he was one of the reasons the Gotham Rose Club was started. But if Renee knew who he was, she wasn’t spilling the secret.
It was all supposed to be hush-hush, but I’d heard that Renee had struck a deal with the Governess to create and run the Gotham Rose Agency in exchange for her husband, Preston’s, early release from prison. Someone had to go to jail for the Sinclair family’s illegal business dealings and poor Preston was the scapegoat.
“Have you been keeping up with the news of the show circuit?” Renee asked, reaching for a scone.
“No, not really.” What was the point of salting a wound? I got my fix of horses through my foundation and my weekly trips to my estate in Darien, Connecticut, where I kept two horses. “Why?”
“A string of accidents have happened this winter on the Palm Beach show-jumping circuit. Canterbury Crown died of a heart attack while going over a jump and his rider was hurt from the fall. Drug testing showed cocaine in the horse’s blood.”
“Cocaine?” Who would do such a thing? Of course, some people would do anything to win—even hurt a defenseless animal. “What happened?”
“The police investigated but came to no conclusion.”
I leaned forward, my heart fluttering against my ribs. “You want me to look into it,” I said hopefully.
“A few weeks later, a barn fire killed four horses, including the current National Horse Show champion, Total Eclipse.”
Just thinking about the terror those poor animals had to endure raised my blood pressure and sparked my anger. But I bit my tongue. This was definitely my kind of assignment, but Renee was obviously not asking for my opinion.
“The latest victim is Monica Lightbourne, daughter of the media heiress,” Renee continued. “Someone injected her horse, Blue Ribbon Belle, with a drug that caused a neurological reaction so violent the horse had to be put down.”
“That’s awful. How do you want me to help?”
“The Metropolitan Spring Classic Charity Horse Show begins in a week.”
“You want me to investigate at the show since I’ll be there for my foundation’s charity event.” Yes! This I could do. No stretch at all.
“Not exactly.” Renee sipped her tea, humor glinting in her eyes. “As you know, the mayor’s daughter participates in show jumping. Elliot Siegel is afraid his daughter, who’s a front runner to win the Grand Prix, will be the Horse Ripper’s next victim and that he’ll strike some time before or during the show.”
“You want me to protect Leah Siegel.” A small thrill spurred my pulse into a gallop. Finally a chance to do more than shuffle paper. Protecting the mayor’s daughter was an elite assignment.
“We want you to go undercover at the stable where she trains.” Renee tilted her head. “As a groom.”
“Excuse me?” I had to have heard wrong. Renee wanted me to go undercover as a groom? Just what had she put in her tea?
“You heard me.”
Needing to gather my wits, I picked up my teacup, but it never made it to my lips. I plunked the cup back on its saucer. “You want me to shovel manure? How’s that going to help protect Leah?”
Renee studied me, then lifted both eyebrows and a shoulder in a gesture of dismissal. “I told the Governess this wasn’t a good idea. With your leg, you can’t possibly be expected to perform such hard physical labor.”
“Wait a minute. This has nothing to do with my leg.” I slid to the edge of the chair caught between wanting to tell Renee what she could do with her condescending attitude and fighting for my first real assignment. I hadn’t realized how badly I needed her approval until now. “You don’t want me here. You never have.”
“That’s not true. The trouble with you, Alexa, is that you have no concept of the limits of your skills and that makes you dangerous. You think you can do everything. Everyone needs help. And I don’t want to see you, or any of my girls, hurt.”
Hurt? She was thinking of Emma. But the situations were different. Renee hadn’t even given me the chance to chip a nail. The last assignment had relied more on my understanding of avionics and electronics systems produced by my father’s defense-contracting business than on physical prowess.
I rode again after the doctors told me I never would. I survived the brutal training I’d gone through with Emma, Chloe and Becca. I ran the business side of my foundation without anyone there knowing about my handicap. My chin crept up and my back got stiff with steel. “I can do anything as well as anyone else.”
The tilt of Renee’s smile widened. “You’re proving my point.”
I strangled the linen napkin in one fist. Control, Alexa. Get yourself under control. If I didn’t watch out, I’d blow this. I had to make Renee realize there was more to me than my missing lower leg, and the only way I could think to do that was to put her on the spot. “Why did you ask me to join the agency if you have no faith in my ability?”
“You have many outstanding abilities,” Renee said so silkily that I could feel my ruffled feathers smoothing. Her gaze didn’t waver—almost as if she’d expected this flak from me and had her side of the argument ready to deflect anything I could throw at her.
“We brought you in,” she said, “because you know your way around a business statement in several languages. You have access to the defense industry through your father. You have connections with several highly placed branches of society both in New York and in London. And you, more than any of the other girls, can physically alter your looks to fit any situation.”
“But…” I said and waited for Renee to fill the space. There was always a damned but.
“Your blinders get in the way. I can’t give you a field assignment if I feel I’ll be putting you in physical danger.”
“We’re back to the leg thing again.” Didn’t everything in my life come back to that blasted leg? If it didn’t matter to me, why should it matter to anyone else?
“No, you’re back to the leg thing again. You made it through training. You’ve proved you can cope with your handicap.” There was actual warmth in Renee’s voice as if she really did admire what I’d overcome. She reached for my hand and squeezed it gently. “It’s your impetuous tendency that worries me. You grow impatient, you bend the rules and look for the shortcut. There’s no place for that in the field. Not when there’s so much at stake. Think of it as dressage. Everything has to be precise or you put the whole operation at risk.”
“Wait,” I said, pulling back, confused by Renee’s simultaneous praise and excoriation. “You said you were sending me to work as a groom.”
“Then you took offense and didn’t let me get to the second part of your mission.”
Second part of the mission? Man, I was burning bridges before I even got a foot on them. This was the one thing I kept forgetting about Renee: how good she was at manipulating people to do exactly what she wanted. Now I couldn’t refuse the assignment without coming across as a self-pitying spoiled brat.
“I’m sorry.” I shrugged. “It’s just a groom isn’t
