The Rake to Ruin Her

by Julia Justiss

  Her stepmother sighed. ‘You’re not going to like it. Apparently he heard about the events at Barton Abbey. He claims the shock of it must have unbalanced your mind for, he wrote, no young lady of breeding in her right senses, caught in such a dire situation, would ever turn down a respectable offer of marriage. He’s convinced your, um, “unnatural preoccupation” with running the stud has made you unable to realise how badly the scandal reflects upon you and the entire family. So, to protect you and the Denby name, he’s convinced the other trustees to agree to something he’s long been urging: the sale of the stud.’

  Shock froze her in place, while her heart stood still and blood seemed to drain from her head and limbs. Dizzy, she grabbed the back of a wing chair to steady herself. ‘The sale of the stud?’ she repeated, stunned. ‘He wants to sell my horses?’

  ‘Y-yes, my dear.’

  It was impossible. It was outrageous. Aside from Lady Denby’s generous widow’s portion, the rest of the estate, including Denby Lodge, the Denby Stud and the income to operate it, had been willed to her. Papa had always promised the farm and the land would remain hers, for her use and then as part of her dowry.

  She shook her head to clear the faintness. ‘Can they do that?’ she demanded, her voice trembling.

  ‘I don’t know. Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry! I know how much the stud means to you.’

  ‘How much... Why, it means everything,’ Caro said, feeling returning to her limbs in a rush of fury. ‘Everything I’ve worked for these last ten years! Has it been done yet? May I see the note?’

  Silently, her stepmother held it out. Caroline snatched and read it through rapidly.

  ‘It does not appear the sale has gone through yet,’ she said, when she had finished it. ‘There must be some way to stop it. The stud belongs to me!’

  But even as she made the bold declaration, doubt and dread rose up to check her like a ten-foot gate before a novice jumper.

  Did she have control of the stud? Numb, shocked and trying to cope with the immensity of her father’s sudden death, she’d sat silent and vacant-headed during the reading of his will. Thinking back, she knew the assets of the estate had been turned over to trustees to manage for her, but no details about how the trust was to be administered, or the extent of the powers granted the trustees, had penetrated her pall of grief and pain.

  ‘What will you do?’ Lady Denby asked.

  ‘I shall leave for London tomorrow at first light and consult Papa’s solicitor. Mr Henderson will know if anything can be done.’

  Lady Denby shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry, Caroline. I would never have written if I’d had any suspicion Lord Woodbury would do such a thing.’

  Absently Caroline patted her hand. ‘It’s not your fault. According to the note, Woodbury has been trying to convince the other trustees to sell the stud for some time.’

  Anguish twisted in her gut as the scene played out in her head: some stranger arriving to lead away Sultan, whom she’d eased from his mother’s body the night he was born. She’d put on him his first halter, his first saddle. Turning over Sultan, or Sheik’s Ransom or Arabian Lady or Cleveland’s Hope or any of the horses she’d worked with from foal to weaning to training, would be like having someone confiscate her brothers and sisters.

  ‘Thank you for telling me at once,’ she said, brisk purpose submerging her anxiety—at least for the moment. ‘Now, you will please excuse me. I must confer with Newman in the stables, so he may continue the training while I’m gone.’ She dismissed the flare of panic in her belly at the thought that when she came back, she might no longer be giving the orders. ‘Would you ring Dulcie for me and ask her to pack some things?’

  ‘While you’re at the stables, be sure to tell John Coachman to ready the travelling barouche.’

  Already pacing towards the door, Caro shook her head impatiently. ‘No, I’ll go by mail coach; it will be faster.’

  ‘By mail coach!’ Lady Denby gasped. ‘But...that will not be at all proper! If you don’t wish to take the barouche, at least hire a carriage.’

  ‘My dear Stepmama, I don’t wish to make the journey in the easy stages required if I’m forced to hire horses along the way! I’ll take Dulcie to lend me some countenance,’ she added. Despite her agitation, she had to grin at the dismay the maid would doubtless feel upon being informed she would be rattling around in a public vehicle, probably stuffed full of other travellers, that broke its journey at the inns along the route only for the few minutes required to change the horses.

  ‘Where will you stay in London?’ Lady Denby cried, following her out into the passage.

  ‘With Cousin Elizabeth. Or at a hotel, if she’s not in town. If necessary, Mr Henderson will find me something suitable. Now I must go. I have a hundred things to do before the Royal Mail leaves tomorrow.’

  Giving her stepmother’s hand a quick squeeze, Caro strode through the entry, trotted down the steps and, once out of her stepmother’s sight, set off at a run for the stables.

  * * *

  It was long past dark by the time she’d concluded her rounds of the stalls with Newman, her head trainer, reviewing with him the regimen she wished him to follow with each horse.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Miss Caroline,’ he told her when they’d finished. ‘Your late father, God rest ’im, trained me and every groom at Denby Stables. We’ll do whatever’s needful to carry on. You go up to London and do what you must. And, miss...’ he added gruffly, giving her arm an awkward pat, ‘best of luck to you.’

  With a wisp of a smile, Caro watched him go. Even after so many years of living in a large household, it never ceased to amaze her how quickly news travelled through invisible servants’ networks. Although she’d told Newman nothing beyond the fact that urgent business called her away to London, somehow he must have discovered the true reason behind her journey.

  Her final stop before returning to the house was Sultan’s box. ‘No, my handsome boy, I’ll not take you with me this time,’ she told him as she stroked the velvet nose. ‘You’re too fine a horse to risk having you turn an ankle in some pothole, racing through the dark to London. Though you would fly to take me there, if I asked you.’

  The gelding nosed her hand and nickered his agreement.

  The darkness seemed to close around her, magnifying the fear and anxiety she’d been struggling to hold at bay. Sensing her distress, Sultan nosed her again and rubbed his neck against her hand. Trying to give her comfort, it seemed.

  What comfort would she have, if she lost him, lost them all? She had no siblings, no close neighbours other than Harry, and he was off in India. All her life, her horses had been her friends and playmates. She’d poured out her problems and told them her secrets, while they listened, nickering encouragement and sympathy.

  Denby Lodge was a vast holding, its wealth derived from farms, cattle and fields planted in corn and other crops. Like her father, she’d been content to let the estate manager—and then the trustees in London—concern themselves with the other businesses, as she let the housekeeper manage the manor itself and its servants, while she focused solely on managing the stud.

  She’d not been dissembling when she told Henshaw she possessed no feminine talents. She didn’t sew or embroider, paint, sing, or play an instrument. What was she to do with herself without her horses to birth, raise and train?

  It was all she knew. All she had ever done. All she had ever wanted to do. What could she find to replace the long hours spent in these immaculately kept barns with their rows of box stalls, where every breath brought the familiar scents of hay and bran and horse, saddle leather and polished brass? What could replace the thrill of feeling a thousand pounds of stallion thundering under her as he galloped across a meadow, responding to signals she’d ingrained in him after hours and hours of patient, careful training?

  After all she had done to keep the stud, it was intolerable that some self-important peer, who wished to dictate to her what a woman’s place should be, migh
t have the power to strip it all from her.

  What was to become of her if Woodbury succeeded?

  Weary, anxious, desperate, she wrapped her arms around Sultan’s neck and wept.

  Chapter Eleven

  Little more than thirty hours later, Caroline climbed down from the hackney that had brought her back from the solicitor’s office and walked slowly up the stairs into her cousin Elizabeth’s modest town house. A house that been part of her cousin’s marriage settlements, fortunately, Caro thought, making it one of the few assets her profligate husband hadn’t been able to squander.

  Oh, fortunate Elizabeth.

  A dull ache in her head, she felt the weariness of every sleepless hour she’d endured, from her last night at Denby Lodge, briefing the trainer and preparing for the journey, to the long dusty, uncomfortable transit into London. She’d barely taken the time to greet Elizabeth and inform her about her urgent mission before leaving for Mr Henderson’s office.

  Where she was met by the chilling news that her trustees, approved by the Court of Chancery under her father’s will to care for her inheritance, definitely had the legal right to sell off any land or assets they saw fit, for the good of the estate.

  Lady Elizabeth was out, the butler told her as he let her in. Her chest so tight with pain and outrage she could barely breathe, too exhausted to sleep, Caroline went to the small study, took paper and scrawled a letter to Harry, pouring into it all her anguished desperation.

  Not that it would make any difference; she probably wouldn’t even post it. By the time the letter reached Harry, even if he wrote back immediately, agreeing to marry her by proxy, it would be too late. The sale, Mr Henderson had advised her this afternoon, was already near to being concluded.

  She was going to lose the stud.

  That awful fact echoed in hollowness of her belly like a shot ricocheting inside a stone building, chipping off pieces that could wound and maim. She felt her heart’s blood oozing out even now.

  She might as well shoot herself and get it over with, she thought bleakly.

  A rustling in the passageway announced her cousin Elizabeth’s return. Not wishing to leave the letter there, where some curious servant might read her ramblings, she quickly sanded and folded it and scrawled Harry’s name on the top. Setting it to the side of the desk, she rose to meet her cousin.

  Elizabeth took one look at her face and gathered her into a hug.

  ‘Men!’ she said bitterly, releasing Caro before linking arms and leading her to the sofa. ‘They shape our world, write its laws and pretend we are helpless creatures who cannot be trusted to manage our own lives. So they can take it all.’

  ‘At least you have your house. Maybe I can come and reside with you, once...once it’s gone. I don’t think I can bear to live at Denby Lodge, afterwards.’

  ‘You’d certainly be welcome. I don’t have nearly the income I once did, but it’s enough for us to manage.’

  ‘Oh, I should have wealth aplenty for us both, especially after the sale. My kind trustees are managing the estate so brilliantly, I should be awash in guineas. Lord Woodbury would doubtless approve my buying every feminine frippery under the sun...as long as I don’t do the only thing in life I care about.’

  Elizabeth poured them wine and handed Caro a glass. ‘Come and live with me, then. We’ll be two eccentric bluestockings, keeping pugs, reading scientific tracts and nattering on about the rights of working women and prostitutes, like that Mary Wollstonecraft creature.’

  Caro attempted a smile, but with her whole world disintegrating around her, she didn’t have the heart to appreciate her cousin’s attempt at humour. ‘You should think twice before making such an offer. I’m a social pariah now, remember.’

  Her cousin merely laughed. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve heard the fantastical tale Lady Melross has been spreading. You, baring your bosom to snag a gentleman? Max Ransleigh, rake though he be, mauling a gently born girl in his own aunt’s conservatory? No one who knows either of you could possibly believe it.’

  In no mood to recount the story again, despite the curiosity in her cousin’s eyes, Caro merely shrugged.

  Tacitly accepting her reluctance, Elizabeth sighed. ‘Is there no way to get around Lord Woodbury?’

  ‘Only if I could find a fortune hunter desperate enough to escort me to Gretna Green tonight.’

  Elizabeth shuddered. ‘Don’t even joke of such a thing! Besides, wouldn’t Woodbury put a stop to that, too?’

  ‘He couldn’t; I’m of age. And, once married, my new husband would take ownership of everything from the trustees, with the power to cancel the sale.’

  ‘I trust you are only jesting,’ Elizabeth said, looking at her with concern. ‘Gaining a husband would give you no more control over your wealth than your trustees do, as I learned to my sorrow. Oh, if only Harry were not so far away in India!’

  ‘I know,’ Caro said, feeling tears again prick her eyes. She’d never expected that at the most desperate hour of her life her closest childhood friend would be too far away to help her. ‘I wrote to him tonight, useless as that was. But the plain fact is he’s not here, nor could he possibly return before the sale goes through...and then the stud is lost to me for ever.’

  Merely saying the words sent a knife-like pain slashing through her. Lips trembling, she pushed the image of Sultan from her mind.

  ‘That soon?’ Elizabeth was saying. ‘I’m almost willing to draw up a list of eligible gentlemen.’

  ‘He could have all my money, as long as he left me enough to maintain the stud. If only I knew someone besides Harry who’d be honourable enough to make such a bargain and keep—’ Caroline broke off abruptly as Max Ransleigh’s words echoed in her ears: You could run the stud with my blessing...

  A near-hysterical excitement blazing new energy into her, she seized her cousin’s arm. ‘Elizabeth, you are acquainted with the Ransleighs, aren’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t moved in their circles since my début Season, but I still count Jane Ransleigh as a friend. She’s Lady Gilford now, one of society’s most important—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know her,’ Caroline interrupted. ‘Is she in town? Could you get a message to her?’

  ‘I suppose so. What is it, Caro? You’re as white as if you were about to faint—and you’re hurting my arm.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, releasing it at once. Lightheaded, desperate, feeling every hour she’d gone without food and sleep and rest, she said, ‘I must get a message to her cousin, Max Ransleigh. Tonight, if possible.’

  ‘Max Ransleigh? Ah, the man who...’ Comprehension dawned in Elizabeth’s eyes. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I am. Though I’m not at all sure, after the scandal I dragged him into, that Lady Gilford would agree to give me his direction.’

  ‘You don’t have to ask her. Max is here now, in London. Jane told me at tea last week that he’d come to town to meet with the colonel who used to command his regiment.’

  ‘Do you know where he is staying?

  ‘No, but Tilly, my maid, could find out. A friend of hers is the housekeeper’s assistant for Lady Gilford.’

  ‘Could you ask her to go to Lady Gilford’s at once?’

  Elizabeth studied her. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  ‘No,’ Caro replied, panic and hope coursing through her in equal measure. ‘Nor have I any assurance he would even agree to see me, if I can locate him. But it’s the only chance I’ve got. The sale will be final before the month’s end.’

  ‘What about the Curse? Your mother, aunt, cousin, grandmother—every female on your mother’s side, for the last two generations has died in childbed. I thought you intended never to risk that.’

  Putting out of her mind the heat that had flared between them in the glasshouse, Caro said, ‘Mr Ransleigh’s only seen me in atrocious gowns and in breeches, so maybe he won’t want that from me. By all accounts, he prefers beautiful, sophisticated women and I’m hardly that. I’d give him free rein, with my
blessing, to pursue and bed any other woman he wished.’

  Elizabeth’s eyes shadowed; Caro knew her husband had availed himself of that privilege without his wife’s blessing. And despite her passionate love for him.

  Maybe there was something to be said for wedding with cool calculation, with no emotions involved.

  ‘Even if he took his pleasure elsewhere, he’d want to couple with his wife. Like every other man, he’ll want an heir.’

  ‘Perhaps. I’ll worry about that later, after I save the stud.’

  ‘What about Harry?’ Elizabeth persisted.

  A bittersweet pang went through her. She’d never imagined a future that did not include working the stud with Harry, the two of them linked by the same companionable affection they’d shared since childhood.

  Pushing away the doubts, she said, ‘What good would it be to have Harry, with no stud to run? Once the horses are sold and scattered, it would be nearly impossible to reassemble the breeding stock. As for the Curse, what good is hanging on to life if I’ve already lost what I love the most? No, Elizabeth, if there is a single chance of saving my horses, I simply must take it.’

  Elizabeth hesitated another moment, frowning. ‘I’m not at all sure this is wise, but...very well, I’ll send Tilly to Lady Gilford’s.’

  Caroline crushed her cousin in a hug, hope and fear and desperation racing through her with the speed of a thoroughbred galloping towards the finish line at Newmarket. ‘I’m not sure it’s wise either. But ask her to hurry.’

  * * *

  On the other side of Mayfair, Max Ransleigh was sharing a brandy with the colonel of his former regiment at his lodgings at Albany.

  ‘I appreciate your support, sir,’ Max told him.

  Colonel Brandon nodded brusquely. ‘Can’t trust these civilians not to muck things up. Foreign Office!’ He snorted. ‘If any of them had ever faced down fire in the heat of battle, they’d know the mettle of the men who fought beside them beyond any doubt. The very idea that you could have anything to do with that attempt against Wellington would be considered insulting and ridiculous by any soldier who ever served with you. As the scurvy diplomats should have realised.’