Unbefitting a Lady Page 16

  Giles pulled open the narrow top drawer of his desk and pulled out a letter that had come just that morning from Harry. It was short and had been written in haste. Harry’s excitement was nearly as palpable as the air of mystery. Harry had discovered something. He didn’t say what it was, or perhaps he couldn’t say. But the hint was there. The muddied waters surrounding Jamie’s death were clearing. Harry was getting closer to something.

  He wished he could be there when Harry found the answers, and Harry would find them. Harry was thorough and meticulous. He would leave no lead unexplored. And when he had his answers, Harry would exact justice if there was any to be had. Growing up, Harry had worshipped Jamie, they both had. Giles had been just young enough to look up to his brother and just old enough to be his constant companion. He’d never had to follow at a distance like young Harry.

  Those had been heady days, striding around Castonbury like young gods. He had a hundred pictures in his head of Jamie, hands in pockets, wind blowing his hair back as he strode across the fields so confident, so immortal, so sure in his knowledge that one day all this would be his.

  Giles rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Neither of them had ever guessed Castonbury would skip Jamie and come straight to him. Neither of them had wanted that. If Jamie walked through the door right now he’d hand it all back. Lord, he’d give anything for Jamie to walk through that door.

  Giles shook his head. Such imaginings were not worthy of a grown man. They were weak and fanciful. Yet he couldn’t help thinking how different things would have been if Jamie had come home. Maybe Kate would still have married Virgil. Maybe Phaedra would still have run off with her blasted horse. But Father would still be in his right mind instead of withdrawing into the past and ‘better days.’ And maybe you would not have discovered Lily, his conscience scolded mercilessly. Be careful what you wish for.

  Yet he couldn’t help but wonder if things would have been different, better, if Jamie had come home. Edward too, his conscience railed again. Edward and Phaedra had been close as the two youngest. Perhaps Edward would have tempered her wildness...or aided it. Giles chuckled at the idea. Edward had been the angel-boy when it had come to looks but he’d been wilder than all of them. No doubt, Edward would be with Phaedra right now, traipsing across the country to race that colt and thinking it was a jolly lark to run away from home. He’d have loved Phaedra’s new horse travelling cart.

  It would have been good to have Edward with her, better than Bram Basingstoke, although what Phaedra really needed was him, Giles, and his voice of reason to weigh against her recklessness. But he could no more be with Phaedra than with Harry, no matter how much he wished it.

  He could not leave Castonbury. It would mean leaving Father and who knew what kind of trouble he and that mincing valet of his, Smithins, would get up to if left unwatched. It meant leaving Alicia unsupervised, a thought that sat poorly with him.

  To add to his pile of wishes, he wished he felt more comfortable about her claim to be Jamie’s wife. In truth, it was Jamie’s action in the whole bit that didn’t ring true. Jamie knew he had to marry better than her. But Giles also knew better than anyone the kind of things being on a battlefront could do to a man, the types of feelings it could engender. Jamie would have not been immune and perhaps he’d been less prepared for those emotions than a man who’d been taught to expect life in the military.

  Giles glanced down again at Harry’s cryptic note. Short, terse, mysterious, it hardly seemed worth the effort to frank it all the way from Spain with such vague references. But it was the last line he wanted to read over and over, the last line that kept him here, another reason he could not go hunting Phaedra.

  Dear brother, there is hope. I will not stop until I’ve exhausted it all.

  Hope for what? That a body had been recovered so funds could be released? Hope that Jamie had had a decent burial, after all? That he wasn’t mouldering at the bottom of the Bidasoa? That Harry had incontrovertible proof about the legitimacy of Alicia’s marriage so that the family could go forward in certainty about the future of the dukedom?

  Or the wildest hope of all that there had been some mistake, that Jamie hadn’t drowned that fateful day on the river? Such a hope was sheer madness and Giles pushed it away. No one thought that any more. Too much time had passed and Jamie would never have let them languish in grief-ridden suspense this long, nor would Jamie have forsaken his wife and child, if that’s what they were.

  Giles pushed back from the desk. He had to get out of this room. He wouldn’t get any work done at this rate. He’d saddle up Genghis and ride out to see Lily. When he’d proposed a proper, long engagement, he’d never dreamed it would seem this long. He should have married her last summer and been done with it. He could hardly wait to have her with him all day, every day, even if it was simply to look across a room and know she was there.

  * * *

  ‘It’s official. She’s not here, damn it all.’ Sir Nathan drained the last of his glass and set it down on the table beside him with a thud. ‘My sources tell me Lord Bramford was back at Castonbury today, without her.’ He had reasoned the pair of them would be together. It would have made it easier to extract his due revenge for the ball if they had been.

  Across from him, splayed out in a chair and still nursing a discoloured jaw, Hugh Webster perked up. ‘At least we can get Lord Bramford.’ Hugh rubbed the side of his face. ‘He packs a helluva wallop.’

  ‘I know,’ Sir Nathan replied drily. ‘But it can’t be obvious. We’ll look guilty if anything happens too close to home.’ Subtlety wasn’t Hugh Webster’s strong suit when it came to revenge, although the fellow was plenty crafty.

  It was down to revenge now. There was no sense trying to be discreet. Phaedra wouldn’t marry him, short of being dragged to the altar by her hair. While that created a rousing fantasy, the actuality of such an event seemed unlikely.

  Webster was grinning. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Going after the colt. She’ll learn she can’t mess with me and not pay. A little nobbling would be just the thing to teach that lesson. The only thing now is tracking her down.’

  Hugh chuckled. ‘How hard can it be to find a woman and a horse travelling with that odd contraption of hers? I know a couple fellows in the village who would be up for it.’

  ‘Perfect. If anything goes wrong, we can blame them. The Montagues will never be able to officially trace anything back to us, even if the fellows squeal.’ Nathan refilled his glass.

  Hugh raised his glass meaningfully. ‘It’s time for revenge.’

  ‘Past time.’ The Montagues were about to get what was coming to them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epsom, four days before the Derby

  Phaedra anxiously studied the mantel clock in the private parlour of the Waterloo Inn, ticking away the hours of the early afternoon. It was hard to conduct interviews if there was no one to actually interview. She fought back the urge to go to the window and stare out into the courtyard or go to the door and scan up and down the corridor for potential candidates.

  Someone had to come. Surely someone would claim the right to ride Warbourne. She had not travelled this far to fail days before the race simply because she didn’t have a rider. This was Epsom at the height of spring racing. It wasn’t as if riders were thin on the ground.

  The former spa town was already abuzz with race day business. She’d snagged the last room at the popular Waterloo Inn on the High Street, the remaining rooms claimed by other owners who’d made the week-long journey from Newmarket to Epsom after the recently run Two Thousand Guineas Stakes. The stakes winner, Manfred, was already here munching hay in the stall two down from Warbourne. His owner, Scott Stonehewer, was down the hall in the public room playing an afternoon game of cards while his star colt rested.

  The innkeeper bustled in and Phaedra’s hopes began to rise. ‘There’s someone here to see you, Lady Phaedra.’ He bowed respectfully, doing his best not to give any sign
he thought her behavior out of the ordinary. It might be because he was discreetly diplomatic, knowing all coin was worth the same value no matter who it came from and Phaedra had been sure to pay him well. Or because this was Epsom, a town that owed its survival to the thoroughbred racing industry and the reality that standard gender roles were somewhat suspended for a week in May when the country caught Derby fever.

  Phaedra smiled, letting relief fill her. ‘Send him in, please.’ Someone had come, after all.

  Phaedra sat up straight, plucked at the bodice of her blue muslin day dress to make sure all was respectable, folded her hands in her lap and was immediately at a loss for words.

  ‘Hello, Phaedra.’ The caller was no rider at all, but Bram Basingstoke in the immaculate flesh, looking entirely too handsome for his own good as he leaned in the doorway, dressed in buff riding breeches, a dark jacket and high boots.

  She’d thought she’d dealt with her feelings for Bram during the long journey to Epsom. There’d been little else to do during the days on the road. Apparently not.

  He’d deceived her, played her for a fool all for the sake of a little sport and the consequences for her had been tremendous. She was supposed to pay for his indiscretion with marriage. If she didn’t pay with marriage, she’d pay with scandal. It was only a matter of time. She knew she was lucky news of the situation hadn’t drifted down to Epsom just yet.

  It would have been better if he’d remained an anonymous groom. Marriage would have been impossible. It would have been best for it to remain so. There would have been no hurt feelings, no overt rejection, just a whimsical impossibility. Being the son of an earl made it so much worse, because the impossible became possible and she had been rejected.

  Bram stood there unfazed. If the same thoughts plagued him, he gave no sign of it. ‘I heard all the best horses were in town and thought I’d stop by to see if it was true.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true, as you can see.’ She wished for an ounce of his sangfroid. It took all her effort to keep her voice calm, as if seeing him again didn’t conjure up a host of feelings. She was still overwhelmed by the sheer masculine potency of him, the way he owned a room simply by walking in it, the way he could garner her best affections just by looking at her and use them against her. She couldn’t forget that last part.

  The Derby was days away. She didn’t have time for whatever Bram wanted. She had to find a rider. Bram pushed off the door jamb with his customary ease, took a seat in the upholstered chair across from her and crossed his legs. If she was smart, she would not let him settle in for a long stay.

  ‘I am glad you dropped by but you have to go. I am interviewing riders.’ She couldn’t very well conduct interviews with him hovering nearby for a lot of reasons, not the least being the havoc he wreaked on her ability to think clearly.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Bram didn’t move from his chair. ‘I heard. I tracked you down from the stables. I saw Warbourne, by the way. He looks good. Bevins told me you were staying here, alone?’ He raised his dark eyebrow in that annoyingly superior way of his when he found something suspect or displeasing.

  ‘Yes, most of the owners are staying here,’ Phaedra said sharply. She didn’t have to defend her choice to him. The Waterloo was perfectly respectable. ‘If you’ll excuse me?’

  Bram gave her a soft smile that was more alarming than his wolfish grin, the one he used right before he kissed her. ‘Face facts, Phaedra. No one’s coming.’

  She didn’t need to look at the clock to know he spoke the truth but she wouldn’t show her disappointment to him, the man who thought he knew everything about horses, about her. She pasted on a smile. ‘Did you poison the well? I shall have to raise my price. Thanks to the stud fees, I can do that.’

  For once Bram didn’t rise to the bait of an argument. He shook his head and Phaedra braced herself for the worst. ‘It won’t matter how much you pay. Everyone knows Warbourne’s a risky horse to ride. No one’s going to bet their literal necks he’s worked out his problems.’ Bram paused, a little debate warring in his eyes as he studied her.

  ‘Go on,’ Phaedra urged. If there was more, it would be best she knew it.

  ‘Well, and the fact you’re a woman. You have to admit, it’s a deuced unlikely pairing. A risky colt tamed by a woman no one’s heard of. I’m sorry, Phaedra.’

  Phaedra stood up and turned towards the window, away from Bram. She swiped at her eyes. The room must be dusty in spite of the meticulous housekeeper. She wouldn’t want Bram to misconstrue the tears for something else.

  ‘I’ll find a rider. I’ll find someone,’ Phaedra said resolutely.

  ‘Where? The race is four days away. Whoever he is, he has to have time to practise on Warbourne. You can’t just say you’ll find a rider, Phaedra.’

  She did not need to be reminded of that. ‘If you have nothing to contribute, I’d like you to leave.’ Phaedra stood up, dismissing him, and thankfully he went. She could get back to her lonely vigil.

  * * *

  Bram went only because he’d be back with a much-needed contribution. By virtue of her own words, she’d have to listen to him. She needed a rider and he would get her one. He would turn Epsom upside down if that’s what it took to get back into her good graces.

  Bram set off towards the stables, whistling a bit under his breath. The sun was out and spring had this part of England firmly in hand. He’d found Phaedra and the little minx had landed on her feet. The Waterloo was in a prime location on the high street, with close access to the downs and the morning exercise runs. For now, all was well in his world.

  He didn’t lie to himself that it would remain so. Sir Nathan Samuelson could show up and make trouble, someone could recognise him. Even if none of those things came to pass, he would have to reconcile his feelings for Phaedra in short order.

  He’d promised Giles to bring her home after the Derby. That meant four days. There would be travel time too, but he didn’t want to count on that in case he didn’t get back to good terms with her. That left the four days before the Derby—four days to figure out what had motivated him to follow her the length of the country, to protect her against Giles’s well-meant restrictions, to risk his own livelihood by breaking his agreement with his father. One did not do such things without a reason. He needed to know his. Once he knew that, he could decide what to do about it.

  He might be going insane, becoming a modern-day Don Quixote, years of hard living and womanising having taken their toll on him at last. Or Aphrodite might be taking her revenge for all the hearts he’d broken. He supposed it was not beyond the pale that he was falling in love. It stood to reason, when such a thing finally happened it would be with a woman out of his reach and Phaedra was definitely that. Why would she want a wastrel with no prospects when she could choose anyone?

  There was no pretending his father wouldn’t hear of this. All of London would flock to Epsom. There would go the allowance. That had been the deal. He had his wages from Castonbury but they wouldn’t sustain him for more than a few days in the style to which he was accustomed. Still, when it came down to it, disappointing Phaedra or disappointing his father, the choice was clear.

  It had been a certain torture to see her again. His heart had ached at the sight of her sitting at the Waterloo wrapped in her pride, her haughty chin up as if her own stubbornness could make a rider materialise. Well, she might not be able to do that. But he could.

  Bram chose to seek out Matt Somerset first. He found the rider whittling on a hay bale in the long barns overlooking the downs.

  ‘Basingstoke, good to see you.’ Matt Somerset shook his hand vigorously. ‘Where have you been?’ Barely reaching Bram’s shoulder, Matt Somerset had the build currently popular among hired racing riders—short, lean and wiry enough to hold a thousand pounds of speeding horse.

  ‘Up in Derbyshire. I had to get away after the business with Fenton.’ Bram had known Matt for three years. He didn’t mind confessing. Matt was a trustworthy man known for his integ
rity in a sport that sometimes had none. ‘I met a horse up there.’ Bram leaned on the fence overlooking the practise oval where some horses were taking their afternoon exercise.

  ‘A horse? Isn’t a woman more your style?’ Matt joked.

  ‘Well, maybe I met both.’ Bram smiled slyly, taking a well-intended elbow in the ribs from Matt. ‘Anyway, this horse is fast and he needs a rider.’

  ‘For what race?’

  ‘The Derby.’ That would either interest Matt or make him suspicious. Or maybe both. Matt’s keen brown eyes looked out over the track, giving nothing away.

  ‘What’s the horse? Some unknown, I suppose?’

  Bram shrugged. ‘Warbourne.’

  ‘Heaven help us.’ Matt shook his head. ‘So he ended up in the north, did he? With that pretty woman who’s been around the stables? Word on the street is that she can’t find a rider and with good reason. You do know that horse, don’t you?’

  Bram stood his ground. He knew that horse intimately after the past months. ‘I know that horse well enough. He threw Dick Handley last year at the two-year-old races in Newmarket and a slew of other riders too. But I’ve seen him this year. Lady Phaedra has the touch. He’s a different horse but just as fast.’

  ‘I don’t know, Basingstoke. I’ve already got a couple of races lined up that day.’ Matt began to prevaricate, that was a bad sign.

  ‘She’ll pay well and you can be the one everyone remembers. You’ll be the jockey who mastered Warbourne.’

  Matt chuckled. ‘He’s just a horse, Basingstoke. There’s a hundred more like him. No one will remember.’

  ‘Everyone remembers Derby winners.’ Bram dangled the proverbial carrot. ‘Lady Phaedra means to establish a stud afterwards. You can come along for the ride, quite literally in this case.’ Bram paused, letting his offer sink in. ‘It’s been a while since you’ve had a spotlighter, hasn’t it? What was it, two? No, three years ago you had that filly at the Oaks.’ Bram let his voice trail off with a sigh. ‘I need this, Matt. I need this favour, but we’d be kidding ourselves if we didn’t admit you needed it too. Warbourne can be your chance to show everyone you’re back.’