This type of female, however—small, of tender years and solemn eyes—flummoxed him. As Andy leaned over the half-door to stroke her hand down Zephyr’s nose, Cato mentally sorted through his tools and tricks, discarding them one by one. Flattery, flummery, flirting, none of them would work.
In desperation, he seized upon his most rusty and unpredictable strategy: Unvarnished Truth.
“Don’t go running off,” he said quietly. The child whirled, spooking the pony to the back of her stall. “Ah, you see? You and Zephyr were having a fine, friendly visit, and now she’s misplaced her composure.”
Miss Coriander Brown, by contrast, had not misplaced her composure, though she was clearly scared and damned if she’d let it show.
He hunkered next to her. “Blasted saints, child. Do you think I’ll sell you to the tinkers?”
She turned away and stretched out her hand to the pony. “Mama would fetch Lord Amherst if you did. You shouldn’t use bad language.”
And here he’d moderated his language in deference to her youth. “My apologies, but bad language is fun.”
The girl regarded him through eyes very like her papa’s, clearly unimpressed by Cato’s honesty.
Time for some charm.
Cato fished in his pocket and came up with half a carrot. He broke it in two pieces and laid one flat on his palm, holding it out to the gray pony.
“You keep your hand level, and the pony will lip the treat from your hand without biting.”
“I know how to feed treats.” The child took the other half of the carrot without touching Cato’s palm. She fed the greedy little beast easily then speared him with another look.
“I’ll not bite you, either,” Cato said, turning and squatting against the door of the stall. “You and I need to talk.”
“You want to talk about what I saw.”
Cato ran a hand through his hair, mentally reciting a quick Glory Be. “What you saw was…a mistake. A harmless mistake.”
On everybody’s part.
“You hit my papa.” She said it with such a frown, Cato had the sense she was fishing, looking for verification, as if she couldn’t fathom that anybody would strike her dear, departed papa.
“I slapped him once.” He’d backhanded the man. “That was the end of it.”
She stroked small fingers over the pony’s velvety nose. “Papa died that morning. He was riding the horse you lent him.”
“Bla—blessed saints.” Cato rose, paced off and turned, because hearing the loss in the child’s tone made him toweringly uncomfortable, as did the conclusion she’d so easily reached. Dane Hampton had been a self-indulgent, overgrown boy, and he hadn’t been worth the girl’s sorrow. Telling the child so would be pointless—and mean. Cato could be mean, though only to full-grown men, intransigent mules or others he considered his equal.
“You blame me because your papa took a bad fall?”
“He fell from the horse you put him on.”
“I know that.” Hadn’t Cato told himself the same thing a thousand times? “Your papa asked to borrow that gelding, drank too much, and overfaced the horse in bad footing. That’s why he died.”
“Papa always drank too much and never had a care for the footing.”
Cato finished the syllogism for her. “Which leaves the horse I lent him. I grasp your reasoning, but your papa asked to borrow that horse, my personal mount, and if you’ll recall, I ended up shooting the poor beast where it lay in the mud.”
The girl turned, so the door to the stall was at her back. Her expression changed, becoming thoughtful rather than pugnacious. “You had to shoot Ghost?”
“Shattered a cannon bone.” Cato looked away from those somber eyes. This was why he had no truck with children. They were too honest, and too…young.
“I’m sorry.”
“Am I exonerated?”
She blinked at him, downy brows lowering.
“Let off, not guilty, no longer under suspicion?” Children were too simple, too, and too complicated.
“I won’t tell what I saw. You lost your horse, and Papa said Ghost was the best hunter in the shire.”
“And you lost your papa,” Cato said softly.
Dane’s daughter gave the pony one last, longing glance, then left without another word. As Cato watched her retreat, small, quick, quiet, and nimble, he wondered if the horse hadn’t been the greater loss, and if the child didn’t already know it.
***
“What in the hell happened to your stirrup leathers?” Cato’s black Irish scowl was thunderous as he tossed the offending equipment onto Trent’s estate desk.
Trent sat back and eyed his irate stable master. “I broke one last night coming back from Deerhaven. The paths were muddy, Arthur slipped, and we had a bad moment. Shall you sit?”
Cato’s blue-eyed gaze snapped over Trent like lightning dancing around a ship’s rigging. “Are you insulting me, my lord?”
“Of course I am, Catullus.” Trent rose, unwilling to adopt his father’s posturing. Wilton never stood if he could remain enthroned around the help. “I endeavor always to annoy my senior staff. An estate, like a proper family, runs better when it’s at war with itself.”
Trent crossed the library to stick his head into the corridor—social constraints between master and servant having no purchase against the master’s empty stomach—instructed the lounging footman and returned, closing the door behind him.
“My apologies,” Cato bit out. “Your leathers did not break, my lord. They were cut. Both of them.”
“I beg your pardon?” Trent picked up the leathers and took them to a window to peer at in better light. The leather was cleanly sliced through on one and cut down to a narrow strip of hide on the other. Not worn, not frayed, but cleanly cut. “You appear to have the right of it.”
Cato crossed muscular arms as if bracing for an interrogation. “As dirty as the weather was last night, you’re lucky you didn’t break your neck, my lord.”
“Arthur’s a steady sort.” On both leathers the damage had been done high up near the buckles and on the side of the leather lying against the saddle. Unless a groom had taken the stirrups off to clean the saddle, the sabotage would have been all but invisible.
Cato muttered in what sounded like Gaelic—something profane.
“Arthur is a horse,” Cato said, as if the entire species had much to answer for. “The footing was nasty, and any mount can spook at a rabbit in the dark of night.”
“You’re spooked.” Trent fell silent while a footman brought in a laden tray and set it on the low table before the hearth.
When the servant had departed, Trent gestured at his stable master.
“Have a seat and eat something, or at least have a hot cup of tea. Because you and Cook didn’t run off to Gretna Green, I am determined to show my appreciation to you both.”
“Cook and I?” Cato’s look of consternation was comical. “She’s a veritable siren, if you don’t mind a grumpy woman who enjoys wielding a knife with alarming skill.”
Trent took a place on the sofa before the food. “She stood up to my father one too many times. Being in service to him would sour any female’s humor.”
“You’ve succeeded in distracting me,” Cato said, sitting on the couch two feet away from his master. He sat gingerly, as if he expected to be caught by the butler humoring Trent’s queer democratic start. Cato reached for a sandwich, then drew his hand back.
“Eat, Catullus. The occasion of my own hunger is so rare as to be cause for celebration.” Trent helped himself to a sandwich, as much to put Cato at ease as because he was, indeed, hungry. When Cato followed suit, Trent poured them each a cup of tea. “Fix your own, and I’ll do likewise. How did you discover my leathers had been tampered with?”
“I didn’t.” Cato munched slowly, some of the ire draining from his posture. “Peak showed me. He wipes down any gear that’s been used, but especially if it’s been out in the wet or left to sit in the sun.”
“Dane Hampton died on his arse in the mud,” Cato shot back. “That wasn’t amusing in the least.”
And Cato and Dane had been close, within the limits of their respective stations and the egalitarian spirit of the hunt field.
“The viscount was also drunk and attempting to jump a damned gate any other man would have simply opened and ridden through. He wasn’t on his own horse, either.”
“How did you know that?”
Trent paused for a tactical sip of his tea. “Old gossip in the clubs, Cato, but hardly relevant to my stirrups.”
Cato dusted his hands—his sandwich had been demolished—and rose to stare out the window at the gray, windy day. “He was on my horse, one of the best hunters I’ve trained.”
“Ah.” Then when Cato didn’t say anything more, “My condolences.”
Cato nodded without turning, but in the tension in his frame Trent saw confirmation that Cato had come under suspicion. As if an owner could tell a horse to sacrifice itself in the intentional murder of its rider?
Death by equine accomplice? “Was Dane’s equipment in good order?”
“Absolutely. Peak could testify to that because he groomed for the meet that day, and Peak’s word is good.”
“You think somebody tried to cast suspicion back on you by tampering with my saddle,” Trent suggested, taking Cato his tea.
Cato stared down at the steaming cup. “Somebody is trying to walk me to the gallows, and you’re serving me tea? I am your stable master, my lord, need I remind you?” He took the cup and drank anyway.
“Best not to drink alone, and my mama swore by the ability of a nice hot cup of tea to ameliorate every woe.”
“Daft,” Cato muttered, finishing his tea in two swallows.
“More?”
“Go to hell, your lordship.”
“Better.” Trent set the empty cup aside. “Who are your enemies?”
“I’m Irish. Many find that offense enough.”
“You’re an Irish stable master who cleans up well enough,” Trent countered. An Irish stable master who’d likely not been compensated for the loss of an excellent horse, too. “This makes you a coveted commodity in some corners.”
Cato’s shrug was a study in indifference. “I write to my mother once a month, and she reports all at home is quiet, or as quiet as home gets. The lads seem content. The neighbors put up with me because I’m decent with the hounds. A better question is, who wants to bring harm to you?”
Trent leaned back against his desk and considered the theory that Cato wasn’t the target of the miscreant, but rather, harm to Trent himself was the intended result.
“Slicing the stirrup leathers would be a chancy way to bring a man down,” Trent murmured. Though a fall from an eighteen-hand horse was not a short tumble. “Those leathers could have broken right at the mounting block or been switched to somebody else’s saddle. If I’d kept Arthur to the walk, the damage would likely still be unnoticed.”
Cato stalked over to the teapot and poured himself another cup. “Which suggests if you’re the target, whoever is taking aim can’t get inside your house, or hasn’t yet.”
Cato’s concern for his employer, grouchy though it was, warmed Trent’s heart, Would Wilton’s stable master have made this great a fuss if the earl’s well-being were threatened?
“Maybe the malefactor doesn’t own a gun,” Trent suggested. “My life is hardly of great value. I’ve my heir, a spare, and a healthy brother in the wings. The succession is secure, leaving me more or less expendable.”
The notion would not have been at all disquieting only a few weeks ago. On the contrary, Trent might have viewed it as a consolation.
Perhaps he was daft—or had been.
Cato sat to stir sugar and cream into his tea. “You can’t seriously regard yourself as expendable.”
“Of course I do.” Trent joined him on the couch and poured himself a second cup. It wasn’t brandy, but on a cold, windy day, hot tea held some appeal. “We’re all expendable, and Dane’s example underscores the reality.”
“He did not regard himself as expendable,” Cato growled, stirring his tea…pugnaciously?
“He regarded your horse as expendable, and if the wheels are expendable, the cargo is at risk. Another sandwich?”
Cato took a second sandwich. “I’ve never met such a polite baby earl with such a poor grasp of his station.”
“Being referred to as a baby earl will strain that politesse considerably, though speaking of earls, I’m jaunting over to Wilton on the first of the week.”
“Papa summoning you to his side?”
“His steward is.” Damn the man to darkest hell. “I have Wilton’s power of attorney and must occasionally put in my appearance if the merchants are to be paid.”
Cato tossed back his tea like so much gin and refilled his cup. One would think the man was thirsty for it—nigh parched, in fact.
“I didn’t realize Wilton had handed over the reins. Decent of him, I suppose. I can’t abide those old fools who leave their sons racketing about, waiting to inherit while Papa goes drooling and doddering off to the Lords each year.”
Stout black tea made Cato loquacious.
“I didn’t realize my stable master had an opinion on such a matter,” Trent said evenly. Cato met his gaze only for an instant, before picking up a third sandwich. “Catullus, doesn’t your employer feed you?”
“Below-stairs we get the coarse bread, the tough meat and the butter about to turn,” Cato said. “Makes a man appreciate decent fare when it finds him. And your mama and mine would agree about the restorative power of a hot cup of tea.”
While he stirred sugar into his tea, Trent added Cook to Peak’s name on the list of employees he needed to have a word with. “You’ll keep an eye on Lady Rammel for me when I’m off to Hampshire?”
Cato shot Trent a puzzled look. “Has she become prone to wandering?”
“She’ll be working on the gardens, weather permitting, and likely bringing Miss Andy along with her.”
“Miss Andy.” Cato paused in his pillaging of the tea tray and sat back. “The child does not hold your stable master in affection.”
Trent saluted with his tea cup. “A young lady of discernment. What of Lady Rammel? Does she share her daughter’s disdain of you?”
Though why that inquiry was relevant, Trent did not know.
“Step-daughter,” Cato said. “Her ladyship has no quarrel with me that I can detect. I’ll look after them when they’re on the grounds. How long will you be gone?”
“Less than a week. I do not enjoy my visits to the family seat, but needs must.” He loathed the very sight of the place.
“Send your brother,” Cato said, popping a tea cake with pink icing into his mouth. “Isn’t that what younger sons are for?”
Trent set his cup down gently. “For a man whose expertise is horses, you are well informed regarding the doings of the Quality.”
“Cut line, my lord.” Cato delicately patted his lips with a serviette and rose. “The help always keep an eye on the Quality, and the Quality never even see the help. This is how civilization moves forward. What are we to do about your stirrup leathers?”
“Repair them.”
“For the love of God…” Cato put his fists on his hips and glared at his employer. “Somebody tried to kill you, for all you know. Repair them… Bloody hell, Amherst, do you want to die?”
“We don’t know if death was the object of the exercise.” Trent rose and held out the plate of tea cakes. “For now, I’d say swear Peak to discretion and keep the saddle room locked.”
“Amherst,” Cato expostulated, “if tampering with the stirrups failed, then you must watch out for other avenues. Warn Cook, because poison is easy and the staff
will always be blamed. Keep the footmen around you when you’re far from the house. Stay the hell out of the woods, because poaching is considered tame sport by the locals, and don’t let anybody know your plans in advance.”
All very reasonable precautions. “You have a peculiar sense of how to go on when a mere prank is under discussion, but I’ll heed your advice, to the extent practical.”
Cato sighed mightily and before he quit the library, took two more tea cakes, having an apparent preference for pink icing. “At the very least let your family know what’s afoot, and give serious thought to who could mean you harm.”
“Sound advice.” Trent walked with his stable master toward the door. “My thanks for your concern.”
“Sleep with one eye open,” Cato warned. “Better yet, don’t sleep alone.”
“Is that any way to address your betters, Catullus?”
“You’re showing me to the front door, Amherst,” Cato retorted, his tone long-suffering. “I’m not even considered an upper servant.”
“This does appear to be the front door, and I’m tucking the last sandwich into your starving pocket,” Trent said. “It’s the least I can do when you denied yourself a lifetime of Cook’s charms to tend my stables.”
“Ever your humble servant.” Cato bowed elaborately, accepted the linen-wrapped sandwich, and sauntered out the door.
Trent munched a tea cake of his own—one with lemon icing—and hoped that last part about being ever his humble servant had been the only lie to pass Cato’s lips.
Chapter Five
The evening spent with Drew Hampton had yielded two results in addition to cut stirrup leathers. By virtue of delicate questioning over the port, Trent had learned that the Rammel heir was all but terrified of taking responsibility for young Miss Andy. A session of gentlemanly small talk was little price to pay for reassurances that the viscountess’s authority over the child was safe.
The second, less sanguine result was an invitation to join Drew Hampton and the Earl of Greymoor, considered the local expert on horseflesh, in a review of the equine stock gracing the Deerhaven paddocks.
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 6
