Susan Johnson - Hot Streak

“Now, Leon, a little respect for my ex-wife.” But the grin accompanying the words was wickedly boyish.

“I'd like to give her a whole lot more, but she never gets close enough to put my boot where it'll do her the most good.”

“Speaking of boots. Did my boots come back for the Maryland Hunt Cup?”

“This morning.”

“Good. I'll try them tomorrow. Think Tarrytown can take those terrifying timbers two years in a row?”

“If he can't, there's not a hunter that can. The Ferstens are the best breed of jumpers in the world.”

“Thanks to you.”

“And to your pa.”

The phone line from the house trilled tinnily in the stable and they both stiffened, their expressions instantly altering. Charles's heavy brows creased into a frown.

“I'd say it's the bitch,” Leon growled.

“Wouldn't bet against you on that one,” Charles quietly replied. “If it's Sylvie, I'll take it in the house.”

When Leon picked up the receiver, he nodded darkly and said, “Sit tight, Countess, he's on his way to an inside phone.”

And Charles reluctantly started across the muddy paddock.

S ylvie von Mansfeld was a countess in her own right, rich, beautiful, spoiled, and young. She'd met Charles one summer when she'd turned to acting in an attempt to escape boredom. She was captivated by Carey Fersten, the brilliant young director from America who had roots on the continent. She was delighted that his aristocratic family north of the Baltic held a knight's title a thousand years older than her family's mercantile nineteenth-century coat of arms. She was bewitched by his compulsive decisions. When they first met during filming in Yugoslavia, the young genius director was operating on instinct alone. Carey was drinking too much then, using recreational drugs in an excessive way that appealed to her excessive nature. It wasn't until the second week of sharing his bed that he'd stopped in mid “Darling” and asked her name. It still sent tingles down her spine recalling those days, old memories freshly rekindled by the sound of his deep, husky “Hello.”

“I need you,” Sylvie purred into the phone.

“The feeling is not mutual, Sylvie. What do you want, as if I didn't know,” Charles said bluntly, settling into a worn leather chair in the library.

His cool tone brought Sylvie back to her present problem. “You have to come and talk to him. Egon called. He was at the airport during the shooting, and now he's worse than ever. God knows his fear is reasonable. Especially after what Rifat did to the car. He was barely coherent when he called. You have to come and talk to him, Carey!”

“Jesus, Sylvie.” Charles kept his voice steady, despite his feelings on the subject. “I was just there a month ago. Put him in a sanitorium. Find him a confessor. Find him a woman, for Christ's sake. I can't come and hold his hand every time he OD's on terrorism.”

“Those madmen are using him, Carey, you know that. Capitalizing on his nerves and drug habit. He's terrified. No one else can calm him when he's in this state.”

“I can't this time, Sylvie. I'm sorry. I'm scheduled to ride in a meet in Maryland next week, and my next film starts two days after that.”

“I need you. Egon needs you. You owe me!”

Carey sighed. “I can't keep paying for that mistake forever. Everyone was doing drugs out there.”

“But you started him.”

“I didn't, but I'll never win that argument with you. Oh, Christ, it could have been anyone. He was out looking for it.”

“You made him what he is,” she snapped.

“Lord, grow up. He is what he is, with or without me.”

“If you don't come, he's going to die. I could barely understand him on the phone.”

There was a silence on the overseas connection while Charles damned the day Sylvie von Mansfeld first slipped into his bed. “Okay, all right,” he said at last, his feelings for Egon overcoming his aversion to Sylvie, “I'll be there, but I have to be back Wednesday next.”

“We're at the villa in Nice.”

“This is the last time, Sylvie, I swear.” Hanging up, his expression grim, Charles angrily punched the phone number for the stable. “Tell Jess to have the jet fueled. We leave in an hour. And bring my saddle, will you Leon? Maybe I can get in a few hours of riding before the Hunt Cup.” In a brisk cadence he finished his instructions to Leon. Then he dropped the phone receiver in its cradle and turned to his father. “Damn and bloody hell,” he softly swore. “When will it end?”

His father had been seated at the marquetry desk near the window during the phone conversation, his eyes half-closed. Opening his eyes fully now, he glanced at his only child with tolerant affection and quietly said, “The sins of your youth, eh?”

“With Sylvie and Egon, I'm never going to be allowed to forget them.”

“Surely there must be some treatment center with an effective program for”-his father paused delicately-“his variety of problems.”

Bernadotte had never understood Egon's bisexual idiosyncrasies. Firmly heterosexual, he viewed them as an aberration. “He's tried most of the drug treatment centers,” Carey replied, ignoring the other insinuations, “but so far none of them have turned him around. And Sylvie's right, he does respond to me. It makes it harder though since Egon's witless flirtation in the arms business last year. With Rifat leaning on him, he needs the heroin more to blot out the insecurities and fear, just at a time when he'd be better off facing them clean.”

“I understand your attachment for the young man, my concern is your mother,” Bernadotte said, dismissing Egon with a casual wave of his hand. “She's going to be disappointed if you're not back for the Maryland Hunt Cup. The house was opened last week and she has a full guest list waiting to visit with her ‘darling' boy.”

“I know.” Sliding down on his spine, Charles stretched out his long, mud-spattered legs and contemplated the soiled toes of his handmade boots. Then, stretching to relieve the tightness in his shoulders Sylvie's calls always induced, he said, “Tell Mother I'll be back in time.”

His father smiled his rare smile. “She'll be pleased.”

“And don't tell her I went to see Egon,” Charles said, rising from the depths of the comfortable chair. “She'll worry needlessly.”

“I'll make some excuse.”

“I'll call when I'm heading back.” Charles stood in the library doorway and flashed a quick smile, both brows rising speculatively. “I did tell Sylvie this was the last time, didn't I?”

“Distinctly,” his father agreed.

“Then I'm on my last mission of mercy,” Charles replied. “Ciao.” And with a wave he walked from the room.

“Godspeed,” his father murmured in the quiet library as he began concocting a story that would satisfy Juliana.

Although Bernadotte and Juliana had chosen to live apart since Charles was three, they maintained a friendly parenting relationship and a true friendship apart from their duties as parents. Charles was really more like Juliana in many ways, Bernadotte thought. He was a Carrville in size; the Ferstens had always been larger than most but without the extreme height of the Carrvilles. And his love of horses was mysterious, with a gravity like Juliana's that bordered on the pagan. Like his mother, he socialized with ease; there was very little of the hermit like Bernadotte in Charles. But in other ways he was his father's son: reckless and instinctive, inquisitive until he found satisfactory answers. He was, above all, the joy of his father's life, and Bernadotte never regretted meeting Juliana.

Juliana Carrville had been seventeen the spring Count Bernadotte Fersten came to Baltimore to ride in the Hunt Cup. His reputation had preceded him, and every lady invited to the Hunt Ball that night had vied for his attention. He'd just turned forty, was rumored to have spent the previous month with his latest lover, the Maharani of Narayan at her estate outside Delhi while awaiting the beginning of the spring steeplechase circuit. It was a dangerous liaison-especially with her jealous husband in residence-but evidently the count had survived, as he had all his other scandals of the postwar years.

When his estates bordering the Baltic in Eastern Finland were in danger of being overrun by the Russians in the closing days of World War II, Bernadotte had taken leave from the Finnish army and managed to rescue his retainers and his stable of Fersten hunters just hours ahead of the Russians. But his wife Kirsti, whom he'd adored, had been killed in the flight, a victim of exploding shrapnel from artillery pressing the Russian front westward. Her loss, it was said, hurt Bernadotte more deeply than all his ancestral estates left behind.

Heartbroken, he'd pensioned off all the servants, except those needed for his small stud farm near Helsinki, and left for the continent, not caring whether he lived or died. During the next five years he rode in every steeplechase of consequence. Heedless of death, he won most of them. He drank champagne till dawn, slept with whomever clutched his arm that night, and entertained beautiful women from Oslo to Rome with wit, charm, and intoxicating, moody sensuality.

But his icon of Kirsti was always the first object he looked at on waking each day, and his standing order dictated that her grave would always be covered with fresh violets, the flower she'd adored. Bernadotte hadn't been able to forget the only love of his life. Her loss so haunted him that he avoided being alone, and was desperately afraid of solitude. Riding, hunting, gambling, sailing, boudoir games, and a reckless pursuit of pleasure obsessed him. And with his capacity to acquit himself well at all these games, he was in great demand.

When he walked into the drawing room that night in Baltimore before the Hunt Ball, he thought for a blinding moment that Kirsti was waiting for him. But when the tall, blond woman, dressed in violet chiffon turned around, his disappointment must have shone on his face.

“I feel I should apologize for some reason,” Juliana Carrville said, her large hazel eyes attentive.

Count Fersten recovered instantly. “Of course not. I'm afraid I mistook you for someone I once knew. She liked violet, too.”

Thanking her lucky stars she'd picked this dress for the ball, Juliana put out her slim hand and introduced herself.

Bernadotte recognized the last name. “Your father's on the National Hunt Committee.”

“No, my brother. You're the odds-on favorite to win tomorrow, you know,” she said, her smile warm.

“I hope you're right. The course is formidable.” It was a modest reply by a man who'd outclassed everyone in the field, and had ridden the course the previous year in record time.

“Did your horses get in yet?”

“Came down yesterday from Louisville.”

“Where you won the Oxmoor.”

“A bit of luck, actually.”

Juliana had heard otherwise. On a treacherous course where only four of the original twenty riders finished, the count had ridden so aggressively in mud left over from two days of rain that bets had been taken on which hurdle would account for his broken neck. “I hear you may decide to settle in America,” Juliana went on hurriedly, for Bernadotte's glance was beginning to stray.

“I may,” he said absently, his attention drawn to a spectacular redhead in cream lace and diamonds who was bearing down on him.

“There's an estate for sale next to ours. If you'd like, I'll show it to you Wednesday.”

“Thank you. I'll let you know,” he politely replied and turned to greet his old friend Mrs. Percy-Wilson.

The day after the Hunt Cup race, Bernadotte's manservant woke him after the all-night celebration of his win and informed him that Miss Carrville was waiting in the parlor downstairs. She'd come to show him a nearby house on the market.

“Give her my excuses, Anders… politely.”

“Miss Carrville already advised me she isn't leaving until she sees you.” Anders coughed discreetly, but didn't so much as glance at the lady sleeping next to his master. “She's prepared to join you up here, sir.” Anders had considerable experience forestalling women and was paid handsomely for this important skill. He was very good in a standoff, but Miss Carrville was better. It had taken all his persuasion to keep her from following him upstairs. “I think you'll have to speak to her personally, sir.”

Bernadotte groaned softly, cast a swift look at the drowsy Mrs. Percy-Wilson lying beside him, and decided she was not sufficiently awake to require an explanation. Quickly throwing on some clothes, he went downstairs to give his excuses to Miss Carrville personally.