Dedication: To those who feel as if they’ve loved in vain. No love is ever in vain.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Acknowledgement
Copyright © 2015 by Grace Burrowes
Cover Design by Wax Creative, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Grace Burrowes Publishing.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Thomas: The Jaded Gentlemen is Published by Grace Burrowes Publishing
21 Summit Avenue
Hagerstown, MD 21740
graceburrowes.com
Ebook ISBN:
Chapter One
What did it portend, when a man arrived to his newly acquired estate and found an execution in progress?
“The damned beast is done for,” a squat, pot-bellied fellow declared from halfway down the barn aisle.
Thomas Jennings, Baron Sutcliffe, had an advantage of height over the crowd gathered in the stable. Nonetheless, he apparently hadn’t been spotted as he’d ridden up the lane, and he didn’t draw attention watching from the shadows near the door.
“The damned beast was rallying until some idiot fed him oats at midday, Mr. Chesterton,” a woman retorted.
She stood at the front of the group, slightly above average height, a neat dark braid hanging down a ramrod-straight back. Her dress was muddy about the hem and so far from fashionable Thomas could not have accurately named the color.
“Horses in work get grain at midday,” the Chesterton fellow retorted. “If you wanted special treatment for your personal mount, you should have come to me.” He uncoiled a bullwhip from around his middle, an ugly length of braided leather lashed to a heavy wooden stock. “I say the horse needs to be put down and I’m the stable master here, missy.”
This woman would not take kindly to being called missy. A blind man could have discerned that from the command in her tone.
Thomas was far from blind.
The lady stood in profile to him, her nose a trifle bold, her mouth wide and full. Not precisely a pretty woman, though her looks were memorable. She blocked the door to a stall that housed a raw-boned bay gelding. The beast stood with his head down, flanks matted with sweat. A back hoof lifted in a desultory attempt to kick at the horse’s own belly.
“The horse wants walking,” she said. “A few minutes on grass every hour, clean, tepid water, and no more damned oats.”
Chesterton let the coils of his whip fall, the tip of the lash landing on the toes of the lady’s dusty boots.
“You are prolonging that animal’s suffering, Miss Tanner,” Chesterton said. “What will the new owner think of your cruelty? The beast turns up colicky after you ride him to exhaustion in this heat, and you won’t even give your own horse the mercy of a quick death.”
“We’ve had two other cases of colic in your stable in the last month, Mr. Chesterton. Any fool knows a horse recovering from colic ought not to be given oats.”
Thomas had certainly known that.
“If a horse can’t handle his regular rations without coming down with a bellyache, then he’s not recovering, is he?” Chesterton retorted.
Chesterton flicked his wrist, so the whip uncoiled behind him. With one more jerk of his wrist, and he could wrap that whip around the woman’s boots, wrench her off her feet, and get to the horse.
A stable lad sidled closer to the lady, though she gave no indication she’d noticed the advance of Chesterton’s infantry.
“Chesterton, think,” Miss Tanner said, more exasperation than pleading in her tone. “Baron Sutcliffe has only recently purchased Linden, and he will now receive my reports on the crops and livestock. When he learns of three dead horses in one month, every one of them a valuable adult animal in otherwise good health, what conclusion will he draw about his stable master? Give me another twelve hours with the gelding, and then you can shoot him if he’s not coming around.”
The offer was reasonable to the point of shrewdness.
“No baron worth a title will listen to a woman’s opinion regarding his land or livestock. You’d best be packing your things, Miss Tanner, or I’ll be the one reporting to the nancy baron what goes on at Linden.”
Time to end this.
“As it happens,” Thomas said, sauntering forward, “the nancy baron is here, and willing to listen to any knowledgeable opinion on most topics. Perhaps somebody might begin by explaining why a half dozen men to whom I pay regular wages are loitering about in the middle of the afternoon?”
The lady did not give up her place in front of the stall, but Chesterton coiled his whip and puffed out his chest.
“Alvinus Chesterton, your lordship. I’m Linden’s stable master. Yon beast is suffering badly, and Miss Tanner is too soft-hearted to allow the horse a merciful end.”
Miss Tanner’s soft heart was nowhere in evidence that Thomas could divine.
He assayed a bow in the lady’s direction, though manners would likely impress her not one bit.
The point was to impress the louts surrounding her. “Miss Tanner, Thomas, Baron Sutcliffe, at your service. Chesterton, if you’d see to my horse. He’s endured a long, hot journey down from London and needs a thorough cooling out.”
Chesterton clearly didn’t like that suggestion. In any stable, the lowliest lad was usually stuck with the job of walking a sweaty horse until the animal could be safely given water and put in its stall. The stable master stomped off, bellowing for somebody named Anderson to tend to the baron’s horse.
Now for the greater challenge.
“Your horse is ailing?” Thomas asked the lady.
“I own him,” she said, chin tipping up a half inch. A good chin, determined without being stubborn. In contrast, her eyes were a soft, misty gray—also guarded and weary.
“Chesterton tried to tell you what to do with your own livestock?”
“He tried to shoot my horse, and would have done so except I came by to make sure Seamus was continuing to recover.”
Amid the pungent, dusty, horsy scents of the stable Thomas picked up a whiff of roses coming from—her?
“Let’s have a look, shall we, Miss Tanner?”
Oh, she did not want to allow a stranger into her horse’s stall, but the realm’s only female steward—and possibly its most stubborn of either gender—defied her new employer at her peril.
“Miss Tanner, I will not shoot the animal without your permission. You could have me charged before the king’s man for such behavior, baron or not.”
Thomas would have preferred “or not,” though that choice had been taken from him.
Still, he refrained from physically moving the lady aside, reaching past her to open the door, or otherwise publicly disrespecting her authority as owner of the horse and de facto steward at Linden.
Standing this close to Miss Tanner, Thomas co
uld see she was worried for her horse, though Chesterton had been about to use his bullwhip on the lady.
“The gums tell the tale,” Thomas said, quietly. “Your gelding is not trying to get down and roll, and that’s a good sign.”
Outside the stable, Rupert’s hoof beats went clip-clopping by on the lane.
“Tell the fools to walk your horse out in the shade,” the lady said. “They should get his saddle off too.”
Miss Tanner was trying to distract Thomas, trying to wave him off for however long it took her to inspect her sorry beast. Thomas was not willing to be distracted, not as long as Chesterton and a half dozen of his dimwitted minions lurked about.
“Rupert walked the last two miles from the village,” Thomas said. “He’s barely sweating and will manage well enough. I wanted to make a point to my stable master, and you, my dear, are stalling.”
That chin dipped. “Chesterton could be right. I don’t want to put Seamus down.”
A spine of steel, nerves of iron, and a heart of honest sentiment. Interesting combination.
“Miss Tanner, the last time I saw a horse shot, I cried shamelessly. It’s a sad business all around.” Thomas had been twelve years old, and Grandfather’s afternoon hunter had broken a foreleg in a damned rabbit hole. The twins had sworn off foxhunting, and Theresa had cried loudest of all.
Grandpapa, for the only time in Thomas’s memory, had got thoroughly inebriated.
Miss Tanner pushed the stall door open, and the horse lifted his head to inspect the visitors. A horse approaching death would have ignored them or turned away.
“Seamus, this is Baron Sutcliffe,” Miss Tanner informed her gelding. “His lordship says he won’t shoot you.”
“A ringing endorsement.” Thomas let the horse sniff his glove. “Also the truth. When did you first notice a problem?”
“Last night. I came down in the evening, and Wee Nick alerted me. He and Beckman took turns with me walking Seamus for most of the night, offering him water and periodic nibbles of grass. By morning, Seamus seemed to be functioning normally, and I thought we were through the worst.”
Functioning normally was doubtless a euphemism for passing manure.
“Somebody gave him oats at noon?”
“Some imbecile.”
A horse who’d done without much fodder the previous night and skipped his morning ration of oats would have been ravenous for grain by noon, and bolting grain never boded well for an equine’s digestion.
Thomas stroked a hand down the gelding’s sweaty neck. “Part of Seamus’s problem is simply the heat. Why wasn’t a bucket hung in his stall?”
“I don’t know. We usually water them at the trough. Nick hung a bucket last night, but in summer, the buckets need to be scrubbed regularly.”
Seamus craned his neck in the lady’s direction.
“Shameless old man,” she murmured, scratching one hairy ear.
Uncomfortable the gelding might be, but he was not at death’s door if he could flirt with his owner. Thomas lifted the horse’s lip and pressed gently on healthy pink gums. A horse in the later stages of colic would have dark or even purple gums.
“He’s uncomfortable,” Thomas said, “but not in immediate danger. He should be on limited rations—hay and grass, not grain—and no work for several days, exactly as you intended. Was this Nick person among those watching Chesterton threaten your horse?”
Had Thomas not come along, the men might have started exchanging bets, or worse.
Miss Tanner scratched the horse’s other ear. “Nick, Beck, and Jamie have gone into the village to get the last of the provisions for the house in preparation for your arrival. Chesterton timed this confrontation for their absence. None of those three would have allowed Seamus to be fed oats.”
The lady did not want to leave her horse undefended, and Thomas couldn’t blame her, but she would have to learn to trust her employer’s authority.
“Come, Miss Tanner. I’ve yet to see my new house, and as the closest thing I have to a land steward, you are the first among the staff with whom I must become better acquainted.”
“You’ll want to eat,” she said, tousling the horse’s dark forelock. “To change, and Mrs. Kitts is doubtless in a taking that you’ve tarried in the stable this long.”
Thomas did want to eat, also to drink a large quantity of something cold, and to bathe—God above, did he want to bathe.
“You there!” Thomas called to a skinny older fellow pushing a barrow of straw and muck down the barn aisle. “Your name?”
“Hammersmith, my lord.”
“Hammersmith, if Miss Tanner’s horse shows any signs of renewed distress, or is taken from his stall for any reason by anybody save Miss Tanner, you are to alert me immediately. Not Chesterton, not the local magistrate, not Wellington himself is to handle that animal without Miss Tanner’s permission.”
“Aye, milord.”
“And when you’ve dumped that barrow, please see to it Seamus has half a bucket of clean water.”
“Aye, milord. At once, sir.”
“Now will you accompany me to the manor house, Miss Tanner?”
She gave the horse’s chin a deliberate, final scratching. “Yes, my lord.”
* * *
Baron Sutcliffe, was entirely too big to stalk about a busy stable as quietly as a hungry tom cat. He spoke softly too, in the cultured tones of a gentleman, but Chesterton had paled at the sight of his new employer—and put away his whip.
For that alone, the baron had Loris’s loyalty.
She’d been so focused on her horse she’d not noticed the addition to the crowd until Sutcliffe had strolled through the grooms like Moses parting a Red Sea of malevolence and mischief. The baron had been a human storm front rolling toward her, heedless of anything in his path.
No, not heedless—indifferent. Sutcliffe had known Chesterton and his lackeys were milling about, and he’d seen Chesterton fondling that infernal whip.
Sutcliffe simply hadn’t cared.
The baron’s exquisitely tailored riding attire and public school diction sat in contrast to Loris’s conviction that his lordship would have relished a display of violence. One man against a half dozen and he’d been amused by the odds.
“So tell me about the enmity between you and Chesterton,” the baron said, lacing his arm with Loris’s. He’d matched his steps to hers—not all men would.
“He’s your stable master, my lord, and we loathe each other.”
“Why?”
Because I have breasts and a womb and am smarter than he or any of his near relations. Because the stable is not my domain and I could run it better than he’ll ever be able to. Because he’s mean, and male, and no stable lad who wants his wages will gainsay such a master.
“Chesterton loathes me because I am an unnatural female,” Loris said. “I loathe him because he is needlessly cruel to the beasts who depend on him. Besides which, he is bigoted, backward, and incapable of hiring competent stable help.”
As soon as the words were out of Loris’s mouth, she wished them back. Not fifteen minutes after meeting her new employer, she was whining. Loris didn’t like that the baron held her livelihood in his titled hands, she didn’t like explaining herself, and she didn’t like—oh, she most sincerely hated—that he’d been on hand for that scene in the stable.
She would have hated more what would have happened if the baron hadn’t come prowling along.
“Chesterton will not trouble you further,” Sutcliffe said as they reached the steps of the manor house. “Of this, I am certain.”
“You expect him to leave?”
The baron regarded her with eyes of such dark blue they might have been a portraitist’s artistic exaggeration. He had a baronial nose that on another man could have shaded toward unfortunate, but on him looked proud in the best sense. Loris did not like Sutcliffe—she didn’t know him—but she approved of that nose.
“I do not expect Chesterton to spontaneously quit m
y employ,” the baron said. “I can’t abide incompetence in any employee. Either Chesterton did not know how to care for your horse, or he deliberately jeopardized the gelding’s health.”
Sutcliffe held the door for her. Of course, he would not knock on the door to his own home.
And, of course—barons probably set great store by their manners—he was politely warning Loris that her time at Linden Hall could be drawing to a close as well.
Then what would she do? Papa had run off to God knew where, she had no useful skills to fall back on other than stewarding, no family to turn to, and not even a true friend to her name.
Rather than take issue with his lordship’s fussing, Loris preceded him through the door.
Unfortunately for her, all of her fear, fatigue, and uncertainty came trundling right along with her.
* * *
No footman, butler, or porter attended the main entrance to the Linden manor house. Thomas began a list of Linden’s shortcomings: an empty stable yard, an incompetent stable master, and an unattended front door.
He gestured to the right. “Let’s have our discussion in the library, Miss Tanner.”
As best Thomas recalled the description of the house, a library lay off that direction. Perhaps an appearance of the Eighty-Second Regiment of Foot would have resulted in one of his staff coming at last to investigate.
Thomas had asked Miss Tanner to join him, mostly to separate the combatants in the stable and test the loyalty of the lads. If harm came to Miss Tanner’s horse despite Thomas’s orders, then the stable master would not be the only one sent packing.
Miss Tanner preceded Thomas to the library, at home in the Linden manor house and not the least bit self-conscious about it. The tip of her long braid kicked up with each impact of her boot heels on the carpeted corridor.
She could not know where that tempted a man to focus his gaze.
The house was exactly as its previous owner had described: lovely with an emphasis on light, and an airy graciousness created by soft colors, ample windows, high ceilings, and elegant appointments.
Thomas Page 1
