

  “I know you wouldn’t hurt Black Cloud. Everyone else will feel the same. Now quit worrying about it and start thinking about finding a jockey for Crusader. With Black Cloud out of the race, I’m certain he can win, but you’ve got to find a jockey.”

  “I’ll ask around when we get to San Antonio. Maybe one of the other entrants has had to drop out and his jockey will be available.”

  Eden cast one last look at Black Cloud to make sure she was okay. She was furious that anyone would attack an innocent animal for any reason, but she was relieved the injury would heal. She studied Crusader as Edward led him out of the barn. She loved her mare, but Crusader was a magnificent animal. Greyhoundlike with long slim legs and a red chestnut coat that gleamed like gold in the sunlight, he was a sight to cause any horse lover to catch a breath. If he could win the race and sire colts like himself, Edward might one day have one of the most important
horse ranch in Texas. With a last look at Black Cloud, she followed them from the barn.

  Eden held Crusader while Edward saddled him. The horse was playful this morning, grabbing at the reins much like a dog biting at a stick. “He’s in a good mood this morning.”

  “He probably knows I fired that jockey. I wouldn’t put it past him to have acted up just to get rid of him.”

  Eden laughed and patted Crusader’s neck. He responded by nudging her in the chest. “You make him sound awfully crafty.”

  “Crusader’s first owner was a brutish man who thought the only way to get the best out of an animal was to break his spirit. Crusader fought back so hard, the man used him as a bet in a race. I won and got Crusader along with a nice draft mare for Worlege.”

  Eden could tell from the awkward silence that followed that the loss of Edward’s home and family still hurt. It said a lot for Edward’s strength of character that he’d been able to find a direction, develop a plan, and put it into action. Still, there had to be a hole in his heart. She wished there were something she could do to make up for it. But the only thing anybody could do that would mean anything would be to help him win the race.

  “He’s not going to like having my weight on his back,” Edward said as he checked the girth to make sure the straps were tight.

  “Let me ride him.” The words were out before Eden thought. “He’s familiar with me. This way he won’t have to adjust to your weight, then adjust again to a new jockey.”

  Edward turned to her, relief and gratitude in his eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. Now that Black Cloud is out of the race, I’ll “Of course. Now that Black Cloud is out of the race, I’ll be pulling for Crusader.” And by pulling for Crusader, she was pulling for Edward.

  “You have no idea who could have done this or how he got on the ranch without being seen?” Jake asked the three men standing before him.