“She can’t race with it—” Josie began, but Billy interrupted her.
“You knew it too, me lord. You axed me just an hour ago was Sharon all that she could be, and I said yes. And she’s not, is she?”
“You’ll want to check the other horses,” Josie said. “It can spread through a stable like wildfire.” She nodded toward the horse blanket hanging to the side. It was a splendid throw, embroidered with the earl’s crescent and the words COEUR VAILLANT.
“It’s spread through blankets?” Mayne asked.
“You might want to stop embroidering the blankets with your crest and put the horse’s name on instead. It stops the spread. But it can jump from horse to horse on a curry brush as well.”
Mayne nodded, seeing in his mind’s eye the way his gelding loped to the finish line this morning. “Damn it, I should have known about this.”
“There’s only the five horses of ours in London,” Billy was saying to himself. “And this is only a week or two old, because I would have seen that, I would have.”
“I’m sure you would have,” Josie said soothingly. “It’s only because I don’t know Sharon at all that I could see she was in a bit of discomfort.”
“I am sorry, Garret,” his sister said from the aisle outside the box. “You must be very disappointed not to be able to race her.”
“Not as disappointed as the punters will be. Sharon’s odds were three to one. I’d better escort you back to the boxes; Sylvie will be wondering what became of me. Billy, will you take care of scratching Sharon from the race, please?”
Billy nodded. “I’m that sorry I missed it, yer lordship.”
“We both missed it,” Mayne said.
Josie gave Sharon a last pat on the nose. “We were never able to come up with anything that takes the nuts away; it seems they simply have to run their course. But I do have a comfrey bath that seems to give some comfort. I’ll send you the recipe, Mayne.”
Billy closed the gate behind them, thinking that he was a lucky sod to have a master like that, and no one would know from the way Mayne looked that his heart was set on Sharon winning the race. And she would have, if she’d been fit to run.
“I just wanted you to win so much I didn’t see them devilish nuts,” he muttered to Sharon. “It’s the devil’s own luck.”
“There’ll be another race for Sharon,” the young lady said, leaning over the gate and giving Sharon a last scratch. “She’s a beauty, and she wants to race, you can tell that. I expect that’s why you didn’t notice her condition. She’s such a game one that she would have run her heart out, whether they vexed her or not.”
“Aye, and she would have done that,” Billy said, cheering up a little. He watched the young lady as she went. She was hanging onto the master’s arm and talking up at him. By the time they turned the corner at the end of the aisle, she had him laughing.
It wasn’t every young lady who knew what nuts were, and had a recipe for a horse bath. Of course, men being what they were, the master probably didn’t recognize that.
Josie was scandalizing Griselda by telling her how much she missed spending time in the barn.
“A barn!” Griselda screetched, clutching Mayne’s arm and generally acting as if she might be kicked by a bull at any moment. “I can’t imagine why you’d wish to be in a barn.”
“They have a peaceful sort of smell,” Josie said, “as if nothing bad could happen in the world.”
Mayne found himself nodding. “It’s harness dressing: grain and axle grease.”
“And new rope,” Josie said to him. “New rope has a wonderful smell. But mostly it’s hay. Well, hay and tired horses.”
“You have always spent far too much time in the barn,” Griselda told Mayne. “I remember mama being quite worried that you would end up looking like a stable boy.” She smiled at Josie. “Our mother was terribly happy when Garret suddenly developed an interest in his clothing.”
Mayne thought about the great red barn on his estate, that same barn he’d spent so many hours in as a child. He hadn’t spent an afternoon there in two years, likely. He was always in London, and even during the autumn and winter, he went to Rafe’s or another friend’s estate. His stables, for him, were a matter of buying horses, sending them off to his estate for training, and then having them shipped to the racetrack in question. Not that he didn’t visit, because he did so often. But he wasn’t part of the life of the barn, the way he had been when he was a boy.
“Time was,” he said wryly, “when the black cat couldn’t have another set of kittens without my knowing precisely the number.”
Josie grinned. “Kittens, pshaw! I knew the number of mice that our little tiger was catching. She always wished to show me their carcasses before she ate them.”
Griselda shuddered. “You might keep that detail to yourself, if you please.”
13
From The Earl of Hellgate, Chapter the Eighth
Dear Reader, you have not forgotten your promise to resist the impulse to identify the names of the dear women who were kind enough to share their company with me, have you? There is no need to tax your memory by investigating beautiful actresses who have played Titania in the past century…I will clasp her name to my bosom until death do us part.
All of us.
Griselda plucked the note off the salver Brinkley offered her. A smile spread over her face. She discounted the feeble attempt at bribery immediately. She had read genuine shame in Darlington’s eyes when he promised not to mock Josie again. But this invitation…
It deserved consideration.
She sat down and stared at the rose-colored walls of her bedchamber. If she did this—this horrendous, delicious, tempting thing—it would be for the last time. While she had two small little trysts in the ten years since her husband died, she had allowed each man precisely one night. But they had been older than she, cheerful bachelors who understood the rules and abided by them. She had remained the best of friends with both gentlemen. But Darlington was young. Terrifyingly young.
And she had made up her mind to—
“Grissie!” Annabel popped her head into the bedchamber. “Would you like to come upstairs and keep me company while I see to Samuel? He’s due to wake from his nap any moment, and you said you’d like to be there.”
“And when did I give you permission to call me by that revolting nickname?” Griselda said with a mock scowl.
“You didn’t,” Annabel retorted. “But now that I’m a married lady, and you’re no longer my chaperone, I’m taking the liberty.”
Griselda hopped up, hastily thrusting Darlington’s note into her sleeve. “How did Samuel sleep last night?” she asked as they walked to the nursery.
“Like a dream. He really is a splendid child.”
Griselda agreed, with all her heart. At this advanced age, she had suddenly been struck by an acute longing for a baby. And she was willing to take a husband to attain one.
So…But she shook the thought away because Master Samuel crowed with delight to see them coming.
“Go ahead,” Annabel said, laughing. “You pick up the little rascal.” He was kicking his chubby knees and smiling with a madcap grin that was designed to make everyone in the vicinity love him…and it was manifestly successful.
Griselda scooped him up, never feeling the note slip from her sleeve. She was too busy cuddling Samuel, and tickling him, and generally making it clear to him that she was a very, very important person.
So it wasn’t until Samuel began making squawking noises that indicated, in all likelihood, that while he liked her, she wasn’t the person who produced milk, that she turned around. And found Annabel seated in a comfortable rocking chair and grinning at her. This was an entirely different kind of grin from that on her son’s face.
“Griseldaaaa!” she sang, waving a little slip of paper in her hand.
Griselda plumped Samuel into Annabel’s lap and snatched at her note. “Give me that!”
“Grillon
’s Hotel,” Annabel said, laughing aloud. “The place where my reputation died a painful death. Why, if I remember you correctly, no lady ever enters Grillon’s Hotel. ‘I’ve never entered such a place!’” she said, imitating Griselda’s voice.
“And I never did enter such a place until your sister Imogen constrained me to do so,” Griselda said, ripping the note and tossing it into the fireplace.
Annabel pointed commandingly at the seat across from her. “Sit down this minute, you wild widow, and regale me with the tale of who on earth is asking you to Grillon’s. Who is Darling—” But the words faltered on her tongue. “It’s Darlington!”
Griselda fell into the chair with rather less than her usual grace. “It is indeed.”
“But no one meant that you should trade your virtue for cessation of his nasty talk,” Annabel said. “Oh, Griselda, you didn’t think that was what Sylvie meant when she directed you to seduce him, did you? Because she only meant it in the sense that you should flirt with the man, and entice him into changing his mind.”
Griselda had to smile; Annabel looked so horrified. “I know that,” she said. “It’s just that Darlington…”
“He’s blackmailing you. The scoundrel!” Annabel’s eyes narrowed. “He’s not blackmailing just you, Griselda, he’s blackmailing all of us. That’s what he means by his ‘morality slipping,’ doesn’t it? He actually thinks to blackmail you into entering Grillon’s Hotel and carrying on an affaire with him. Rafe may be away on his wedding trip, but my husband will beat Darlington into smithereens, and Tess’s husband will ruin him financially.” She looked as if she were about to leap out of the chair, nursing baby or not, and send Darlington to his doom.
“So I gather you think that I shouldn’t go to Grillon’s?”
Annabel gasped. “You can’t possibly be considering it! Absolutely not, Griselda. That’s a sacrifice that not one of us would ever wish you to make, including Josie. In fact, it would probably make Josie ill just to hear of this. That horrid, impudent little mushroom of a man.”
“But I don’t think he’s little,” Griselda said. “He’s at least as tall as Rafe.”
“I didn’t mean—” Annabel snapped. And stopped. “Griselda Willoughby,” she said slowly, “you tell me what is happening here.”
“Well, you are a married woman,” Griselda observed.
“Manifestly so,” Annabel said, dropping a kiss on the fuzzy head of her son. “And as such, Griselda?” She paused, eyebrow raised.
Griselda looked down at her ankles rather than meet Annabel’s gaze. Her stockings were really quite beautiful. “Don’t you think these are exquisite?” she asked, pulling up her skirts a tad and swinging her ankle in the air. The silk was so thin that they gave her legs a golden sheen, like canary wine.
“Griselda,” Annabel threatened.
“I’m thinking of having a tryst with the man,” Griselda said, watching Annabel carefully under her eyelashes to see if she looked horrified at the thought.
But she didn’t. In fact, she just looked fascinated. “It’s nothing to do with Josie, then?”
Griselda shook her head. “Darlington promised to say nothing of Josie in the future, and I believe him. He had the air of a man who has finally realized he made himself loathsome.”
“Well, why on earth would you wish to have an affaire with someone who is loathsome?”
Griselda laughed. “It seems that marriage has left you unaccountably naive, dearest.”
“I have never been naive,” Annabel said, deftly switching Samuel to her other breast. “I gather that Darlington has some attributes that are…enticing?”
Griselda smiled.
“In that case,” Annabel said, “I shall entertain Josie while you frolic in Grillon’s Hotel.”
“I am rather old for him.”
“Robbing the cradle?” Annabel said cheerfully. “And why not?”
“He can’t be more than twenty-four.”
“That’s nothing. Look at how many marriages have a twenty-year gap in favor of the man.”
“It would be my last such indiscretion,” Griselda said.
“I know, darling,” Annabel said. “Because you should marry now, and have yourself a little Samuel.” Samuel let out a great burp, so she stood up and plopped him into Griselda’s arms.
“I suppose…” Griselda said.
“You’re a born mother. Of course you suppose. Is Darlington a possibility?”
“Certainly not! I just told you that he’s less than thirty. One doesn’t marry men of that age. One might dance with them—”
“Or meet them in a hotel,” Annabel put in. She curled back in the chair, watching as Griselda snuggled a sleepy Samuel.
“I can’t go to a hotel,” Griselda half whispered, looking appalled.
“Where did you meet your other indiscretions?”
“I was living in my own town house, of course.”
“Has chaperoning us put a damper on your personal life?”
“Oh, no! It’s been wonderful. Before you girls appeared, and Rafe asked me to chaperone you, my life was…quite silly, I’m afraid. It has been eye-opening, to say the least, to see three of you fall in love. And I’m quite sure Josie will find the right person as well.”
“Do you have anyone in mind to marry?”
Griselda shook her head. “I fully intend to take the matter seriously in hand, after…” Her voice trailed off.
“After one last unmarried indiscretion!” Annabel said, giggling madly.
“Hush! You make me feel like the veriest light-skirt,” Griselda said.
“Wait! I think I know who Darlington is! Does he have blond hair and hollowed cheekbones—a rather madly dissolute look? Griselda!” Griselda was looking distinctly guilty, so Annabel laughed so hard she almost choked. “You’re right. The man is utterly delicious—and completely off-bounds. Just the person to meet in Grillon’s Hotel.”
14
From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the Fourteenth
By now, Dear Reader, my limbs were yet young, but my sensual appetites were growing tired and old. I began to thirst for something I could find in no place, a tenderer and sweeter emotion than I had known so far. But alas, I was not to find it…instead, a young lady whom I shall term Helena…have you discovered my foibles yet, Dear Reader? Do you know why I name these ladies as I do?
Eliot Governor Thurman had been having a difficult week. Neither Darlington, Wisley, nor Berwick had appeared at the Convent, though he waited there until two in the morning. In one blow, he’d lost all three of the people he counted his friends.
There’d been others at the Convent whom he had believed to be friends, but when Darlington didn’t appear, they gave him their shoulder. By midnight he was well aware that without Darlington’s comments, and Berwick’s wit, and Wisley’s acid little nods, he was worthless. To these supposed friends, he’d been nothing more than an open purse.
With all his heart he hoped that Darlington wouldn’t find a wife. Who’d want him? Penniless and sharp-tongued as they come.
He was wandering disconsolately around his rooms, wondering if invitations would stop, once it was clear that he was no longer part of the entourage surrounding Darlington. He couldn’t give up the life of the ton now. A ball would have no flavor if he was not around Darlington. Part of the most exciting gossip in the room.
He kept drifting from room to room, wondering what to do with himself. It had been miserable at the Convent. He wasn’t a man who hungered for silence or private thought. He wanted to roar with laughter, thump the table, and order another round that he would gladly pay for.
Finally he decided that he had to go to Lady Mucklowe’s ball on the morrow. Darlington would be there. He couldn’t stay at home and have Darlington think that his feelings were hurt. No, he would go to Mucklowe’s ball and—he fingered his cravat in the mirror over his mantelpiece—he would go to Mucklowe’s ball and he would find the Scottish Sausage.
/> She was the reason why Darlington had dropped him. She was the reason Darlington had started thinking about morality and didn’t want the comfort of the Convent anymore.
He wouldn’t do it so as to tell Darlington later either. He’d do it for himself, because he was just as clever as Darlington ever was. In fact, maybe he’d do something really witty, like make the Sausage think that he was courting her. As if he would ever do such a revolting thing. But he could trick her into it with a few compliments. Maybe he’d even kiss her, so that she would look at him with stars in her eyes, thinking that a man of substance had finally decided to court her. And then he’d spurn her. And finally he’d go to the Convent and gather his own group of friends, tell them what he’d done and how funny it was.
He could see her plump cheeks right now, quivering with the pleasure of his kiss.
Perhaps he could find her in Hyde Park, and start his courtship now.
“Cooper!” he howled.
His man came running out of his bedchamber.
“I’m going to the park. Order my carriage; I’ll wear the puce waistcoat. With the sage-colored costume.”
Cooper opened his mouth but caught his master’s eye. Thurman was in no mood to be told what colors did and didn’t go together. Darlington dressed with a casual flair and often put together colors that weren’t as conservative as Cooper’s choices. Now that he, Thurman, was going to be a leader of the ton, he must needs develop a style of his own.
It wasn’t until Thurman was knotting a cravat with a casual violence that crushed most of the starch that he realized precisely what he meant to do.
He meant to be the new Darlington.
Darlington had retired, suffered a change of heart, turned pansy, weak-kneed, however one wanted to say it.
He, Thurman, hadn’t lost his nerve, and he never would. He’d been standing in Darlington’s shadow so long that people didn’t realize that he could be just as clever, if he wished. That was clear at the Convent last night. They thought no one but Darlington had a witty comment to make.