CHAPTER TWO
“A race meeting is like a grand party that goes on for days,” Atticus said, kicking his heels against the traveling coach’s backward-facing bench. “There’s races, and wagers, and drinking, and more wagers, and more races, and the fastest horses you ever did see. Eclipse could run better’n fifty miles an hour!”
I sent a reproving look toward my tiger’s boots, to no avail. “Not for any great distance, he couldn’t. Who has been filling your head with these tales?”
“Old Fergus and the grooms. Half of ’em was jockeys, or their brothers and uncles was jockeys. Fergus saw Eclipse beat Bucephalus at Newmarket. He were just a lad then—Fergus, not Eclipse. Said you never seen nothing like that horse and never will.”
The great Eclipse had been forced into retirement at stud because he had literally beaten all comers. Nobody would bet against him. His style of running had been peculiar—nose low—but he’d had both speed and the will to win. In the years since his death in 1789 at the age of twenty-four, his progeny had exhibited those same traits, though not in the glorious abundance their sire had known.
And now, my tiger, a mere lad, was being bamboozled with legends and fairy tales.
“Atticus, I’m glad the prospect of this meeting pleases you, but heed me: Racing is serious business. Huge sums are wagered, and exorbitant expenses go into maintaining a racing stable. I am attending at Tenneby’s request because he anticipates foul play. Keep your wits about you.”
The boy’s heels went mercifully still. “Foul play? Like tampering with the horses?”
“Possibly, or with the course, or with the stewards, or with God knows what. Tenneby doesn’t know why his horse ran so poorly three years ago. For all we know, it wasn’t even his colt on the course, but rather, another animal that closely resembled his, substituted at the last minute.”
Atticus’s mouth formed into a perfect O. “That’s bleedin’ cheating.”
“Language, lad. You will hear some virtuosic swearing at this gathering, but a gentleman minds his tongue.”
Atticus scowled, and I chided myself for raising a tender subject.
Atticus was not a gentleman. He was a boy of about nine or ten years whom I’d plucked from the staff of a Kentish manor to be my tiger. At the time, I’d had little use for a tiger, but my sensibilities had been offended by the neglect of a keen young mind. Atticus, who’d begun life in a London poorhouse, also had a feral sort of honor that I understood and trusted. He’d made himself useful in my investigations, though I was trying to coax him into spending more time on book learning and less time gossiping with the grooms.
“Fergus rode his first race when he were twelve,” Atticus said. “Boys don’t weigh much.”
No, no, no, and no. “And how old was Fergus when he broke his collarbone for the first time?”
Atticus gifted me with another scowl. “Jockeys are tough. A fall here or there doesn’t bother them.”
Boys were not tough, though society insisted they appear to be. “If anybody says he’ll pay you to ride a half-broken Thoroughbred youngster, you decline , Atticus. Tell them your unreasonable, blockheaded, clod-pated employer forbids it. I don’t care if you’re approached for a morning gallop, a canter on the Downs, or a match race.”
The scowl became a glower. “Why? You say I’m a natural in the saddle.”
I’d begun Atticus’s education by teaching him to ride, a skill many grooms acquired, but not all. From there, assisted by Hyperia, I’d embarked on the ongoing struggle to make the boy literate. His diction was also a work in progress, going half Cockney when he was excited or worried and turning up nearly proper when he was in more confident spirits.
“You are a natural equestrian, but today’s Thoroughbred is not a creature trained for a mannerly hack. Those who breed racehorses are interested in only one quality—speed. Your hero Eclipse had a dangerously foul temper, and that temper has been bred into many of his progeny, along with his speed. These horses are schooled from a young age to run their hearts out. You don’t steer them so much as you hang on for dear life and pray to cross the finish line this side of your celestial reward.”
Atticus pushed a mop of dark hair away from his eyes. “Fergus says there’s nothing like winning a hard race.”
Fergus was overdue for a very pointed lecture. He’d dazzled Harry and me with the same blather, leaving Arthur to explain the finer and more dangerous details of race riding to us.
“Ask Fergus why he limps, my boy. Ask him why he can predict foul weather by the throbbing in his shoulder. Ask him why, if being a jockey was the pinnacle of all his joys, he gave it up before he turned twenty.”
“Twenty is old.”
Ah, youth and the blessed ignorance attendant thereto. “He was tired of starving himself, Atticus, and of breaking bones so some rich toff could make a packet without taking any risks, while the jockey was left to limp home with a few quid in his pocket—when he could walk at all.” Fergus hadn’t admitted to that denouement until I’d been much older—nearly twenty myself.
“I could do it,” Atticus said, little chin jutting. “I could make it across the finish line and maybe even win. Fergus says it’s half luck and half skill—yours and the horse’s.”
I understood a child’s skepticism toward adult authority. From Atticus’s perspective, I was elderly (though not yet thirty years of age), prone to a profound type of intermittent forgetfulness, cursed with weak eyes, and out of favor with Society. What did I know about anything? I’d turned the very same distrust on most of my governesses, tutors, and teachers, until they’d proven their competence.
I could lecture Atticus, exhort, forbid, and threaten, but those tactics had never worked on me as a boy. They hadn’t worked on Atticus when I’d thought to leave him in the schoolroom during the investigation in Hampshire.
Instead, he’d disobeyed direct orders and stowed away on the baggage coach and then provided material assistance in my efforts to resolve the Marquess of Dalhousie’s difficulties.
Subtle tactics were in order.
“If you’d like to try riding racehorses, I’ll arrange for you to go along on some training gallops. You can rely on Fergus’s dubiously fond recollections, or you can make up your own mind. The choice is yours. Just know that anybody who hires you to ride won’t give a ruddy damn whether you break your head or lose a hand, while I do give a damn, as do Miss West, His Grace, and Lady Ophelia.”
The chin dipped. “You’d let me do practice gallops?”
He could ride, but he had no idea the degree of speed and power a fit Thoroughbred brought to the undertaking. “On the flat.”
He nodded, suggesting that even his overdeveloped equestrian confidence was daunted by the prospect of the enormous hedges, yawning ditches, muddy banks, and water hazards typical of any steeplechase course.
“Are we agreed, Atticus? You will tell me if you’d like to ride a few gallops, and I’ll arrange it, but you will not accept any rides offered by strangers.”
He nodded.
I stuck out my hand because I meant business, and I wanted him to know it. We shook, the first time that male ritual had been observed between us, and I—foolishly—felt marginally less fretful on his behalf. Atticus was brave but not reckless, proud but not arrogant. A few heart-pounding excursions—and maybe even a tumble or two onto spring grass—and he could weigh risks and rewards on the basis of firsthand evidence.
Though as to that, the fields in the surrounds of Tenneby’s estate looked sorely overdue for some rain.
As the coach turned between the gateposts of Tenneby’s family seat, I was already chastising myself for the bargain I’d struck with Atticus. I could ensure that he rode only on good ground, that the other training riders didn’t cut him off, use their whips on his face or on his horse. I could limit the risks so the practice gallops were only incrementally more dangerous than the risks he took every time he climbed into the saddle.
But Hyperia would hate the whole notion of letting a boy ride a Thoroughbred racer. Every day, in all sorts of weather, boys did exactly that at training stables, but Atticus was my boy to guide and protect. If anything happened to him, Hyperia would hold me responsible.
As I’d hold myself responsible.
“You’re looking glum, guv,” Atticus said. “Place seems pretty enough to me.”
The coach was navigating a sweeping turn of the drive doubtless intended to give visitors a lovely first impression of Tenneby Acres. The facade was uniform golden sandstone rising to three neoclassical stories, complete with pediment, frieze, and perfectly symmetrical front steps marching down from a wide front terrace.
Pots of yellow, white, and red tulips graced not only the terrace, but the first-floor window boxes. A bright green door as well as bright green shutters echoed the verdure of the surrounding park.
I was abruptly homesick for the Hall, a larger and more staid version of the same style. “Tenneby is blessed in his dwelling.”
“I hope he’s blessed in his kitchen too. I’m starving.”
“We follow the usual arrangement, Atticus. You dine in the servants’ hall and sleep in my dressing closet.” Safer for him that way.
“I can sleep in the footmen’s dormitory, guv, or bunk in with the grooms.” Said with a certain, calculated casualness. As an aspiring jockey, Atticus naturally expected himself to hold his own with the stable yard’s enlisted men. Thank heavens he did not aspire to a career in pugilism—yet.
“I have no doubt you would manage accommodations among the grooms splendidly and even turn them to good use when gathering intelligence, but how am I to obtain your reports, Atticus? If you attach yourself exclusively to the stable, my only excuse for crossing your path is to visit my horse. Atlas will spend most of the next two weeks loafing in a paddock. How will you communicate with me then?”
“We could meet in the carriage house.”
“And be overheard by every trysting couple ever to enjoy a liaison.”
Atticus looked to be considering the novel possibility that commodious coaches had a purpose other than travel. “That’s stupid.”
Awkward, certainly, and often stuffy. “You will content yourself with the cot in my dressing closet and exert yourself to look after my effects when you aren’t looking after Atlas. Miss West will be glad to know you’re keeping an eye on me.”
Low tactics again, to invoke Hyperia’s name, but effective tactics, as I well knew.
“Miss West will like to know how my reading is coming. I’m much better than I was.”
“Do us proud, lad, or she will have stern words for all concerned.”
The coach rolled to a halt, and the footman opened the door and let down the steps.
“Does Miss West know we’ll be here?” Atticus asked as I gathered up my top hat and gloves.
“I did try to alert her, but even if our presence is a surprise, I’m sure she’ll be exceedingly pleased to see us.” On that enormous bouncer, I stepped down from the coach.
As it happened, Hyperia emerged from the house in the next instant. With the instincts of a man very much in love, I grasped—from the swish of her skirts, from the quality of her stride—that my darling was anything but pleased to see me.
* * *
“Julian.” Hyperia curtseyed to a depth proper for greeting a duke’s son.
I bowed with similar punctilio. “Hyperia. A pleasure.” Mostly. She was in great good looks, the afternoon sun finding every fiery highlight in her chestnut hair, the spring breeze putting roses in her cheeks. That she’d come out of doors without a bonnet, though, was proof of singular agitation.
The undiscerning eye of Society considered my intended only passably pretty, and Hyperia worked hard to keep it so. She was shortish, curvy, and green-eyed—three strikes—and she chose demure fashions and subdued colors. Her hair was never tortured into the elaborate styles favored by Mayfair’s diamonds, and she was accomplished at flattery that avoided flirtation.
Hyperia hid the lights of her intelligence and beauty under every bushel basket, shawl, and bonnet available. She threatened no one and missed nothing. That she had consented to marry me, with all my quirks and flaws, went squarely into the category of too good to be true.
“I did not know you’d be here,” she said, coming straight to the point, another of her many gifts.
To explain, apologize, or dissemble? What sort of reply did she want? I was all at sea, despite having had mile after jouncing mile to plan my entrance. Worse yet, we were in full view of any guest or servant lingering by a window. The groom heading the horses could hear our every word, as could John Coachman, to say nothing of Atticus, lurking in the coach.
I affected a puzzled expression. “Shall I leave?” She would not send me away, not with half the turf crowd already on the premises.
“Of course not. I simply… Well, you have never expressed an interest in horse racing.”
Neither had she. “Tenneby invited me at the urging of the Marquess of Dalhousie. For me to ignore the invitation altogether would have been unmannerly.”
I was being somewhat honest. Lord Dalhousie had promised to speak well of me in polite circles. One did not tell a marquess bent on gentlemanly goodwill to keep his handsome gob shut, though I wished he had.
“Then you won’t be staying long?”
Hyperia was not only annoyed, maybe not even annoyed, but worried. Well, well, well. “Might we continue this discussion elsewhere? I’m sure John Coachman would like to get the horses out of harness, and I know I could do with some lemonade.”
Atticus, the little schemer, was apparently determined to accompany the coach around to the stable block, where he’d doubtless begin ingratiating himself with any groom who rode in the practice gallops.
“Did you come alone?” Hyperia asked.
“I brought Atticus, lest he once again disobey orders and bring himself. He’s looking forward to impressing you with his literary accomplishments.”
I waved to John Coachman, and he directed the horses to walk on. I was traveling light—no baggage coach would come lumbering up the drive three hours hence—and my trunks would be unloaded at the porter’s entrance.
“Then Lady Ophelia isn’t with you?” Hyperia asked, which struck me as odd. Godmama often acted as Hyperia’s chaperone, and the two were close correspondents.
“Her ladyship is enjoying a rural respite between rounds in Town. Hyperia, I truly am in need of something to drink. Cook packed us a generous hamper, but Atticus makes locusts look lackadaisical when it comes to food and drink.” I also wanted to get out of the bright sunshine and off what amounted to an open-air stage.
I had questions for Hyperia, just as she had been questioning me.
“Come along,” she said, leading the way through the open front door. “Not all of the guests have arrived. Tenneby is kept very busy settling in horses, greeting guests, and, I gather, settling his own nerves. He’ll greet you shortly, I’m sure.”
I did not care one sweaty saddle pad whether Tenneby bothered himself to do the pretty.
I followed Hyperia into a lovely foyer rising to two stories. The theme was pink marble pilasters, white marble flooring, robust ferns, and abundant sunlight admitted by soaring two-story windows. A gorgeous staircase—more white marble—swept in a graceful curve up to the next story. The banisters beneath the handrail were carved to depict twining ivy.
The earldom might well be in dun territory now, but at some point, the Tennebys had enjoyed abundant means.
“The winter parlor has been turned into an all-day buffet,” Hyperia said. “Saves the staff having to answer a dozen bells every hour. Seems a bit expedient to me, but Tenneby’s sister hasn’t much experience as a hostess, and he really shouldn’t have asked that of her anyway.”
“Tenneby’s sister?” He’d not mentioned a sister to me, which might well have been an innocent oversight, though Godmama had said one sister remained unmarried. In Tenneby’s horse-mad mind, sisters likely ranked below the boot-boy. Prettier, perhaps, but not half so useful as the boot-boy when a man came home after a muddy morning on horseback.
“Evelyn Tenneby. She was presented four Seasons ago, courtesy of some auntie, but she did not take. I’m here ostensibly at her invitation.”
We passed down a corridor notable for spotless carpets, an absence of cobwebs, and an abundance of horse portraits. Gray Squirrel at the St. Ledger . Pegasus at the Macaroni Stakes. Potoooooooo at the 1200 Guineas Stakes.
All were in the spare, balanced style of the late George Stubbs. I peered closer at a particularly fine rendering. “This is a Stubbs, not merely in his style.”
“Why would anybody name a horse Potoo?” Hyperia asked.
Pot-Eight-Os. Potatoes, though the joke is said to have originated in a stable boy’s poor spelling on a feed bucket.”
Hyperia left off studying the painting to study me. “How do you know that?”
“Harry was turf mad for a time.”
Mention of my brother had Hyperia resuming our progress down the corridor. “I was surprised he didn’t join a cavalry regiment,” she said.
“I was relieved. Wellington hated the cavalry, and for good reason. They were forever pursuing havoc when they should have been pursuing victory. They had a penchant for reckless dashes behind enemy lines when they should have been regrouping.”
“Don’t say that too loudly. Half the men here might be former cavalry.”
Splendid. The more military sorts on hand, the more snide comments and veiled insults I was likely to endure. I had sent word of the meet to one former military connection, though, who would make an admirable addition to the gathering.
“The food is in here.” Hyperia led the way into a sunny little parlor—more horse portraits—that also boasted comfortably upholstered chairs and a sofa, a southern exposure, and thick if slightly worn carpets. The sideboard offered bread made with white flour, a cold collation of meats and cheeses, a number of condiments, along with biscuits, savory and sweet tarts, and whole oranges. A pair of punchbowls occupied what looked like a card table.
“Join me,” I said, filling a glass from the smaller punchbowl. “Tell me all the latest news.” The recipe was cidery, with citrus notes and warm spices. The heated version would have been more palatable, but I was thirsty and not about to try my luck with the offerings in the larger bowl.
“I haven’t much news,” Hyperia said, putting some tarts on a plate. “What do you hear from His Grace?”
A safe place to start. “Arthur has left Greece and is racketing about Italy. He says Banter is in alt, the wine is hearty, and he misses the Hall.” Arthur and I were six years apart, and more significantly, he had been raised to step into the ducal role. I had been raised as an extra spare, with Harry occupying the middle ground of next heir.
Arthur and I got on well, now that we were adults. I still felt as if my only surviving brother was in some regards an unknown quantity, and he doubtless felt the same about me. Familial ties, the shared loss of Harry, and a congruence of values drew us together. When I’d truly needed to rely on Arthur, he’d come through without hesitation.
That he would leave the Hall in my hands while he traveled on the Continent with his dear Banter both flattered and unnerved me.
“When will the duke come home?” Hyperia asked, taking a seat on one of the comfortable chairs by the window.
“I make it a point not to ask him, Perry. He has been so dutiful for so long, while Harry and I did as we pleased. Arthur deserves his holiday.”
I fashioned myself a sandwich of ham, cheese, and mustard, piled tarts on the side of my plate, and took the chair closest to Hyperia’s.
“Is this outing a holiday for you?” Hyperia asked, sipping her drink.
“More like a duty wedged between planting and haying. What about for you?” Why was I fencing with her? Hyperia and I had been through much together, and she had been loyal to me when I’d been too morose to be loyal to myself.
“Same.”
An awkward silence ensued. I took a bite of my sandwich—the bread was slightly stale—and Hyperia nibbled a tart. What duty could she possibly be fulfilling at a race-meeting-cum-house-party?
I set down my plate. “Tenneby all but begged me to attend, Perry. He claims he was cheated out of twenty-eight thousand pounds at Epsom three years ago, and he’s worried more mischief will arise at this gathering.”
Hyperia finished her tart. “Was it hard for you to tell me that, Julian?”
Julian . When in charity with me, she called me Jules. “A bit awkward, wading into business matters when I long to take you in my arms, but not difficult.” My besetting sin, according to Hyperia, was an unwillingness to trust her. She did not doubt my love or loyalty, but in some way a wiser man would understand, she felt slighted by my tendency toward self-reliance.
I further blundered in her eyes by occasionally turning up protective of her in situations she deemed herself capable of managing without my aid. I was learning to restrain such impulses, to think before drawing my figurative sword, but the impulse itself refused to die.
She was mine to love, and that meant mine to protect. Nothing I had read in Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s polemics had convinced me otherwise.
“When were you planning on telling me that you’d jaunted off to Berkshire?” Hyperia asked.
“I put a letter in the post to your London address. I wrote it the day after I agreed to attend.” What are you doing here, Hyperia? The question went unasked, perhaps because my conscience was troubled by my evasiveness, perhaps because whacking a hornet’s nest had ever been ill-advised.
“Your hair is getting darker,” Hyperia said, gaze upon my locks. “Near your part, you’ve turned strawberry blond.”
After I’d endured months of torment in French hands, losing Harry, and finding myself at large in bitter cold spring weather on the slopes of the Pyrenees, my hair had turned white. Had I been asked as a youth, I would have confidently asserted that I wasn’t vain about my (then) reddish-brown hair. Hair was hair, better to have some, probably, than none, but such developments were beyond a person’s control.
Turn my tresses as white as an ermine’s coat, and I missed those nondescript brown locks sorely. To my great relief, color was reasserting itself in the new growth, though hair white at the bottom, flaxen in the middle, and blond at the top added to my credentials as an eccentric.
“Did you bring Atlas?” Hyperia asked, choosing another tart.
I’d told her that I longed to embrace her, and she’d reciprocated by asking after my horse. What on earth was afoot? “He came by easy stages, and I will check on him before supper. How is Healy faring with his plays?”
Hyperia choked on her tart. I patted her back.
She waved me off. “Healy might put in an appearance here,” she said, sipping her punch. “I’m sure he will, in fact. He says creativity benefits from a periodic change of air, and one doesn’t argue with one’s brother over a topic on which he is a self-appointed expert.”
Said with a touch of sororal asperity, which I found shamefully reassuring. Hyperia loved her brother, but Healy viewed himself as the head of the family despite having at best a shaky grasp of his own affairs. He’d lit upon writing plays as a means of earning coin without sacrificing his status as a gentleman, though none of his works had yet been produced.
Neither of his works, rather. As far as I knew, he’d completed one play and was perpetually toiling away on another.
We finished our snacks without further sallies into small talk. Hyperia explained to me which apartment had the pleasure of housing her, and a housekeeper arrived to escort me to my quarters.
Hyperia would have bustled off to some unknown destination, but before the housekeeper could kidnap me, I put a hand on Perry’s sleeve.
“I have missed you terribly,” I said, “and I am overjoyed to see you. Will you hack out with me tomorrow morning?”
She took my hand and squeezed my fingers. “Gladly. I’ll see you at supper too. Rest as well as you can before then, Jules. This promises to be a lively gathering.”
Jules. Hyperia had called me Jules. Leaning on that slender reed of reassurance, I let the housekeeper take me captive. She didn’t show me to my rooms, though. A footman accosted us at the foot of the gleaming staircase.
“A lad from the stable is asking for you, my lord. Says you’re needed double time, and he was most insistent.”
“Small, dark-haired, tends to Cockney when agitated?”
“That’s him, sir. He was ready to storm the footmen’s steps and search the house for you.”
I made my excuses to the housekeeper and took the path to the stable. Raised voices led me to the open end of a large U-shaped stable yard. Around the perimeter, horses gazed out of open half doors. Some were munching hay. Some were watching, ears pricked, as one large groom shoved at the chest of a much smaller fellow. Between the stall doors, potted tulips bloomed in cheery yellows, whites, and reds, very likely echoing Tenneby’s racing colors.
“Trying to cheat, you was,” the shover bellowed. “Mr. Tenneby will hear about this.”
The shovee, though at least six inches shorter than his assailant, spat on his palms and balled his fists. “Mr. Tenneby will hear that his head lad is a rude jackanapes who don’t know shit from shamrocks, and so says Paddy Denton.”
Paddy apparently had supporters, and his diction identified him as a son of the Emerald Isle. If the larger fellow was Tenneby’s head lad, he would have backers as well. Murmurs began as the crowd formed itself into the inevitable human ring in the middle of which all the best pugilism occurred.
Also much of the worst folly.
I elbowed my way past a pair of gawking grooms and into the center of the circle. “Gentlemen, let’s not be hasty. Surely this is all just a misunderstanding?”
Paddy Denton and Tenneby’s head lad turned equally hostile glowers on me. I was a toff—clothing, hygiene, and speech confirmed my status—and I was meddling with both stable yard justice and a whacking good row.
What had I expected? Atticus’s head was filled with a victorious outing to the Grand National, Hyperia was barely speaking to me, and now every groom and jockey on the premises would happily do me an injury.
Fast work, even for me.