Love Story
Author: Jennifer Echols

1

Almost a Lady

by Erin Blackwell

Captain Vanderslice was something of an ass. He took Rebecca’s gloved hand and kissed it at the lowest point of a deep bow. “Miss O’Carey, you are blooming into quite the young lady.”

“And you, sir, look as fine as always,” Rebecca lied, watching him straighten before her. Tall and dark, he might have been handsome but for a stray bullet that had caught his cheek during the War Between the States ten years before, burrowing a thick scar from nose to eye.

Rumor had it that the visible wound wasn’t the only one he’d suffered during the war—and that despite his status as a bachelor in a border state deprived of many of its young men by the ravages of war, this disappointment with regard to offspring was the main factor that had kept several ladies from accepting his hand in marriage. However, the prospect of the bloodline ending mattered not to Rebecca’s self-centered and business-minded grandmother, who thought the match advantageous, for someday it would merge Captain Vanderslice’s vast horse farm with her own.

It mattered to Rebecca. She racked her brain for something to say to the captain that would be neither rude nor an encouragement of his amours. “Wasn’t Colonel Clark’s derby a delight! He talks of making it an annual event.”

“It will never catch on,” said the captain with hauteur, swirling the mint julep in a tumbler in his gloved hand.

“Oh! I’d consider the races a success, with ten thousand in attendance,” Rebecca maintained. She continued to exchange unpleasant pleasantries with the captain while her eye roved about the rich ballroom, searching for an escape before the captain’s small talk turned to courtship, as it had at every social gathering of late.

Luck was not on her side. At a typical country dance, one of her friends from the neighborhood would have strategically interrupted the exchange, drawing a grateful Rebecca away from the gentleman’s attentions. This was no country dance. Colonel Clark had organized a race of the area’s finest three-year-old colts on the outskirts of Louisville, and this exclusive ball in his mansion included only the richest families. In a gathering of perhaps a hundred, Rebecca was alone.

Almost. She spied movement out of the corner of her eye. Framed by the arched window that let in the cool May night, beyond the patio, David’s dark jacket blended with the shadows, but his golden hair and crisp white shirt glowed in the soft candlelight reflected from mirrors in the ballroom.

She had asked him to meet her. She had retreated to this corner of the ballroom with a view of the garden early in the evening, and had glanced casually through the archway in search of him after every dance for four quadrilles, three reels, and a round dance. As she spied him at last, she felt as if her heart with its insistent throbbing were actually moving the lace of her bosom.

“Miss Rebecca!”

She started, nearly bursting from her tightly laced corset in surprise. But it was only the elderly Mr. Gordon, stepping between herself and Captain Vanderslice. She smiled gratefully at him for the interruption. Recently on a turn about the garden at her grandmother’s estate, she had shared with him her opinion of the captain and her grandmother’s plans. “Mr. Gordon.” She bowed and gave him her hand.

“Gordon,” the captain said shortly.

Mr. Gordon merely nodded to acknowledge the captain. To Rebecca he said, “I was most pleased with the performance of your horseflesh in the third race today. I hear you trained this filly yourself?”

“You trained!” the captain gasped, aghast at Rebecca.

Rebecca kept her eyes on Mr. Gordon, which seemed a good policy if the captain was intent on merely being shocked by everybody instead of participating in the conversation. “You heard this from our stable hands,” she said, “but they give me too much credit. Our young David Archer has done most of the work. I merely took an interest.”

“And picked this filly out of the barn to train,” Mr. Gordon prompted her.

“Well, yes,” Rebecca said, “after discussions on the subject with David.”

“Young, you say,” Mr. Gordon mused. “Looking for a place of his own, out from beneath the long shadow of his famously talented father, perhaps.”

Rebecca’s heart throbbed again, this time with alarm. She knew Mr. Gordon was only making conversation to distract the captain from wooing her, and she appreciated his efforts. If only she could keep her servant-lover from being hired away from her grandmother’s farm in the process. “Well, I don’t know that Archer is all that,” Rebecca backtracked. “I probably have more of an eye for horseflesh than I give myself credit for. It is not ladylike to accept the accolades.”

“Nor is it ladylike to take such an interest in horseflesh in the first place!” the forgotten captain exploded. “Rebecca, are you mad? Hanging about in the barn will ruin your reputation! I shall speak with your grandmother!”

“What an excellent idea!” Rebecca said. “Mr. Gordon, would you be so kind as to help the captain find my grandmother?”

“And you must accompany us!” the captain exclaimed to Rebecca, offering his arm.

Rebecca hung back. “No need. I am quite incapable of disciplining myself. You had better get to the root of the problem, and I shall stand here by myself in the corner and think remorseful thoughts about what I have done.”

“Come, Captain!” Mr. Gordon feigned outrage. As he put a hand on the captain’s shoulder to turn him, he crossed his eyes at Rebecca.

She winked at Mr. Gordon. She appreciated his help, and she felt a twinge of guilt at deceiving him. If he had known he was not only extracting her from an embarrassing courtship, but also clearing her for an illicit one, he would not have been so helpful.

She watched the elegant backs of the two men weave among the partygoers and disappear into another room in search of the matriarch. With a last stealthy glance around the party, she backed to the arched doorway. She moved with excruciating slowness due to the damned fashion of the season, a bustled gown with an impossibly tight skirt, allowing steps of only a few inches at a time. The dress was flattering for marriageable women, she supposed, but extremely inconvenient when one had designs on a stable boy.

Finally she passed under the arch and outdoors. The cold air made her shiver in her sleeveless gown, but she must hide her discomfort. The only way to pull off this affair without being cast into her bedchamber until her coming-of-age, and without causing David to be let go, or, much worse, to become a victim of country justice, was to have an excuse available at all times. Her excuse at the moment was that she had felt light-headed in the party and needed fresh air. Such a thing had never happened to her—the stable hands had told her she could hold her liquor admirably for a lady—but there was a first time for everything.