Fortunate Wager

by Jan Jones

  Lord Rothwell looked sardonic. ‘Doubtless he was visiting an acquaintance amongst your grooms.’

  ‘They say not. Our men do not think very highly of him. Or his morals.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that, may I ask?’

  ‘Merely that he gave every impression of spying – in order to put himself at an advantage, perhaps, when it comes to the betting for Solange’s race.’

  Caroline had not thought his lordship’s expression could grow any more austere. She was wrong. ‘I trust you do not think I had anything to do with his being at your brother’s establishment?’ he said, white-lipped.

  ‘Why, no. There would be no need. An owner, you know, must be welcome to see his horse whenever he chooses.’ A loud shout of indecorously unSabbath laughter drew her attention to the knot of young men and reminded her of Solange’s idiosyncrasy. ‘But only the owner, if you please, not his friends.’

  ‘I must say, you express yourself very freely for one who merely writes the reports for her brother.’

  ‘That is because Harry has too much bonhomie to enforce his own rules. I have no popularity to lose. Oh, I see Mama approaching. Would you care to be introduced?’

  ‘Your servant, Miss Fortune,’ he said, in tones of total dislike, and left.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MONDAY MORNING. SIX o’clock. Alex reflected savagely that the majority of his acquaintance were no doubt asleep at this moment, most of them asleep in busy, lively, important London. But here was he, staring at the ceiling of a Newmarket coaching inn, thoroughly awake and already suffering from a surfeit of boredom. He rolled out of bed and irritably rattled open the curtains, ready to aggravate himself some more by looking out on a tedious, empty day.

  His preconceptions received a sharp shock. Tradesmen’s carts trundled along the High Street. Shutters were folded back and the street washed down. Maids were abroad marketing. Maids! Alex disremembered seeing such a homely sight in Newmarket before and couldn’t help recalling Caroline Fortune’s pithy remark about servants not setting foot out of doors during a racing week.

  Were his fellow bucks and bloods that perilous? Surely not. But Alex was fair-minded and reluctantly conceded that when in Newmarket, gentlemen were free of their families and tended to give themselves over entirely to pleasure. Crowded hugger-mugger into the town’s many inns and hotels, they were unfettered by the common restraints of polite life. And thinking wryly of all the times he’d paid off Giles’s fancies in other places, he thought the more respectable females of Newmarket might just have a point.

  For now, he stood at the window of his room and watched the comings and goings of a market town. It was oddly soothing. His attention sharpened as a nice chestnut with a long white star on its forehead trotted by. The youth riding it had a familiar action, one Alex had seen before. On the heath, presumably, one of the hundreds of horses and riders he had been scrutinizing this week. He frowned, trying to pin the memory down. But the entrance into his chamber of a maid to light the fire – and flustered to find him already out of bed – distracted him and chased the matter from his mind.

  With no racing or cock-fighting or pugilism on offer, Giles did not put in an appearance at breakfast, relieving Alex of the necessity of finding an excuse as to why his friend should not accompany him to Penfold Lodge. Not, he qualified to himself, that he was letting a chit of a girl dictate his actions. That would be preposterous.

  Fortune was there for once, out in the paddock. Watching unnoticed, Alex approved of the non-hectoring way the young man treated the horses. It was a fanciful conceit, but the beasts seemed to want to do their best for him. But, Lord, the place was quiet. No shouts from the stable-block, no ribald banter such as was to be found in other establishments. It was enough to give one gooseflesh.

  ‘We find it serves,’ explained Harry with a shrug when Alex greeted him. ‘Will you come to the house and join me in a tankard of ale?’

  As they strolled towards the yard, Alex noticed a chestnut with a long white forehead star in the field. He paused. ‘Didn’t I see that one this morning trotting along the High Street?’

  His companion stumbled on a tussock of grass. ‘I daresay,’ he said. ‘Most trainers take their horses up to the heath to exercise them. Here, Maiden,’ and he stretched out his hand to the filly.

  ‘Lad riding her had a nice action. Very smooth.’

  Harry patted the horse’s neck. ‘Yes, we’re hoping for a result in next year’s Guineas with Maiden. You want to watch out for her.’

  Fortune was hiding something. A trainer did not give out that sort of tip without good reason. Alex’s nerves tingled. As they walked on, he directed a close look around the stable and yard, noting every man there. The sight of Solange with her nose in a bucket of feed, unperturbed by the head groom brushing her down was a considerable facer. Alex gaped. How the devil had Fortune managed it in so short a time? The mare looked … normal! ‘That lad,’ he said casually when he’d recovered, ‘the chestnut’s rider. Is he here? I’d like to commend him on his style.’

  ‘Eh? No, sorry, he rides out for me now and again but I haven’t got enough work to keep him full time. I believe he’s got several jobs on the go. You know how it is.’

  Alex did indeed. His thoughts turned grim. The boy was good and would be in demand. If he was in and out of other stables, he could well be gathering just such information as would turn a pretty profit at the betting post. Maybe Giles was not so wide of the mark with his prejudice against Penfold Lodge after all.

  Caroline sat on a hard chair in the New Subscription Rooms, watching the dancing and stifling a small yawn. Since Harry had relayed Lord Rothwell’s comments about seeing her ride Maiden on Monday, she had thought it prudent to rise an hour earlier to exercise the horses. Bertrand had always said she needed less sleep than a rabbit in a farmer’s sights, but even so she was feeling just a trifle over-extended now.

  It would not have been so bad if she had been dancing herself, or even conversing with someone interesting. But there was a dearth of young men tonight, and because she took pains to be either too clever or too bubbleheaded for all the middle-aged gentlemen on the look-out for a unpaid housekeeper, she was thrown back on the chaperons (whose gossiping she inhibited) or the other unpartnered young ladies. Caroline listened to them rattle on, interspersing the odd word, all the while calculating for the ten-thousandth time in her head how soon she could be considered a failure in the marriage stakes and thus reintroduce the subject at home of moving permanently to Penfold Lodge to be a companion to Bertrand’s mama.

  The set ended. Harry squired Louisa over and went in search of lemonade. Alderman Taylor, thought Caroline, looked decidedly unenamoured by Harry’s solicitous care of his daughter, but so long as the young pair did not stand up together for more than two dances he could not complain. The fact that they were always the longest two dances on the card had fortunately escaped him.

  A ripple of interest suddenly spread through the room. Caroline glanced across and to her amazement saw Lord Rothwell’s tall, immaculately clad figure stroll through the door. At the sight of the gratified smile on Alderman Taylor’s face, Caroline was glad he had decided not to spurn the invitation, although it was possibly only because he and his fine friend were at a loose end that they had made the journey.

  The alderman wasted no time in beckoning Louisa over. In a spirit of pure mischief, Caroline linked her arm in her friend’s and accompanied her. There was an undignified stir from the chaperons’ bench as a number of ladies felt the need to take a prompt turn about the room.

  ‘Louisa, my dear, here is Lord Rothwell desirous of asking you to stand up for the next dance. I’m sure you have that one free, do you not?’

  Louisa’s dance card had never yet been anything but full within minutes of her entering a ballroom, but she obeyed her father’s implicit instructions and bobbed an amiable curtsey.

  Out of politeness, Giles d’Arblay should then have offered to stand up
with Caroline, but instead he allowed his eye to be caught by one of the ladies behind her and was seamlessly engulfed in a charming flurry of introductions.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Lord Rothwell in a constrained voice. ‘My friend has no manners.’

  ‘I assure you I do not regard it,’ returned Caroline. She glanced at Alderman Taylor whispering hasty instructions in Louisa’s ear and chuckled. ‘Was it very flat in Newmarket tonight?’

  ‘By no means,’ said his lordship austerely. ‘But it is a fine evening and as I had already had occasion to mark the elegant exterior architecture in the town, we took a fancy to see these rooms. They are as handsome as report indicates.’

  ‘Spoken like a gentleman. The set is forming, my lord. I had best see if Louisa’s erstwhile partner would like me as a consolation prize.’

  He did, but with such a bad grace that Caroline was obliged to spend most of the half-hour flattering him into a better humour, with the result that their steps were less than polished. She was all the more astonished when Lord Rothwell solicited her hand for the cotillion.

  ‘Are you sure? The cotillion is the supper dance, you know.’

  His mouth twitched at her frankness. ‘Precisely. I am paying you back in your own coin. Making use of you, as you used me the other day.’

  Caroline felt an unpleasant stab of conscience. ‘My lord?’

  ‘Better I take you into supper than any of the other insipid females I see lined up waiting to toad-eat me.’

  She should have known his manners had not taken such a nice turn without an ulterior motive and she supposed she had deserved his unflattering elucidation. Still, she liked to dance and it was an undoubted pleasure to do so with a partner as accomplished as Lord Rothwell. When he steered her towards Harry and Louisa at the supper tables, however, Caroline determined that the favour was now used up. He would not fix his interest there if she could help it. She quizzed him throughout the repast on the luminaries who commonly graced the town during the racing weeks. As she had expected, he was both knowledgeable and sarcastic about his fellows. What was more to the point was that although Caroline herself found his comments amusing, Louisa – who had little interest in the London ton – came to the conclusion that Lord Alexander Rothwell was rather a dull dog long before the end of the meal.

  Caroline shot a rapid glance at the White Hart next morning as she and Solange trotted back in the early dawn, but all the windows were close-curtained and no Lord Rothwell gazed out at her. Still abed with any luck. Fatigued beyond measure after being polite to the Bury St Edmunds luminaries for a whole evening. ‘So why did he come?’ she asked Solange, perplexed. ‘For that matter, why is he still in Suffolk when everything about him says London? His clothes, his manner, his friends …’ She grimaced, thinking of Mr d’Arblay’s rather cold-blooded charm, and felt Solange pick up her mood. She made haste to reassure her. ‘Apart from you, darling, you’re just beautiful. I don’t believe he’s here simply to see you win a race, even so.’

  A dog barked in the yard of the Star, causing the horse to shy across the cobbles. ‘Silly girl,’ chided Caroline. ‘And you five times its size.’

  Solange whinnied as if to say size had nothing to do with it.

  In the stall, Caroline put Lord Rothwell out of her mind as she spent a while rubbing the mare down. One of Bertrand’s tenets had been that the bond between rider and horse was the strongest there is. This had been Solange’s first time out of Penfold Lodge; Caroline had to reassure her that she’d been fast and strong and clever and had done spectacularly well. Oh, to have time to linger for as long as she wished with her. But it couldn’t be done. One last pat and then, with a look at the lightening sky, she swung herself into Fancy’s saddle.

  There. Alex had been almost sure it was Fortune’s mystery rider he’d seen going up to the heath on the bay colt as he opened his curtain. After a frustrating couple of days finding excuses to visit other training yards and seeing neither hide nor hair of him, Alex had hastily made ready after that glimpse – and had been rewarded by the sight of the lad trotting the horse back to Penfold Lodge.

  At last. He pulled his cap low and edged along the street behind the colt, his outline disguised by the bulk of the oldest coat in his wardrobe. He’d wait on the corner opposite the stables, then follow the lad to see where he went next. With any luck, he’d soon be free of his obligation to Sally Jersey and could go back to London and civilization.

  An excellent plan, but infuriatingly thwarted. As the archway remained empty, Alex concluded this must be the one day the wretched boy worked at Penfold Lodge all morning. He cursed long and hard. He couldn’t wait here any longer, the town was livening up and he’d already attracted one or two curious glances. Nor could he stroll into the stables legitimately as Solange’s owner, not when he had such odd clothes on. He’d go back to the White Hart, change, then return.

  Which he did. And found only a yard full of stable-hands, eating porridge out of a common tureen and politely astonished that one of the gentry should be abroad so early. He thought the whole street could probably hear his teeth grinding as he strode back.

  ‘I don’t know what you were worried about. Life here is just one dissipation after another,’ said Giles, pouring himself a second cup of coffee.

  Alex threw him a fulminating look. Despite a robust breakfast, he was still in a thoroughly bad temper. ‘Do elucidate,’ he said.

  ‘You cannot possibly have forgotten that we are invited to Mrs Fortune’s At Home today?’

  ‘Giles, we are not! We cannot be. I was assiduous in not attracting one of that damned woman’s invitations!’

  ‘Dear, dear. You should have warned me. Knowing time was likely to be hanging on our hands, I accepted for both of us.’

  ‘Accepted? For poor company and bad wine? Are you mad? Whatever possessed you?’

  ‘She has a deuced pretty daughter.’

  ‘Now I know you are all about in your head. That was last season. And however pleasing a young woman is to the eye, if she has an encroaching mother, it is as much as one’s life is worth to pursue the acquaintance.’

  ‘Hence your monopoly of the goldsmith’s chit at the Assembly Rooms, I suppose? No vulgar mama to bring you up to scratch.’

  ‘I would hardly describe it as a monopoly. You stood up with her yourself when they called the extra dance at the end.’

  ‘But I had to bribe the fiddle player to stay on for another half-hour – you simply lordshipped your way into displacing some poor yokel for the privilege.’

  ‘And was well-served by being wearied to death. A beauty she may be, but Miss Taylor has precious little conversation.’

  ‘Lord, Alex, there’s no rule says you have to listen to ’em.’

  Which was presumably why his friend had not realized Louisa Taylor was infatuated with Harry Fortune. Alex decided against enlightening him. A fruitless pursuit might at least stop Giles plaguing him out of his life while he was forced to reside in Newmarket.

  It gave him a morbid satisfaction when Mrs Fortune’s At Home proved exactly as he had prophesied. The room itself was not quite in the newest fashion, overly gilded, and chilly to boot. Giles, naturally, charmed his way into the circle of ladies by the fire. Alex, after nodding glacially and giving his hostess no encouragement when she presented him to Caroline’s empty-headed younger sister – who wasn’t even out for goodness sake! – decided with no enthusiasm whatsoever that his duty lay in the direction of Fortune Senior and his cronies. The man was a gentleman trainer, after all. Alex would never have a better opportunity to get into conversation with him. And then to steer that conversation towards the race course.

  Hoping her hospitality to Papa’s colleagues’ daughters would prevent Mama from finding yet another elderly widower for her to make herself agreeable to, Caroline watched Lord Rothwell out of the corner of her eye as she kept up a flow of inconsequential chatter. He was doing it again! Why did he come to these gatherings, only to be bored
? That he was bored she knew full well, even though he was listening to her father with every appearance of interest. He had a tiny little trick of twitching his shoulders inside his coat as if he were longing to be off, but was constrained by politeness to stay. It was a puzzle. Nothing Caroline had seen of Lord Alexander Rothwell before the assembly inclined her to the belief that he put manners before his own comfort. And yet it was a full forty minutes before he eased himself away. By that time, Caroline had been twice round the circle of young ladies and chaperons, had detached her agreeably flustered sister Selina from Giles d’Arblay and had managed, under the guise of offering him tea and cake, to fit in a very informative chat with the manager of the bank where the racing account resided. Now she crossed to Lord Rothwell as he sought to make his escape. It was ill done in her, no doubt, but he piqued her curiosity considerably.

  ‘Would you care for tea, my lord? Or coffee? I can fetch it over so you do not need to run the gamut of the tray.’

  ‘No,’ he said, with more force than politeness. ‘I can think of nothing I would like less than tea at this moment.’

  Goodness, he really had been bored. How intriguing. ‘I am sure that’s not true,’ said Caroline.

  ‘I do not wish for tea,’ he repeated through set lips.

  ‘That I comprehended. I only meant there must be many things you would like less than tea. Worms, for instance. I used to have such a penchant for worms when I was younger, but whenever I was summoned to Mama’s sitting room and brought a handful to show her and her guests, they were not at all appreciative. Eventually she stopped sending for me. Honoria was far more tractable.’

  The corner of his mouth relaxed. ‘Miss Caro, you are a hoyden.’