CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Why would I offer for a horse,” Pierpont began, “who, despite all efforts and breeding to the contrary, could barely eke out one victory on home terrain? Tenneby’s aging stallion is an object of pity in the stable yard, and one does so hate to see a proud man made a fool of. Epsom three years ago was bad enough, but really, Tenneby, you need to sell that horse and get what you can for him.”
“Sell him to you?” Tenneby asked.
“I would take him off your hands, provided the transaction was handled discreetly. One doesn’t want to be known as a bleeding heart in this business. I’m sure you understand.”
I gave Pierpont credit for steady nerves, but then, a man whose fortunes were built on chicanery needed a criminal’s brand of fortitude.
“One doesn’t want to be known as a cheat either,” I said, “and you deserve that reputation many times over.”
Pierpont studied his manicured nails, then aimed a pitying look at me. “ One hears that you do not deal well with excessive heat, Caldicott. One hears that Spain robbed you of your wits and, clearly, your common sense too. Perhaps you’d like to retract that last, nigh laughable accusation?”
“I’d rather back it up with facts. The horses at this meeting who have inexplicably lost their wind just short of the finish line exhibit the very symptoms of equines deprived of water. They make a fine start, run hard, and hit the end of their tethers just short of victory. Caleb Bean agrees with my deductions, and I’ve offered to demonstrate the technique for Tenneby—for the whole meeting—if necessary.”
Pierpont crossed his legs at the knee, which a gentleman wasn’t supposed to do before ladies in proper company.
“An imaginative conjecture, I grant you. I especially like the appeal to the stalwart blacksmith, but I run mares, Caldicott, and but for Minerva’s victory, the distaff have been unaffected by this lack of wind. Minerva was the second favorite, after all.”
“You tampered with Juliet,” Miss Tenneby said. “Your grooms did, rather. Probably a little test of the terrain and a sort of joke, on the whole meeting, to put some needed cash in your pockets. Even a cheater needs stakes money. By the time the fillies ran, your Hercules had convinced the other grooms to cooperate with his leading-horses-to-water scheme. The drought has been a godsend for your ambitions, my lord, but you weren’t clever enough.”
“My dear,”—Pierpont smiled with exquisite condescension—“at the risk of appearing ungentlemanly, might you not be viewing the situation from the perspective of—one hesitates, but must be firm in all matters of reputation—a woman scorned?”
Evelyn beamed back at him. “More like a woman who feels pity for a bumbler and doesn’t want to see him hanged.”
Pierpont rose abruptly. “I refuse to listen to such pure nonsense. The Tenneby family is on the brink of ruin, and wild accusations such as that will only hasten their downfall. I must in all good faith caution you lot to hold your tongues lest there be repercussions you regret. I’ve been more than tolerant, but this clumsy attempt to ambush me is at an end.”
He was fortunate that the ladies were not in possession of their parasols.
“Pierpont, sit down,” I said. “The particulars are as follows: You buy only fillies, claiming they keep their value after their racing careers because they can become broodmares. You buy the best bloodlines you can afford, and your reasoning makes sense up to a point.”
“Of course it makes sense.” He sat. “I am nobody’s fool.”
Anybody could become a fool for love. “Beyond that point, it’s very odd thinking. The fillies’ purses are smaller than the colts’, and yet, the females cost just as much to house, train, and feed as their brothers. Then too, the fillies have no hope of becoming broodmares without the cooperation of a first-rate stud to service them. Ladies, my apologies for blunt speech.”
“None needed,” Evelyn snapped. “You were after the colts, Pierpont. You fixed races that made Golden Sovereign, Dasher, Blinken, and Excalibur all perform poorly. Excalibur and Dasher pulled out victories, but not the easy wins they deserved. Your next move would have been to make pity offers on the disgraced colts, all of whom are also descended from Thoroughbred royalty.”
“Three or four years from now,”—I took up the narrative—“you’d have the most impressive crop of youngsters in the realm, a fortune in horseflesh, just like old Richard Tattersall made with his Highflyer and the daughters of Eclipse.”
Pierpont’s mouth opened, then closed.
“Don’t make it worse,” the old earl put in. “I know your papa, you scurrilous young jackanapes, and he’ll be none too pleased to hear of this.”
For the first time, Pierpont’s lordly demeanor faltered. “You’d carry tales supported by nothing more than conjecture and coincidence?”
Enough of this. “Sir Albertus’s groom allowed Dasher a protracted drink of water—which the horse was desperate to have—the morning before the race, which is how Dasher snatched victory from the jaws of your scheme. Excalibur outran your villainy on the strength of sheer determination. The stronger case comes from the flowers, Pierpont.”
He glowered at me. “What flowers? I’ve not sent anybody flowers.”
“The flowers,” Tenneby said, “that Evelyn insisted we set out to decorate the stable yard. The tulips in my stable colors. On the fillies’ side, the flowers are wilting and dying. The grooms and gardeners were all given orders to conserve what water we have for the household and the horses. All of the stable yard flowers should have been casualties of the drought.”
Pierpont was on his feet again. “What has that to do—?”
Tenneby mustered an expression that even I found intimidating. Thunderous, righteous, and very, very determined. Pierpont sank back into his chair.
“On the colts’ side,” Tenneby went on, “the flowers are doing much better. Why? Because your grooms, in addition to not watering those colts at the river as they agreed to do, dumped out the buckets hung in those stalls for the horses to drink from through the night. Any one of those gallant young equines could have expired in an agony of colic thanks to you, Pierpont. I am certain that, if questioned, your grooms will admit to the orders you forced upon them.”
“They won’t have to,” I said. “My tiger was dispatched to follow Hercules on this morning’s watering rounds. Atticus will confirm that Hercules led Sovereign Remedy away from the stable yard, but stopped short of the river without allowing the horse to drink. Remedy is scheduled to run for considerable money tomorrow.”
“That is…” Pierpont shot his cuffs. “That is Hercules’s affair and nothing to do with me. Grooms are prone to jealousies, and…”
I let him run out of puff, as it were.
“I have committed no crime,” he said at length. “Betting on the horses is a matter of honor. No court would convict me of anything based on these, these… spiteful conjectures. I will take my mares and leave, and this is the last you will ever see of me at one of your slipshod private meetings, Tenneby. I wish you the best, but fear you and your stables will be very poorly received at any competition worth the name.”
Threats. Pierpont was going down swinging.
“Pierpont,” I said, “I will explain the whole of your very bad behavior to every owner at this meeting unless you cease denying the obvious. The flowers don’t lie. I doubt Hercules will lie for you. He’s a horseman at heart, and what you’ve asked of him goes against the grain of his very soul.”
The threat of exposure to his titled father had bothered him, but the thought of revealing his unscrupulousness to his racing cronies caused Pierpont to go pale.
“Very unsporting of you, my lord, and your own reputation among the other guests is less than pristine. Far less. For your own sake, you must not spread such vicious rumors. I could easily point a finger at Tenneby too. He’s bleated for three straight years that he was cheated at Epsom, and if that’s not a motive to throw his own race meeting, nothing is. I suggest you exercise great caution.”
I would exercise caution, but not in the direction of Pierpont’s choosing. Before I could embellish further, Hyperia rose.
“I’ve heard enough,” she said. “Lord Pierpont, if you have any sense, you will resolve this matter to Lord Julian’s satisfaction. Do that, and I will forget the entirety of this discussion. Perhaps the rest of the company will join me on the terrace for a glass of punch? Lord Temmington, you must come too. You’ve been least in sight for too long, and I’m sure you have stories from past meetings that the guests would love to hear.”
Every inch the duchess, that was my Perry. The room cleared. The footman stepped out into the corridor and closed the door, leaving me alone with Pierpont.
Time for the gallop to the finish, and I did not intend to lose to a cheating scoundrel.
* * *
“The quality of fillies you’ve purchased come dear,” I said. “As a fourth son, one without a wife or independent wealth, you needed means to acquire your future broodmares. Fixing races provided you those means. Don’t bother to deny it.”
“I haven’t admitted anything.”
Stubborn, which would serve him no longer. “You won’t have to. The facts already stated convict you. Your grooms graciously inveigled the whole meeting into their cooperative schedule for watering horses. You grew too ambitious, Pierpont. At Epsom, probably at half the courses where your mares competed, you simply had Hercules step into some promising favorite’s stall and dump out the water bucket two or three times prior to that horse’s scheduled races. Hercules is well-liked and a familiar sight. If asked, he could say he was kindly refilling the bucket, not emptying it.”
Pierpont went to the sideboard and helped himself to a brandy. “You can’t prove that.”
“You can’t disprove it. Tenneby was probably your first big swindle. He was cheated out of twenty-eight thousand pounds, money he very much needed, that should have been won by a colt the likes of which England hasn’t seen in years. The next Herod or Highflyer, maybe the next Eclipse, but you sent Excalibur back to Berkshire in disgrace.”
“Every horse has an off day.”
“Pierpont, I will tell Wickley . You even turned your dastardly machinations against him, and then you had the nerve, the absolute gall, to throw accusations of unrequited love at Miss Tenneby.”
The hand holding Pierpont’s drink began to tremble. He set the glass down without tasting the brandy. “I beg your pardon.”
“For the esteem in which you hold Lord Wickley, you should not have to beg anything of anybody, but for the damage you have done to countless good horses and honest owners, you should be covered in shame.”
He braced a hand on the sideboard as if assailed by a paroxysm.
“The race is over, Pierpont. Give it up. Your personal life is private, but the cheating has come to an end.”
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. Then another. From the terrace below, laughter floated up—Wickley’s distinctive merriment—and the murmur of friendly conversations. The sound seemed to penetrate Pierpont’s awareness as all my admonitions had not.
“You cannot say a word. Caldicott, it’s worth my life. I beg you, be silent.”
He was contemptible in his self-pity and arrogance. A creeping, posturing, lying insult to the racing fraternity, a scoundrel and a swindler, et cetera and so forth.
He was also a man with a broken heart and no hope, no sliver of a miraculous possibility, that he would ever see that heart healed. His brothers with their burgeoning nurseries and cheerful Society marriages had what Pierpont never would and couldn’t even bring himself to want. Wickley, in all his golden, lordly strutting and bumbling, would never know the blows he’d dealt Pierpont under the guise of either rivalry or casual bonhomie.
“Tenneby is decent to his bones,” I said. “Miss Evelyn wants her family’s fortunes restored, though you had best give her a wide berth going forward. She proposes the following resolution: You will pay for Excalibur’s stud services and pay handsomely. You will send the first three foals to Tenneby when they are ready for training and sign them over to Miss Tenneby.”
He nodded, took a shaky sip, and nodded again. “I can do that.”
“You will bet heavily against Excalibur in the final race. The details I leave to you and Tenneby. He isn’t looking for the full twenty-eight thousand pounds with interest, but you stole a fortune from him and knew that he’d never be able to hold you accountable. Worse yet, you put his reputation at risk when you know him to be a man above reproach.”
“I don’t have… That is… I’ll need some time.”
“You will need to sell off some of your mares, once they are in foal to Excalibur, just as you planned to do, but only with Tenneby’s prior permission. The majority of the proceeds will go toward the wagering debt you incur at this meeting.”
“You assume Excalibur will win?”
“We both know he will if he’s allowed to run a fair race. Otherwise, what was this whole debacle in aid of?”
Pierpont sipped his drink again, his hand steady. “I didn’t really want Blinken or Dasher, but Sir Albertus does get on one’s nerves. I contented myself with disgracing Juliet. Won a tidy sum. I would have been content with Golden Sovereign or Sovereign Remedy. They aren’t quite in Excalibur’s class, nobody is, but they belonged to him . My allowance stops when I turn thirty, and I have only a few more years to establish myself. The horses take every groat I have, but Wickley is turf mad, ergo… The plan seemed so sensible when I first concocted it, and it would have worked splendidly in another few years.”
The racing obsession would have provided the bond, however competitive, that was better than nothing, and the scheming would have provided the means to continue racing.
“Does Wickley suspect you of holding him in particular regard?”
Pierpont shook his head. “Of course not. He’d be horrified. You doubtless are too.”
“A ruthless cheat is a horrifying prospect, but where your affections lie is your business. I told the others that I was certain I could bring you around to atoning for the harm you’ve caused—some of the harm. I did not tell them how I would convince you to see reason.”
“You will hold your tongue?”
This was what Arthur faced every waking day. Anybody who knew the true nature of his love for Banter could see him disgraced and hanged.
I could do better than simply holding my tongue. “You have my word that should anybody within my hearing speculate on the nature of your regard for Wickley, I will dismiss their dangerous and unkind gossip with all the lordly disdain I can muster, which is considerable when I’m in good form.”
He nodded again. “One appreciates… That is to say, you have my thanks.”
“None needed. Try to show the colors at lunch, and go easy on the brandy. You face a gauntlet of your own making. Should I ever hear that you’re up to your old tricks, or that you’re not keeping the bargain with Tenneby, I shall wax eloquent about courtesy lords who cheat at the races.”
“I understand.” He finished his drink. “How did you know, Caldicott? I’ve been endlessly discreet. That is, I’ve never even hinted… but you knew.”
“I suspected. Up on the Downs, you didn’t watch your own horses on the gallops. You did not watch your competitors’ mares. You watched only Wickley. You have a fine pair of field glasses and you kept them trained on Wickley.”
Pierpont nodded. “But that was only a suspicion.”
“Nobody else took note of your behavior, Pierpont. You needn’t worry. Wickley’s laughter is meant to attract notice, after all. My suspicion bloomed into a hunch when I recalled that you had approached me about keeping my eye on Wickley. You didn’t quite point a finger at him—you in fact described him as honorable—but you hoped that I might be distracted from watching you.”
A cleverly timed ploy, given the opening set-to between Paddy Denton and Josiah Woglemuth, and Wickley’s possible involvement in it.
“You watched me anyway, damn the luck.”
“I considered what I knew of you, and it was ancient history that confirmed my theory. Three years ago, you purposely caught Miss Tenneby’s eye. Her brother was not yet the heir, such that she’d have been considered an acceptable match for a marquess’s son. You had already devised a scheme for ensuring that Excalibur was disgraced, and you had any number of informants among the racing set. You did not need to winkle any of Tenneby’s racing secrets from her. You had no apparent reason to pretend to court the lady.”
“Except,” Pierpont said, “that Wickley was taken with her. Evelyn knows all about racing, she wouldn’t mind a few rough edges on a newly fledged peer, and she is clever. Wickley adores cleverness.”
“To be quite blunt, you did not want to lose Wickley to Miss Tenneby. She might have discouraged his rivalry with you, or worse, seen the situation for what it was. She is clever, but she’s also kind. She has proposed a solution that allows you to survive with your reputation and your racing stable intact, and that should matter to you.”
I resisted the urge to sermonize on the point.
“I will offer her a sincere and overdue apology. You have the right of it. I was not thinking clearly, and… I expected him to fight for her. He truly is mad for the turf.”
Easier perhaps, to lose the contest to a lot of galloping horses than to a clever lady or unkind fate.
“Which means as long as you run your mares, you and he will cross paths.” Would that be consolation or torment? None of my business.
“So we will.” Pierpont stuck out a hand. “You’ve been spectacularly decent, Caldicott.”
I did not want to shake. He was a swindler and a thief. He’d put horses and jockeys at risk of death for his financial gain. He was selfish and nasty and a thousand other contemptible things.
He was also a man cheated in love and so very, very lonely. Given his standing in Society and his abruptly reduced financial prospects, he likely always would be.
I shook, we bowed briefly, and I absented myself, leaving him to the dubious consolation of Lord Temmington’s brandy and—call me a fool—an unburdened conscience.
* * *
Twelve hours of steady, pattering rain pushed the next set of races back a day, to give the ground time to absorb the moisture. The old earl had made that suggestion, and the owners had been too polite to gainsay him. Since leaving his apartment at Hyperia’s insistence, he’d hardly returned to it. Wickley in particular wanted to hear every tale, myth, and memory Temmington had from his racing days, and Miss Evelyn goaded her uncle shamelessly to share them all.
In the stable yard, Woglemuth had declared that, given the rain, grooms would resume taking their own horses, and only their own horses, down to the river for watering, lest a tendon sprained on the muddy riverbank become an excuse for brawling.
His proclamation was met with an odd sort of relief, suggesting that at least some suspicions had been swirling over Hercules’s cooperative watering schedule.
The horses were thus given time to recover from any tampering, and Tenneby and Pierpont had an interval during which to agree on the specifics of reparation.
I left them to it. I’d successfully completed my mission, my intended strolled at my side, and the only lingering issue was the match race St. George was about to run on this lovely spring morning.
“You brought up Wickley?” Hyperia asked as we passed the viewing pavilion.
“I might have mentioned that Wickley would be especially disappointed to learn of Pierpont’s scheming.”
She nodded to Miss Evelyn, who had said earl firmly by the arm some yards away. “That must have been an awkward exchange.”
Hyperia and I had not discussed this aspect of the situation privately. I’d given Pierpont my word, and I intended to keep it.
“The confrontation as a whole seemed to come as a relief to Pierpont. He’d probably begun his mischief out of a younger son’s need for some quick cash and realized he’d happened onto a means of establishing himself among the racing brethren, where he dearly longed to be. He became more ambitious the longer he kept at it, though all the while, he knew better. He’s not a scoundrel at heart, and now he will mend his ways.”
We walked along among the crowd on the viewing hill, the mood around us cheerful in part thanks to the rain and in part thanks to a plan announced by Pierpont and Tenneby to partner in the broodmare venture. Excalibur’s spectacular win the previous day had occasioned vociferous congratulations to both and protracted discussions between Tenneby and several other owners.
Including the Earl of Wickley.
“Wickley will offer for Miss Tenneby,” Hyperia said. “He told me so, but he doesn’t think it appropriate to ask a lady’s permission to pay her his addresses at a race meet.”
“Miss Evelyn might view the matter differently.”
“Jules?”
“Hmm?” The horses were at the starting line, which at this early hour was still in shade, as was much of the course. St. George was on his mettle, and well he should be. The match race had attracted other entries, given the cooler early hour, and the wagering was fierce.
“Even if George loses, we will still be engaged.”
“Utterly correct, Miss West.” But what was she implying?
“You meant it when you said that your devotion to me does not rest on marriage vows now or ever.”
“Truer words and all that. Healy looks nervous. I find that encouraging.” I kept my tone light, though I wished the crowd around us to perdition and longed to take Hyperia’s hand.
“Well, my devotion to you should not rest on having settlements, and while I’m on the subject, I have no right to demand that you share your memories or nightmares or imaginings with me. I was wrong to insist, and I’m sorry for presuming.”
I did take her hand—to blazes with the milling crowd. They should all be watching the start anyway.
“You were not wrong to ask, Perry. You were not wrong to inform me that you felt rejected and belittled by the way I guarded my privacy. I was not wrong to need that privacy, just as your desire to manage Healy without creating any fuss wasn’t wrong either. If we are truly devoted, we will have failed missions. We will consult inaccurate maps. We will make fallacious assumptions. But we’ll discuss our difficulties like the allies we are. Agreed?”
She squeezed my hand. “Agreed. I do hope George wins, for Healy’s sake.”
She smiled up at me, and I was helpless not to smile at her like the most fatuous, besotted, hopeless gudgeon ever to make sheep’s eyes at his beloved.
“With respect to Healy…” I put Hyperia’s hand on my arm and resumed our progress.
“Julian?”
“I hedged my bets.”
“But you aren’t wagering.”
“Not on the horses. I mentioned to Healy that I knew what he was about, buying a racehorse, bumbling his way into a private meeting. I suggested that his next play will be a satire set in the racing world and that this whole outing was undertaken by him in the way of researching his topic.”
“A play? A stage play? About racing?”
“He seemed to like the notion. He went off muttering and rubbing his chin, and I saw him an hour later scribbling furiously in the library, cuffs turned back, a full tea tray sitting ignored at his elbow.”
“He was still there last night. I went down to return a book, and he didn’t even look up when I walked in. Julian, I love you, and sometimes I also adore you.”
What did a fellow say to that? I patted her hand. “Then I have work to do. Nothing less than constant adoration shall become my fixed goal.”
She discreetly elbowed me in the ribs, and all the joy in the universe filled my heart.
The horses ran splendidly. St. George beat the lot by five easy and excessively lucrative lengths. In the general applause that greeted the victor, I kissed my beloved, and she kissed me right back.
Healy won a considerable fortune. Tenneby was beaming more brightly than the sun. Wickley sauntered about in a besotted daze, and Miss Evelyn exuded great good cheer. But the true winner at that long, hot, difficult race meeting was my humble self. The investigation had been successful, and more significantly, Hyperia and I were firmly in each other’s good graces.
All that mattered was right with my world.
And as it happened, Healy’s play was hilarious and quite successful. My next investigation was far from hilarious—felony crimes seldom are—and, for most of the undertaking, I and my cohorts were far from successful.
But that is a tale for another time!