What Price Love?

by Stephanie Laurens

  1

  September 1831

  Newmarket, Suffolk

  I had hoped we’d have longer in reasonable privacy.” Letting the door of the Twig & Bough coffee shop on Newmarket High Street swing shut behind him, Dillon Caxton stepped down to the pavement beside Barnaby Adair. “Unfortunately, the sunshine has brought the ladies and their daughters out in force.”

  Scanning the conveyances thronging the High Street, Dillon was forced to smile and acknowledge two matrons, each with beaming daughters. Tapping Barnaby’s arm, he started strolling. “If we stand still, we’ll invite attack.”

  Chuckling, Barnaby fell in beside him. “You sound even more disenchanted with the sweet young things than Gerrard was.”

  “Living in London, you’re doubtless accustomed to far worse, but spare a thought for us who value our bucolic existence. To us, even the Little Season is an unwanted reminder of that which we fervently wish to avoid.”

  “At least with this latest mystery you have something to distract you. An excellent excuse to be elsewhere, doing other things.”

  Seeing a matron instructing her coachman to draw her landau to the curb ten paces farther on, Dillon swore beneath his breath. “Unfortunately, as our mystery must remain a strict secret, I fear Lady Kershaw is going to draw first blood.”

  Her ladyship, a local high stickler, beckoned imperiously. There was no help for it; Dillon strolled on to her now-stationary carriage. He exchanged greetings with her ladyship and her daughter, Margot, then introduced Barnaby. They stood chatting for five minutes. From the corner of his eye, Dillon noted how many arrested glances they drew, how many other matrons were now jockeying for position farther along the curb.

  Glancing at Barnaby, doing his best to live up to Miss Kershaw’s expectations, Dillon inwardly grimaced. He could imagine the picture they made, he with his dark, dramatic looks most commonly described as Byronic, with Barnaby, a golden Adonis with curly hair and bright blue eyes, by his side, the perfect foil. They were both tall, well set up, and elegantly and fashionably turned out. In the restricted society of Newmarket, it was no wonder the ladies were lining up to accost them. Unfortunately, their destination—the Jockey Club—lay some hundred yards distant; they had to run the gauntlet.

  They proceeded to do so with the glib assurance that came from untold hours spent in ton ballrooms. Despite his preference for the bucolic, courtesy of his cousin Flick—Felicity Cynster—over the last decade Dillon had spent his fair share of time in the whirl of the ton, in London and elsewhere, as Flick put it, keeping in practice.

  In practice for what was a question to which he was no longer sure he knew the answer. Before his fall from grace and the scandal that had shaken his life, he’d always assumed he would marry, have a family, and all the rest. Yet while spending the last decade putting his life to rights, repaying his debts of social and moral obligation, and reestablishing himself, his honor, in the eyes of all those who mattered to him, he’d grown accustomed to his solitary existence, to the life of an unencumbered gentleman.

  Smiling at Lady Kennedy, the third matron to detain them, he extricated himself and Barnaby and strolled on, casting his eye along the line of waiting carriages and their fair burdens. Not one stirred the remotest interest in him. Not one sweet face even moved him to curiosity.

  Unfortunately, becoming known as a gentleman with a hardened heart, one unsusceptible to feminine enticements, had piled additional fuel on the bonfire of the ladies’ aspirations. Too many now viewed him as a challenge, a recalcitrant male they were determined to bring to heel. As for their mothers, with every year that passed he was forced to exercise greater care, to keep his eyes ever open for social snares, those traps certain matrons set for the unwary.

  Even those select ladies with whom he occasionally dallied discreetly in the capital weren’t above hatching schemes. His last inamorata had tried to convince him of the manifold benefits that would accrue to him should he marry her niece. Said benefits had, of course, included her fair self.

  He was beyond being outraged, beyond even being surprised; he was close to turning his back on the entire subject of marriage.

  “Mrs. Cartwell, a plea sure to see you, ma’am.” Taking the hand the haughty matron extended, he shook it, bowed to the vision of loveliness sitting beside Mrs. Cartwell, then stepped back and introduced Barnaby. Always interested in people, Barnaby exchanged platitudes with the lovely Miss Cartwell; cravenly grateful, Dillon stood back and let him have the stage.

  Mrs. Cartwell was monitoring the exchange between her daughter and Barnaby, the third son of an earl and every bit as eligible as Dillon himself, with absolute concentration. Reduced to the redundant, Dillon’s mind returned to the matter he and Barnaby had retreated to the Twig & Bough to discuss, until they’d been ousted by the invading ladies. They’d chosen the quieter shop catering to the genteel element rather than the club coffee house favored by the racing fraternity for the simple reason that the subject of their discussion would set ears flapping and tongues wagging among the racing set.

  Another racing scandal was precisely what he was working to avoid.

  This time, he wasn’t engaged on the wrong side of the ledger; this time, he’d been recruited by the angels, to wit the all-powerful Committee of the Jockey Club, to investigate the rumors of race fixing that had started to circulate after the recent spring racing season.

  That request was a deliberate and meaningful vote of confidence—a declaration that the Committee viewed his youthful indiscretion as fully paid for, the slate wiped clean. More, it was a clear statement that the Committee had complete faith in his integrity, in his discretion, and in his devotion to the breeding and racing industry that the Committee oversaw, and that he and his father before him had for so long served.

  His father, General Caxton, was long retired, and Dillon was now the Keeper of the Breeding Register and the Stud Book, the two official tomes that together ruled the breeding and racing of horses in England. It was in that capacity that he’d been asked to look into the rumors.

  Rumors being rumors, and in this case issuing from London, he’d recruited the Honorable Barnaby Adair, a good friend of Gerrard Debbington, to help. Dillon knew Gerrard well, had for years, through their connections to the powerful Cynster family; Barnaby had recently assisted Gerrard in solving a troublesome matter of murder. When Dillon had mentioned the possibility of a racing swindle, Barnaby’s eyes had lit.

  That had been in late July. Barnaby had duly investigated, and in August had reported that while the rumors were there, all were vague, very much of the strain that horses people had expected to win had instead lost. Hardly a novel happening in the racing game. There’d seemed little substance, and no real fact behind the rumors. Nothing to warrant further action.

  Now, however, with the first races of the autumn season behind them, something rather odd had occurred. Odd enough for Dillon to summon Barnaby back.

  In the peace of the Twig & Bough, he’d related the details of three separate attempts to break into the Jockey Club, along with reports of some man asking about “the register” in local ale houses, rough taverns catering to the dregs of the town.

  They’d just finished discussing what was known of the inquisitive man—an Irishman by his accent—when the influx of ladies had rousted them. Dillon’s office in the Jockey Club was their current goal, the only place they might conclude their sensitive discussion in some degree of privacy.

  But it was slow going. Escaping Mrs. Cartwell, they fell victim to Lady Hemmings. As they left her ladyship, Dillon seized the chance created by two groups of ladies becoming distracted by their own gossip to quickly steer Barnaby between two carriages and across the street. They lengthened their strides; by the time the ladies noticed they’d slipped sideways and escaped, they were turning into the long avenue flanked by tall trees that led to the front door of the Jockey Club.

  “Phew!” Barnaby shot him a glance. “I see what you mean. It’s wors
e than in London—there are few others about to draw their fire.”

  Dillon nodded. “Luckily, we’re now safe. The only females ever glimpsed within these hallowed precincts are of the horse-mad sorority, not the husband-hunting packs.”

  There were no others, male or female, presently on the path leading to the front door; easing his pace, he returned to their interrupted discussion. “These break-ins—if someone’s asking about ‘a register,’ odds are they mean the Breeding Register, presumably the target of our would-be thief. Nothing else within the Jockey Club has any real value.”

  Slowing to an amble, Barnaby looked at the red brick building standing squarely at the end of the shady avenue. “Surely there are cups, plates, medallions—things that would be worth something if melted down? Isn’t it more likely a thief would be after those?”

  “Most of the trophies are plated. Their value lies more in what they represent, not in their commercial worth. And this thief’s not a professional, but he is determined. Besides, it’s too coincidental—someone asking about ‘the register,’ and shortly after, someone tries to break into the club where the one item referred to in Newmarket as ‘the register’ resides.”

  “True,” Barnaby conceded. “So how is the Breeding Register valuable? Ransom?”

  Dillon raised his brows. “I hadn’t thought of that, but such a tack would be dangerous. Loss of the Breeding Register would stop all racing, so using it in such a way, essentially holding the entire racing fraternity to ransom, would very likely prove an unhealthy experiment. If the Breeding Register disappeared, I would expect to see it magically reappear within three days.” He glanced at Barnaby. “This industry isn’t short of those prepared to take the law into their own hands, especially over a matter like that.”

  Barnaby frowned. “But I thought you said it was the Breeding Register our would-be thief was after?”

  “Not the register itself—the set of books—but the information it contains. That’s where the gold lies.”

  “How so?”

  “That,” Dillon admitted, “is something I’m not precisely sure of—it’s a function of what the information is to be used for. However, in light of our earlier rumors, one possible use leaps to mind.”

  He met Barnaby’s blue eyes. “Horse substitution. It used to be prevalent decades ago, before they implemented the present system. One horse would gain a reputation for winning, then, in one race, the owners would substitute another horse, passing it off as the previous winner, and the punters would lose. The owners would be in league with certain bookmakers, and would pocket a nice cut from the lost bets, as well as pocketing even more from bets they or their friends laid against their ‘champion’ winning.”

  “Aha!” Barnaby’s eyes narrowed. “Unexpected losses—as have been rumored to have occurred over the spring season.”

  “Just so. And that’s where the Breeding Register comes in. It’s an obligatory listing of a horse’s bloodlines confirming its right to race on English tracks under Jockey Club rules. Bloodlines are fully documented in the Stud Book, while the register is essentially a licensing listing—every horse has to be approved and entered before being allowed in any race at any track operating under the auspices of the Jockey Club. However, along with the horse’s name and general details, each register entry contains a physical description supposedly sufficient to ensure that a given horse, with given name, age, bloodlines, and racing clearance, can be distinguished from any other horse.”

  Dillon snorted. “Impossible to be a hundred percent certain always, yet armed with those descriptions, the race stewards at the tracks monitor all the starters before every race, and reexamine and verify all the placegetters after the race has been run. That’s why horses have to be entered for races weeks in advance, so the stewards can be issued with copies of the descriptions each starter should match.”

  “And those descriptions come from the Breeding Register held here in Newmarket?”

  “Making the stewards’ copies is what my register clerks do, at least during the racing seasons.”

  “So why would our would-be thief be interested in the descriptions contained in this register? How would it benefit him?”

  “I can think of two ways.” Dillon looked ahead; they were nearly at the Jockey Club’s door. “First, if his master was planning to substitute for a champion he owned, he’d need to be sure what points feature most highly in the register description, because the substitute horse would absolutely have to possess those points to make the substitution work.”

  Halting before the pair of shallow stone steps leading up to the club’s double doors, he faced Barnaby. “The second possibility is that whoever has sent our thief is planning a new substitution, but hasn’t yet located a suitable substitute horse. Scanning the descriptions in the register would take time, but would unquestionably identify the best possible match for a substitution.”

  He paused, then added, “Bear in mind that in a substitution racket, the substitute only has to pass the prerace check, which is the least detailed. Because the substitute finishes out of the places, it’s not subjected to the more stringent check conducted after the race.”

  Barnaby frowned. “So what we might have here is an already established racket that ran certain substitutions last spring and escaped detection, plus an Irishman, presumably acting for some owner, looking to gain access to the Breeding Register to facilitate further substitutions.”

  Dillon nodded. “And as to whether the former is directly linked to the latter, logically there’s no reason it has to be. But I’d lay odds they’re connected.”

  Barnaby softly snorted. “It certainly has that feeling.”

  They turned to the club’s front door. Both paused as through the central glass pane they glimpsed the club’s doorman, inside, hurrying to reach for the latch.

  Sweeping the doors wide, the doorman bowed obsequiously, almost tripping over his toes as he stepped aside to allow a lady to pass through.

  Not just any lady. A vibrant vision in emerald green, she halted on the top step, taken aback at finding herself facing a masculine wall.

  Her head, crowned with a silky tumble of blue-black curls, instinctively rose. Eyes, an even more intense emerald than her elegant gown, rose, too; widening, they locked with Dillon’s.

  Barnaby murmured an apology and stepped back.

  Dillon didn’t move.

  For one incalculable moment, all he could see—all he knew of the world—was that face.

  Those eyes.

  Brilliant green, glinting gold, they lured and promised.

  She was of average height; standing two steps up, her glorious eyes were level with his. He was dimly aware of the classical symmetry of her heart-shaped face, of perfect, very white skin, fine, almost translucent, of delicately arched brows, lush black lashes, a straight little nose, and a mouth a touch too wide. Her lips were full and blatantly sensual, yet instead of disrupting the perfection of her beauty, those distracting lips brought her face alive.

  Like a callow youth, he stood and stared.

  Wide-eyed, Pris stared back and tried to catch her breath. She felt like one of her brothers had punched her in the stomach; every muscle had contracted and locked, and she couldn’t get them to relax.

  Beside her, the helpful doorman beamed. “Why, here’s Mr. Caxton, miss.”

  Her mind whirled.

  To the gentlemen, he said, “This lady was asking after the register, sir. We explained she had to speak with you.”

  Which one was Caxton? Please don’t let it be him.

  Tearing her gaze from the dark eyes into which she’d somehow fallen, she looked hopefully at the Greek god, but fickle fate wasn’t that kind. The Greek god was looking at his sinfully dark companion. Reluctantly, she did the same.

  His dark, very dark brown eyes that before had appeared as startled as she felt—she doubted he often met ladies as dramatically beautiful as he—had now hardened. As she watched, they fractionally narrow
ed.

  “Indeed?”

  The precise diction, the arrogantly superior tone, told her all she needed to know of his social rank and background. The flick of inherent power brought her head up, brought the earl’s daughter to the fore. She smiled, assured. “I was hoping to view the register, if that’s possible?”

  Instantly, she sensed a dramatic heightening of their interest—a focusing that owed nothing to the quality of her smile. Her gaze locked on Caxton, on the dark eyes in which, unless she was sorely mistaken, suspicion was now blooming, she mentally replayed her words, but could see nothing to explain their reaction. Glancing at the Greek god, she saw the alert look he sent Caxton…it was her accent that had triggered their response.

  Like all the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, she spoke perfect English, but no amount of elocution lessons would ever remove the soft burr of her brogue, the stamp of Ireland on her tongue.

  And Rus, naturally, was the same.

  Tamping down the sudden surge of emotion—trepidation and expectation combined—she looked again at Caxton. Meeting his eyes, she arched a brow. “Perhaps, now you’ve returned, sir, you could help me with my inquiries?”

  She wasn’t going to let his beauty, or her unprecedented reaction to it, get in her way.

  More to the point, his reaction to her gave her a weapon she was perfectly prepared to wield. She would do anything, absolutely anything without reservation, to help Rus; running rings around an Englishman and tying him in knots barely rated.

  Dillon inclined his head in acquiescence and gestured for her to reenter the building—his domain. Her distracting smile still flirting about her even more distracting lips, she swung around, waiting for the doorman to step back before passing through the portal and into the foyer.

  Climbing the steps, Dillon followed her in. He’d noted the calculation that had flashed through those brilliant eyes, was duly warned. An Irish lady asking to see the register? Oh, yes, he definitely would speak with her.