Unbefitting a Lady

by Bronwyn Scott

  Still, he could leave whenever he chose if he didn’t like how things progressed. He wasn’t reliant on the position for a wage or a reference. He could vanish in the night and no one would be the wiser. As long as he dressed the part...

  Bram studied the items in the drawer—three linen shirts and two waistcoats from London’s finest tailors. They simply wouldn’t do for stable work. He’d have to go down to the village and look for ready-made work clothes. He’d also have to see about making arrangements to discreetly retrieve his trunk from the inn in Buxton too. It was unmistakably a gentleman’s travelling trunk and would have raised too many questions. There’d been only time to stop by the inn on the way out of town and pack a quick valise. Even that had been tricky since the inn had been in close proximity to the luxurious Crescent area of Buxton, expensive quarters for a man looking for work.

  Bram shut the drawer. What did he care if he was caught? The scandal would serve his father right. There was an irony to it. He’d been sent away to avoid further scandal, not to foment it. His father would die a thousand social deaths if it became known his son had taken employment as a groom in a duke’s household and lived above the stables with the other grooms and male workers. He didn’t want to get caught too soon though, not before he had a chance to see if the colt could be tamed—or Phaedra Montague for that matter.

  A heavy footfall at the door caused him to straighten. He had company. He half expected it to be Phaedra. ‘So, you’re the one who has come to replace me.’ The voice was thick with the broad sounds of Derbyshire, the sounds of a man who’d grown up here all his life and wandered very little, a man who would see assistance as an intrusion.

  ‘Not to replace you, to help you. For a while,’ Bram said in friendly tones. He strode forward, his hand outstretched. ‘You must be Anderson.’ The man looked sixty at least, with a shock of white hair and weathered face. But he was sturdy in build with the stocky frame of a Yorkshire man.

  He shifted his cane to his left side and shook hands. ‘Tom Anderson I am.’

  ‘I’m Bram Basingstoke. Have a seat. I’d like to talk to you about the horses.’ Bram belatedly glanced around the tiny room to realise the only place to sit was the bed.

  ‘Why don’t you come down to my rooms once you’re settled. We’ll talk more comfortably there.’

  ‘I’m ready now. I didn’t have much to unpack.’ Bram gestured towards the door. ‘I am hoping you can recommend a place in the village I can get work clothes,’ he said as they made the short trip towards Anderson’s rooms on the first floor.

  Anderson waved his cane. ‘Don’t bother. I’ve got a trunk of shirts and trousers left over from the last fellow who was here. He was tall like you, they should fit well enough.’

  Anderson’s rooms were slightly larger as befitted his status as the stable manager, and furnished comfortably with well-worn pieces. A fire was going in the hearth, a definite improvement over Bram’s cold chamber.

  ‘The last fellow?’ Bram enquired, taking a seat near the fire.

  Anderson chuckled. ‘You don’t think you’re the first man Lord Giles has hired to help out, do you?’ He pulled out a jug of whisky and poured two pewter cups.

  ‘I hadn’t thought either way on it,’ Bram said honestly. He’d been too busy thinking about Phaedra and the colt to contemplate the nuances of his position.

  ‘You’re about the fourth in as many months.’ Anderson passed him a cup. ‘Winter hasn’t been kind to this old man. I’ve been down with one thing or another since November and now my hip is giving me trouble. I can’t work the horses with a bad hip.’ Anderson paused and raised his cup in a toast. ‘Here’s hoping you’ll last longer than the rest.’

  Bram studied Anderson over the rim of his cup. Bram could see the age around Anderson’s eyes, his face tanned and wrinkled from a life lived outdoors. Anderson reminded him of the old groom at his family home. His father still hadn’t found a way to pension him off without hurting his pride. ‘The stables are well-kept and the quarters are decent. What drove them off?’

  It was Anderson’s turn to eye him over a swallow of whiskey. ‘It wasn’t a “what”. It was a “who”. Some men don’t like taking orders from a lady.’

  Ah. Phaedra Montague. He should have guessed. She’d been far from pleased with her brother’s announcement at the fair. ‘She makes life difficult?’ Bram asked. Did she plant frogs in their beds? He couldn’t envisage her stooping to such juvenile levels.

  Anderson wiped his mouth with his hand. ‘Nah. She doesn’t do it on purpose. It’s not her fault she knows more about horses than they do. She doesn’t mean to drive them away.’

  The first thing that struck Bram was that he doubted it. She probably did hope they would move along. She had not hidden her disapproval at the horse fair. The second was that she had the old groom wrapped around her finger. He was clearly defending her.

  ‘She’s that good?’ Bram took another swallow, trying to cultivate an attitude of nonchalance while he probed for information. It was always best to know one’s quarry before one began the hunt.

  ‘She’s that good. Lord Giles is a bruising rider but she holds equal to him. It’s not just the riding though. It’s everything else. It’s like she can look in their souls, that she can reach them on a level no one else can.’ Anderson poured himself a second drink. ‘I’ll tell you something crazy if you want to hear it and if it won’t send you packing.’

  Bram was all ears. This part of the country was known for its superstitions and ghost tales and Anderson had the makings of a fine storyteller.

  ‘Two years ago last June we had a white stallion named Troubadour. He belonged to her brother Edward. Edward was off fighting Napoleon but Troubadour had been left home. One night around the fourteenth, he started acting all crazy-like in his stall, kicking, stomping. He wouldn’t eat. No one could get near him except Miss Phaedra. She sat with him for hours getting him to calm down. Mind you, there was no one here. All four of the boys were at war. It was just Lady Phaedra and Lady Kate and the duke, of course. When Lady Kate came out to see her, Lady Phaedra was crying something fierce. She told Lady Kate Troubadour was dying and that she feared young Lord Edward was dead. Before sunrise, Troubadour lay down in his stall and refused to get up. A month later, word reached us that Lord Edward had fallen at Waterloo, the very night Troubadour died.’ Anderson tapped his head with his finger. ‘She knows them, knows what’s in their heads.’

  Bram nodded. He’d heard stories about horses that could sense their masters’ distress. He’d never heard of anything quite as drastic as Anderson’s tale. So, Lady Phaedra talked to horses and read their minds. Well, he’d see about that for himself, but it was clear Tom Anderson believed it in full.

  They passed a companionable evening discussing the horses and their workout needs. There was the spirited mare the eldest daughter, Kate, had left behind when she’d gone to America not long ago. There were the general horses kept for guests, not that there’d been many guests outside of family in recent months. There was Giles Montague’s black beast of a stallion, Genghis, nearly as dark as Warbourne. And there was the elegant chestnut thoroughbred, Merlin, Lord Jamie’s horse.

  ‘Lord Jamie?’ He quirked his eyebrow in question. Yet another younger brother, perhaps? How big was this family? Bram was beginning to wonder.

  ‘Lord Jamie is the eldest. But he went to war too, and didn’t come home. Only Lord Giles and Lord Harry returned.’ Anderson shook his head. ‘It’s been a bad business all around for the family. Lord Giles wanted to be a career military man. He never wanted to be the heir, never was jealous of Lord Jamie. But it wasn’t to be.’

  ‘He died too?’ Bram asked quietly. He knew several families in London who’d lost loved ones thanks to Napoleon. Families both rich and poor alike had lost sons.

  Anderson shrugged, a light twinkling in his old blue eyes. ‘Don’t know. That’s a whole other kettle of fish brewing up at the house these days. Lord Giles is pr
etty closemouthed about it, as he should be. But there was no body ever recovered and then last fall this woman shows up with a little ’un just about the right age claiming she’s Lord Jamie’s wife. She’s living at the Dower House. The family is trying to do right by her, although the whole thing seems off to me.’

  ‘Why?’

  Anderson jerked his head the general direction of the horse stalls. ‘Merlin’s still alive. He and Lord Jamie were as close as a horse and human can be, just like Edward and Troubadour,’ Tom Anderson answered matter-of-factly, as if everyone bought into folklore without question.

  Bram refrained from comment. He supposed stranger things had happened. When he’d driven through the gates of Castonbury today, it had looked normal enough—the manicured grounds, the outbuildings in decent repair, the stables immaculate. It had looked better than normal. From the outside, one would never guess the turmoil that simmered beneath the surface. What exactly had he let himself in for? Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t ‘boring.’ All fears of ennui had been effectively banished.

  * * *

  Phaedra rose early and dressed quickly in breeches and a loose shirt. Rising early was imperative if she wanted to escape the eagle eye of Aunt Wilhelmina. She did not approve of Phaedra roaming the estate in breeches nor did the redoubtable lady approve of rising before ten in the morning. Neither of which was surprising. Aunt Wilhelmina spent most of her life disapproving. Still, Phaedra preferred not to be on the receiving end of her aunt’s disapproval and there seemed to be a lot more of it headed her direction since Kate had left after Christmas with her new husband.

  In the breakfast room, Giles was already present with his coffee and newspapers. He looked up as she entered and uttered a brief good-morning. She nodded. This had become their ritual. Both of them enjoyed rising early but early rising was not synonymous with a desire to engage in conversation. They wanted to eat first, let their minds sift through the agenda of their days.

  Phaedra piled her plate with eggs and hot toast. Chances were she wouldn’t be back to the house for luncheon. Her mind was already sorting through the things that needed doing at the stables: check on the gelding with the sore leg, make sure the hay delivery had arrived from the home farm, do a general walk-through to check on the stalls and horses. There was Warbourne to see to and horses to exercise.

  The activity would fill her day until sunset. The busyness was a blessed relief from the empty house. She’d grown up in a large family, used to being surrounded by brothers and a sister, but war and the passing of years had brought an end to that. The boys had gone to battle. Only Giles had come home and then only because duty demanded it. Harry had come home and left again. Kate had married. Really, Kate’s marriage was the last blow, the last desertion. The two of them had lived here together during the years the boys were at war. It had brought them close in spite of the difference in their ages. Now Kate was gone, choosing Virgil and a new life in Boston over Castonbury and the familiar. And her.

  Now it was just her and Giles, the oldest and the youngest, nine years separating them. She hoped it wasn’t disloyal to Jamie to think of Giles as the oldest. But Jamie was dead now, whether there was a body or not, and Giles had done his best to pick up the reins of duty in the wake of great tragedy.

  Phaedra sighed and bit into her toast. Since Kate had left, mornings were hardest of all, the time when she was most acutely aware she’d been left behind. The once merry and heavily populated breakfast room was empty. Giles was here but he had Lily and in the summer they would marry. They would fill Castonbury with a new generation of Montagues. Time would move on. Would she? What would happen to her? What would become of her? Anything could happen. She told herself she had Warbourne now. He was her chance.

  Phaedra pushed back from the table, her appetite overruled by the need to see Warbourne, to get to the stables where worries and thoughts wouldn’t plague her.

  ‘Leaving so soon?’ Giles looked up from his paper. ‘Anxious to see your colt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t suppose we’ll see you before dinner?’ Giles arched a dark brow in query.

  ‘There’s a lot to be done. I was gone for two days,’ Phaedra said.

  ‘That’s what Basingstoke is for. Let him do the job he’s been hired for.’ Giles gave her a patient, brotherly smile. ‘You need time to be yourself, to do things you enjoy, Phae. You’ve been working too hard. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.’ Giles folded the newspaper and set it aside.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this spring, Phae. I know now isn’t the best time, but perhaps after dinner tonight?’ It was a token of how much Giles had softened this year that he was asking at all. Last year Giles would simply have issued his edict and considered it done.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Phaedra offered noncommittally. Giles could talk all he wanted. She wasn’t going to London for a Season. She had the Derby to think about. She couldn’t be spending her days on Bond Street trying on dresses to impress men she wasn’t going to marry, not when Warbourne needed her here. Phaedra grabbed up an apple from a bowl on the sideboard and made a hasty retreat before Giles decided to have the discussion right then.

  Unlike the quiet house, the stables were a hive of activity. Horses and grooms rose early. Phaedra went straight to an old, unused tack room she’d converted into an office during the winter and began going through paperwork that had arrived while she was gone. There wasn’t much of it, but the ritual was soothing and it centred her thoughts. Here, sitting at the scarred desk she’d found in the stable storage loft, she felt at home. This was her place. A rough desk, a rough chair, the worn breeding ledgers lined on a shelf that detailed every foal born at Castonbury—all of it defined her world.

  Phaedra pulled down a book that catalogued the horses at Castonbury. She flipped through until she found a blank page towards the back. She reached for the quill and inkstand on her desk and carefully wrote Warbourne, followed by his lineage, the price paid and date of purchase. She blew on the ink to dry it and surveyed the entry with a deep sense of pride. It was time to see the colt.

  Phaedra strode through the stable, stopping every so often to stroke a head poking out of its stall. She was nearly to Warbourne’s stall when she sensed it. Something was wrong. No, not wrong, merely different, out of the usual. Phaedra backtracked two stalls and halted. Merlin’s stall was empty.

  Jamie! Phaedra tamped down a wave of uncertain emotion, part fear and part wild hope tinged by memories of Troubadour and Edward, who had not been parted, not even in death. Phaedra strode through the stables at a half-run looking for Tom Anderson. ‘Tom!’ she called out, finding him cleaning a saddle. ‘Tom, where’s Merlin?’

  ‘Now settle yourself, missy. There’s nothing wrong,’ Tom said in calm tones. ‘Bram’s got him out in the round pen for a little work. You know how he’s been giving the boys trouble. No one’s been on him for quite a while and the longer he goes without discipline, the harder it will be to instil any in him.’

  Phaedra’s emotions settled into neutral agitation. A stranger had taken out Jamie’s horse. It was true, Merlin needed work. But it still felt odd. ‘The round pen, you said?’ She would go and have a look, and if anything was amiss, it would be the last time Bram Basingstoke helped himself to Jamie’s horse.

  Phaedra pulled her hacking jacket closer against the cold as she made her way towards the round pen. The day was overcast and grey, the sky full of clouds. In short, a typical Derbyshire March day. There would be twenty-seven more of them, probably all of them save the variance in rainfall. Derbyshire wasn’t known for ‘early springs.’

  In the offing, she could see the chestnut blur of Merlin as he cantered the perimeter of the pen. Cantered? That was promising. Phaedra quickened her pace. Lately, Merlin usually galloped heedlessly in the round pen, not minding any of the commands from the exercise boys. This morning, he was collected, running in a circle at a controlled pace.

  As she neared, Phaedra made
out the dark form of a man in the centre, long whip raised for instruction in one arm, the other arm stretched out in front of him holding the lunge line. But that wasn’t what held her attention. It was the fact that the man in question was doing all this shirtless. This time, Phaedra’s shiver had nothing at all to do with the weather.

  Chapter Four

  Bram Basingstoke stood in the round pen stripped to the waist and gleaming indecently with sweat. Phaedra was torn between continuing forward—which would result in him putting his shirt on, or standing back to discreetly watch him work, which would result in the shirt staying off a bit longer—a very enticing proposition, especially when one was as well made as he and she’d had very few opportunities to see such a finely honed man. It wasn’t nearly the same as seeing one’s brother en déshabillé.

  Phaedra opted for the latter and stayed back by the hay shed. No girl with an iota of curiosity about the male physique would discard the chance to see such a display of manhood. Déshabillé was hardly an apt description. Déshabillé implied casually or partially dressed. She supposed breeches and boots counted as partially dressed, technically. But the point remained, he was closer to ‘half naked’ than partially dressed and gloriously so.

  The muscles of his arm were taut with exertion from holding the lunge line, showing developed upper arms and well-formed shoulders. There had been considerable power behind the fist that had floored Sir Nathan the day before. Broad shoulders gave way to a well-defined torso, a veritable atlas of ridges and muscle leading to a tapered waist. With that kind of strength on display it was no wonder Merlin was cantering dutifully through his exercises.

  Bram brought Merlin to a halt. She should probably make her presence known. She couldn’t stand here all day ogling the help. Aunt Wilhelmina would have an apoplexy if she knew or if she saw... Phaedra stifled a laugh at the thought of Aunt Wilhelmina seeing Bram like this. She doubted Aunt Wilhelmina had ever tolerated a naked man in her presence. More the pity for her. Phaedra squared her shoulders and prepared to pretend she hadn’t been watching him work.