An Unwilling Conquest
An Unwilling Conquest
Stephanie Laurens
A successful horse breeder and self-proclaimed rake, Harry Lester samples women like wines.But after having his heart trampled upon by someone he actually loved, he has no intention of falling for a woman again, let alone be ensnared by the trap of marriage. Now, with a large inheritance to his name, Harry knows that he'd best start running from London's matchmaking mothers and widows.Harry heads for the racing town of Newmarket, only to encounter Mrs. Lucinda Babbacombe, a beautiful, independent widow. And before he knows it, Harry vows to protect Lucinda from the town full of lonely gambling men, despite her refusal to accept his countless offers of help.Lucinda is extraordinary-an intelligent, tender, marriageworthy woman-but will Harry let himself be taken prisoner in this most passionate of traps?
An Unwilling Conquest
Stephanie Laurens
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
About the Author
Set against the backdrop of Regency England, in An Unwilling Conquest,STEPHANIE LAURENS continues the story of Harry Lester, met earlier in The Reason for Marriage and A Lady of Expectations. The Lesters were the first family Stephanie created where different books dealt with the romances of siblings, and as such were the precursors of many of Stephanie’s subsequent books.
In An Unwilling Conquest, Harry, the second Lester brother, flees London for Newmarket, determined to escape any leg-shackle fate might have waiting for him in the ballrooms. Fate, however, proves more far-sighted, having arranged for a distraction in the person of Mrs Lucinda Babbacombe.
Stephanie lives in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and two daughters. To learn more about Stephanie’s books visit her website at www.stephanielaurens.com.
Also by Stephanie Laurens
THE REASONS FOR MARRIAGE
A LADY OF EXPECTATIONS
A COMFORTABLE WIFE
Chapter One
“Is it the devil we’re running from, then?”
The question, uttered in the mildest of tones, made Harry Lester wince. “Worse,” he threw over his shoulder at his groom and general henchman, Dawlish. “The matchmaking mamas—in league with the dragons of the ton.” Harry edged back on the reins, feathering a curve at speed. He saw no reason to ease the wicked pace. His match greys, sleek and powerful, were quite content to keep the bits between their teeth. His curricle rushed along in their wake; Newmarket lay ahead. “And we’re not running—it’s called a strategic retreat.”
“Is that so? Well, can’t say I blame you,” came in Dawlish’s dour accents. “Who’d ever have thought to see Master Jack landed—and without much of a fight, if Pinkerton’s on the up. Right taken aback, is Pinkerton.” When this information elicited no response, Dawlish added, “Considering his position, he is.”
Harry snorted. “Nothing will part Pinkerton from Jack—not even a wife. He’ll swallow the pill when the time comes.”
“Aye—p’raps. Still, can’t say I’d relish the prospect of answering to a missus—not after all these years.”
Harry’s lips quirked. Realising that Dawlish, riding on the box behind him, couldn’t see it, he gave into the urge to smile. Dawlish had been with him forever, having, as a fifteen-year-old groom, attached himself to the second son of the Lester household the instant said son had been put atop a pony. Their old cook had maintained it was a clear case of like to like; Dawlish’s life was horses—he had recognised a master in the making and had followed doggedly in his wake. “You needn’t worry, you old curmudgeon. I can assure you I’ve no intention, willingly or otherwise, of succumbing to any siren’s lures.”
“All very well to say so,” Dawlish grumbled. “But when these things happen, seems like there’s no gainsaying them. Just look at Master Jack.”
“I’d rather not,” Harry curtly replied. Dwelling on his elder brother’s rapid descent into matrimony was an exercise guaranteed to shake his confidence. With only two years separating them, he and Jack had led much the same lives. They’d come on the town together more than ten years ago. Admittedly, Jack had less reason than he to question love’s worth, nevertheless, his brother had been, as Dawlish had observed, a most willing conquest. The fact made him edgy.
“You planning on keeping from London for the rest of yore life?”
“I sincerely hope it won’t come to that.” Harry checked the greys for a slight descent. The heath lay before them, a haven free of matchmakers and dragons alike. “Doubtless my uninterest will be duly noted. With any luck, if I lay low, they’ll have forgotten me by next Season.”
“Wouldn’t have thought, with all the energy you’ve put into raising a reputation like you have, that they’d be so keen.”
Harry’s lip curled. “Money, Dawlish, will serve to excuse any number of sins.”
He waited, expecting Dawlish to cap the comment with some gloomy pronouncement to the effect that if the madams of society could overlook his transgressions then no one was safe. But no comment came; his gaze fixed unseeing on his leader’s ears, Harry grudgingly reflected that the wealth with which he and his brothers, Gerald as well as Jack, had recently been blessed, was indeed sufficient to excuse a lifetime of social sins.
His illusions were few—he knew who and what he was—a rake, one of the wolves of the ton, a hellion, a Corinthian, a superlative rider and exceptional breeder of quality horseflesh, an amateur boxer of note, an excellent shot, a keen and successful huntsman on the field and off. For the past ten and more years, Society had been his playing field. Capitalising on natural talents, and the position his birth had bestowed, he had spent the years in hedonistic pleasure, sampling women much as he had the wines. There’d been none to gainsay him, none to stand in his path and challenge his profligate ways.
Now, of course, with a positively disgusting fortune at his back, they’d be lining up to do so.
Harry snorted and refocused on the road. The sweet damsels of the ton could offer until they were blue in the face—he wasn’t about to buy.
The junction with the road to Cambridge loomed ahead. Harry checked his team, still sprightly despite their dash from London. He’d nursed them along the main road, only letting them have their heads once they’d passed Great Chesterford and picked up the less-frequented Newmarket road. They’d passed a few slower-moving carriages; most of the gentlemen intent on the week’s racing would already be in Newmarket.
About them, the heath lay flat and largely featureless, with only a few stands of trees, windbreaks and the odd coppice to lend relief. There were no carriages approaching on the Cambridge road; Harry swung his team onto the hard surface and flicked the leader’s ear. Newmarket—and the comfort of his regular rooms at the Barbican Arms—lay but a few miles on.
“To y’r left.”
Dawlish’s warning growl came over his shoulder in the same instant Harry glimpsed movement in the stand of trees bordering the road ahead. He flicked both horses’ withers; as the lash softly swooshed back up the whip-handle, he slackened the reins, transferring them to his left hand. With his right, he reached for the loaded pistol he kept under the seat, just behind his right boot.
As his fingers closed about the chased butt, he registered the incongruity of the scene.
Dawlish put it into words, a heavy horse pistol in his hands. “On the king’s highway in broad daylight—never-you-mind! What’s the world a-coming to, I asks you?”
The curricle sped on.
Harry wasn’t entirely surprised when the men milling in the trees made no attempt to halt them. They were mounted but, even so, would have had the devil of a time hauling in the flying greys. He counted at least five as they flashed past, all in frieze and heavily muffled. The sound of stifled cursing dwindled behind them.
Dawlish muttered darkly, rummaging about re-stowing his pistols. “Stap me, but they even had a wagon backed up in them trees. Right confident of their haul they must be.”
Harry frowned.
The road curved ahead; he regathered the slack reins and checked the greys fractionally.
They rounded the curve—Harry’s eyes flew wide.
He hauled back on the reins with all his strength, slewing the greys across the road. They came to a snorting, stamping halt, their noses all but in the low hedge. The curricle rocked perilously, then settled back on its springs.
Curses turned the air about his ears blue.
Harry paid no attention; Dawlish was still up behind him, not in the ditch. Before him, on the other hand, was a scene of disaster.
A travelling carriage lay on its side, not in the ditch but blocking most of the road. It looked as if one of the back wheels had disintegrated; the ponderous contraption, top-heavy with luggage, had toppled sideways. The accident had only just occurred—the upper wheels of the carriage were still slowly rotating. Harry blinked. A young lad, a groom presumably, was struggling to haul a hysterical girl from the ditch. An older man, the coachman from his attire, was hovering anxiously over a thin grey-haired woman, laid out on the ground.
The coach team was in a flat panic.
Without a word, Harry and Dawlish leapt to the ground and ran to calm the horses.
It took a good five minutes to soothe the brutes, good, strong coach horses with the full stubbornness and dim wits of their breed. With the traces finally untangled, Harry left the team in Dawlish’s hands;
the young groom was still helplessly pleading with the tearful girl while the coachman dithered over the older woman, clearly caught between duty and a wish to lend succour, if he only knew how.
The woman groaned as Harry walked up. Her eyes were closed; she lay straight and rigid on the ground, her hands crossed over her flat chest.
“My ankle—!” A spasm of pain twisted her angular features, tight under an iron-grey bun. “Damn you, Joshua—when I get back on my feet I’ll have your hide for a footstool, I will.” She drew her breath in in a painful hiss. “If I ever get back on my feet.”
Harry blinked; the woman’s tones were startlingly reminiscent of Dawlish in complaining mode. He raised his brows as the coachman lumbered to his feet and touched his forehead. “Is there anyone in the carriage?”
The coachman’s face blanked in shock.
“Oh my God!” Her eyes snapping open, the woman sat bolt upright. “The mistress and Miss Heather!” Her startled gaze fell on the carriage. “Damn you, Joshua—what are you doing, mooning over me when the mistress is likely lying in a heap?” Frantically, she hit at the coachman’s legs, pushing him towards the carriage.
“Don’t panic.”
The injunction floated up out of the carriage, calm and assured.
“We’re perfectly all right—just a bit shaken.” The clear, very feminine voice paused before adding, a touch hesitantly, “But we can’t get out.”
With a muttered curse, Harry strode to the carriage, pausing only to shrug out of his greatcoat and fling it into the curricle. Reaching up to the back wheel, he hauled himself onto the body. Standing on the coach’s now horizontal side, he bent and, grasping the handle, hauled the door open.
Planting one booted foot on either side of the coach step, he looked down into the dimness within.
And blinked.
The sight that met his eyes was momentarily dazzling. A woman stood in the shaft of sunshine pouring through the doorway. Her face, upturned, was heart-shaped; a broad forehead was set beneath dark hair pulled severely back. Her features were well defined; a straight nose and full, well-curved lips above a delicate but determined chin.
Her skin was the palest ivory, the colour of priceless pearls; beyond his control, Harry’s gaze skimmed her cheeks and the graceful curve of her slender neck before coming to rest on the ripe swell of her breasts. Standing over her as he was, they were amply exposed to his sight even though her modish carriage dress was in no way indecorous.
Harry’s palms tingled.
Large blue eyes fringed with long black lashes blinked up at him.
For an instant, Lucinda Babbacombe was not entirely sure she hadn’t sustained a blow on the head—what else could excuse this vision, conjured from her deepest dreams?
Tall and lean, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, he towered above her, long, sleekly muscled legs braced on either side of the door. Sunlight haloed his golden locks; with the light behind him she could not make out his features yet she sensed the tension that held him.
Lucinda blinked rapidly. A light blush tinged her cheeks; she looked away—but not before she registered the subdued elegance of his garments—the tightly-fitting grey coat, superbly cut, style in every line, worn over clinging ivory inexpressibles, which clearly revealed the long muscles of his thighs. His calves were encased in gleaming Hessians; his linen was crisp and white. There were, she noted, no fobs or seals hanging at his waist, only a single gold pin in his cravat.
Prevailing opinion suggested such severe attire should render a gentleman uninteresting. Unremarkable. Prevailing opinion was wrong.
He shifted—and a large, long-fingered, extremely elegant hand reached down to her.
“Take my hand—I’ll pull you up. One of the wheels is shattered—it’s impossible to right the carriage.”
His voice was deep, drawling, an undercurrent Lucinda couldn’t identify sliding beneath the silken tones. She glanced up through her lashes. He had moved to the side of the door and had gone down on one knee. The light now reached his face, illuminating features that seemed to harden as her gaze touched them. His hand moved impatiently; a black sapphire set in a gold signet glimmered darkly. He would need to be very strong to lift her out with one arm. Subduing the thought that her rescue might well prove a greater threat than her plight, Lucinda reached for his hand.
Their palms met; long fingers curled about her wrist. Lucinda brought her other hand up and clasped it about his—and she was airborne.
She drew in a swift breath—an arm of steel wrapped about her waist; her diaphragm seized. She blinked—and found herself on her knees, held fast in his embrace, locked breast to chest with her unnerving rescuer.
Her eyes were on a level with his lips. They were as severe as his clothes, chiselled and firm. His jaw was distinctly squared, the patrician line of his nose a testimony to his antecedents. The planes of his face were hard, as hard as the body steadying hers, holding her balanced on the edge of the carriage doorframe. He had released her hands; they had fallen to lie against his chest. One of her hips was pressed against his, the other against his muscled thigh. Lucinda forgot about breathing.
Cautiously, she lifted her eyes to his—and saw the sea, calm and clear, a cool, crystalline pale green.
Their gazes locked.
Mesmerised, Lucinda drowned in the green sea, her skin lapped by waves of warmth, her mind suborned to sensation. She felt her lips soften, felt herself lean into him—and blinked wildly.
A tremor shook her. The muscles surrounding her twitched, then stilled.
She felt him draw breath.
“Careful,” was all he said as he slowly rose, drawing her up with him, holding her steady until her feet could find purchase on the carriage.
Lucinda wondered just what danger he was warning her against.
Forcing his arms from her, Harry struggled to shackle his impulses, straining at their leash. “I’ll have to lower you to the ground.”
Peering over the carriage side, Lucinda could only nod. The drop was six feet and more. She felt him shift behind her; she jumped as his hands slipped beneath her arms.
“Don’t wriggle or try to jump. I’ll let go when your coachman has hold of you.”
Joshua was waiting below. Lucinda nodded; speech was beyond her.
Harry gripped her firmly and swung her over the edge. The coachman quickly grasped her legs; Harry let go—but could not prevent his fingers from brushing the soft sides of her breasts. He clenched his jaw and tried to eradicate the memory but his fingertips burned.
Once on terra firma, Lucinda was pleased to discover her wits once more at her command. Whatever curious influence had befuddled her faculties was, thank Heaven, purely transitory.
A quick glance upwards confirmed that her rescuer had turned back to render a like service to her stepdaughter. Reflecting that at barely seventeen Heather’s susceptibility to his particular brand of wizardry was probably a good deal less than her own, Lucinda left him to it.
After one comprehensive glance about the scene, she marched across to the ditch, leaned over and dealt Amy, the tweeny, a sharp slap. “Enough,” she declared, as if she was speaking of nothing more than kneading dough. “Now come and help with Agatha.”
Amy’s tear-drenched eyes opened wide, then blinked. “Yes, mum.” She sniffed—then shot a watery smile at Sim, the groom, and struggled up out of the thankfully dry ditch.
Lucinda was already on her way to Agatha, prone in the road. “Sim—help with the horses. Oh—and do get these stones out of the road.” She pointed a toe at the collection of large, jagged rocks littering the highway. “I dare say it was one of these that caused our wheel to break. And I expect you’d better start unloading the carriage.”
“Aye, mum.”
Halting by Agatha’s side, Lucinda bent to look down at her. “What is it and how bad?”
Lips compressed, Agatha opened iron-grey eyes and squinted up at her. “It’s just my ankle—it’ll be better directly.”
“Indeed,” Lucinda remarked, getting down on her knees to examine the injured limb. “That’s no doubt why you’re white as a sheet.”
“Nonsense—oooh!” Agatha sucked in a quick breath and closed her eyes.
“Stop fussing and let me bind it.”
Lucinda bade Amy tear strips from her petticoat, then proceeded to bind Agatha’s ankle, ignoring the maid’s grumbles. All the while, Agatha shot suspicious glances past her.
“You’d best stay by me, mistress. And keep the young miss by you. That gentleman may be a gentleman, but he’s a one to watch, I don’t doubt.”
Lucinda didn’t doubt either but she refused to hide behind her maid’s skirts. “Nonsense. He rescued us in a positively gentlemanly manner—I’ll thank him appropriately. Stop fussing.”
“Fussing!” Agatha hissed as Lucinda drew her skirts down to her ankles. “You didn’t see him move.”
“Move?” Frowning, Lucinda stood and dusted her hands, then her gown. She turned to discover Heather hurrying up, hazel eyes bright with excitement, clearly none the worse for their ordeal.
Behind her came their rescuer. All six feet and more of him, with a lean and graceful stride that conjured the immediate image of a hunting cat.
A big, powerful predator.
Agatha’s comment was instantly explained. Lucinda concentrated on resisting the urge to flee. He reached for her hand—she must have extended it—and bowed elegantly.
“Permit me to introduce myself, ma’am. Harry Lester—at your service.”
He straightened, a polite smile softening his features.
Fascinated, Lucinda noted how his lips curved upwards just at the ends. Then her eyes met his. She blinked and glanced away. “I most sincerely thank you, Mr Lester, for your assistance—yours and your groom’s.” She beamed a grateful smile at his groom, unhitching the horses from the coach with Sim’s help. “It was immensely lucky you happened by.”
Harry frowned, the memory of the footpads lurking in the trees beyond the curve intruding. He shook the thought aside. “I beg you’ll permit me to drive you and your…” Brows lifting, he glanced from the younger girl’s bright face to that of his siren’s.
She smiled. “Allow me to introduce my stepdaughter, Miss Heather Babbacombe.”
Heather bobbed a quick curtsy; Harry responded with a slight bow.
“As I was saying, Mrs Babbacombe.” Smoothly Harry turned back and captured the lady’s wide gaze with his. Her eyes were a soft blue, partly grey—a misty colour. Her carriage gown of lavender blue served to emphasise the shade. “I hope you’ll permit me to drive you to your destination. You were headed for…?”
“Newmarket,” Lucinda supplied. “Thank you—but I must make arrangements for my people.”
Harry wasn’t sure which statement more surprised him. “Naturally,” he conceded, wondering how many other ladies of his acquaintance, in like circumstances, would so concern themselves over their servants. “But my groom can handle the details for you. He’s familiar with these parts.”
“He is? How fortunate.”
Before he could blink, the soft blue gaze had left him for Dawlish—his siren followed, descending upon his servitor like a galleon in full sail. Intrigued, Harry followed. She summoned her coachman with an imperious gesture. By the time Harry joined them, she was busily issuing the orders he had thought to give.
Dawlish shot him a startled, distinctly reproachful glance.
“Will that be any trouble, do you think?” Lucinda asked, sensing the groom’s distraction.
“Oh—no, ma’am.” Dawlish bobbed his head respectfully. “No trouble at all. I knows the folks at the Barbican right well. We’ll get all seen to.”
“Good.” Harry made a determined bid to regain control of the situation. “If that’s settled, I suspect we should get on, Mrs Babbacombe.” At the back of his mind lurked a vision of five frieze-coated men. He offered her his arm; an intent little frown wrinkling her brows, she placed her hand upon it.
“I do hope Agatha will be all right.”
“Your maid?” When she nodded, Harry offered, “If she’d broken her ankle she would, I think, be in far greater pain.”
The blue eyes came his way, along with a grateful smile.
Lucinda glanced away—and caught Agatha’s warning glare. Her smile turned into a grimace. “Perhaps I should wait here until the cart comes for her?”
“No.” Harry’s response was immediate. She shot him a startled glance; he covered his lapse with a charming but rueful smile. “I hesitate to alarm you but footpads have been seen in the vicinity.” His smile deepened. “And Newmarket’s only two miles on.”
“Oh.” Lucinda met his gaze; she made no effort to hide the consideration in hers. “Two miles?”
“If that.” Harry met her eyes, faint challenge in his.
“Well…” Lucinda turned to view his curricle.
Harry waited for no more. He beckoned Sim and pointed to the curricle. “Put your mistresses’ luggage in the boot.”
He turned back to be met by a cool, distinctly haughty blue glance. Equally cool, he allowed one brow to rise.
Lucinda suddenly felt warm, despite the cool breeze that heralded the approaching evening. She looked away, to where Heather was talking animatedly to Agatha.
“If you’ll forgive the advice, Mrs Babbacombe, I would not consider it wise for either you or your stepdaughter to be upon the road, unescorted, at night.”
The soft drawl focused Lucinda’s mind on her options. Both appeared dangerous. With a gentle inclination of her head, she chose the more exciting. “Indeed, Mr Lester. Doubtless you’re right.” Sim had finished stowing their baggage in the curricle’s boot, strapping bandboxes to the flaps. “Heather?”
While his siren fussed, delivering a string of last-minute instructions, Harry lifted her stepdaughter to the curricle’s seat. Heather Babbacombe smiled sunnily and thanked him prettily, too young to be flustered by his innate charms.
Doubtless, Harry thought, as he turned to view her stepmother, Heather viewed him much as an uncle. His lips quirked, then relaxed into a smile as he watched Mrs Babbacombe glide towards him, casting last, measuring glances about her.
She was slender and tall—there was something about her graceful carriage that evoked the adjective “matriarchal.” A confidence, an assurance, that showed in her frank gaze and open expression. Her dark hair, richly brown with the suspicion of red glinting in the sun, was, he could now see, fixed in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. For his money, the style was too severe—his fingers itched to run through the silken tresses, laying them free.
As for her figure, he was having great difficulty disguising his interest. She was, indeed, one of the more alluring visions he had beheld in many a long year.
She drew near and he lifted a brow. “Ready, Mrs Babbacombe?”
Lucinda turned to meet his gaze, wondering how such a soft drawl could so easily sound steely. “Thank you, Mr Lester.” She gave him her hand; he took it, drawing her to the side of the carriage. Lucinda blinked at the high step—the next instant, she felt his hands firm about her waist and she was lifted, effortlessly, to the seat.
Stifling her gasp, Lucinda met Heather’s gaze, filled with innocent anticipation. Sternly suppressing her fluster, Lucinda settled herself on the seat next to her stepdaughter. She had not, indeed, had much experience interacting with gentlemen of Mr Lester’s standing; perhaps such gestures were commonplace?
Despite her inexperience, she could not delude herself that her position, as it transpired, could ever be dismissed as commonplace. Her rescuer paused only to swing his greatcoat—adorned, she noted, with a great many capes—about his broad shoulders before following her into the curricle, the reins in his hands. Naturally, he sat beside her.
A bright smile firmly fixed on her lips, Lucinda waved Agatha goodbye, steadfastly ignoring the hard thigh pressed against her much softer limb, and the way her shoulder perforce had to nestle against his back.
Harry himself had not foreseen the tight squeeze—and found its results equally disturbing. Pleasant—but definitely disturbing. Backing his team, he asked, “Were you coming from Cambridge, Mrs Babbacombe?” He desperately needed distraction.
Lucinda was only too ready to oblige. “Yes—we spent a week there. We intended to leave directly after lunch but spent an hour or so in the gardens. They’re very fine, we discovered.”
Her accents were refined and untraceable, her stepdaughter’s less so, while those of her servants were definitely north country. The greys settled into their stride; Harry comforted himself that two miles meant less than fifteen minutes, even allowing for picking their way through the town. “But you’re not from hereabouts?”
“No—we’re from Yorkshire.” After a moment, Lucinda added, a smile tweaking her lips, “At the moment, however, I suspect we could more rightly claim to be gypsies.”
“Gypsies?”
Lucinda exchanged a smile with Heather. “My husband died just over a year ago. His estate passed into his cousin’s hands, so Heather and I decided to while away our year of mourning in travelling the country. Neither of us had seen much of it before.”
Harry stifled a groan. She was a widow—a beautiful widow newly out of mourning, unfixed, unattached, bar the minor encumbrance of a stepdaughter. In an effort to deny his mounting interest, to block out his awareness of her soft curves pressed, courtesy of Heather Babbacombe’s more robust figure, firmly against his side, he concentrated on her words. And frowned. “Where do you plan to stay in Newmarket?”
“The Barbican Arms,” Lucinda replied. “I believe it’s in the High Street.”
“It is.” Harry’s lips thinned; the Barbican Arms was directly opposite the Jockey Club. “Ah—have you reservations?” He slanted a glance at her face and saw surprise register. “It’s a race week, you know.”
“Is it?” Lucinda frowned. “Does that mean it’ll be crowded?”
“Very.” With every rakehell and womaniser who could make the journey from London. Harry suppressed the thought. Mrs Babbacombe was, he told himself, none of his business. Very definitely none of his business—she might be a widow and, to his experienced eye, ripe for seduction, but she was a virtuous widow—therein lay the rub. He was too experienced not to know such existed—indeed, the fleeting thought occurred that if he was to plot his own downfall, then a virtuous widow would be first choice as Cupid’s pawn. But he had recognised the trap—and had no intention of falling into it. Mrs Babbacombe was one beautiful widow he would do well to leave untouched—unsampled. Desire bucked, unexpectedly strong; with a mental curse, Harry shackled it—in iron!
The first straggling cottages appeared ahead. He grimaced. “Is there no acquaintance you have in the district with whom you might stay?”
“No—but I’m sure we’ll be able to find accommodation somewhere.” Lucinda gestured airly, struggling to keep her mind on her words and her senses on the late afternoon landscape. “If not at the Barbican Arms, then perhaps the Green Goose.”
She sensed the start that shot through him. Turning, she met an openly incredulous, almost horrified stare.
“Not the Green Goose.” Harry made no attempt to mute the decree.
It was received with a frown. “Why not?”
Harry opened his mouth—but couldn’t find the words. “Never mind why—just get it into your head that you cannot reside at the Green Goose.”
Intransigence flowed into her expression, then she put her pretty nose in the air and looked ahead. “If you will just set us down at the Barbican Arms, Mr Lester, I’m sure we’ll sort things out.”
Her words conjured a vision of the yard at the Barbican Arms—of the main hall of the inn as it would be at this moment—as Harry had experienced it at such times before. Jam-packed with males, broad-shouldered, elegant tonnish gentlemen, the vast majority of whom he would know by name. He certainly knew them by nature; he could just imagine their smiles when Mrs Babbacombe walked in.
“No.”
The cobbles of the High Street rang beneath the greys’ hooves.
Lucinda turned to stare at him. “What on earth do you mean?”
Harry gritted his teeth. Even with his attention on his horses as he negotiated the press of traffic in the main street of the horse capital of England, he was still aware of the surprised glances thrown their way—and of the lingering, considering looks bent on the woman by his side. Arriving with him, being seen with him, had already focused attention on her.
It was none of his business.
Harry felt his face harden. “Even if the Barbican Arms has rooms to spare—which they will not—it’s not suitable for you to stay in town while a race meeting’s on.”
“I beg your pardon?” After a moment of astonished surprise, Lucinda drew herself up. “Mr Lester—you have most ably rescued us—we owe you our gratitude. However, I am more than capable of organising our accommodation and stay in this town.”
“Gammon.”
“What?”
“You don’t know anything about staying in a town during a race-meet or you wouldn’t be here now.” Lips set in a thin line, Harry shot her an irritated glare. “Devil take it—look around you, woman!”
Lucinda had already noticed the large number of men strolling the narrow pavements. As her gaze swept the scene, she noted that there were many more on horseback and in the sporting carriages of every description thronging the thoroughfare. Gentlemen everywhere. Only gentlemen.
Heather was leaning close, shrinking against her, not used to being stared at and ogled. She raised hazel eyes filled with uncertainty to Lucinda’s face. “Lucinda…?”
Lucinda patted her hand. As she raised her head, she encountered a boldly appraising stare from a gentleman in a high-perch phaeton. Lucinda returned his scrutiny with a frosty glance. “Nevertheless,” she maintained. “If you will set us down at…”
Her words trailed away as she glimpsed, hanging above a broad archway just ahead, a signboard depicting a castle gateway. In that instant, the traffic parted; Harry clicked his reins and the curricle shot forward—straight past the archway.
Lucinda swivelled to peer at the sign as they moved steadily down the street. “That’s it—the Barbican Arms!” She turned to look at Harry. “You’ve passed it.”
Grim-faced, Harry nodded.
Lucinda glared at him. “Stop,” she ordered.
“You can’t stay in town.”
“I can!”
“Over my dead body!” Harry heard his snarl and inwardly groaned. He closed his eyes. What was happening to him? Opening his eyes, he glared at the woman beside him. Her cheeks were becomingly flushed—with temper. A fleeting thought of how she would look flushed with desire shot through his unwilling mind.
Something of his thoughts must have shown in his face—her blue eyes narrowed. “Are you proposing to kidnap us?” Her voice held the promise of a long and painful death.
The end of the High Street appeared; the traffic thinned. Harry flicked his leader’s ear and the greys surged. As the sound of hooves on cobbles died behind them, he glanced down at her and growled, “Consider it forcible repatriation.”
Chapter Two
“Forcible repatriation?”
Harry shot her a narrow-eyed glare. “You don’t belong in a race-town.”
Lucinda glared back. “I belong wherever I choose to stay, Mr Lester.”
His face set in uncompromising lines, Harry looked back at his team. Lucinda looked ahead, frowning direfully.
“Where are you taking us?” she eventually demanded.
“To stay with my aunt, Lady Hallows.” Harry glanced at her. “She lives a little way out of town.”
It had been many years since she’d allowed anyone to order her life. Nose in the air, Lucinda held to dignified disapproval. “How do you know she won’t already have visitors?”
“She’s a widow of long standing and lives quietly.” Harry checked his team and turned onto a side road. “She has a whole Hall to spare—and she’ll be delighted to make your acquaintance.”
Lucinda sniffed. “You can’t know that.”
The smile he bent on her was infinitely superior.
Resisting the urge to gnash her teeth, Lucinda pointedly looked away.
Heather had perked up the instant they’d quit town; she smiled when Lucinda glanced her way, clearly restored to her usual sunny humour and unperturbed by the unexpected alteration to their plans.
Feeling distinctly huffy, Lucinda looked ahead. It was, she suspected, pointless to protest—at least, not until she’d met Lady Hallows. Until then, there was nothing she could do to regain the ascendancy. The infuriating gentleman beside her had the upper hand—and the reins. Her gaze flicked sideways, to where his hands, covered by soft doeskin gloves, dextrously managed the ribbons. Long slim fingers and slender palms. She’d noted that earlier. To her horror, the memory evoked a shiver—she had to fight to quell it. With him so close, he would very likely feel it—and, she suspected, would unhesitatingly guess its cause.
Which would leave her feeling embarrassed—and even more deeply disturbed. He evoked a most peculiar response in her—it had yet to fade, despite her irritation at his autocratic interference. It was a distinctly novel feeling—one she wasn’t at all sure she appreciated.
“Hallows Hall.”
She looked up to discover a pair of imposing gateposts which gave onto a shady avenue lined with elms. The gravelled drive wound gently along a slight ridge, then dipped to reveal a pleasant vista of rolling lawns surrounding a reed-fringed lake, the whole enclosed by large trees.
“How pretty!” Heather looked about in delight.
The Hall, a relatively recent structure in honey-coloured stone, sat on a rise above the drive, which wound past the front steps before curving around the corner of the house. A vine stretched green fingers over the stone. There were roses in abundance; ducks clacked from the lake.
An ancient retainer came ambling up as Harry drew his team to a halt.
“Thought as we’d see you this week, young master.”
Harry grinned. “Good evening, Grimms. Is my aunt at home?”
“Aye—that she is—and right pleased she’ll be to see you. Evening, miss. Miss.” Grimms doffed his cap to Lucinda and Heather.
Lucinda’s answering smile was distant. Hallows Hall stirred long-forgotten memories of life before her parents had died.
Harry descended and helped her down. After helping Heather to the ground, he turned to see Lucinda looking about her, a wistful expression on her face. “Mrs Babbacombe?”
Lucinda started. Then, with a half-grimace and a frosty glance, she placed her hand on his arm and allowed him to lead her up the steps.
The door was flung open—not by a butler, although a stately personage of that persuasion hovered in the shadows—but by a gaunt, angular-featured woman a good two inches taller than Lucinda and decidedly thinner.
“Harry, m’boy! Thought you’d be here. And who’s this you’ve brought?”
Lucinda found herself blinking into dark blue eyes, shrewd and intelligent.
“But what am I about? Come in, come in.” Ermyntrude, Lady Hallows, waved her guests into the hall.
Lucinda stepped over the threshold—and was immediately enveloped in the warm, elegant yet homey atmosphere.
Harry took his aunt’s hand and bowed over it, then kissed her cheek. “As elegant as ever, Em,” he said, scanning her topaz gown.
Em’s eyes opened wide. “Flummery? From you?”
Harry pressed her hand warningly as he released it. “Allow me to present Mrs Babbacombe, Aunt. Her carriage broke a wheel just outside town. I had the honour of driving her in. She had some idea of staying in town but I prevailed upon her to change her mind and give you the benefit of her company.”
The words tripped glibly from his tongue. Rising from her curtsy, Lucinda shot him a chilly glance.
“Capital!” Em beamed and took Lucinda’s hand. “My dear, you don’t know how bored I sometimes get, stuck out here in the country. And Harry’s quite right—you can’t possibly stay in town during a meet—not at all the thing.” Her blue eyes switched to Heather. “And who’s this?”
Lucinda made the introduction and Heather, smiling brightly, bobbed a curtsy.
Em put out a hand and tipped Heather’s chin up the better to view her face. “Hmm—quite lovely. You’ll do well in a year or two.” Releasing her, Em frowned. “Babbacombe, Babbacombe…” She glanced at Lucinda. “Not the Staffordshire Babbacombes?”
Lucinda smiled. “Yorkshire.” When her hostess only frowned harder, she felt compelled to add, “I was a Gifford before my marriage.”
“Gifford?” Em’s eyes slowly widened as she studied Lucinda. “Great heavens! You must be Melrose Gifford’s daughter—Celia Parkes was your mother?”
Surprised, Lucinda nodded—and was promptly enveloped in a scented embrace.
“Good gracious, child—I knew your father!” Em was in transports. “Well—I was a bosom-bow of his elder sister, but I knew all the family. Naturally, after the scandal, we heard very little of Celia and Melrose, but they did send word of your birth.” Em wrinkled her nose. “Not that it did much good—stiff-necked lot, your grandparents. On both sides.”
Harry blinked, endeavouring to absorb this rush of information. Lucinda noticed, and wondered how he felt about rescuing the outcome of an old scandal.
“Just fancy!” Em was still in alt. “I never thought to set eyes on you, m’dear. Mind you, there’s not many left but me who’d remember. You’ll have to tell me the whole story.” Em paused to draw breath. “Now then! Fergus will get your luggage and I’ll show you up to your rooms—after a dish of tea—you must be in need of refreshment. Dinner’s at six so there’s no need to hurry.”
Together with Heather, Lucinda found herself hustled towards an open doorway—a drawing-room lay ahead. On the threshold she hesitated and glanced back, as did Em behind her.
“You’re not staying, are you, Harry?” Em asked.
He was tempted—sorely tempted. His gaze not on his aunt but on the woman beside her, Harry forced himself to shake his head. “No.” With an effort he shifted his gaze to his aunt’s face. “I’ll call sometime during the week.”
Em nodded.
Prompted by she knew not what, Lucinda turned and re-crossed the hall. Their rescuer stood silently and watched her approach; she steadfastly ignored the odd tripping of her heart. She halted before him, calmly meeting his green gaze. “I don’t know how to thank you for your help, Mr Lester. You’ve been more than kind.”
His lips slowly curved; again, she found herself fascinated by the movement.
Harry took the hand she held out to him and, his eyes on hers, raised it to his lips. “Your rescue was indeed my pleasure, Mrs Babbacombe.” The sudden widening of her eyes as his lips touched her skin was payment enough for the consequent hardships. “I’ll ensure that your people know where to find you—your maids will arrive before nightfall, I’m sure.”
Lucinda inclined her head; she made no effort to retrieve her fingers from his warm grasp. “Again, you have my thanks, sir.”
“It was nothing, my dear.” His eyes on hers, Harry allowed one brow to rise. “Perhaps we’ll meet again—in a ballroom, maybe? Dare I hope you’ll favour me with a waltz if we do?”
Graciously, Lucinda acquiesced. “I would be honoured, sir—should we meet.”
Belatedly reminding himself that she was a snare he was determined to avoid, Harry took a firm grip on his wayward impulses. He bowed. Releasing Lucinda’s hand, he nodded to Em. With one last glance at Lucinda, he strolled gracefully out of the door.
Lucinda watched the door shut behind him, a distant frown in her eyes.
Em studied her unexpected guest, a speculative glint in hers.
Agatha’s been with me forever,” Lucinda explained. “She was my mother’s maid when I was born. Amy was an under-maid at the Grange—my husband’s house. We took her with us so that Agatha could train her to act as maid for Heather.”
“Just as well,” Heather put in.
They were in the dining-room, partaking of a delicious meal prepared, so Em had informed them, in honour of their arrival. Agatha, Amy and Sim had arrived an hour ago, conveyed by Joshua in a trap borrowed from the Barbican Arms. Joshua had returned to Newmarket to pursue the repairs of the carriage. Agatha, taken under the wing of the portly housekeeper, Mrs Simmons, was resting in a cheery room below the eaves, her ankle pronounced unbroken but badly sprained. Amy had thus had to assist both Lucinda and Heather to dress, a task at which she had acquitted herself with honours.
Or so Em thought as she looked down the table. “So,” she said, patting her lips with her napkin then waving Fergus and the soup tureen away. “You may start at the beginning. I want to know all about you since your parents died.”
The sheer openness of the request robbed it of any rudeness. Lucinda smiled and laid aside her spoon; Heather was dipping into the tureen for the third time, much to Fergus’s delight. “As you know, what with both families disowning my parents, I hadn’t had any contact with my grandparents. I was fourteen at the time of the accident. Luckily, our old solicitor hunted up my mother’s sister’s address—she agreed to take me in.”
“Now let’s see.” Em’s eyes narrowed as she surveyed the past. “That would be Cora Parkes that was?”
Lucinda nodded. “If you recall, the Parkes family fortunes had taken a downturn sometime after my parents married. They’d retired from Society and Cora had married a mill-owner in the north—a Mr Ridley.”
“Never say so!” Em was enthralled. “Well, well—how the mighty did fall. Your aunt Cora was one of the most intransigent when it came to any question of reconciliation with your parents.” Em lifted her thin shoulders. “Fate’s revenge, I dare say. So you lived with them until your marriage?”
Lucinda hesitated, then nodded.
Em noticed; her eyes sharpened, then flicked to Heather. Lucinda saw—and hastened to explain. “The Ridleys weren’t exactly happy to have me. They only agreed to house me, thinking to use my talents as governess to their two daughters and then to broker my marriage as soon as maybe.”
For a moment, Em stared. Then she snorted. “Doesn’t surprise me. That Cora was ever out for her own gain.”
“When I was sixteen, they arranged a marriage with another mill-owner, a Mr Ogleby.”
“Ugh!” Heather looked up from her soup to shudder artistically. “He was a horrible old toad,” she blithely informed Em. “Luckily, my father heard about it—Lucinda used to come and give me lessons. So he married Lucinda instead.” Having done her bit for the conversation, Heather returned to her soup.
Lucinda smiled affectionately. “Indeed, Charles was my saviour. I only recently learned that he bought off my relatives in order to marry me—he never told me.”
Em snorted approvingly. “Glad to hear they’ve some gentlemen in those parts. So you became Mrs Babbacombe and lived at…the Grange, was it?”
“That’s right.” Heather had finally relinquished the soup; Lucinda paused to serve herself from the platter of turbot Fergus offered. “To all appearances Charles was a well-to-do gentleman of moderate estate. In reality, however, he owned a considerable collection of inns up and down the country. He was really very wealthy but preferred a quiet existence. He was close to fifty when we married. As I grew older, he taught me all about his investments and how to manage them. He was ill for some years—the end was a relief when it came—but because of his foresight, I was able to handle most of the work for him.”
Lucinda looked up to find her hostess staring at her.
“Who owns the inns now?” Em asked.
Lucinda smiled. “We do—Heather and I. The Grange, of course, went to Charles’s nephew, Mortimer Babbacombe, but Charles’s private fortune wasn’t part of the entail.”
Em sat back and regarded her with frank approval. “And that’s why you’re here—you own an inn in Newmarket?”
Lucinda nodded. “After the will was read, Mortimer asked us to vacate the Grange within the week.”
“The blackguard!” Em glared. “What sort of a way is that to treat a grieving widow?”
“Well,” Lucinda held up a hand. “I did offer to leave as soon as he wished—although I hadn’t thought he’d be in such a hurry. He’d never even visited before—not really.”
“So you found yourselves out on your ears in the snow?” Em was incensed.
Heather giggled. “It really turned out most fortuitously in the end.”
“Indeed.” Lucinda nodded, pushing her plate away. “With nothing organised, we decided to remove to one of our inns—one a little way away from the Grange, a place we weren’t known. Once there, I realised the inn was far more prosperous than I would have guessed from the accounts our agent had recently presented. Mr Scrugthorpe was a new man—Charles had been forced to appoint a new agent a few months before he died when our old Mr Matthews passed on.” Lucinda frowned at the trifle Fergus placed before her. “Unfortunately, Charles interviewed Scrugthorpe on a day he was in great pain and I had to be in town with Heather. To cut a long story short, Scrugthorpe had falsified the accounts. I called him in and dismissed him.”
Lifting her gaze to her hostess’s face, Lucinda smiled. “After that, Heather and I decided that travelling the country getting to know our inns was an excellent way to see out our year of mourning. It was exactly the sort of enterprise of which Charles would have approved.”
Em snorted—this snort clearly signified her appreciation of Charles’s good sense. “Seems to have been a very able man—your father, miss.”
“He was a dear.” Heather’s open face clouded and she blinked rapidly, then looked down.
“I’ve appointed a new agent—a Mr Mabberly.” Lucinda smoothly covered the awkward moment. “He’s young but extremely efficient.”
“And goes in awe of Lucinda,” Heather offered, looking up to help herself to a second scoop of trifle.
“As he should,” Em replied. “Well, Miss Gifford as was—you’ve certainly done your parents proud thus far. A capable lady of independent means at what—twenty-six?”
“Twenty-eight.” Lucinda’s smile was crooked. There were times, such as today, when she suddenly wondered if life had passed her by.
“A very fair achievement,” Em declared. “I don’t hold with women being helpless.” She eyed Heather’s at last empty plate. “And if you’ve finally finished, miss, I suggest we retire to the drawing-room. Do either of you play the pianoforte?”
They both did and gladly entertained their hostess with various airs and sonatas, until Heather fell to yawning. At Lucinda’s suggestion she retired, passing the tea trolley in the doorway.
“Indeed, we’ve had an adventuresome day.” Lucinda sat back in an armchair by the fire and sipped the tea Em had dispensed. Lifting her gaze, she smiled at Em. “I can’t thank you enough, Lady Hallows, for taking us in.”
“Nonsense,” Em replied with one of her snorts. “And you could please me by dropping all the ladyships and just calling me Em, like everyone else in the family. You’re Melrose’s daughter and that’s close enough for me.”
Lucinda smiled, a trifle wearily. “Em, then. What’s it a contraction for? Emma?”
Em wrinkled her nose. “Ermyntrude.”
Lucinda managed to keep her lips straight. “Oh?” she said weakly.
“Indeed. My brothers delighted in calling me all the contractions you might imagine. When my nephews came along, I declared it was Em and nothing else.”
“Very wise.” A companionable silence settled as they savoured their tea. Lucinda broke it to ask, “Do you have many nephews?”
From under heavy lids, Em’s eyes glinted. “Quite a few. But it was Harry and his brothers I had to guard against. A rapscallion lot.”
Lucinda shifted. “He has a lot of brothers?”
“Only two—but that’s quite enough. Jack’s the eldest,” Em blithely rattled on. “He’s—let me see—thirty-six now. Then comes Harry, two years younger. Then there’s quite a gap to their sister Lenore—she married Eversleigh some years back—she must be twenty-six now, which makes Gerald twenty-four. Their mother died years ago but my brother still hangs on.” Em grinned. “Dare say he’ll manage to cling to life long enough to see a grandson to carry on the name, the cantankerous old fool.” The last was said affectionately. “But it was the boys I had most to do with—and Harry was always my favourite. Blessed by the angels and the devil both, of course, but such a good boy.” Em blinked, then amended, “Well—a good boy at heart. They all were—are. I see most of Harry and Gerald these days—what with Newmarket so close. Harry runs the Lester stud which, even if ‘tis I who say so—and Heaven knows I know next to nothing about horses—such a boring subject—is hailed as one of the premier studs in the land.”
“Really?” There was not the slightest trace of boredom in Lucinda’s face.
“Indeed.” Em nodded. “Harry usually comes to watch his runners perform. Dare say I’ll see Gerald this week, too. Doubtless he’ll want to show off his new phaeton. Told me when last he was up that he was going to buy one, now the family coffers are full and overflowing.”
Lucinda blinked.
Em didn’t wait for her to find a subtle way to ask. One hand waving, she airly explained, “The Lesters have traditionally been strapped for cash—good estates, good breeding, but no money. The present generation, however, invested in some shipping venture last year and now the whole family’s rolling in an abundance of the ready.”
“Oh.” Lucinda readily recalled Harry Lester’s expensive elegance. She couldn’t imagine him any other way. Indeed, his image seemed to have fixed in her mind, oddly vivid, strangely enthralling. Shaking her head to dispel it, she delicately smothered a yawn. “I’m afraid I’m not very good company, Lady—Em.” She smiled. “I suspect I’d better follow Heather.”
Em merely nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning, m’dear.”
Lucinda left her hostess staring into the fire.
Ten minutes later, her head pillowed in down, Lucinda closed her eyes—only to find Harry Lester on her mind. Tired, adrift, her memories of the day replayed, her interactions with him claiming centre stage. Until she came to their parting—which left one question to plague her. How would it feel to waltz with Harry Lester?
A mile away, in the tap of the Barbican Arms, Harry sat elegantly sprawled behind a corner table, moodily surveying the room. A smoky haze wreathed a forest of shoulders; gentlemen mingled freely with grooms and stablemen, tipsters wrangled with bookmakers. The tap was all business this evening; the first races, those for non-bloodstock, would commence the next day.
A barmaid came up, hips swaying. She set a tankard of the inn’s finest on the table, smiling coyly, one brow rising as Harry flipped a coin onto her tray.
Harry caught her eye; his lips curved but he shook his head. Disappointed, the girl turned away. Harry lifted the foaming tankard and took a long sip. He’d abandoned the snug, his habitual refuge, where only the cognescenti were permitted, driven forth by the all-but-incessant questioning as to his delectable companion of the afternoon.
It seemed as if all in Newmarket had seen them.
Certainly all his friends and acquaintances were keen to learn her name. And her direction.
He’d given them neither, steadfastly returning their bright-eyed enquiries with a blank look and the information that the lady was an acquaintance of his aunt’s he’d simply been escorting to her door.
Those facts proved sufficient to dampen the interest of most; the majority who frequented Newmarket knew of his aunt.
But he was definitely tired of covering the lovely Mrs Babbacombe’s tracks, particularly as he was trying his damnedest to forget her. And her loveliness.
With an inward growl, Harry immersed himself in his tankard and tried to focus his mind on his horses—usually an enthralling subject.
“There you are! Been looking all over. What’re you doing out here?” Dawlish slumped into the chair beside him.
“Don’t ask,” Harry advised. He waited while the barmaid, with a fine show of indifference, served Dawlish before asking, “What’s the verdict?”
Dawlish shot him a glance over the rim of his tankard. “Odd,” came mumbling from behind it.
Brows lifting, Harry turned his head to stare at his henchman. “Odd?” Dawlish had gone with the coachman, Joshua, to fetch the wainwright to the carriage.
“Me, Joshua and the wainwright all thinks the same.” Dawlish set down his tankard and wiped the froth from his lip. “Thought as how you should know.”
“Know what?”
“That the cotter-pin on that wheel was tampered with—half-sawed through, it was—before the accident. And the spokes had been got at, too.”
Harry frowned. “Why?”
“Don’t know as how you noticed, but there were a curious lot of rocks strewn about that stretch of road where the carriage went over. None before—and none after. Just along that stretch. No way a coachman could miss all of ‘em. And they were just round a corner so he couldn’t see them in time to pull up.”
Harry’s frown was intense. “I remember the rocks. The boy cleared them away so I didn’t have to drive over them.”
Dawlish nodded. “Aye—but the carriage couldn’t avoid them—and as soon as that wheel hit, the cotter would have snapped and the spokes after that.”
A chill swept Harry’s nape. Five mounted men in frieze, with a wagon, hiding in the trees, moving towards the road just after the carriage went down. And if it hadn’t been a race-week, that particular stretch of road would almost certainly have been deserted at that time of day.
Harry lifted his gaze to Dawlish’s face.
Dawlish looked back at him. “Makes you think, don’t it?”
Grim-faced, Harry slowly nodded. “It does indeed.” And he didn’t like what he thought at all.
Chapter Three
“I’ll have y’r team out in a jiffy, sir.”
Harry nodded absentmindedly as the head-ostler of the Barbican Arms hurried off towards the stables. Pulling on his driving gloves, he strolled away from the inn’s main door to await his curricle in a vacant patch of sunshine by the wall.
Before him, the courtyard was busy, many of the inn’s guests departing for a day at the track, hoping to pick a few winners to start the week off on the right note.
Harry grimaced. He wouldn’t be joining them. Not, at least, until he’d satisfied himself on the score of one Mrs Babbacombe. He had given up telling himself she was none of his business; after the revelations of yesterday, he felt compelled to brave her dangers—long enough to assure himself of her safety. She was, after all, his aunt’s guest—at his insistence. Two facts which undoubtedly excused his interest.
“I’ll get along and see Hamish then, shall I?”
Harry turned as Dawlish came up. Hamish, his head-stableman, should have arrived yesterday with his string of thoroughbred racers; the horses would be settling into their stables beyond the racetrack. Harry nodded. “Make sure Thistledown’s fetlock’s sufficiently healed—I don’t want her entered unless it is.”
Dawlish nodded sagely. “Aye. Shall I tell Hamish you’ll be along shortly to see it?”
“No.” Harry studied the fit of his gloves. “I’ll have to rely on your combined wisdom this time. I’ve pressing matters elsewhere.”
He felt Dawlish’s suspicious glance.
“More pressing than a prime mare with a strained fetlock?” Dawlish snorted. “I’d like to know what’s higher on y’r list than that.”
Harry made no effort to enlighten him. “I’ll probably look in about lunchtime.” His imaginings were very likely groundless. It could be no more than coincidence, and two likely females travelling without major escort, that had focused the attention of the men in frieze on the Babbacombe coach. “Just make sure Hamish gets the message in time.”
“Aye,” Dawlish grumbled. With a last keen glance, he headed off.
Harry turned as his curricle appeared, the head-ostler leading the greys with a reverence that bespoke a full appreciation of their qualities.
“Right prime ‘uns, they be,” he averred as Harry climbed to the box.
“Indeed.” Harry took up the reins. The greys were restive, sensing the chance of freedom. With a nod for the ostler, he backed the curricle preparatory to making a stylish exit from the yard.
“Harry!”
Harry paused, then, with a sigh, drew in his impatient steeds. “Good morning, Gerald. And since when do you arise at this ungodly hour?”
He had spied his younger brother amongst the crowds in the tap the night before but had made no effort to advertise his presence. He turned to watch as Gerald, blue-eyed and dark-haired as was his elder brother Jack, strode up, grinning broadly, to place a familiar hand on the curricle’s front board.
“Ever since I heard the story of you escorting two excessively likely looking females who, according to you, are connections of Em’s.”
“Not connections, dear brother—acquaintances.”
Faced with Harry’s languidly bored mask, Gerald lost a little of his assurance. “You mean they really are? Acquaintances of Em’s, I mean?”
“So I discovered.”
Gerald’s face fell. “Oh.” Then Dawlish’s absence registered. Gerald shot a keen glance at his brother. “You’re going to Em’s now. Mind if I hitch a ride? Should say hello to the old girl—and perhaps to that dark-haired delight you had up beside you yesterday.”
For an instant, Harry was shaken by the most absurd impulse—Gerald was his younger brother after all, of whom he was, beneath his dismissive exterior, distinctly fond. He concealed the unexpected emotion behind his ineffable charm—and sighed. “I fear, dear brother, that I must puncture your delusions—the lady’s too old for you.”
“Oh? How old is she?”
Harry raised his brows. “Older than you.”
“Well—perhaps I’ll try for the other one then—the blonde.”
Harry looked down on his brother’s eager countenance—and inwardly shook his head. “She, if anything, is probably too young. Just out of the schoolroom, I suspect.”
“No harm in that,” Gerald blithely countered. “They have to start sometime.”
Feeling distinctly put-upon, Harry heaved a disgusted sigh. “Gerald…”
“Dash it all, Harry—don’t be such a dog-in-the-manger. You’re not interested in the younger chit—let me take her off your hands.”
Harry blinked at his brother. It was undoubtedly true that any discussion of Mrs Babbacombe’s situation would proceed a great deal more openly in the absence of her stepdaughter. “Very well—if you insist.” Within Em’s purlieu, Gerald could be relied on to keep within acceptable bounds. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Almost gleefully, Gerald swung up to the curricle’s seat. The instant he was aboard, Harry clicked his reins. The greys shot forward; he had to exert all his skills to thread them through the traffic thronging the High Street. He let them stretch their legs once free of the town; Em’s leafy drive was reached in record time.
A stableboy came hurrying to take charge of the curricle. Together, Harry and Gerald mounted the steps to Em’s door. The oak door was set wide open, not an uncommon occurrence. The brothers wandered in. Harry tossed his gloves onto the ormolu table. “Looks like we’ll have to go hunt. I expect my business with Mrs Babbacombe will take no more than half an hour. If you can keep Miss Babbacombe occupied until then, I’ll be grateful.”
Gerald cocked an eyebrow. “Grateful enough to let me tool your greys back to town?”
Harry looked doubtful. “Possibly—but I wouldn’t count on it.”
Gerald grinned and looked about him. “So where do we start?”
“You take the gardens—I’ll take the house. I’ll call if I need help.” With a languid wave, Harry set off down one corridor. Whistling, Gerald turned and went out of the main door.
Harry drew a blank in the morning room and the parlour. Then he heard humming, punctuated by the click of shears, and remembered the small garden room at the end of the house. There he found Em, arranging flowers in a huge urn.
At his languid best, he strolled in. “Good morning, Aunt.”
Em turned her head—and stared in stunned surprise. “Devil take it—what are you doing here?”
Harry blinked. “Where else should I be?”
“In town. I was sure you’d be there.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Harry conceded with the obvious. “Why?”
“Because Lucinda—Mrs Babbacombe—went into town half an hour ago. Never been there before—wanted to get her bearings.”
A chill caressed Harry’s nape. “You let her go alone?”
Turning back to her blooms, Em waved her shears. “Heavens, no—her groom accompanied her.”
“Her groom?” Harry’s voice was soft, urbane, its tone enough to send chills down the most insensitive spine. “The young tow-headed lad who arrived with her?”
He watched as a tell-tale blush spread over his aunt’s high cheekbones.
Disconcerted, Em shrugged. “She’s an independent woman—it doesn’t do to argue overmuch.” She knew perfectly well she should not have let Lucinda go into Newmarket this week without more tangible escort, but there was a definite purpose to her ploy. Turning, she surveyed her nephew. “You could try, of course.”
For an instant, Harry couldn’t believe his ears—surely not Em? His eyes narrowed as he took in her bland expression; this was the last thing he needed—a traitor in his own camp. His lips thinned; with a terse nod, he countered, “Rest assured I will.”
Turning on his heel, he strode out of the room, down the corridor, out of the door and around to the stables. The stableboy was startled to see him; Harry was merely glad the horses were still harnessed.
He grabbed the reins and leapt up to the seat. His whip cracked and the horses took off. The drive back to town established a new record.
Only when he was forced to slow by the press of traffic in the High Street did Harry remember Gerald. He cursed, regretting the loss of another to aid in his search. Taking advantage of the crawling pace, he carefully studied the crowded pavements from behind his habitually unruffled mien. But no dark head could he see.
He did, however, discover a large number of his peers—friends, acquaintances—who, like himself, were too experienced to waste time at the track today. He entertained not the slightest doubt that each and every one would be only too willing to spend that time by the side of a certain delectable dark-haired widow—not one would consider it time wasted.
Reaching the end of the street, Harry swore. Disregarding all hazards, he turned the curricle, missing the gleaming panels of a new phaeton by less than an inch, leaving the slow-top in charge of the reins in the grip of an apoplectic fit.
Ignoring the fuss, Harry drove quickly back to the Barbican Arms and turned the greys into the loving hands of the head-ostler. The man confirmed that Em’s gig was in residence. Harry surreptitiously checked the private parlour and was relieved to find it empty; the Arms was the favourite watering-hole of his set. Striding back to the street, he paused to take stock. And to wonder what “getting her bearings” meant.
There was no lending library. He settled on the church, some way along the street. But no likely looking widow haunted its hallowed precincts, nor trod the paths between the graves. The town’s gardens were a joke—no one came to Newmarket to admire floral borders. Mrs Dobson’s Tea Rooms were doing a brisk trade but no darkly elegant widow graced any of the small tables.
Returning to the pavement, Harry paused, hands on hips, and stared across the street. Where the devil was she?
A glimmer of blue at the edge of his vision had him turning his head. Just in time to identify the dark-haired figure who sailed through the street door of the Green Goose, a tow-headed boy at her back.
Pausing just inside the inn’s door, Lucinda found herself engulfed in dimness. Musty dimness. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she discovered she was in a hall, with the entrance to the tap on her left, two doors which presumably led to private parlours on her right and a counter, an extension of the tap’s bar, directly ahead, a tarnished bell on its scratched surface.
Suppressing the urge to wrinkle her nose, she swept forward. She had spent the last twenty minutes examining the inn from outside, taking due note of the faded and flaking whitewash, the clutter in the yard and the down-at-heel appearance of the two customers who had crossed its threshold. Extending one gloved hand, she picked up the bell and rang it imperiously. At least, that was her intention. But the bell emitted no more than a dull clack. Upending it, Lucinda discovered the clapper had broken.
With a disgusted grimace, she replaced the bell. She was wondering whether to tell Sim, waiting by the door, to raise his voice in summons when a large shadow blocked out what little light penetrated from the inn’s nether regions. A man entered, burly, brawny—very big. His face was heavy-featured but his eyes, sunk in folds of fat, appeared merely uninterested.
“Aye?”
Lucinda blinked. “Are you Mr Blount?”
“Aye.”
Her heart sank. “You’re the innkeeper?”
“Nay.”
When no more was forthcoming, she prompted, “You’re Mr Blount, but you’re not the innkeeper.” There was hope yet. “Where is the Mr Blount who is the innkeeper?”
For a long moment, the burly individual regarded her stoically as if his brain was having difficulty digesting her question. “You want Jake—m’brother,” he eventually offered.
Lucinda heaved an inward sigh of relief. “Precisely—I wish to see Mr Blount, the innkeeper.”
“Wha’for?”
Lucinda opened her eyes wide. “That, my good man, is a matter for your brother and myself.”
The hulking brute eyed her measuringly, then humphed. “Wait ‘ere—I’ll fetch ‘im.” With that, he lumbered off.
Leaving Lucinda praying that his brother took after the other side of the family. Her prayers were not answered. The man who replaced the first was equally burly, equally overweight and, apparently, only fractionally less dim-witted.
“Mr Jake Blount—the keeper of this inn?” Lucinda asked, with no real hope of contradiction.
“Aye.” The man nodded. His small eyes swept her, not insolently but with weary assessment. “But the likes of you don’t want to take rooms ‘ere—try the Barbican or the Rutland up the road.”
He turned away, leaving Lucinda somewhat stunned. “Just a minute, my good man!”
Jake Blount shuffled back to face her but shook his head. “Yer not the sort for this inn, see?”
Lucinda felt the breeze as the inn door opened. She saw Mr Blount’s eyes lift to the newcomer but was determined to retain his attention. “No—I do not see. What on earth do you mean—’not the sort for this inn’?”
Jake Blount heard her but was more concerned with the gentleman who now stood behind her, hard green eyes on him. Gold hair, gently waved at the ends, cut in the latest style, a well-cut coat of light brown worn over buckskin breeches and Hessians so highly polished you could see your face in them, all added up to a persona Blount recognised very well. He didn’t need the many-caped greatcoat that swung from the gentleman’s broad shoulders, nor the patrician features and hooded eyes nor yet the tall, lean and well-muscled frame, to tell him that one of the bloods of the ton had deigned to enter his humble inn. The fact made him instantly nervous. “Aaah…” He blinked and looked back at Lucinda. “Not the sort who takes rooms ‘ere.”
Lucinda stared. “What sort of lady takes rooms here?”
Blount’s features contorted. “That’s wha’ I mean—no ladies. Just that sort.”
Increasingly certain she had wandered into a madhouse, Lucinda stubbornly clung to her question. “What sort is that?”
For an instant, Jake Blount simply stared at her. Then, defeated, he waved a pudgy hand. “Lady—I don’t knows wha’ you want wi’ me but I got business to see to.”
He lifted his gaze pointedly over her shoulder; Lucinda drew in a portentious breath.
And nearly swallowed it when she heard a drawling voice languidly inform the recalcitrant Blount, “You mistake, Blount. My business here is merely to ensure you deal adequately with whatever the lady desires of you.”
Harry let his eyes meet the innkeeper’s fully. “And you’re perfectly correct—she is not that sort.”
The particular emphasis, delivered in that sensual voice, immediately made clear to Lucinda just what “sort had been the subject of her discussion. Torn between unaccustomed fluster, mortification and outrage, she hesitated, a light blush tinging her cheeks.
Harry noticed. “And now,” he suavely suggested, “if we could leave that loaded topic, perhaps we might proceed to the lady’s business? I’m sure you’re breathlessly waiting to discover what it is—as am I.”
Over her shoulder, Lucinda shot him a haughty glance. “Good morning, Mr Lester.” She gifted him with a restrained nod; he stood behind her right shoulder, large and reassuring in the dingy dimness. He inclined his head gracefully, his features hard-edged and severe, suggesting an impatience to have her business aired.
Inwardly grimacing, Lucinda turned back to the innkeeper. “I believe you were visited recently by a Mr Mabberly, acting for the owners of this inn?”
Jake Blount shifted. “Aye.”
“I believe Mr Mabberly warned you that an inspection of your premises would shortly take place?”
The big man nodded.
Lucinda nodded decisively back. “Very well—you may conduct me over the inn. We’ll start with the public rooms.” Without pause, she swept about. “I take it this is the tap.” She glided towards the door, her skirts stirring up dust eddies.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Blount stare, open-mouthed, then come hurrying around the counter. Harry Lester simply stood and watched her, an inscrutable expression on his face.
Lucinda swept on—into the gloomy, heavily shuttered room. “Perhaps, Blount, if we were to have those shutters wide I might be able to see well enough to form an opinion?”
Blount cast her a flustered glance, then lumbered to the windows. Seconds later, sunshine flooded the room, apparently to the discomfort of its two patrons, one an old codger wrapped in a rumpled cloak, hugging the inglenook, the other a younger man in the rough clothes of a traveller. They both seemed to shrink inwards, away from the light.
Lucinda cast a shrewd glance around the room. The interior of the inn matched its exterior, at least in the matter of neglect. The Green Goose was fast living up to Anthony Mabberly’s description as the very worst of the Babbacombe inns. Grimy walls and a ceiling that had seen neither brush nor mop for years combined with a general aura of dust and slow decay to render the tap a most unwelcoming place. “Hmm.” Lucinda grimaced. “So much for the tap.”
She slanted a glance at Harry, who had followed her in. “Thank you for your assistance, Mr Lester—but I’m perfectly capable of dealing with Mr Blount.”
The green gaze, which had been engaged in a survey of the unwholesome room, switched to her face. His eyes were less unreadable than his features, but other than distinct disapproval and a species of irritation, Lucinda couldn’t be sure what their expression portended.
“Indeed?” His brows lifted fractionally; his languid tone was barely polite. “But perhaps I should remain—just in case you and the good Blount run into any further…communication difficulties?”
Lucinda suppressed the urge to glare. Short of ordering him out of her inn, hardly supportive of her ploy to conceal her ownership, she could think of no way to dispense with his attentive presence. His green gaze was acute, perceptive; his tongue, as she already knew, could be decidedly sharp.
Accepting fate’s decree with a small shrug, Lucinda returned her attention to Blount, hovering uncertainly by the bar. “What’s through that door?”
“The kitchens.”
Blount looked shocked when she waved him on. “I’ll need to see those, too.”
The kitchen was not as bad as she had feared, a fact she attributed to the buxom but worn-down woman who bobbed respectfully when introduced as “the missus”. The Blounts’ private quarters gave off the large, square room; Lucinda disavowed any desire to inspect them. After closely examining the large open fireplace and engaging in a detailed discussion with Mrs Blount on the technicalities of the draw and the overall capacity of the kitchen, which, by their impatient expressions, passed over both Blount’s and Harry Lester’s heads, she consented to be shown the parlours.
Both parlours were shabby and dusty but, when the shutters were opened, proved to have pleasant aspects. Both contained old but serviceable furniture.
“Hmm, mmm,” was Lucinda’s verdict. Blount looked glum.
In the back parlour, which looked out over a wilderness that had once been a garden, she eyed a sturdy oak table and its attendant chairs. “Please ask Mrs Blount to dust in here immediately. Meanwhile, I’ll see the rooms above stairs.”
With a resigned shrug, Blount went to the door of the kitchen to deliver the order, then returned to lead the way up the stairs. Halfway up, Lucinda paused to test the rickety balustrade. Leaning against it, she was startled to hear it crack—and even more startled to feel an arm of steel wrap about her waist and haul her back to the centre of the treads. She was released immediately but heard the muttered comment, “Damned nosy woman!”
Lucinda grinned, then schooled her features to impassivity as they reached the upper corridor.
“All the rooms be the same.” Blount swung open the nearest door. Without waiting to be asked, he crossed to open the shutters.
The sunlight played on a dreary scene. Yellowing whitewash flaked from the walls; the ewer and basin were both cracked. The bedclothes Lucinda mentally consigned to the flames without further thought. The furniture, however, was solid—oak as far as she could tell. Both the bed and the chest of drawers could, with a little care, be restored to acceptable state.
Pursing her lips, Lucinda nodded. She turned and swept out of the door, past Harry Lester, lounging against the frame. He straightened and followed her along the corridor. Behind them, Blount shot out of the room and hurried to interpose himself between Lucinda and the next door.
“This room’s currently taken, ma’am.”
“Indeed?” Lucinda wondered what sort of patron would make do with the sad amenities of the Green Goose.
As if in answer, a distinctly feminine giggle percolated through the door.
Lucinda’s expression grew coldly severe. “I see.” She shot an accusing glance at Blount, then, head high, moved along the corridor. “I’ll see the room at the end, then we’ll return downstairs.”
There were no further revelations; it was as Mr Mabberly had said—the Green Goose was sound enough in structure but its management needed a complete overhaul.
Descending once more to the hall, Lucinda beckoned Sim forward and relieved the lad of the bound ledgers he’d been carrying. Leading the way into the back parlour, she was pleased to discover the table and chairs dusted and wiped. Setting her ledgers on the table before the chair at its head, she placed her reticule beside them and sat. “Now, Blount, I would like to examine the books.”
Blount blinked. “The books?”
Her gaze steady, Lucinda nodded. “The blue one for incomings and the red one for expenditures.”
Blount stared, then muttered something Lucinda chose to interpret as an assent and departed.
Harry, who had maintained his role of silent protector throughout, strolled across to shut the door after him. Then he turned to his aunt’s unexpected acquaintance. “And now, my dear Mrs Babbacombe, perhaps you would enlighten me as to what you’re about?”
Lucinda resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose at him—he was, she could tell, going to be difficult. “I am doing as I said—inspecting this inn.”
“Ah, yes.” The steely note was back in his voice. “And I’m to believe that some proprietor has seen fit to engage you—employ you, no less—in such a capacity?”
Lucinda met his gaze, her own lucidly candid. “Yes.”
The look he turned on her severely strained her composure.
With a wave, she put an end to his inquisition; Blount would soon be back. “If you must know, this inn is owned by Babbacombe and Company.”
The information arrested him in mid-prowl. He turned a fascinated green gaze upon her. “Whose principals are?”
Folding her hands on her ledgers, Lucinda smiled at him. “Myself and Heather.”
She did not have time to savour his reaction; Blount entered with a pile of ledgers in his arms. Lucinda waved him to a seat beside her. While he sorted through his dog-eared tomes, she reached for her reticule. Withdrawing a pair of gold-rimmed half-glasses, she perched them on her nose. “Now then!”
Beneath Harry’s fascinated gaze, she proceeded to put Blount through his financial paces.
Appropriating a chair from the table—one that had been dusted—Harry sat by the window and studied Lucinda Babbacombe. She was, undoubtedly, the most unexpected, most surprising, most altogether intriguing woman he’d ever met.
He watched as she checked entry after entry, adding figures, frequently upside-down from Blount’s ledgers. The innkeeper had long since abandoned all resistance; out of his depth, faced with a totally unforeseen ordeal, he was now eager to gain approval.
As she worked through the ledgers, Lucinda came to the same somewhat reluctant conclusion. Blount wasn’t intentionally neglectful; he hadn’t meant to run the inn into the ground. He simply lacked direction and the experience to know what to do.
When, after an hour, she reached the end of her inquiries, Lucinda took off her glasses and fixed Blount with a shrewdly assessing glance. “Just so we are clear, Blount, it is up to me to make a recommendation on whether Babbacombe and Company should retain your services.” She tapped her closed ledger with one arm of her glasses. “While your figures are unimpressive, I will be reporting that I can find no evidence of malpractice—all seems entirely above board.”
The burly innkeeper looked so absurdly grateful Lucinda had to sternly suppress a reassuring smile. “I understand you were appointed to your present position on the death of the former landlord, Mr Harvey. From the books it’s clear that the inn had ceased to perform well long before your tenancy.”
Blount looked lost.
“Which means that you cannot be held to blame for its poor base performance.” Blount looked relieved. “However,” Lucinda continued, both tone and glance hardening, “I have to tell you that the current performance, for which you must bear responsibility, is less than adequate. Babbacombe and Company expect a reasonable return on their investment, Blount.”
The innkeeper’s brow furrowed. “But Mr Scrugthorpe—he’s the one as appointed me?”
“Ah, yes. Mr Scrugthorpe.”
Harry glanced at Lucinda’s face; her tone had turned distinctly chilly.
“Well, Mr Scrugthorpe said as how the profit didn’t matter so long as the inn paid its way.”
Lucinda blinked. “What was your previous position, Blount?”
“I used to keep the Blackbird’s Beak, up Fordham way.”
“The Blackbird’s Beak?”
“A hedge-tavern, I suspect,” Harry put in drily.
“Oh.” Lucinda met his gaze, then looked back at Blount. “Well, Blount, Mr Scrugthorpe is no longer Babbacombe and Company’s agent, largely because of the rather odd way he thought to do business. And, I fear, if you wish to remain an employee of the company, you’re going to have to learn to manage the Green Goose in a more commercial fashion. An inn in Newmarket cannot operate on the same principles as a hedge-tavern.”
Blount’s forehead was deeply creased. “I don’t know as how I rightly follow you, ma’am. Tap’s a tap, after all.”
“No, Blount. A tap is not a tap—it is the principal public room of the inn and as such should possess a clean and welcoming ambience. I do hope you won’t suggest that that,” she pointed in the direction of the tap, “is clean and welcoming?”
The big man shifted on his seat. “Dare say the missus could do a bit of a clean-up.”
“Indeed.” Lucilla nodded. “The missus and you, too, Blount. And whoever else you can get to help.” She folded her hands on her ledgers and looked Blount in the eye. “In my report, I am going to suggest that, rather than dismiss you, given you’ve not yet had an opportunity to show the company of what you’re capable, the company reserves judgement for three months and then reviews the situation.”
Blount swallowed. “What exactly does that mean, ma’am?”
“It means, Blount, that I will make a list of all the improvements that will need to be done to turn this inn into one rivalling the Barbican Arms, at least in profit. There’s no reason it shouldn’t. Improvements such as a thorough whitewashing inside and out, all the timber polished, present bedding discarded and fresh bought, all furniture polished and crockery replaced. And the kitchen needs a range.” Lucinda paused to meet Blount’s eye. “Ultimately, you will employ a good cook and serve wholesome meals continuously in the tap, which will be refurbished accordingly. I’ve noticed that there are few places at which travellers staying in this town can obtain a superior repast. By providing the best fare, the Green Goose will attract custom away from the coaching houses which, because of their preoccupation with coaching, supply only mediocre food.”
She paused but Blount only blinked at her. “I take it you are interested in keeping your position here?”
“Oh—yes, ma’am. Definitely! But…where’s the blunt coming from for all that?”
“Why, from the profits, Blount.” Lucinda eyed him straitly. “The profits before your wages are deducted—and before the return paid to the company. The company considers such matters as an investment in the inn’s future; if you’re wise, you’ll consider my suggestions in light of an investment in your future.”
Blount met her gaze; slowly he nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good!” Lucinda rose. “I will make a copy of the improvements I’ll be suggesting to the company and have my groom drop it by tomorrow.” She glanced at Blount as he struggled to his feet; his expression suggested he was still reeling. “Mr Mabberly will look in on you in a month’s time, to review your progress. And now, if there’s nothing else, I will bid you good day, Blount.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Blount hurried to open the door. “Thank you, ma’am.” He was clearly sincere.
Lucinda regally nodded and sailed from the room.
Reluctantly impressed, Harry followed close behind. Still inwardly amazed, he waited until they were back on the pavement, she gliding along with her nose in the air as if she had not just taken on Goliath and won, before catching her hand, neatly trapping it on his sleeve. Her fingers fluttered, then stilled. She cast him a quick glance, then studiously looked ahead. Her groom followed two paces behind, her ledgers clutched in his arms.
The young traveller who had been slouching in the tap slipped out of the inn door in their wake.
“My dear Mrs Babbacombe,” Harry began in what he hoped was an even tone. “I do hope you’re going to satisfy my curiosity as to why a gently reared female, however well-equipped for the task, goes about interrogating her company’s employees?”
Unabashed, Lucinda met his gaze; aggravation showed clearly in the green. “Because there is no one else.”
Harry held her gaze. His lips thinned. “I find that hard to believe. What about this Mr Mabberly—your agent? Why can he not take on the challenge of such as Blount?”
Lucinda’s lips quirked. “You must admit he was a definite challenge.” She slanted a deliberately provocative glance his way. “I feel quite chuffed.”
Harry snorted. “As you well know, you performed a minor miracle. That man will now work himself to the bone—which will be a distinct improvement in itself. But that,” he continued, his tone hardening, “is not the point.”
“But it is, you see.” Lucinda wondered why she was allowing him to put in his oar. Perhaps because it had been a long time since anyone had tried? “Mr Anthony Mabberly is all of twenty-three. He’s an excellent man with the accounts and is scrupulously honest and fair—a far cry from Scrugthorpe.”
“Ah, yes. The undesirable Scrugthorpe.” Harry cast her a quick glance. “Why was he so undesirable?”
“Fraud. He was appointed by my husband just before his death—on one of his bad days, I’m afraid. After Charles’s death, I by chance learned that the books as they were being presented to me did not reflect the actual figures generated by the inns.”
“What happened to Scrugthorpe?”
“I dismissed him, of course.”
Harry noted the righteous satisfaction that underlaid her tone. Clearly, Lucinda Babbacombe had not approved of Mr Scrugthorpe. “So until recently the agent took responsibility for negotiating with your tenants?”
Lucinda lifted a haughty brow. “Until I reorganised the company’s procedures. Mr Mabberly would not know where to start with such as Blount—he’s of a somewhat timid disposition. And I consider it appropriate that both Heather and myself are familiar with the inns that form our legacy.”
“Laudable though such sentiments might be, Mrs Babbacombe, I do hope—” Harry broke off as she stopped and looked consideringly across the street. “What is it?”
“Hmm?” Absent-mindedly, Lucinda glanced up. “Oh—I was just wondering if there was time left to do the Barbican Arms today.” She glanced back at the busy inn across the street. “But it looks rather crowded. Perhaps tomorrow morning would be better?”
Harry stared at her, an unwelcome suspicion slowly crystallising in his brain. “Very much better,” he averred. “But tell me, Mrs Babbacombe—how many inns do you and your stepdaughter own?”
She looked up at him, an unlikely innocence in her powder-blue eyes. “Fifty-four,” she replied. Then added, as if in afterthought, “Up and down the country.”
Harry closed his eyes and struggled to suppress a groan. Then, without another word, with no more than a single speaking glance, he escorted her into the yard of the Barbican Arms and, with heartfelt relief, handed her up to Em’s gig and watched her drive away.
“So she’s staying in Newmarket?”
Mr Earle Joliffe drew a riding crop back and forth through his fingers. A thickset man of undistinguished mien, he sat back in his chair, his pale gaze, as pale as his pasty complexion, fixed on the young roughneck he’d sent into town to track their quarry down.
“As to that, I ain’t sure.” The youngster took a swig from his tankard.
They were in a rundown cottage three miles from Newmarket, the best they’d been able to rent at short notice. Four men sat about the deal table—Joliffe, the youngster whose name was Brawn and two others—Mortimer Babbacombe and Ernest Scrugthorpe. The latter was a hulking man, rough despite the severe clothes of a clerk; he sat silently glowering into his beer. Mortimer Babbacombe, a slight figure in the attire of a would-be dandy, shifted restlessly; he clearly wished himself elsewhere.
“She got into a gig and drove out eastwards. I couldn’t follow.”
Scrugthorpe grunted. “See? Told you she’d go to the Green Goose. Couldn’t keep away, meddling witch.”
He spat contemptuously on the floor; the action made Mortimer even more uncomfortable.
“Ye-es, well.” Joliffe transferred his gaze to Scrugthorpe. “Might I remind you that she should, by now, have been in our hands? That but for your lack of foresight, she would be?”
Scrugthorpe scowled. “How was I to know it were a race-week? And that gentlemen would be using that road? Everything went perfect, elsewise.”
Joliffe sighed and raised his eyes heavenwards. Amateurs—they were all the same. How had he, who had spent his life thus far successfully extracting a living from the rich, descended to the company of such? Lowering his gaze, his glance fell on Mortimer Babbacombe. Joliffe’s lips curled in a contemptuous sneer.
“Ought to mention,” Brawn put in, surfacing from his tankard. “She was walking the street with a swell today—right chummy—looked like the same swell as wot rescued them.”
Joliffe’s eyes narrowed and he sat forward. “Describe this swell.”
“Fair hair—like gold. Tall, looked like he’d strip to advantage. One of them bloods with a fancy cape.” Brawn grimaced. “They all look the same to me.”
Not so to Joliffe. “This blood—was he staying at the Barbican Arms?”
“Seemed so—the ostlers and all seemed to know him.”
“Harry Lester.” Joliffe tapped a pensive nail on the table. “I wonder…”
“Wonder what?” Mortimer looked at his erstwhile friend and most urgent creditor, his expression that of a man well out of his depth. “Would this man Lester help us?”
Joliffe snorted. “Only to the hangman’s noose. But his peculiar talents bear consideration.” Leaning forward, Joliffe placed both elbows on the table. “It occurs to me, my dear Mortimer, that we may be involving ourselves unnecessarily here.” Joliffe smiled, an empty gesture that made Mortimer shrink. “I’m sure you’d be most agreeable to any way of achieving our aim without direct involvement.”
Mortimer swallowed. “But how can Lester help us—if he won’t?”
“Oh—I didn’t say he won’t—just that we needn’t ask him. He’ll help us entirely for the fun of it. Harry Lester, dear Mortimer, is the rake supreme—a practitioner extraordinaire in the gentle art of seduction. If, as seems possible, he’s got your uncle’s widow in his sights, then I wouldn’t like to bet on her chances.” Joliffe’s smile grew. “And, of course, once she’s demonstrably no longer a virtuous widow, then you’ll have all the reason you need to legally challenge her guardianship of your cousin.” Joliffe’s gaze grew intent. “And once your pretty cousin’s legacy’s in your hands, you’ll be in a position to pay me, won’t you, Mortimer?”
Mortimer Babbacombe swallowed—and forced himself to nod.
“So what do we do now?” Scrugthorpe drained his tankard.
Joliffe considered, then pronounced, “We sit tight and watch. If we get a chance to lay hands on the lady, we will—just like we planned.”
“Aye—far as I’m concerned, that’s how we should do it—no sense in leaving anything to chance.”
Joliffe’s lip curled. “Your animosity is showing, Scrugthorpe. Please remember that our primary aim here is to discredit Mrs Babbacombe—not satisfy your lust for revenge.”
Scrugthorpe snorted.
“As I was saying,” Joliffe went on. “We watch and wait. If Harry Lester succeeds—he’ll have done our work for us. If not, we’ll continue to pursue the lady—and Scrugthorpe here will have his chance.”
At that, Scrugthorpe smiled. Lecherously.
Chapter Four
When Lucinda drove into the yard of the Barbican Arms the next morning, Harry was waiting, shoulders against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, his boot against the wall for balance. He had plenty of time to admire the artless picture of mature womanhood seated beside Grimms in his aunt’s gig. Elegantly gowned in a cornflower blue carriage dress, her dark hair restrained in a severe chignon thus revealing the delicate bones of her face, Lucinda Babbacombe predictably turned the heads of those still dawdling in the yard. Thankfully, the thoroughbred races were to commence that morning; most of Harry’s contemporaries were already at the track.
Grimms brought Em’s gig to a neat halt in the centre of the yard. With an inward snort, Harry pushed away from the wall.
Lucinda watched him approach—his graceful stride forcefully reminded her of a prowling tiger. A very definite thrill coursed through her; she avoided smiling her delight, contenting herself with a mild expression of polite surprise. “Mr Lester.” Calmly, she extended her hand. “I hadn’t expected to see you this morning—I thought you were here for the races.”
His brows had risen sceptically at her first remark; on her second, his green eyes glittered. He grasped her hand—for an instant, as his eyes held hers, Lucinda wondered why she was playing with fire.
“Indeed,” Harry replied, his habitual drawl in abeyance. He helped her from the carriage, steadying her on the cobbles. “I own to surprise on that score myself. However, as you are my aunt’s guest, and at my instigation, I feel honour-bound to ensure you come to no harm.”
Lucinda’s eyes narrowed but Harry, distracted by the absence of groom or maid—Grimms had already disappeared into the stables—did not notice.
“Speaking of which, where’s your groom?”
Lucinda allowed herself a small smile. “Riding with your brother and Heather. I have to thank you for sending Gerald to us—he’s entertaining company for Heather—I dare say she would otherwise grow bored. And, of course, that leaves me free to tend to business without having to worry my head over her.”
Harry didn’t share her confidence—but he wasn’t, at this point, concerned with her stepdaughter. His expression hardened as he looked down at her. He was still holding her hand; tucking it into his arm, he turned her towards the inn door. “You should at least have a groom with you.”
“Nonsense, Mr Lester.” Lucinda slanted him a curious glance. “Surely you aren’t suggesting that at my age I need a chaperon?”
Looking into her eyes, softly blue, their expression openly independent, challenging yet oddly innocent, Harry inwardly cursed. The damned woman didn’t need a chaperon—she needed an armed guard. Just why he had elected himself to the post was not a point he was willing to pursue. He contented himself with repressively stating, “In my opinion, Mrs Babbacombe, women like you should not be allowed out alone.”
Her eyes twinkled; two tiny dimples appeared in her cheeks. “Actually, I’d like to see the stables.” She turned to the archway leading from the main yard.
“The stables?”
Her gaze ranging their surroundings, Lucinda nodded. “The state of the stableyard frequently reflects the quality of the inn’s management.”
The state of the stables suggested the innkeeper of the Barbican Arms was a perfectionist; everything was neat, clean and in its place. Horses turned their heads to stare as Lucinda picked her way over the cobbles, still wet with dew, forced more than once to lean heavily on Harry’s arm.
When they reached the earthen floor of the stables, she determinedly straightened. Regretfully withdrawing her fingers from the warmth of his sleeve, she strolled along the row of loose boxes, stopping here and there to acknowledge their curious occupants. She eventually reached the tack room and peered in.
“Excuse me, ma’am—but you shouldn’t be in here.” An elderly groom hurried out.
Harry stepped out of the shadows. “It’s all right, Johnson. I’ll see the lady safe,”
“Oh!—it’s you, Mr Lester.” The groom touched his cap. “That’s all right and tight, then. Ma’am.” With another tug of his cap, the groom retreated into the tack room.
Lucinda blinked, then shot a glance at Harry. “Is it always so ordered? So…” She waved at the loose boxes, each with their half-doors shut. “So exact?”
“Yes.” Harry looked down at her as she stopped beside him. “I stable my carriage horses here—you may rest assured of the quality in that respect.”
“I see.” Deeming all queries on the equine side of business satisfied, Lucinda turned her attention to the inn proper.
Ushered through the main door, she looked with approval on half-panelled walls, well-polished and glowing mellowly. Sunshine reflected from crisply whitewashed walls; stray beams danced across the flagged floor.
Mr Jenkins, the innkeeper, a neat, rotund person of genial mien, bustled up. Harry performed the introductions, then stood patiently by while Lucinda explained her purpose. Unlike Blount, Mr Jenkins was all gratified helpfulness.
Lucinda turned to Harry. “My business with Mr Jenkins will keep me busy for at least an hour. I wouldn’t for the world impose on your kindness, Mr Lester—you’ve already done so much. And I can hardly come to harm within the inn.”
Harry didn’t blink. For her, the Arms played host to a panapoly of dangers—namely his peers. Meeting her innocent gaze with an impenetrable blandness, he waved a languid hand. “Indeed—but my horses don’t run until later.”
Which comment, he noted, brought a flash to her eyes. She hesitated, then, somewhat stiffly, acquiesced, inclining her head before turning back to Mr Jenkins.
Wearing patience like a halo, Harry followed his host and his aunt’s guest about the old inn, through rambling passageways and storerooms, to bedchambers and even to the garrets. They were returning down an upper corridor when a man came blundering out of a room.
Lucinda, opposite the door, started; glimpsing the man from the corner of her eye, she braced herself for a collision. Instead, she was bodily set aside; the chubby young gentleman ran full tilt into a hard shoulder. He bounced off, crumpling against the door frame.
“Ouf!” Straightening, the man blinked. “Oh—hello, Lester. Slept in, don’t y’know. Can’t miss the first race.” He blinked again, a puzzled frown forming in his eyes. “Thought you’d be at the track by now.”
“Later.” Harry stepped back, revealing Lucinda.
The young man blinked again. “Oh—ah, yes. Terribly sorry, ma’am—always being told I should look where I’m going. No harm done, I hope?”
Lucinda smiled at the ingenuous apology. “No—none.” Thanks to her protector.
“Good-oh! I’d best be on my way, then. See you at the track, Lester.” With an awkward bow and a cheery wave, the youthful sprig hurried off.
Harry snorted.
“Thank you for your assistance, Mr Lester.” Lucinda slanted him a smile. “I’m really most grateful.”
Harry took full note of the quality of her smile. Coolly, he inclined his head and waved her on in Jenkins’s wake.
By the end of her tour, Lucinda was impressed. The Barbican Arms, and Mr Jenkins, were a far cry from the Green Goose and Jake Blount. The inn was spick and span throughout; she had found nothing remotely amiss. Her inspection of the books was a mere formality; Mr Mabberly had already declared the Arms a model of good finance.
She and her host spent a few minutes going over the plans for an extension to the inn. “For we’re full to overflowing during race-meets and more than half full at other times.”
Lucinda gave her general approval and left the details for Mr Mabberly.
“Thank you, Mr Jenkins,” she declared, pulling on her gloves as they headed for the door. “I must tell you that, having visited all but four of the fifty-four inns owned by Babbacombe and Company, I would rank the Barbican Arms as one of the best.”
Mr Jenkins preened. “Very kind of you to say so, ma’am. We do strive to please.”
With a gracious nod, Lucinda swept out. Once in the courtyard she paused. Harry stopped beside her; she looked up at his face. “Thank you for your escort, Mr Lester—I’m really most grateful considering the other demands on your time.”
Harry was too wise to attempt an answer to that.
Lucinda’s lips twitched; she looked quickly away. “Actually,” she mused, “I was considering viewing this race-meet.” She brought her eyes back to his face. “I’ve never been to one before.”
Harry looked down at her ingenuous expression. His eyes narrowed. “Newmarket race-track is no place for you.”
She blinked, taken aback—Harry glimpsed real disappointment in her eyes. Then she looked away. “Oh.”
The single syllable hung in the air, a potent testimony to crushed anticipation. Fleetingly, Harry closed his eyes, then opened them. “However, if you give me your word you will not stray from my side—not to admire some view, some horse or a lady’s bonnet—” He looked down at her, his jaw setting. “I will engage to escort you there.”
Her smile was triumphant. “Thank you. That would be very kind.”
Not kind—foolish. It was, Harry was already convinced, the most stupid move he’d ever made. An ostler came running in answer to his curt gesture. “I’ll have my curricle. You can tell Grimms to take Lady Hallows’s gig back; I’ll see Mrs Babbacombe home.”
“Yessir.”
Lucinda busied herself with the fit of her gloves, then meekly allowed herself to be lifted to the curricle’s seat. Settling her skirts, and her quivering senses, she smiled serenely as, with a deft flick of the reins, Harry took the greys onto the street.
The race-track lay west of the town on the flat, grassy, largely tree-less heath. Harry drove directly to the stables in which his string of racers were housed, a little way from the track proper, beyond the public precincts.
Lucinda, drinking in the sights, could not miss the glances thrown their way. Stableboy and gentleman alike seemed disposed to stare; she was unexpectedly grateful when the stable walls protected her from view.
The horses were a wonder. Lifted down from the curricle, Lucinda could not resist wandering down the row of loose boxes, patting the velvet noses that came out to greet her, admiring the sleek lines and rippling muscles of what, even to her untutored eyes, had to be some of the finest horses in England.
Engaged in a brisk discussion with Hamish, Harry followed her progress, insensibly buoyed by the awed appreciation he saw in her gaze. On reaching the end of the row, she turned and saw him watching her; her nose rose an inch but she came back, strolling towards him through the sunshine.
“So all’s right with entering the mare, then?”
Reluctantly, Harry shifted his gaze to Hamish’s face. His head-stableman was also watching Lucinda Babbacombe, not with the appreciation she deserved but with horrified fascination. As she drew nearer, Harry extended his arm; she placed her fingertips upon it without apparent thought. “Just as long as Thistledown’s fetlock’s fully healed.”
“Aye.” Hamish bobbed respectfully at Lucinda. “Seems to be. I told the boy to just let her run—no point marshalling her resources if it’s still weak. A good run’s the only way to tell.”
Harry nodded. “I’ll stop by and speak to him myself.”
Hamish nodded and effaced himself with the alacrity of a man nervous around females, at least those not equine in nature.
Suppressing a grin, Harry lifted a brow at his companion. “I thought you agreed not to be distracted by horses?”
The look she bent on him was confidently assured. “You shouldn’t have brought me to see yours, then. They are truly the most distractingly beautiful specimens I’ve ever seen.”
Harry couldn’t suppress his smile. “But you haven’t seen the best of them. Those on that side are two-and three-year-olds—for my money, the older ones are more gracious. Come, I’ll show you.”
She seemed only too ready to be led down the opposite row of boxes, dutifully admiring the geldings and mares. At the end of the row, a bay stallion reached confidently over the half-door to investigate Harry’s pockets.
“This is old Cribb—a persistent devil. Still runs with the best of them though he could retire gracefully on his accumulated winnings.” Leaving her patting the stallion’s nose, Harry went to a barrel by the wall. “Here,” he said, turning back. “Feed him these.”
Lucinda took the three dried apples he offered her, giggling as Cribb delicately lipped them from her palm.
Harry glanced up—and saw Dawlish outside the tack-room, standing stock-still, staring at him. Leaving Lucinda communing with Cribb, Harry strolled over. “What’s up?”
Now that he was beside him, it was clear Dawlish was staring at his companion, not him.
“Gawd’s truth—it’s happened.”
Harry frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Dawlish turned a pitying eye on him. “Ridiculous, is it? You do realize, don’t you, that that’s the first female you’ve ever shown your horses?”
Harry lifted a supercilious brow. “She’s the first female ever to have shown an interest.”
“Hah! Might as well hang up your gloves, gov’nor—you’re a goner.”
Harry cast his eyes heavenwards. “If you must know, she’s never been to a race-meet before and was curious—there’s nothing more to it than that.”
“Ah-hah. So you says.” Dawlish cast a long, defeated look at the slight figure by Cribb’s box. “All I says is that you can justify it any ways you want—the conclusions still come out the same.”
With a doleful shake of his head, Dawlish retreated, muttering, back into the tack-room.
Harry wasn’t sure whether to laugh or frown. He glanced back at the woman, still chatting to his favourite stallion. If it wasn’t for the fact they would shortly be surrounded by crowds, he might be inclined to share his henchman’s pessimism. But the race-track, in full view of the multitudes, was surely safe enough.
“If we leave now,” he said, returning to her side, “we can stroll to the track in time for the first race.”
She smiled her acquiescence and laid her hand on his arm. “Is that horse you were talking of—Thistledown—running in it?”
Smiling down into her blue eyes, Harry shook his head. “No—she’s in the second.”
Lucinda found herself trapped in the clear green of his eyes; she studied them, trying to gauge what he was thinking. His lips twitched and he looked away. Blinking as they emerged into the bright sunshine, Lucinda asked, “Your aunt mentioned you managed a stud?”
His fascinating lips curved. “Yes—the Lester stud.” With ready facility, prompted by her questions, he expiated at length on the trials and successes of his enterprise. What he didn’t say but Lucinda inferred, it being the logical deduction to make from his descriptions, was that the stud was both a shining achievement and the very core of his life.
They reached the tents surrounding the track as the runners for the first race were being led to the barrier. All Lucinda could see was a sea of backs as everyone concentrated on the course.
“This way—you’ll see better from the stands.”
A man in a striped vest was guarding a roped arena before a large wooden stand. Lucinda noted that while he insisted on seeing passes from the other latecomers ahead of them, he merely grinned and nodded at Harry and let them by. Harry helped her up the steep steps by the side of the planks serving as seats—but before they could find places a horn blew.
“They’re off.” Harry’s words echoed from a hundred throats—about them, all the patrons craned forward.
Lucinda turned obediently and saw a line of horses thundering down the turf. From this distance, neither she nor anyone else could see all that much of the animals. It was the crowd that enthralled her—their rising excitement gripped her, making her breathe faster and concentrate on the race. When the winner flashed past the post, the jockey flourishing his whip high, she felt inordinately glad.
“Well raced.” Harry’s gaze was on the horses and riders as they slowed and turned back to the gates.
Lucinda grasped the moment to study him. He was intent on observation, green eyes keenly assessing, shrewdly calculating. For an instant, she saw him clearly, his features unguarded. He was a man who, despite all other distractions in his life, was totally devoted to his chosen path.
He turned his head at that moment. Their eyes met, their gazes locked. He was standing on the step below her so her eyes were almost level with his. For a moment, he said nothing, then his lips twisted wrily.
Lucinda suppressed a delicate shiver.
With a gesture, Harry indicated the crowded lawns before them. “If you truly want to experience a race-meet, then you have to promenade.”
Her own lips curving, Lucinda inclined her head. “Lead on, Mr Lester—I’m entirely in your hands.”
She saw his brow quirk but pretended ignorance. On his arm, she descended the steps and exited the private enclosure.
“The Jockey Club maintains the stand for the use of its members,” Harry informed her when she glanced back.
Which meant he was a well-known member. Even Lucinda had heard of the pre-eminence of the Jockey Club. “I see. The races are run under their auspices, I take it?”
“Correct.”
He led her on a slow perambulation through the milling crowds. Lucinda felt distinctly round-eyed—she wanted to see everything, understand the fascination that drew so many gentlemen to Newmarket.
The same fascination that drove Harry Lester.
He showed her the bookmakers, each surrounded by knots of punters eager to lay their bets. They paraded before the tents and pavilions; again and again they were stopped by some acquaintance of Harry’s, keen to exchange a few words. Lucinda was prepared to be on her guard, but she encountered nothing but polite deference in the glances thrown her way; all those who stopped to talk were disarmingly correct. Nevertheless, she felt no impulse to withdraw her hand from the security of her escort’s elbow, where he had tucked it, drawing her close. In the press of male bodies, it was unquestionably comforting to have Harry Lester by her side. There were, she discovered, some ladies present. “Some have a real interest in the sport—usually the older ones.” Relaxed, in his milieu, Harry glanced down at her. “Some of the younger ladies have a vested interest;
their families, like mine, have a long-standing connection with the turf.”
Mouthing an “oh”, Lucinda nodded. There were other ladies, too, whom he had not seen fit to comment upon, who,
she suspected, held dubious right to the title. The race-track, however, was an overwhelmingly male domain—every subcategory of the male population was certainly represented. Lucinda was quite sure she would have neither the courage nor the inclination to attend again—not unless Harry Lester was her escort.
“It’s nearly time for the next race. I must speak to Thistledown’s jockey.”
Lucinda nodded, conveying with a glance her intention of staying with him.
Harry threw her a brief smile then concentrated on forging a path to the mounting yard.
“She seems very lively, sir,” the jockey vouchsafed as he settled in the saddle. “But the competition’s stiff—Jonquil—that mare out of Herald—is a starter. And Caught by the Scruff, too. And some of them others are experienced racers—it’ll be a miracle if she wins, what with her fetlock just come good an’ all.”
Harry nodded. “Just let her go—let her set her own pace. We’ll consider this a trial, nothing more. Don’t cram her—and no whip.”
Lucinda left his side to pat the mare’s velvet muzzle; a huge, dark brown eye invited her understanding. Lucinda grinned. “Hopeless, aren’t they?” she crooned. “But you don’t want to listen to them—men are notoriously hopeless at judging women. They should never so presume.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Harry’s lips lift; he exchanged a glance with the jockey, who grinned. “You just go out there and win the race—then see how they react. I’ll see you in the winner’s circle.”
With a last pat for the mare, she turned and, with divine disregard for the expression on Harry Lester’s face, allowed him to lead her back to the stands.
He secured seats in the third row, almost opposite the post. Lucinda leaned forward, eagerly scanning the horses trotting towards the barrier. She waved when Thistledown appeared.
Harry, watching her, laughed.
“She’ll win—you’ll see.” With smug confidence, Lucinda sat back.
But when the horn sounded and the barrier was dropped, she leant forward again, eyes keenly searching the thundering charge for Harry’s colours of green and gold. So intent was she that she didn’t even notice she rose to her feet, in company with all the other spectators, as the horses rounded the bend. As they entered the straight, a gap appeared in their ranks—Thistledown shot through.
“There she is!” Lucinda grabbed Harry’s arm. Only deeply entrenched decorum kept her from jigging up and down. “She’s winning!”
Harry was too riveted to answer.
But Thistledown was indeed showing the field a clean pair of heels. Halfway down the straight, her stride lengthened even more—she appeared to be flying when she flashed past the post.
“She won! She won!” Lucinda grasped both Harry’s arms and all but danced. “I told you she would!”
Rather more accustomed to the delights of victory, Harry looked down at her face, wreathed in smiles and lit by the same joy he still felt every time one of his horses came home first. He knew he was smiling, as delighted as she if rather more circumspect in showing it.
Lucinda turned back to locate Thistledown, now being led from the course. “Can we go and see her now?”
“Indeed we can.” Harry took her hand and tucked it tightly in his arm. “You promised to meet her in the winner’s circle, remember?”
Lucinda blinked as he steered her out of the crowded stand. “Is it permissible for ladies to enter the winner’s circle?”
“There’s no rule against it—in fact—” Harry slanted a glance at her “—I suspect the Head of the Committee will be delighted to see you.” When she shot him a suspicious glance, he laughed and urged her on. Once out of the enclosure and free of those members keen to press their congratulations, a path cleared before them, leading directly to the roped arena where Thistledown, shiny coat flickering but clearly untired by her dash, waited patiently.
As soon as Lucinda emerged from the crowd, the mare pushed her head forward, dragging on the reins to get to Lucinda’s side. Lucinda hurried forward, crooning her praises. Harry looked on indulgently.
“Well, Lester! Another trophy for your mantel—surprised it hasn’t collapsed.”
Harry turned as the President of the Jockey Club, present Head of the Race Committee, appeared at his elbow. In his hands, he held a gold-plated statuette in the shape of a lady.
“Remarkable run—truly remarkable.”
Shaking hands, Harry nodded. “Particularly as she’s just recovered from a strained fetlock—I wasn’t sure I’d race her.”
“Just as well you did.” The President’s eye was on the horse and the woman apparently chatting to the beast. “Nice conformation.”
Harry knew very well that Lord Norwich was not referring to the mare. “Indeed.” His tone was dry; Lord Norwich, who had known him from the cradle, lifted a brow at him.
Glancing at the statuette, Harry confirmed that the lady was indeed decently garbed, then nodded at Lucinda. “It was Mrs Babbacombe who delivered the inspirational address prior to the race. Perhaps she should accept the award on my behalf?”
“Excellent idea!” Beaming, Lord Norwich strode forward.
Shielded by her brimming happiness, the aftermath of fulfilled excitement, Lucinda had succeeded in blithely ignoring the avid interest of the spectators. Lord Norwich, however, was impossible to ignore. But Harry strolled forward to stand by their side, quieting her uncertainties.
Lord Norwich gave a short speech, praising the mare and Harry’s stables, then gallantly presented the statuette—to her.
Surprised, Lucinda looked at Harry—he smiled and nodded.
Determined to rise to the occasion, she graciously thanked his lordship.
“Quite, quite.” His lordship was quite taken. “Need to see more game fillies at the track, what?”
Lucinda blinked at him.
Harry reached for her elbow and drew her to his side. He nodded at his strapper. “Take her back to the stables.”
With a last lingering look for Lucinda, Thistledown was led away. Lord Norwich and the rest of the crowd turned away, already intent on the next race.
Still conscious of the fading thrill, Lucinda looked around, then cast a glance upwards.
Harry smiled. “And you have my heartfelt thanks, too, my dear. For whatever magic you wove.”
Lucinda met his eyes—and stopped breathing. “There was no magic.” She felt his fingers on hers; she watched as he raised her hand and brushed his lips across the backs of her fingers. A long shiver traced its path down her spine, leaving an odd warmth in its wake. With an effort she veiled her eyes, breaking his spell. Catching her breath, she made a bid for her usual confidence; she raised the statuette and presented it to him, defiantly meeting his eyes.
He took it in his other hand, his gaze steady on hers.
Time lost its meaning; they stood, largely forgotten, in the centre of the winner’s circle. Men crowded about, jostling each other but not touching them. They stood close, so close the small ruffle on Lucinda’s bodice brushed the long lapel of Harry’s coat. He sensed its flutter as her breathing grew more rapid but he was lost in her eyes, in a world of misty blue. He watched them widen, darken. Her lips softened, parted. Her bodice made contact with his coat.
His head had begun its slow descent when sanity awoke—and frantically hauled on his reins.
Great heavens! They were in the winner’s circle at Newmarket!
Shaken to the depths of his soul, Harry dragged in a quick breath. He tore his gaze from her face, from the consternation that was filling her eyes, and the soft blush that had started to tinge her cheeks, and looked about them. No one, thank heaven, had seen.
His heart pounding, he took a firm grip of her elbow—and took refuge in action. “If you’ve seen enough of the racing, I should get you back to Em’s—she’ll be wondering where you are.”
Lucinda nodded—the faintly bored drawl left her no choice. She felt—she didn’t know what—shaken, certainly, but regretful, and resentful, too. But she couldn’t argue with his wish to be gone from here.
But they still had the gamut of well-wishers to run—they were stopped constantly, more than one gentleman wishing to make an offer for the mare.
Harry faced the hurdles with what patience he could, conscious that all he wished to do was escape. With her. But that was impossible—she was his danger, his Waterloo.
From now on, every time he looked into her face would be like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun. A weapon that could land him in painful slavery.
If he was wise, he wouldn’t look too frequently.
Lucinda sensed his withdrawal although he cloaked it well. His urbane charm came to the fore—but he would not meet her eyes, her puzzled glances.
They finally escaped the crowds and walked back, in silence, to the stables. He lifted her to his curricle and swung up beside her, his expression closed.
He drove back to Hallows Hall without a word, his apparent concentration on his horses a wall Lucinda made no attempt to breach.
But when he drew up before the steps and secured the reins, then came around and lifted her down, she held her position in front of him even though his hands fell immediately from her. “Thank you for a most…instructive morning, Mr Lester.”
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Stephanie Laurens
A successful horse breeder and self-proclaimed rake, Harry Lester samples women like wines.But after having his heart trampled upon by someone he actually loved, he has no intention of falling for a woman again, let alone be ensnared by the trap of marriage. Now, with a large inheritance to his name, Harry knows that he'd best start running from London's matchmaking mothers and widows.Harry heads for the racing town of Newmarket, only to encounter Mrs. Lucinda Babbacombe, a beautiful, independent widow. And before he knows it, Harry vows to protect Lucinda from the town full of lonely gambling men, despite her refusal to accept his countless offers of help.Lucinda is extraordinary-an intelligent, tender, marriageworthy woman-but will Harry let himself be taken prisoner in this most passionate of traps?
An Unwilling Conquest
Stephanie Laurens
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
About the Author
Set against the backdrop of Regency England, in An Unwilling Conquest,STEPHANIE LAURENS continues the story of Harry Lester, met earlier in The Reason for Marriage and A Lady of Expectations. The Lesters were the first family Stephanie created where different books dealt with the romances of siblings, and as such were the precursors of many of Stephanie’s subsequent books.
In An Unwilling Conquest, Harry, the second Lester brother, flees London for Newmarket, determined to escape any leg-shackle fate might have waiting for him in the ballrooms. Fate, however, proves more far-sighted, having arranged for a distraction in the person of Mrs Lucinda Babbacombe.
Stephanie lives in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and two daughters. To learn more about Stephanie’s books visit her website at www.stephanielaurens.com.
Also by Stephanie Laurens
THE REASONS FOR MARRIAGE
A LADY OF EXPECTATIONS
A COMFORTABLE WIFE
Chapter One
“Is it the devil we’re running from, then?”
The question, uttered in the mildest of tones, made Harry Lester wince. “Worse,” he threw over his shoulder at his groom and general henchman, Dawlish. “The matchmaking mamas—in league with the dragons of the ton.” Harry edged back on the reins, feathering a curve at speed. He saw no reason to ease the wicked pace. His match greys, sleek and powerful, were quite content to keep the bits between their teeth. His curricle rushed along in their wake; Newmarket lay ahead. “And we’re not running—it’s called a strategic retreat.”
“Is that so? Well, can’t say I blame you,” came in Dawlish’s dour accents. “Who’d ever have thought to see Master Jack landed—and without much of a fight, if Pinkerton’s on the up. Right taken aback, is Pinkerton.” When this information elicited no response, Dawlish added, “Considering his position, he is.”
Harry snorted. “Nothing will part Pinkerton from Jack—not even a wife. He’ll swallow the pill when the time comes.”
“Aye—p’raps. Still, can’t say I’d relish the prospect of answering to a missus—not after all these years.”
Harry’s lips quirked. Realising that Dawlish, riding on the box behind him, couldn’t see it, he gave into the urge to smile. Dawlish had been with him forever, having, as a fifteen-year-old groom, attached himself to the second son of the Lester household the instant said son had been put atop a pony. Their old cook had maintained it was a clear case of like to like; Dawlish’s life was horses—he had recognised a master in the making and had followed doggedly in his wake. “You needn’t worry, you old curmudgeon. I can assure you I’ve no intention, willingly or otherwise, of succumbing to any siren’s lures.”
“All very well to say so,” Dawlish grumbled. “But when these things happen, seems like there’s no gainsaying them. Just look at Master Jack.”
“I’d rather not,” Harry curtly replied. Dwelling on his elder brother’s rapid descent into matrimony was an exercise guaranteed to shake his confidence. With only two years separating them, he and Jack had led much the same lives. They’d come on the town together more than ten years ago. Admittedly, Jack had less reason than he to question love’s worth, nevertheless, his brother had been, as Dawlish had observed, a most willing conquest. The fact made him edgy.
“You planning on keeping from London for the rest of yore life?”
“I sincerely hope it won’t come to that.” Harry checked the greys for a slight descent. The heath lay before them, a haven free of matchmakers and dragons alike. “Doubtless my uninterest will be duly noted. With any luck, if I lay low, they’ll have forgotten me by next Season.”
“Wouldn’t have thought, with all the energy you’ve put into raising a reputation like you have, that they’d be so keen.”
Harry’s lip curled. “Money, Dawlish, will serve to excuse any number of sins.”
He waited, expecting Dawlish to cap the comment with some gloomy pronouncement to the effect that if the madams of society could overlook his transgressions then no one was safe. But no comment came; his gaze fixed unseeing on his leader’s ears, Harry grudgingly reflected that the wealth with which he and his brothers, Gerald as well as Jack, had recently been blessed, was indeed sufficient to excuse a lifetime of social sins.
His illusions were few—he knew who and what he was—a rake, one of the wolves of the ton, a hellion, a Corinthian, a superlative rider and exceptional breeder of quality horseflesh, an amateur boxer of note, an excellent shot, a keen and successful huntsman on the field and off. For the past ten and more years, Society had been his playing field. Capitalising on natural talents, and the position his birth had bestowed, he had spent the years in hedonistic pleasure, sampling women much as he had the wines. There’d been none to gainsay him, none to stand in his path and challenge his profligate ways.
Now, of course, with a positively disgusting fortune at his back, they’d be lining up to do so.
Harry snorted and refocused on the road. The sweet damsels of the ton could offer until they were blue in the face—he wasn’t about to buy.
The junction with the road to Cambridge loomed ahead. Harry checked his team, still sprightly despite their dash from London. He’d nursed them along the main road, only letting them have their heads once they’d passed Great Chesterford and picked up the less-frequented Newmarket road. They’d passed a few slower-moving carriages; most of the gentlemen intent on the week’s racing would already be in Newmarket.
About them, the heath lay flat and largely featureless, with only a few stands of trees, windbreaks and the odd coppice to lend relief. There were no carriages approaching on the Cambridge road; Harry swung his team onto the hard surface and flicked the leader’s ear. Newmarket—and the comfort of his regular rooms at the Barbican Arms—lay but a few miles on.
“To y’r left.”
Dawlish’s warning growl came over his shoulder in the same instant Harry glimpsed movement in the stand of trees bordering the road ahead. He flicked both horses’ withers; as the lash softly swooshed back up the whip-handle, he slackened the reins, transferring them to his left hand. With his right, he reached for the loaded pistol he kept under the seat, just behind his right boot.
As his fingers closed about the chased butt, he registered the incongruity of the scene.
Dawlish put it into words, a heavy horse pistol in his hands. “On the king’s highway in broad daylight—never-you-mind! What’s the world a-coming to, I asks you?”
The curricle sped on.
Harry wasn’t entirely surprised when the men milling in the trees made no attempt to halt them. They were mounted but, even so, would have had the devil of a time hauling in the flying greys. He counted at least five as they flashed past, all in frieze and heavily muffled. The sound of stifled cursing dwindled behind them.
Dawlish muttered darkly, rummaging about re-stowing his pistols. “Stap me, but they even had a wagon backed up in them trees. Right confident of their haul they must be.”
Harry frowned.
The road curved ahead; he regathered the slack reins and checked the greys fractionally.
They rounded the curve—Harry’s eyes flew wide.
He hauled back on the reins with all his strength, slewing the greys across the road. They came to a snorting, stamping halt, their noses all but in the low hedge. The curricle rocked perilously, then settled back on its springs.
Curses turned the air about his ears blue.
Harry paid no attention; Dawlish was still up behind him, not in the ditch. Before him, on the other hand, was a scene of disaster.
A travelling carriage lay on its side, not in the ditch but blocking most of the road. It looked as if one of the back wheels had disintegrated; the ponderous contraption, top-heavy with luggage, had toppled sideways. The accident had only just occurred—the upper wheels of the carriage were still slowly rotating. Harry blinked. A young lad, a groom presumably, was struggling to haul a hysterical girl from the ditch. An older man, the coachman from his attire, was hovering anxiously over a thin grey-haired woman, laid out on the ground.
The coach team was in a flat panic.
Without a word, Harry and Dawlish leapt to the ground and ran to calm the horses.
It took a good five minutes to soothe the brutes, good, strong coach horses with the full stubbornness and dim wits of their breed. With the traces finally untangled, Harry left the team in Dawlish’s hands;
the young groom was still helplessly pleading with the tearful girl while the coachman dithered over the older woman, clearly caught between duty and a wish to lend succour, if he only knew how.
The woman groaned as Harry walked up. Her eyes were closed; she lay straight and rigid on the ground, her hands crossed over her flat chest.
“My ankle—!” A spasm of pain twisted her angular features, tight under an iron-grey bun. “Damn you, Joshua—when I get back on my feet I’ll have your hide for a footstool, I will.” She drew her breath in in a painful hiss. “If I ever get back on my feet.”
Harry blinked; the woman’s tones were startlingly reminiscent of Dawlish in complaining mode. He raised his brows as the coachman lumbered to his feet and touched his forehead. “Is there anyone in the carriage?”
The coachman’s face blanked in shock.
“Oh my God!” Her eyes snapping open, the woman sat bolt upright. “The mistress and Miss Heather!” Her startled gaze fell on the carriage. “Damn you, Joshua—what are you doing, mooning over me when the mistress is likely lying in a heap?” Frantically, she hit at the coachman’s legs, pushing him towards the carriage.
“Don’t panic.”
The injunction floated up out of the carriage, calm and assured.
“We’re perfectly all right—just a bit shaken.” The clear, very feminine voice paused before adding, a touch hesitantly, “But we can’t get out.”
With a muttered curse, Harry strode to the carriage, pausing only to shrug out of his greatcoat and fling it into the curricle. Reaching up to the back wheel, he hauled himself onto the body. Standing on the coach’s now horizontal side, he bent and, grasping the handle, hauled the door open.
Planting one booted foot on either side of the coach step, he looked down into the dimness within.
And blinked.
The sight that met his eyes was momentarily dazzling. A woman stood in the shaft of sunshine pouring through the doorway. Her face, upturned, was heart-shaped; a broad forehead was set beneath dark hair pulled severely back. Her features were well defined; a straight nose and full, well-curved lips above a delicate but determined chin.
Her skin was the palest ivory, the colour of priceless pearls; beyond his control, Harry’s gaze skimmed her cheeks and the graceful curve of her slender neck before coming to rest on the ripe swell of her breasts. Standing over her as he was, they were amply exposed to his sight even though her modish carriage dress was in no way indecorous.
Harry’s palms tingled.
Large blue eyes fringed with long black lashes blinked up at him.
For an instant, Lucinda Babbacombe was not entirely sure she hadn’t sustained a blow on the head—what else could excuse this vision, conjured from her deepest dreams?
Tall and lean, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, he towered above her, long, sleekly muscled legs braced on either side of the door. Sunlight haloed his golden locks; with the light behind him she could not make out his features yet she sensed the tension that held him.
Lucinda blinked rapidly. A light blush tinged her cheeks; she looked away—but not before she registered the subdued elegance of his garments—the tightly-fitting grey coat, superbly cut, style in every line, worn over clinging ivory inexpressibles, which clearly revealed the long muscles of his thighs. His calves were encased in gleaming Hessians; his linen was crisp and white. There were, she noted, no fobs or seals hanging at his waist, only a single gold pin in his cravat.
Prevailing opinion suggested such severe attire should render a gentleman uninteresting. Unremarkable. Prevailing opinion was wrong.
He shifted—and a large, long-fingered, extremely elegant hand reached down to her.
“Take my hand—I’ll pull you up. One of the wheels is shattered—it’s impossible to right the carriage.”
His voice was deep, drawling, an undercurrent Lucinda couldn’t identify sliding beneath the silken tones. She glanced up through her lashes. He had moved to the side of the door and had gone down on one knee. The light now reached his face, illuminating features that seemed to harden as her gaze touched them. His hand moved impatiently; a black sapphire set in a gold signet glimmered darkly. He would need to be very strong to lift her out with one arm. Subduing the thought that her rescue might well prove a greater threat than her plight, Lucinda reached for his hand.
Their palms met; long fingers curled about her wrist. Lucinda brought her other hand up and clasped it about his—and she was airborne.
She drew in a swift breath—an arm of steel wrapped about her waist; her diaphragm seized. She blinked—and found herself on her knees, held fast in his embrace, locked breast to chest with her unnerving rescuer.
Her eyes were on a level with his lips. They were as severe as his clothes, chiselled and firm. His jaw was distinctly squared, the patrician line of his nose a testimony to his antecedents. The planes of his face were hard, as hard as the body steadying hers, holding her balanced on the edge of the carriage doorframe. He had released her hands; they had fallen to lie against his chest. One of her hips was pressed against his, the other against his muscled thigh. Lucinda forgot about breathing.
Cautiously, she lifted her eyes to his—and saw the sea, calm and clear, a cool, crystalline pale green.
Their gazes locked.
Mesmerised, Lucinda drowned in the green sea, her skin lapped by waves of warmth, her mind suborned to sensation. She felt her lips soften, felt herself lean into him—and blinked wildly.
A tremor shook her. The muscles surrounding her twitched, then stilled.
She felt him draw breath.
“Careful,” was all he said as he slowly rose, drawing her up with him, holding her steady until her feet could find purchase on the carriage.
Lucinda wondered just what danger he was warning her against.
Forcing his arms from her, Harry struggled to shackle his impulses, straining at their leash. “I’ll have to lower you to the ground.”
Peering over the carriage side, Lucinda could only nod. The drop was six feet and more. She felt him shift behind her; she jumped as his hands slipped beneath her arms.
“Don’t wriggle or try to jump. I’ll let go when your coachman has hold of you.”
Joshua was waiting below. Lucinda nodded; speech was beyond her.
Harry gripped her firmly and swung her over the edge. The coachman quickly grasped her legs; Harry let go—but could not prevent his fingers from brushing the soft sides of her breasts. He clenched his jaw and tried to eradicate the memory but his fingertips burned.
Once on terra firma, Lucinda was pleased to discover her wits once more at her command. Whatever curious influence had befuddled her faculties was, thank Heaven, purely transitory.
A quick glance upwards confirmed that her rescuer had turned back to render a like service to her stepdaughter. Reflecting that at barely seventeen Heather’s susceptibility to his particular brand of wizardry was probably a good deal less than her own, Lucinda left him to it.
After one comprehensive glance about the scene, she marched across to the ditch, leaned over and dealt Amy, the tweeny, a sharp slap. “Enough,” she declared, as if she was speaking of nothing more than kneading dough. “Now come and help with Agatha.”
Amy’s tear-drenched eyes opened wide, then blinked. “Yes, mum.” She sniffed—then shot a watery smile at Sim, the groom, and struggled up out of the thankfully dry ditch.
Lucinda was already on her way to Agatha, prone in the road. “Sim—help with the horses. Oh—and do get these stones out of the road.” She pointed a toe at the collection of large, jagged rocks littering the highway. “I dare say it was one of these that caused our wheel to break. And I expect you’d better start unloading the carriage.”
“Aye, mum.”
Halting by Agatha’s side, Lucinda bent to look down at her. “What is it and how bad?”
Lips compressed, Agatha opened iron-grey eyes and squinted up at her. “It’s just my ankle—it’ll be better directly.”
“Indeed,” Lucinda remarked, getting down on her knees to examine the injured limb. “That’s no doubt why you’re white as a sheet.”
“Nonsense—oooh!” Agatha sucked in a quick breath and closed her eyes.
“Stop fussing and let me bind it.”
Lucinda bade Amy tear strips from her petticoat, then proceeded to bind Agatha’s ankle, ignoring the maid’s grumbles. All the while, Agatha shot suspicious glances past her.
“You’d best stay by me, mistress. And keep the young miss by you. That gentleman may be a gentleman, but he’s a one to watch, I don’t doubt.”
Lucinda didn’t doubt either but she refused to hide behind her maid’s skirts. “Nonsense. He rescued us in a positively gentlemanly manner—I’ll thank him appropriately. Stop fussing.”
“Fussing!” Agatha hissed as Lucinda drew her skirts down to her ankles. “You didn’t see him move.”
“Move?” Frowning, Lucinda stood and dusted her hands, then her gown. She turned to discover Heather hurrying up, hazel eyes bright with excitement, clearly none the worse for their ordeal.
Behind her came their rescuer. All six feet and more of him, with a lean and graceful stride that conjured the immediate image of a hunting cat.
A big, powerful predator.
Agatha’s comment was instantly explained. Lucinda concentrated on resisting the urge to flee. He reached for her hand—she must have extended it—and bowed elegantly.
“Permit me to introduce myself, ma’am. Harry Lester—at your service.”
He straightened, a polite smile softening his features.
Fascinated, Lucinda noted how his lips curved upwards just at the ends. Then her eyes met his. She blinked and glanced away. “I most sincerely thank you, Mr Lester, for your assistance—yours and your groom’s.” She beamed a grateful smile at his groom, unhitching the horses from the coach with Sim’s help. “It was immensely lucky you happened by.”
Harry frowned, the memory of the footpads lurking in the trees beyond the curve intruding. He shook the thought aside. “I beg you’ll permit me to drive you and your…” Brows lifting, he glanced from the younger girl’s bright face to that of his siren’s.
She smiled. “Allow me to introduce my stepdaughter, Miss Heather Babbacombe.”
Heather bobbed a quick curtsy; Harry responded with a slight bow.
“As I was saying, Mrs Babbacombe.” Smoothly Harry turned back and captured the lady’s wide gaze with his. Her eyes were a soft blue, partly grey—a misty colour. Her carriage gown of lavender blue served to emphasise the shade. “I hope you’ll permit me to drive you to your destination. You were headed for…?”
“Newmarket,” Lucinda supplied. “Thank you—but I must make arrangements for my people.”
Harry wasn’t sure which statement more surprised him. “Naturally,” he conceded, wondering how many other ladies of his acquaintance, in like circumstances, would so concern themselves over their servants. “But my groom can handle the details for you. He’s familiar with these parts.”
“He is? How fortunate.”
Before he could blink, the soft blue gaze had left him for Dawlish—his siren followed, descending upon his servitor like a galleon in full sail. Intrigued, Harry followed. She summoned her coachman with an imperious gesture. By the time Harry joined them, she was busily issuing the orders he had thought to give.
Dawlish shot him a startled, distinctly reproachful glance.
“Will that be any trouble, do you think?” Lucinda asked, sensing the groom’s distraction.
“Oh—no, ma’am.” Dawlish bobbed his head respectfully. “No trouble at all. I knows the folks at the Barbican right well. We’ll get all seen to.”
“Good.” Harry made a determined bid to regain control of the situation. “If that’s settled, I suspect we should get on, Mrs Babbacombe.” At the back of his mind lurked a vision of five frieze-coated men. He offered her his arm; an intent little frown wrinkling her brows, she placed her hand upon it.
“I do hope Agatha will be all right.”
“Your maid?” When she nodded, Harry offered, “If she’d broken her ankle she would, I think, be in far greater pain.”
The blue eyes came his way, along with a grateful smile.
Lucinda glanced away—and caught Agatha’s warning glare. Her smile turned into a grimace. “Perhaps I should wait here until the cart comes for her?”
“No.” Harry’s response was immediate. She shot him a startled glance; he covered his lapse with a charming but rueful smile. “I hesitate to alarm you but footpads have been seen in the vicinity.” His smile deepened. “And Newmarket’s only two miles on.”
“Oh.” Lucinda met his gaze; she made no effort to hide the consideration in hers. “Two miles?”
“If that.” Harry met her eyes, faint challenge in his.
“Well…” Lucinda turned to view his curricle.
Harry waited for no more. He beckoned Sim and pointed to the curricle. “Put your mistresses’ luggage in the boot.”
He turned back to be met by a cool, distinctly haughty blue glance. Equally cool, he allowed one brow to rise.
Lucinda suddenly felt warm, despite the cool breeze that heralded the approaching evening. She looked away, to where Heather was talking animatedly to Agatha.
“If you’ll forgive the advice, Mrs Babbacombe, I would not consider it wise for either you or your stepdaughter to be upon the road, unescorted, at night.”
The soft drawl focused Lucinda’s mind on her options. Both appeared dangerous. With a gentle inclination of her head, she chose the more exciting. “Indeed, Mr Lester. Doubtless you’re right.” Sim had finished stowing their baggage in the curricle’s boot, strapping bandboxes to the flaps. “Heather?”
While his siren fussed, delivering a string of last-minute instructions, Harry lifted her stepdaughter to the curricle’s seat. Heather Babbacombe smiled sunnily and thanked him prettily, too young to be flustered by his innate charms.
Doubtless, Harry thought, as he turned to view her stepmother, Heather viewed him much as an uncle. His lips quirked, then relaxed into a smile as he watched Mrs Babbacombe glide towards him, casting last, measuring glances about her.
She was slender and tall—there was something about her graceful carriage that evoked the adjective “matriarchal.” A confidence, an assurance, that showed in her frank gaze and open expression. Her dark hair, richly brown with the suspicion of red glinting in the sun, was, he could now see, fixed in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. For his money, the style was too severe—his fingers itched to run through the silken tresses, laying them free.
As for her figure, he was having great difficulty disguising his interest. She was, indeed, one of the more alluring visions he had beheld in many a long year.
She drew near and he lifted a brow. “Ready, Mrs Babbacombe?”
Lucinda turned to meet his gaze, wondering how such a soft drawl could so easily sound steely. “Thank you, Mr Lester.” She gave him her hand; he took it, drawing her to the side of the carriage. Lucinda blinked at the high step—the next instant, she felt his hands firm about her waist and she was lifted, effortlessly, to the seat.
Stifling her gasp, Lucinda met Heather’s gaze, filled with innocent anticipation. Sternly suppressing her fluster, Lucinda settled herself on the seat next to her stepdaughter. She had not, indeed, had much experience interacting with gentlemen of Mr Lester’s standing; perhaps such gestures were commonplace?
Despite her inexperience, she could not delude herself that her position, as it transpired, could ever be dismissed as commonplace. Her rescuer paused only to swing his greatcoat—adorned, she noted, with a great many capes—about his broad shoulders before following her into the curricle, the reins in his hands. Naturally, he sat beside her.
A bright smile firmly fixed on her lips, Lucinda waved Agatha goodbye, steadfastly ignoring the hard thigh pressed against her much softer limb, and the way her shoulder perforce had to nestle against his back.
Harry himself had not foreseen the tight squeeze—and found its results equally disturbing. Pleasant—but definitely disturbing. Backing his team, he asked, “Were you coming from Cambridge, Mrs Babbacombe?” He desperately needed distraction.
Lucinda was only too ready to oblige. “Yes—we spent a week there. We intended to leave directly after lunch but spent an hour or so in the gardens. They’re very fine, we discovered.”
Her accents were refined and untraceable, her stepdaughter’s less so, while those of her servants were definitely north country. The greys settled into their stride; Harry comforted himself that two miles meant less than fifteen minutes, even allowing for picking their way through the town. “But you’re not from hereabouts?”
“No—we’re from Yorkshire.” After a moment, Lucinda added, a smile tweaking her lips, “At the moment, however, I suspect we could more rightly claim to be gypsies.”
“Gypsies?”
Lucinda exchanged a smile with Heather. “My husband died just over a year ago. His estate passed into his cousin’s hands, so Heather and I decided to while away our year of mourning in travelling the country. Neither of us had seen much of it before.”
Harry stifled a groan. She was a widow—a beautiful widow newly out of mourning, unfixed, unattached, bar the minor encumbrance of a stepdaughter. In an effort to deny his mounting interest, to block out his awareness of her soft curves pressed, courtesy of Heather Babbacombe’s more robust figure, firmly against his side, he concentrated on her words. And frowned. “Where do you plan to stay in Newmarket?”
“The Barbican Arms,” Lucinda replied. “I believe it’s in the High Street.”
“It is.” Harry’s lips thinned; the Barbican Arms was directly opposite the Jockey Club. “Ah—have you reservations?” He slanted a glance at her face and saw surprise register. “It’s a race week, you know.”
“Is it?” Lucinda frowned. “Does that mean it’ll be crowded?”
“Very.” With every rakehell and womaniser who could make the journey from London. Harry suppressed the thought. Mrs Babbacombe was, he told himself, none of his business. Very definitely none of his business—she might be a widow and, to his experienced eye, ripe for seduction, but she was a virtuous widow—therein lay the rub. He was too experienced not to know such existed—indeed, the fleeting thought occurred that if he was to plot his own downfall, then a virtuous widow would be first choice as Cupid’s pawn. But he had recognised the trap—and had no intention of falling into it. Mrs Babbacombe was one beautiful widow he would do well to leave untouched—unsampled. Desire bucked, unexpectedly strong; with a mental curse, Harry shackled it—in iron!
The first straggling cottages appeared ahead. He grimaced. “Is there no acquaintance you have in the district with whom you might stay?”
“No—but I’m sure we’ll be able to find accommodation somewhere.” Lucinda gestured airly, struggling to keep her mind on her words and her senses on the late afternoon landscape. “If not at the Barbican Arms, then perhaps the Green Goose.”
She sensed the start that shot through him. Turning, she met an openly incredulous, almost horrified stare.
“Not the Green Goose.” Harry made no attempt to mute the decree.
It was received with a frown. “Why not?”
Harry opened his mouth—but couldn’t find the words. “Never mind why—just get it into your head that you cannot reside at the Green Goose.”
Intransigence flowed into her expression, then she put her pretty nose in the air and looked ahead. “If you will just set us down at the Barbican Arms, Mr Lester, I’m sure we’ll sort things out.”
Her words conjured a vision of the yard at the Barbican Arms—of the main hall of the inn as it would be at this moment—as Harry had experienced it at such times before. Jam-packed with males, broad-shouldered, elegant tonnish gentlemen, the vast majority of whom he would know by name. He certainly knew them by nature; he could just imagine their smiles when Mrs Babbacombe walked in.
“No.”
The cobbles of the High Street rang beneath the greys’ hooves.
Lucinda turned to stare at him. “What on earth do you mean?”
Harry gritted his teeth. Even with his attention on his horses as he negotiated the press of traffic in the main street of the horse capital of England, he was still aware of the surprised glances thrown their way—and of the lingering, considering looks bent on the woman by his side. Arriving with him, being seen with him, had already focused attention on her.
It was none of his business.
Harry felt his face harden. “Even if the Barbican Arms has rooms to spare—which they will not—it’s not suitable for you to stay in town while a race meeting’s on.”
“I beg your pardon?” After a moment of astonished surprise, Lucinda drew herself up. “Mr Lester—you have most ably rescued us—we owe you our gratitude. However, I am more than capable of organising our accommodation and stay in this town.”
“Gammon.”
“What?”
“You don’t know anything about staying in a town during a race-meet or you wouldn’t be here now.” Lips set in a thin line, Harry shot her an irritated glare. “Devil take it—look around you, woman!”
Lucinda had already noticed the large number of men strolling the narrow pavements. As her gaze swept the scene, she noted that there were many more on horseback and in the sporting carriages of every description thronging the thoroughfare. Gentlemen everywhere. Only gentlemen.
Heather was leaning close, shrinking against her, not used to being stared at and ogled. She raised hazel eyes filled with uncertainty to Lucinda’s face. “Lucinda…?”
Lucinda patted her hand. As she raised her head, she encountered a boldly appraising stare from a gentleman in a high-perch phaeton. Lucinda returned his scrutiny with a frosty glance. “Nevertheless,” she maintained. “If you will set us down at…”
Her words trailed away as she glimpsed, hanging above a broad archway just ahead, a signboard depicting a castle gateway. In that instant, the traffic parted; Harry clicked his reins and the curricle shot forward—straight past the archway.
Lucinda swivelled to peer at the sign as they moved steadily down the street. “That’s it—the Barbican Arms!” She turned to look at Harry. “You’ve passed it.”
Grim-faced, Harry nodded.
Lucinda glared at him. “Stop,” she ordered.
“You can’t stay in town.”
“I can!”
“Over my dead body!” Harry heard his snarl and inwardly groaned. He closed his eyes. What was happening to him? Opening his eyes, he glared at the woman beside him. Her cheeks were becomingly flushed—with temper. A fleeting thought of how she would look flushed with desire shot through his unwilling mind.
Something of his thoughts must have shown in his face—her blue eyes narrowed. “Are you proposing to kidnap us?” Her voice held the promise of a long and painful death.
The end of the High Street appeared; the traffic thinned. Harry flicked his leader’s ear and the greys surged. As the sound of hooves on cobbles died behind them, he glanced down at her and growled, “Consider it forcible repatriation.”
Chapter Two
“Forcible repatriation?”
Harry shot her a narrow-eyed glare. “You don’t belong in a race-town.”
Lucinda glared back. “I belong wherever I choose to stay, Mr Lester.”
His face set in uncompromising lines, Harry looked back at his team. Lucinda looked ahead, frowning direfully.
“Where are you taking us?” she eventually demanded.
“To stay with my aunt, Lady Hallows.” Harry glanced at her. “She lives a little way out of town.”
It had been many years since she’d allowed anyone to order her life. Nose in the air, Lucinda held to dignified disapproval. “How do you know she won’t already have visitors?”
“She’s a widow of long standing and lives quietly.” Harry checked his team and turned onto a side road. “She has a whole Hall to spare—and she’ll be delighted to make your acquaintance.”
Lucinda sniffed. “You can’t know that.”
The smile he bent on her was infinitely superior.
Resisting the urge to gnash her teeth, Lucinda pointedly looked away.
Heather had perked up the instant they’d quit town; she smiled when Lucinda glanced her way, clearly restored to her usual sunny humour and unperturbed by the unexpected alteration to their plans.
Feeling distinctly huffy, Lucinda looked ahead. It was, she suspected, pointless to protest—at least, not until she’d met Lady Hallows. Until then, there was nothing she could do to regain the ascendancy. The infuriating gentleman beside her had the upper hand—and the reins. Her gaze flicked sideways, to where his hands, covered by soft doeskin gloves, dextrously managed the ribbons. Long slim fingers and slender palms. She’d noted that earlier. To her horror, the memory evoked a shiver—she had to fight to quell it. With him so close, he would very likely feel it—and, she suspected, would unhesitatingly guess its cause.
Which would leave her feeling embarrassed—and even more deeply disturbed. He evoked a most peculiar response in her—it had yet to fade, despite her irritation at his autocratic interference. It was a distinctly novel feeling—one she wasn’t at all sure she appreciated.
“Hallows Hall.”
She looked up to discover a pair of imposing gateposts which gave onto a shady avenue lined with elms. The gravelled drive wound gently along a slight ridge, then dipped to reveal a pleasant vista of rolling lawns surrounding a reed-fringed lake, the whole enclosed by large trees.
“How pretty!” Heather looked about in delight.
The Hall, a relatively recent structure in honey-coloured stone, sat on a rise above the drive, which wound past the front steps before curving around the corner of the house. A vine stretched green fingers over the stone. There were roses in abundance; ducks clacked from the lake.
An ancient retainer came ambling up as Harry drew his team to a halt.
“Thought as we’d see you this week, young master.”
Harry grinned. “Good evening, Grimms. Is my aunt at home?”
“Aye—that she is—and right pleased she’ll be to see you. Evening, miss. Miss.” Grimms doffed his cap to Lucinda and Heather.
Lucinda’s answering smile was distant. Hallows Hall stirred long-forgotten memories of life before her parents had died.
Harry descended and helped her down. After helping Heather to the ground, he turned to see Lucinda looking about her, a wistful expression on her face. “Mrs Babbacombe?”
Lucinda started. Then, with a half-grimace and a frosty glance, she placed her hand on his arm and allowed him to lead her up the steps.
The door was flung open—not by a butler, although a stately personage of that persuasion hovered in the shadows—but by a gaunt, angular-featured woman a good two inches taller than Lucinda and decidedly thinner.
“Harry, m’boy! Thought you’d be here. And who’s this you’ve brought?”
Lucinda found herself blinking into dark blue eyes, shrewd and intelligent.
“But what am I about? Come in, come in.” Ermyntrude, Lady Hallows, waved her guests into the hall.
Lucinda stepped over the threshold—and was immediately enveloped in the warm, elegant yet homey atmosphere.
Harry took his aunt’s hand and bowed over it, then kissed her cheek. “As elegant as ever, Em,” he said, scanning her topaz gown.
Em’s eyes opened wide. “Flummery? From you?”
Harry pressed her hand warningly as he released it. “Allow me to present Mrs Babbacombe, Aunt. Her carriage broke a wheel just outside town. I had the honour of driving her in. She had some idea of staying in town but I prevailed upon her to change her mind and give you the benefit of her company.”
The words tripped glibly from his tongue. Rising from her curtsy, Lucinda shot him a chilly glance.
“Capital!” Em beamed and took Lucinda’s hand. “My dear, you don’t know how bored I sometimes get, stuck out here in the country. And Harry’s quite right—you can’t possibly stay in town during a meet—not at all the thing.” Her blue eyes switched to Heather. “And who’s this?”
Lucinda made the introduction and Heather, smiling brightly, bobbed a curtsy.
Em put out a hand and tipped Heather’s chin up the better to view her face. “Hmm—quite lovely. You’ll do well in a year or two.” Releasing her, Em frowned. “Babbacombe, Babbacombe…” She glanced at Lucinda. “Not the Staffordshire Babbacombes?”
Lucinda smiled. “Yorkshire.” When her hostess only frowned harder, she felt compelled to add, “I was a Gifford before my marriage.”
“Gifford?” Em’s eyes slowly widened as she studied Lucinda. “Great heavens! You must be Melrose Gifford’s daughter—Celia Parkes was your mother?”
Surprised, Lucinda nodded—and was promptly enveloped in a scented embrace.
“Good gracious, child—I knew your father!” Em was in transports. “Well—I was a bosom-bow of his elder sister, but I knew all the family. Naturally, after the scandal, we heard very little of Celia and Melrose, but they did send word of your birth.” Em wrinkled her nose. “Not that it did much good—stiff-necked lot, your grandparents. On both sides.”
Harry blinked, endeavouring to absorb this rush of information. Lucinda noticed, and wondered how he felt about rescuing the outcome of an old scandal.
“Just fancy!” Em was still in alt. “I never thought to set eyes on you, m’dear. Mind you, there’s not many left but me who’d remember. You’ll have to tell me the whole story.” Em paused to draw breath. “Now then! Fergus will get your luggage and I’ll show you up to your rooms—after a dish of tea—you must be in need of refreshment. Dinner’s at six so there’s no need to hurry.”
Together with Heather, Lucinda found herself hustled towards an open doorway—a drawing-room lay ahead. On the threshold she hesitated and glanced back, as did Em behind her.
“You’re not staying, are you, Harry?” Em asked.
He was tempted—sorely tempted. His gaze not on his aunt but on the woman beside her, Harry forced himself to shake his head. “No.” With an effort he shifted his gaze to his aunt’s face. “I’ll call sometime during the week.”
Em nodded.
Prompted by she knew not what, Lucinda turned and re-crossed the hall. Their rescuer stood silently and watched her approach; she steadfastly ignored the odd tripping of her heart. She halted before him, calmly meeting his green gaze. “I don’t know how to thank you for your help, Mr Lester. You’ve been more than kind.”
His lips slowly curved; again, she found herself fascinated by the movement.
Harry took the hand she held out to him and, his eyes on hers, raised it to his lips. “Your rescue was indeed my pleasure, Mrs Babbacombe.” The sudden widening of her eyes as his lips touched her skin was payment enough for the consequent hardships. “I’ll ensure that your people know where to find you—your maids will arrive before nightfall, I’m sure.”
Lucinda inclined her head; she made no effort to retrieve her fingers from his warm grasp. “Again, you have my thanks, sir.”
“It was nothing, my dear.” His eyes on hers, Harry allowed one brow to rise. “Perhaps we’ll meet again—in a ballroom, maybe? Dare I hope you’ll favour me with a waltz if we do?”
Graciously, Lucinda acquiesced. “I would be honoured, sir—should we meet.”
Belatedly reminding himself that she was a snare he was determined to avoid, Harry took a firm grip on his wayward impulses. He bowed. Releasing Lucinda’s hand, he nodded to Em. With one last glance at Lucinda, he strolled gracefully out of the door.
Lucinda watched the door shut behind him, a distant frown in her eyes.
Em studied her unexpected guest, a speculative glint in hers.
Agatha’s been with me forever,” Lucinda explained. “She was my mother’s maid when I was born. Amy was an under-maid at the Grange—my husband’s house. We took her with us so that Agatha could train her to act as maid for Heather.”
“Just as well,” Heather put in.
They were in the dining-room, partaking of a delicious meal prepared, so Em had informed them, in honour of their arrival. Agatha, Amy and Sim had arrived an hour ago, conveyed by Joshua in a trap borrowed from the Barbican Arms. Joshua had returned to Newmarket to pursue the repairs of the carriage. Agatha, taken under the wing of the portly housekeeper, Mrs Simmons, was resting in a cheery room below the eaves, her ankle pronounced unbroken but badly sprained. Amy had thus had to assist both Lucinda and Heather to dress, a task at which she had acquitted herself with honours.
Or so Em thought as she looked down the table. “So,” she said, patting her lips with her napkin then waving Fergus and the soup tureen away. “You may start at the beginning. I want to know all about you since your parents died.”
The sheer openness of the request robbed it of any rudeness. Lucinda smiled and laid aside her spoon; Heather was dipping into the tureen for the third time, much to Fergus’s delight. “As you know, what with both families disowning my parents, I hadn’t had any contact with my grandparents. I was fourteen at the time of the accident. Luckily, our old solicitor hunted up my mother’s sister’s address—she agreed to take me in.”
“Now let’s see.” Em’s eyes narrowed as she surveyed the past. “That would be Cora Parkes that was?”
Lucinda nodded. “If you recall, the Parkes family fortunes had taken a downturn sometime after my parents married. They’d retired from Society and Cora had married a mill-owner in the north—a Mr Ridley.”
“Never say so!” Em was enthralled. “Well, well—how the mighty did fall. Your aunt Cora was one of the most intransigent when it came to any question of reconciliation with your parents.” Em lifted her thin shoulders. “Fate’s revenge, I dare say. So you lived with them until your marriage?”
Lucinda hesitated, then nodded.
Em noticed; her eyes sharpened, then flicked to Heather. Lucinda saw—and hastened to explain. “The Ridleys weren’t exactly happy to have me. They only agreed to house me, thinking to use my talents as governess to their two daughters and then to broker my marriage as soon as maybe.”
For a moment, Em stared. Then she snorted. “Doesn’t surprise me. That Cora was ever out for her own gain.”
“When I was sixteen, they arranged a marriage with another mill-owner, a Mr Ogleby.”
“Ugh!” Heather looked up from her soup to shudder artistically. “He was a horrible old toad,” she blithely informed Em. “Luckily, my father heard about it—Lucinda used to come and give me lessons. So he married Lucinda instead.” Having done her bit for the conversation, Heather returned to her soup.
Lucinda smiled affectionately. “Indeed, Charles was my saviour. I only recently learned that he bought off my relatives in order to marry me—he never told me.”
Em snorted approvingly. “Glad to hear they’ve some gentlemen in those parts. So you became Mrs Babbacombe and lived at…the Grange, was it?”
“That’s right.” Heather had finally relinquished the soup; Lucinda paused to serve herself from the platter of turbot Fergus offered. “To all appearances Charles was a well-to-do gentleman of moderate estate. In reality, however, he owned a considerable collection of inns up and down the country. He was really very wealthy but preferred a quiet existence. He was close to fifty when we married. As I grew older, he taught me all about his investments and how to manage them. He was ill for some years—the end was a relief when it came—but because of his foresight, I was able to handle most of the work for him.”
Lucinda looked up to find her hostess staring at her.
“Who owns the inns now?” Em asked.
Lucinda smiled. “We do—Heather and I. The Grange, of course, went to Charles’s nephew, Mortimer Babbacombe, but Charles’s private fortune wasn’t part of the entail.”
Em sat back and regarded her with frank approval. “And that’s why you’re here—you own an inn in Newmarket?”
Lucinda nodded. “After the will was read, Mortimer asked us to vacate the Grange within the week.”
“The blackguard!” Em glared. “What sort of a way is that to treat a grieving widow?”
“Well,” Lucinda held up a hand. “I did offer to leave as soon as he wished—although I hadn’t thought he’d be in such a hurry. He’d never even visited before—not really.”
“So you found yourselves out on your ears in the snow?” Em was incensed.
Heather giggled. “It really turned out most fortuitously in the end.”
“Indeed.” Lucinda nodded, pushing her plate away. “With nothing organised, we decided to remove to one of our inns—one a little way away from the Grange, a place we weren’t known. Once there, I realised the inn was far more prosperous than I would have guessed from the accounts our agent had recently presented. Mr Scrugthorpe was a new man—Charles had been forced to appoint a new agent a few months before he died when our old Mr Matthews passed on.” Lucinda frowned at the trifle Fergus placed before her. “Unfortunately, Charles interviewed Scrugthorpe on a day he was in great pain and I had to be in town with Heather. To cut a long story short, Scrugthorpe had falsified the accounts. I called him in and dismissed him.”
Lifting her gaze to her hostess’s face, Lucinda smiled. “After that, Heather and I decided that travelling the country getting to know our inns was an excellent way to see out our year of mourning. It was exactly the sort of enterprise of which Charles would have approved.”
Em snorted—this snort clearly signified her appreciation of Charles’s good sense. “Seems to have been a very able man—your father, miss.”
“He was a dear.” Heather’s open face clouded and she blinked rapidly, then looked down.
“I’ve appointed a new agent—a Mr Mabberly.” Lucinda smoothly covered the awkward moment. “He’s young but extremely efficient.”
“And goes in awe of Lucinda,” Heather offered, looking up to help herself to a second scoop of trifle.
“As he should,” Em replied. “Well, Miss Gifford as was—you’ve certainly done your parents proud thus far. A capable lady of independent means at what—twenty-six?”
“Twenty-eight.” Lucinda’s smile was crooked. There were times, such as today, when she suddenly wondered if life had passed her by.
“A very fair achievement,” Em declared. “I don’t hold with women being helpless.” She eyed Heather’s at last empty plate. “And if you’ve finally finished, miss, I suggest we retire to the drawing-room. Do either of you play the pianoforte?”
They both did and gladly entertained their hostess with various airs and sonatas, until Heather fell to yawning. At Lucinda’s suggestion she retired, passing the tea trolley in the doorway.
“Indeed, we’ve had an adventuresome day.” Lucinda sat back in an armchair by the fire and sipped the tea Em had dispensed. Lifting her gaze, she smiled at Em. “I can’t thank you enough, Lady Hallows, for taking us in.”
“Nonsense,” Em replied with one of her snorts. “And you could please me by dropping all the ladyships and just calling me Em, like everyone else in the family. You’re Melrose’s daughter and that’s close enough for me.”
Lucinda smiled, a trifle wearily. “Em, then. What’s it a contraction for? Emma?”
Em wrinkled her nose. “Ermyntrude.”
Lucinda managed to keep her lips straight. “Oh?” she said weakly.
“Indeed. My brothers delighted in calling me all the contractions you might imagine. When my nephews came along, I declared it was Em and nothing else.”
“Very wise.” A companionable silence settled as they savoured their tea. Lucinda broke it to ask, “Do you have many nephews?”
From under heavy lids, Em’s eyes glinted. “Quite a few. But it was Harry and his brothers I had to guard against. A rapscallion lot.”
Lucinda shifted. “He has a lot of brothers?”
“Only two—but that’s quite enough. Jack’s the eldest,” Em blithely rattled on. “He’s—let me see—thirty-six now. Then comes Harry, two years younger. Then there’s quite a gap to their sister Lenore—she married Eversleigh some years back—she must be twenty-six now, which makes Gerald twenty-four. Their mother died years ago but my brother still hangs on.” Em grinned. “Dare say he’ll manage to cling to life long enough to see a grandson to carry on the name, the cantankerous old fool.” The last was said affectionately. “But it was the boys I had most to do with—and Harry was always my favourite. Blessed by the angels and the devil both, of course, but such a good boy.” Em blinked, then amended, “Well—a good boy at heart. They all were—are. I see most of Harry and Gerald these days—what with Newmarket so close. Harry runs the Lester stud which, even if ‘tis I who say so—and Heaven knows I know next to nothing about horses—such a boring subject—is hailed as one of the premier studs in the land.”
“Really?” There was not the slightest trace of boredom in Lucinda’s face.
“Indeed.” Em nodded. “Harry usually comes to watch his runners perform. Dare say I’ll see Gerald this week, too. Doubtless he’ll want to show off his new phaeton. Told me when last he was up that he was going to buy one, now the family coffers are full and overflowing.”
Lucinda blinked.
Em didn’t wait for her to find a subtle way to ask. One hand waving, she airly explained, “The Lesters have traditionally been strapped for cash—good estates, good breeding, but no money. The present generation, however, invested in some shipping venture last year and now the whole family’s rolling in an abundance of the ready.”
“Oh.” Lucinda readily recalled Harry Lester’s expensive elegance. She couldn’t imagine him any other way. Indeed, his image seemed to have fixed in her mind, oddly vivid, strangely enthralling. Shaking her head to dispel it, she delicately smothered a yawn. “I’m afraid I’m not very good company, Lady—Em.” She smiled. “I suspect I’d better follow Heather.”
Em merely nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning, m’dear.”
Lucinda left her hostess staring into the fire.
Ten minutes later, her head pillowed in down, Lucinda closed her eyes—only to find Harry Lester on her mind. Tired, adrift, her memories of the day replayed, her interactions with him claiming centre stage. Until she came to their parting—which left one question to plague her. How would it feel to waltz with Harry Lester?
A mile away, in the tap of the Barbican Arms, Harry sat elegantly sprawled behind a corner table, moodily surveying the room. A smoky haze wreathed a forest of shoulders; gentlemen mingled freely with grooms and stablemen, tipsters wrangled with bookmakers. The tap was all business this evening; the first races, those for non-bloodstock, would commence the next day.
A barmaid came up, hips swaying. She set a tankard of the inn’s finest on the table, smiling coyly, one brow rising as Harry flipped a coin onto her tray.
Harry caught her eye; his lips curved but he shook his head. Disappointed, the girl turned away. Harry lifted the foaming tankard and took a long sip. He’d abandoned the snug, his habitual refuge, where only the cognescenti were permitted, driven forth by the all-but-incessant questioning as to his delectable companion of the afternoon.
It seemed as if all in Newmarket had seen them.
Certainly all his friends and acquaintances were keen to learn her name. And her direction.
He’d given them neither, steadfastly returning their bright-eyed enquiries with a blank look and the information that the lady was an acquaintance of his aunt’s he’d simply been escorting to her door.
Those facts proved sufficient to dampen the interest of most; the majority who frequented Newmarket knew of his aunt.
But he was definitely tired of covering the lovely Mrs Babbacombe’s tracks, particularly as he was trying his damnedest to forget her. And her loveliness.
With an inward growl, Harry immersed himself in his tankard and tried to focus his mind on his horses—usually an enthralling subject.
“There you are! Been looking all over. What’re you doing out here?” Dawlish slumped into the chair beside him.
“Don’t ask,” Harry advised. He waited while the barmaid, with a fine show of indifference, served Dawlish before asking, “What’s the verdict?”
Dawlish shot him a glance over the rim of his tankard. “Odd,” came mumbling from behind it.
Brows lifting, Harry turned his head to stare at his henchman. “Odd?” Dawlish had gone with the coachman, Joshua, to fetch the wainwright to the carriage.
“Me, Joshua and the wainwright all thinks the same.” Dawlish set down his tankard and wiped the froth from his lip. “Thought as how you should know.”
“Know what?”
“That the cotter-pin on that wheel was tampered with—half-sawed through, it was—before the accident. And the spokes had been got at, too.”
Harry frowned. “Why?”
“Don’t know as how you noticed, but there were a curious lot of rocks strewn about that stretch of road where the carriage went over. None before—and none after. Just along that stretch. No way a coachman could miss all of ‘em. And they were just round a corner so he couldn’t see them in time to pull up.”
Harry’s frown was intense. “I remember the rocks. The boy cleared them away so I didn’t have to drive over them.”
Dawlish nodded. “Aye—but the carriage couldn’t avoid them—and as soon as that wheel hit, the cotter would have snapped and the spokes after that.”
A chill swept Harry’s nape. Five mounted men in frieze, with a wagon, hiding in the trees, moving towards the road just after the carriage went down. And if it hadn’t been a race-week, that particular stretch of road would almost certainly have been deserted at that time of day.
Harry lifted his gaze to Dawlish’s face.
Dawlish looked back at him. “Makes you think, don’t it?”
Grim-faced, Harry slowly nodded. “It does indeed.” And he didn’t like what he thought at all.
Chapter Three
“I’ll have y’r team out in a jiffy, sir.”
Harry nodded absentmindedly as the head-ostler of the Barbican Arms hurried off towards the stables. Pulling on his driving gloves, he strolled away from the inn’s main door to await his curricle in a vacant patch of sunshine by the wall.
Before him, the courtyard was busy, many of the inn’s guests departing for a day at the track, hoping to pick a few winners to start the week off on the right note.
Harry grimaced. He wouldn’t be joining them. Not, at least, until he’d satisfied himself on the score of one Mrs Babbacombe. He had given up telling himself she was none of his business; after the revelations of yesterday, he felt compelled to brave her dangers—long enough to assure himself of her safety. She was, after all, his aunt’s guest—at his insistence. Two facts which undoubtedly excused his interest.
“I’ll get along and see Hamish then, shall I?”
Harry turned as Dawlish came up. Hamish, his head-stableman, should have arrived yesterday with his string of thoroughbred racers; the horses would be settling into their stables beyond the racetrack. Harry nodded. “Make sure Thistledown’s fetlock’s sufficiently healed—I don’t want her entered unless it is.”
Dawlish nodded sagely. “Aye. Shall I tell Hamish you’ll be along shortly to see it?”
“No.” Harry studied the fit of his gloves. “I’ll have to rely on your combined wisdom this time. I’ve pressing matters elsewhere.”
He felt Dawlish’s suspicious glance.
“More pressing than a prime mare with a strained fetlock?” Dawlish snorted. “I’d like to know what’s higher on y’r list than that.”
Harry made no effort to enlighten him. “I’ll probably look in about lunchtime.” His imaginings were very likely groundless. It could be no more than coincidence, and two likely females travelling without major escort, that had focused the attention of the men in frieze on the Babbacombe coach. “Just make sure Hamish gets the message in time.”
“Aye,” Dawlish grumbled. With a last keen glance, he headed off.
Harry turned as his curricle appeared, the head-ostler leading the greys with a reverence that bespoke a full appreciation of their qualities.
“Right prime ‘uns, they be,” he averred as Harry climbed to the box.
“Indeed.” Harry took up the reins. The greys were restive, sensing the chance of freedom. With a nod for the ostler, he backed the curricle preparatory to making a stylish exit from the yard.
“Harry!”
Harry paused, then, with a sigh, drew in his impatient steeds. “Good morning, Gerald. And since when do you arise at this ungodly hour?”
He had spied his younger brother amongst the crowds in the tap the night before but had made no effort to advertise his presence. He turned to watch as Gerald, blue-eyed and dark-haired as was his elder brother Jack, strode up, grinning broadly, to place a familiar hand on the curricle’s front board.
“Ever since I heard the story of you escorting two excessively likely looking females who, according to you, are connections of Em’s.”
“Not connections, dear brother—acquaintances.”
Faced with Harry’s languidly bored mask, Gerald lost a little of his assurance. “You mean they really are? Acquaintances of Em’s, I mean?”
“So I discovered.”
Gerald’s face fell. “Oh.” Then Dawlish’s absence registered. Gerald shot a keen glance at his brother. “You’re going to Em’s now. Mind if I hitch a ride? Should say hello to the old girl—and perhaps to that dark-haired delight you had up beside you yesterday.”
For an instant, Harry was shaken by the most absurd impulse—Gerald was his younger brother after all, of whom he was, beneath his dismissive exterior, distinctly fond. He concealed the unexpected emotion behind his ineffable charm—and sighed. “I fear, dear brother, that I must puncture your delusions—the lady’s too old for you.”
“Oh? How old is she?”
Harry raised his brows. “Older than you.”
“Well—perhaps I’ll try for the other one then—the blonde.”
Harry looked down on his brother’s eager countenance—and inwardly shook his head. “She, if anything, is probably too young. Just out of the schoolroom, I suspect.”
“No harm in that,” Gerald blithely countered. “They have to start sometime.”
Feeling distinctly put-upon, Harry heaved a disgusted sigh. “Gerald…”
“Dash it all, Harry—don’t be such a dog-in-the-manger. You’re not interested in the younger chit—let me take her off your hands.”
Harry blinked at his brother. It was undoubtedly true that any discussion of Mrs Babbacombe’s situation would proceed a great deal more openly in the absence of her stepdaughter. “Very well—if you insist.” Within Em’s purlieu, Gerald could be relied on to keep within acceptable bounds. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Almost gleefully, Gerald swung up to the curricle’s seat. The instant he was aboard, Harry clicked his reins. The greys shot forward; he had to exert all his skills to thread them through the traffic thronging the High Street. He let them stretch their legs once free of the town; Em’s leafy drive was reached in record time.
A stableboy came hurrying to take charge of the curricle. Together, Harry and Gerald mounted the steps to Em’s door. The oak door was set wide open, not an uncommon occurrence. The brothers wandered in. Harry tossed his gloves onto the ormolu table. “Looks like we’ll have to go hunt. I expect my business with Mrs Babbacombe will take no more than half an hour. If you can keep Miss Babbacombe occupied until then, I’ll be grateful.”
Gerald cocked an eyebrow. “Grateful enough to let me tool your greys back to town?”
Harry looked doubtful. “Possibly—but I wouldn’t count on it.”
Gerald grinned and looked about him. “So where do we start?”
“You take the gardens—I’ll take the house. I’ll call if I need help.” With a languid wave, Harry set off down one corridor. Whistling, Gerald turned and went out of the main door.
Harry drew a blank in the morning room and the parlour. Then he heard humming, punctuated by the click of shears, and remembered the small garden room at the end of the house. There he found Em, arranging flowers in a huge urn.
At his languid best, he strolled in. “Good morning, Aunt.”
Em turned her head—and stared in stunned surprise. “Devil take it—what are you doing here?”
Harry blinked. “Where else should I be?”
“In town. I was sure you’d be there.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Harry conceded with the obvious. “Why?”
“Because Lucinda—Mrs Babbacombe—went into town half an hour ago. Never been there before—wanted to get her bearings.”
A chill caressed Harry’s nape. “You let her go alone?”
Turning back to her blooms, Em waved her shears. “Heavens, no—her groom accompanied her.”
“Her groom?” Harry’s voice was soft, urbane, its tone enough to send chills down the most insensitive spine. “The young tow-headed lad who arrived with her?”
He watched as a tell-tale blush spread over his aunt’s high cheekbones.
Disconcerted, Em shrugged. “She’s an independent woman—it doesn’t do to argue overmuch.” She knew perfectly well she should not have let Lucinda go into Newmarket this week without more tangible escort, but there was a definite purpose to her ploy. Turning, she surveyed her nephew. “You could try, of course.”
For an instant, Harry couldn’t believe his ears—surely not Em? His eyes narrowed as he took in her bland expression; this was the last thing he needed—a traitor in his own camp. His lips thinned; with a terse nod, he countered, “Rest assured I will.”
Turning on his heel, he strode out of the room, down the corridor, out of the door and around to the stables. The stableboy was startled to see him; Harry was merely glad the horses were still harnessed.
He grabbed the reins and leapt up to the seat. His whip cracked and the horses took off. The drive back to town established a new record.
Only when he was forced to slow by the press of traffic in the High Street did Harry remember Gerald. He cursed, regretting the loss of another to aid in his search. Taking advantage of the crawling pace, he carefully studied the crowded pavements from behind his habitually unruffled mien. But no dark head could he see.
He did, however, discover a large number of his peers—friends, acquaintances—who, like himself, were too experienced to waste time at the track today. He entertained not the slightest doubt that each and every one would be only too willing to spend that time by the side of a certain delectable dark-haired widow—not one would consider it time wasted.
Reaching the end of the street, Harry swore. Disregarding all hazards, he turned the curricle, missing the gleaming panels of a new phaeton by less than an inch, leaving the slow-top in charge of the reins in the grip of an apoplectic fit.
Ignoring the fuss, Harry drove quickly back to the Barbican Arms and turned the greys into the loving hands of the head-ostler. The man confirmed that Em’s gig was in residence. Harry surreptitiously checked the private parlour and was relieved to find it empty; the Arms was the favourite watering-hole of his set. Striding back to the street, he paused to take stock. And to wonder what “getting her bearings” meant.
There was no lending library. He settled on the church, some way along the street. But no likely looking widow haunted its hallowed precincts, nor trod the paths between the graves. The town’s gardens were a joke—no one came to Newmarket to admire floral borders. Mrs Dobson’s Tea Rooms were doing a brisk trade but no darkly elegant widow graced any of the small tables.
Returning to the pavement, Harry paused, hands on hips, and stared across the street. Where the devil was she?
A glimmer of blue at the edge of his vision had him turning his head. Just in time to identify the dark-haired figure who sailed through the street door of the Green Goose, a tow-headed boy at her back.
Pausing just inside the inn’s door, Lucinda found herself engulfed in dimness. Musty dimness. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she discovered she was in a hall, with the entrance to the tap on her left, two doors which presumably led to private parlours on her right and a counter, an extension of the tap’s bar, directly ahead, a tarnished bell on its scratched surface.
Suppressing the urge to wrinkle her nose, she swept forward. She had spent the last twenty minutes examining the inn from outside, taking due note of the faded and flaking whitewash, the clutter in the yard and the down-at-heel appearance of the two customers who had crossed its threshold. Extending one gloved hand, she picked up the bell and rang it imperiously. At least, that was her intention. But the bell emitted no more than a dull clack. Upending it, Lucinda discovered the clapper had broken.
With a disgusted grimace, she replaced the bell. She was wondering whether to tell Sim, waiting by the door, to raise his voice in summons when a large shadow blocked out what little light penetrated from the inn’s nether regions. A man entered, burly, brawny—very big. His face was heavy-featured but his eyes, sunk in folds of fat, appeared merely uninterested.
“Aye?”
Lucinda blinked. “Are you Mr Blount?”
“Aye.”
Her heart sank. “You’re the innkeeper?”
“Nay.”
When no more was forthcoming, she prompted, “You’re Mr Blount, but you’re not the innkeeper.” There was hope yet. “Where is the Mr Blount who is the innkeeper?”
For a long moment, the burly individual regarded her stoically as if his brain was having difficulty digesting her question. “You want Jake—m’brother,” he eventually offered.
Lucinda heaved an inward sigh of relief. “Precisely—I wish to see Mr Blount, the innkeeper.”
“Wha’for?”
Lucinda opened her eyes wide. “That, my good man, is a matter for your brother and myself.”
The hulking brute eyed her measuringly, then humphed. “Wait ‘ere—I’ll fetch ‘im.” With that, he lumbered off.
Leaving Lucinda praying that his brother took after the other side of the family. Her prayers were not answered. The man who replaced the first was equally burly, equally overweight and, apparently, only fractionally less dim-witted.
“Mr Jake Blount—the keeper of this inn?” Lucinda asked, with no real hope of contradiction.
“Aye.” The man nodded. His small eyes swept her, not insolently but with weary assessment. “But the likes of you don’t want to take rooms ‘ere—try the Barbican or the Rutland up the road.”
He turned away, leaving Lucinda somewhat stunned. “Just a minute, my good man!”
Jake Blount shuffled back to face her but shook his head. “Yer not the sort for this inn, see?”
Lucinda felt the breeze as the inn door opened. She saw Mr Blount’s eyes lift to the newcomer but was determined to retain his attention. “No—I do not see. What on earth do you mean—’not the sort for this inn’?”
Jake Blount heard her but was more concerned with the gentleman who now stood behind her, hard green eyes on him. Gold hair, gently waved at the ends, cut in the latest style, a well-cut coat of light brown worn over buckskin breeches and Hessians so highly polished you could see your face in them, all added up to a persona Blount recognised very well. He didn’t need the many-caped greatcoat that swung from the gentleman’s broad shoulders, nor the patrician features and hooded eyes nor yet the tall, lean and well-muscled frame, to tell him that one of the bloods of the ton had deigned to enter his humble inn. The fact made him instantly nervous. “Aaah…” He blinked and looked back at Lucinda. “Not the sort who takes rooms ‘ere.”
Lucinda stared. “What sort of lady takes rooms here?”
Blount’s features contorted. “That’s wha’ I mean—no ladies. Just that sort.”
Increasingly certain she had wandered into a madhouse, Lucinda stubbornly clung to her question. “What sort is that?”
For an instant, Jake Blount simply stared at her. Then, defeated, he waved a pudgy hand. “Lady—I don’t knows wha’ you want wi’ me but I got business to see to.”
He lifted his gaze pointedly over her shoulder; Lucinda drew in a portentious breath.
And nearly swallowed it when she heard a drawling voice languidly inform the recalcitrant Blount, “You mistake, Blount. My business here is merely to ensure you deal adequately with whatever the lady desires of you.”
Harry let his eyes meet the innkeeper’s fully. “And you’re perfectly correct—she is not that sort.”
The particular emphasis, delivered in that sensual voice, immediately made clear to Lucinda just what “sort had been the subject of her discussion. Torn between unaccustomed fluster, mortification and outrage, she hesitated, a light blush tinging her cheeks.
Harry noticed. “And now,” he suavely suggested, “if we could leave that loaded topic, perhaps we might proceed to the lady’s business? I’m sure you’re breathlessly waiting to discover what it is—as am I.”
Over her shoulder, Lucinda shot him a haughty glance. “Good morning, Mr Lester.” She gifted him with a restrained nod; he stood behind her right shoulder, large and reassuring in the dingy dimness. He inclined his head gracefully, his features hard-edged and severe, suggesting an impatience to have her business aired.
Inwardly grimacing, Lucinda turned back to the innkeeper. “I believe you were visited recently by a Mr Mabberly, acting for the owners of this inn?”
Jake Blount shifted. “Aye.”
“I believe Mr Mabberly warned you that an inspection of your premises would shortly take place?”
The big man nodded.
Lucinda nodded decisively back. “Very well—you may conduct me over the inn. We’ll start with the public rooms.” Without pause, she swept about. “I take it this is the tap.” She glided towards the door, her skirts stirring up dust eddies.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Blount stare, open-mouthed, then come hurrying around the counter. Harry Lester simply stood and watched her, an inscrutable expression on his face.
Lucinda swept on—into the gloomy, heavily shuttered room. “Perhaps, Blount, if we were to have those shutters wide I might be able to see well enough to form an opinion?”
Blount cast her a flustered glance, then lumbered to the windows. Seconds later, sunshine flooded the room, apparently to the discomfort of its two patrons, one an old codger wrapped in a rumpled cloak, hugging the inglenook, the other a younger man in the rough clothes of a traveller. They both seemed to shrink inwards, away from the light.
Lucinda cast a shrewd glance around the room. The interior of the inn matched its exterior, at least in the matter of neglect. The Green Goose was fast living up to Anthony Mabberly’s description as the very worst of the Babbacombe inns. Grimy walls and a ceiling that had seen neither brush nor mop for years combined with a general aura of dust and slow decay to render the tap a most unwelcoming place. “Hmm.” Lucinda grimaced. “So much for the tap.”
She slanted a glance at Harry, who had followed her in. “Thank you for your assistance, Mr Lester—but I’m perfectly capable of dealing with Mr Blount.”
The green gaze, which had been engaged in a survey of the unwholesome room, switched to her face. His eyes were less unreadable than his features, but other than distinct disapproval and a species of irritation, Lucinda couldn’t be sure what their expression portended.
“Indeed?” His brows lifted fractionally; his languid tone was barely polite. “But perhaps I should remain—just in case you and the good Blount run into any further…communication difficulties?”
Lucinda suppressed the urge to glare. Short of ordering him out of her inn, hardly supportive of her ploy to conceal her ownership, she could think of no way to dispense with his attentive presence. His green gaze was acute, perceptive; his tongue, as she already knew, could be decidedly sharp.
Accepting fate’s decree with a small shrug, Lucinda returned her attention to Blount, hovering uncertainly by the bar. “What’s through that door?”
“The kitchens.”
Blount looked shocked when she waved him on. “I’ll need to see those, too.”
The kitchen was not as bad as she had feared, a fact she attributed to the buxom but worn-down woman who bobbed respectfully when introduced as “the missus”. The Blounts’ private quarters gave off the large, square room; Lucinda disavowed any desire to inspect them. After closely examining the large open fireplace and engaging in a detailed discussion with Mrs Blount on the technicalities of the draw and the overall capacity of the kitchen, which, by their impatient expressions, passed over both Blount’s and Harry Lester’s heads, she consented to be shown the parlours.
Both parlours were shabby and dusty but, when the shutters were opened, proved to have pleasant aspects. Both contained old but serviceable furniture.
“Hmm, mmm,” was Lucinda’s verdict. Blount looked glum.
In the back parlour, which looked out over a wilderness that had once been a garden, she eyed a sturdy oak table and its attendant chairs. “Please ask Mrs Blount to dust in here immediately. Meanwhile, I’ll see the rooms above stairs.”
With a resigned shrug, Blount went to the door of the kitchen to deliver the order, then returned to lead the way up the stairs. Halfway up, Lucinda paused to test the rickety balustrade. Leaning against it, she was startled to hear it crack—and even more startled to feel an arm of steel wrap about her waist and haul her back to the centre of the treads. She was released immediately but heard the muttered comment, “Damned nosy woman!”
Lucinda grinned, then schooled her features to impassivity as they reached the upper corridor.
“All the rooms be the same.” Blount swung open the nearest door. Without waiting to be asked, he crossed to open the shutters.
The sunlight played on a dreary scene. Yellowing whitewash flaked from the walls; the ewer and basin were both cracked. The bedclothes Lucinda mentally consigned to the flames without further thought. The furniture, however, was solid—oak as far as she could tell. Both the bed and the chest of drawers could, with a little care, be restored to acceptable state.
Pursing her lips, Lucinda nodded. She turned and swept out of the door, past Harry Lester, lounging against the frame. He straightened and followed her along the corridor. Behind them, Blount shot out of the room and hurried to interpose himself between Lucinda and the next door.
“This room’s currently taken, ma’am.”
“Indeed?” Lucinda wondered what sort of patron would make do with the sad amenities of the Green Goose.
As if in answer, a distinctly feminine giggle percolated through the door.
Lucinda’s expression grew coldly severe. “I see.” She shot an accusing glance at Blount, then, head high, moved along the corridor. “I’ll see the room at the end, then we’ll return downstairs.”
There were no further revelations; it was as Mr Mabberly had said—the Green Goose was sound enough in structure but its management needed a complete overhaul.
Descending once more to the hall, Lucinda beckoned Sim forward and relieved the lad of the bound ledgers he’d been carrying. Leading the way into the back parlour, she was pleased to discover the table and chairs dusted and wiped. Setting her ledgers on the table before the chair at its head, she placed her reticule beside them and sat. “Now, Blount, I would like to examine the books.”
Blount blinked. “The books?”
Her gaze steady, Lucinda nodded. “The blue one for incomings and the red one for expenditures.”
Blount stared, then muttered something Lucinda chose to interpret as an assent and departed.
Harry, who had maintained his role of silent protector throughout, strolled across to shut the door after him. Then he turned to his aunt’s unexpected acquaintance. “And now, my dear Mrs Babbacombe, perhaps you would enlighten me as to what you’re about?”
Lucinda resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose at him—he was, she could tell, going to be difficult. “I am doing as I said—inspecting this inn.”
“Ah, yes.” The steely note was back in his voice. “And I’m to believe that some proprietor has seen fit to engage you—employ you, no less—in such a capacity?”
Lucinda met his gaze, her own lucidly candid. “Yes.”
The look he turned on her severely strained her composure.
With a wave, she put an end to his inquisition; Blount would soon be back. “If you must know, this inn is owned by Babbacombe and Company.”
The information arrested him in mid-prowl. He turned a fascinated green gaze upon her. “Whose principals are?”
Folding her hands on her ledgers, Lucinda smiled at him. “Myself and Heather.”
She did not have time to savour his reaction; Blount entered with a pile of ledgers in his arms. Lucinda waved him to a seat beside her. While he sorted through his dog-eared tomes, she reached for her reticule. Withdrawing a pair of gold-rimmed half-glasses, she perched them on her nose. “Now then!”
Beneath Harry’s fascinated gaze, she proceeded to put Blount through his financial paces.
Appropriating a chair from the table—one that had been dusted—Harry sat by the window and studied Lucinda Babbacombe. She was, undoubtedly, the most unexpected, most surprising, most altogether intriguing woman he’d ever met.
He watched as she checked entry after entry, adding figures, frequently upside-down from Blount’s ledgers. The innkeeper had long since abandoned all resistance; out of his depth, faced with a totally unforeseen ordeal, he was now eager to gain approval.
As she worked through the ledgers, Lucinda came to the same somewhat reluctant conclusion. Blount wasn’t intentionally neglectful; he hadn’t meant to run the inn into the ground. He simply lacked direction and the experience to know what to do.
When, after an hour, she reached the end of her inquiries, Lucinda took off her glasses and fixed Blount with a shrewdly assessing glance. “Just so we are clear, Blount, it is up to me to make a recommendation on whether Babbacombe and Company should retain your services.” She tapped her closed ledger with one arm of her glasses. “While your figures are unimpressive, I will be reporting that I can find no evidence of malpractice—all seems entirely above board.”
The burly innkeeper looked so absurdly grateful Lucinda had to sternly suppress a reassuring smile. “I understand you were appointed to your present position on the death of the former landlord, Mr Harvey. From the books it’s clear that the inn had ceased to perform well long before your tenancy.”
Blount looked lost.
“Which means that you cannot be held to blame for its poor base performance.” Blount looked relieved. “However,” Lucinda continued, both tone and glance hardening, “I have to tell you that the current performance, for which you must bear responsibility, is less than adequate. Babbacombe and Company expect a reasonable return on their investment, Blount.”
The innkeeper’s brow furrowed. “But Mr Scrugthorpe—he’s the one as appointed me?”
“Ah, yes. Mr Scrugthorpe.”
Harry glanced at Lucinda’s face; her tone had turned distinctly chilly.
“Well, Mr Scrugthorpe said as how the profit didn’t matter so long as the inn paid its way.”
Lucinda blinked. “What was your previous position, Blount?”
“I used to keep the Blackbird’s Beak, up Fordham way.”
“The Blackbird’s Beak?”
“A hedge-tavern, I suspect,” Harry put in drily.
“Oh.” Lucinda met his gaze, then looked back at Blount. “Well, Blount, Mr Scrugthorpe is no longer Babbacombe and Company’s agent, largely because of the rather odd way he thought to do business. And, I fear, if you wish to remain an employee of the company, you’re going to have to learn to manage the Green Goose in a more commercial fashion. An inn in Newmarket cannot operate on the same principles as a hedge-tavern.”
Blount’s forehead was deeply creased. “I don’t know as how I rightly follow you, ma’am. Tap’s a tap, after all.”
“No, Blount. A tap is not a tap—it is the principal public room of the inn and as such should possess a clean and welcoming ambience. I do hope you won’t suggest that that,” she pointed in the direction of the tap, “is clean and welcoming?”
The big man shifted on his seat. “Dare say the missus could do a bit of a clean-up.”
“Indeed.” Lucilla nodded. “The missus and you, too, Blount. And whoever else you can get to help.” She folded her hands on her ledgers and looked Blount in the eye. “In my report, I am going to suggest that, rather than dismiss you, given you’ve not yet had an opportunity to show the company of what you’re capable, the company reserves judgement for three months and then reviews the situation.”
Blount swallowed. “What exactly does that mean, ma’am?”
“It means, Blount, that I will make a list of all the improvements that will need to be done to turn this inn into one rivalling the Barbican Arms, at least in profit. There’s no reason it shouldn’t. Improvements such as a thorough whitewashing inside and out, all the timber polished, present bedding discarded and fresh bought, all furniture polished and crockery replaced. And the kitchen needs a range.” Lucinda paused to meet Blount’s eye. “Ultimately, you will employ a good cook and serve wholesome meals continuously in the tap, which will be refurbished accordingly. I’ve noticed that there are few places at which travellers staying in this town can obtain a superior repast. By providing the best fare, the Green Goose will attract custom away from the coaching houses which, because of their preoccupation with coaching, supply only mediocre food.”
She paused but Blount only blinked at her. “I take it you are interested in keeping your position here?”
“Oh—yes, ma’am. Definitely! But…where’s the blunt coming from for all that?”
“Why, from the profits, Blount.” Lucinda eyed him straitly. “The profits before your wages are deducted—and before the return paid to the company. The company considers such matters as an investment in the inn’s future; if you’re wise, you’ll consider my suggestions in light of an investment in your future.”
Blount met her gaze; slowly he nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good!” Lucinda rose. “I will make a copy of the improvements I’ll be suggesting to the company and have my groom drop it by tomorrow.” She glanced at Blount as he struggled to his feet; his expression suggested he was still reeling. “Mr Mabberly will look in on you in a month’s time, to review your progress. And now, if there’s nothing else, I will bid you good day, Blount.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Blount hurried to open the door. “Thank you, ma’am.” He was clearly sincere.
Lucinda regally nodded and sailed from the room.
Reluctantly impressed, Harry followed close behind. Still inwardly amazed, he waited until they were back on the pavement, she gliding along with her nose in the air as if she had not just taken on Goliath and won, before catching her hand, neatly trapping it on his sleeve. Her fingers fluttered, then stilled. She cast him a quick glance, then studiously looked ahead. Her groom followed two paces behind, her ledgers clutched in his arms.
The young traveller who had been slouching in the tap slipped out of the inn door in their wake.
“My dear Mrs Babbacombe,” Harry began in what he hoped was an even tone. “I do hope you’re going to satisfy my curiosity as to why a gently reared female, however well-equipped for the task, goes about interrogating her company’s employees?”
Unabashed, Lucinda met his gaze; aggravation showed clearly in the green. “Because there is no one else.”
Harry held her gaze. His lips thinned. “I find that hard to believe. What about this Mr Mabberly—your agent? Why can he not take on the challenge of such as Blount?”
Lucinda’s lips quirked. “You must admit he was a definite challenge.” She slanted a deliberately provocative glance his way. “I feel quite chuffed.”
Harry snorted. “As you well know, you performed a minor miracle. That man will now work himself to the bone—which will be a distinct improvement in itself. But that,” he continued, his tone hardening, “is not the point.”
“But it is, you see.” Lucinda wondered why she was allowing him to put in his oar. Perhaps because it had been a long time since anyone had tried? “Mr Anthony Mabberly is all of twenty-three. He’s an excellent man with the accounts and is scrupulously honest and fair—a far cry from Scrugthorpe.”
“Ah, yes. The undesirable Scrugthorpe.” Harry cast her a quick glance. “Why was he so undesirable?”
“Fraud. He was appointed by my husband just before his death—on one of his bad days, I’m afraid. After Charles’s death, I by chance learned that the books as they were being presented to me did not reflect the actual figures generated by the inns.”
“What happened to Scrugthorpe?”
“I dismissed him, of course.”
Harry noted the righteous satisfaction that underlaid her tone. Clearly, Lucinda Babbacombe had not approved of Mr Scrugthorpe. “So until recently the agent took responsibility for negotiating with your tenants?”
Lucinda lifted a haughty brow. “Until I reorganised the company’s procedures. Mr Mabberly would not know where to start with such as Blount—he’s of a somewhat timid disposition. And I consider it appropriate that both Heather and myself are familiar with the inns that form our legacy.”
“Laudable though such sentiments might be, Mrs Babbacombe, I do hope—” Harry broke off as she stopped and looked consideringly across the street. “What is it?”
“Hmm?” Absent-mindedly, Lucinda glanced up. “Oh—I was just wondering if there was time left to do the Barbican Arms today.” She glanced back at the busy inn across the street. “But it looks rather crowded. Perhaps tomorrow morning would be better?”
Harry stared at her, an unwelcome suspicion slowly crystallising in his brain. “Very much better,” he averred. “But tell me, Mrs Babbacombe—how many inns do you and your stepdaughter own?”
She looked up at him, an unlikely innocence in her powder-blue eyes. “Fifty-four,” she replied. Then added, as if in afterthought, “Up and down the country.”
Harry closed his eyes and struggled to suppress a groan. Then, without another word, with no more than a single speaking glance, he escorted her into the yard of the Barbican Arms and, with heartfelt relief, handed her up to Em’s gig and watched her drive away.
“So she’s staying in Newmarket?”
Mr Earle Joliffe drew a riding crop back and forth through his fingers. A thickset man of undistinguished mien, he sat back in his chair, his pale gaze, as pale as his pasty complexion, fixed on the young roughneck he’d sent into town to track their quarry down.
“As to that, I ain’t sure.” The youngster took a swig from his tankard.
They were in a rundown cottage three miles from Newmarket, the best they’d been able to rent at short notice. Four men sat about the deal table—Joliffe, the youngster whose name was Brawn and two others—Mortimer Babbacombe and Ernest Scrugthorpe. The latter was a hulking man, rough despite the severe clothes of a clerk; he sat silently glowering into his beer. Mortimer Babbacombe, a slight figure in the attire of a would-be dandy, shifted restlessly; he clearly wished himself elsewhere.
“She got into a gig and drove out eastwards. I couldn’t follow.”
Scrugthorpe grunted. “See? Told you she’d go to the Green Goose. Couldn’t keep away, meddling witch.”
He spat contemptuously on the floor; the action made Mortimer even more uncomfortable.
“Ye-es, well.” Joliffe transferred his gaze to Scrugthorpe. “Might I remind you that she should, by now, have been in our hands? That but for your lack of foresight, she would be?”
Scrugthorpe scowled. “How was I to know it were a race-week? And that gentlemen would be using that road? Everything went perfect, elsewise.”
Joliffe sighed and raised his eyes heavenwards. Amateurs—they were all the same. How had he, who had spent his life thus far successfully extracting a living from the rich, descended to the company of such? Lowering his gaze, his glance fell on Mortimer Babbacombe. Joliffe’s lips curled in a contemptuous sneer.
“Ought to mention,” Brawn put in, surfacing from his tankard. “She was walking the street with a swell today—right chummy—looked like the same swell as wot rescued them.”
Joliffe’s eyes narrowed and he sat forward. “Describe this swell.”
“Fair hair—like gold. Tall, looked like he’d strip to advantage. One of them bloods with a fancy cape.” Brawn grimaced. “They all look the same to me.”
Not so to Joliffe. “This blood—was he staying at the Barbican Arms?”
“Seemed so—the ostlers and all seemed to know him.”
“Harry Lester.” Joliffe tapped a pensive nail on the table. “I wonder…”
“Wonder what?” Mortimer looked at his erstwhile friend and most urgent creditor, his expression that of a man well out of his depth. “Would this man Lester help us?”
Joliffe snorted. “Only to the hangman’s noose. But his peculiar talents bear consideration.” Leaning forward, Joliffe placed both elbows on the table. “It occurs to me, my dear Mortimer, that we may be involving ourselves unnecessarily here.” Joliffe smiled, an empty gesture that made Mortimer shrink. “I’m sure you’d be most agreeable to any way of achieving our aim without direct involvement.”
Mortimer swallowed. “But how can Lester help us—if he won’t?”
“Oh—I didn’t say he won’t—just that we needn’t ask him. He’ll help us entirely for the fun of it. Harry Lester, dear Mortimer, is the rake supreme—a practitioner extraordinaire in the gentle art of seduction. If, as seems possible, he’s got your uncle’s widow in his sights, then I wouldn’t like to bet on her chances.” Joliffe’s smile grew. “And, of course, once she’s demonstrably no longer a virtuous widow, then you’ll have all the reason you need to legally challenge her guardianship of your cousin.” Joliffe’s gaze grew intent. “And once your pretty cousin’s legacy’s in your hands, you’ll be in a position to pay me, won’t you, Mortimer?”
Mortimer Babbacombe swallowed—and forced himself to nod.
“So what do we do now?” Scrugthorpe drained his tankard.
Joliffe considered, then pronounced, “We sit tight and watch. If we get a chance to lay hands on the lady, we will—just like we planned.”
“Aye—far as I’m concerned, that’s how we should do it—no sense in leaving anything to chance.”
Joliffe’s lip curled. “Your animosity is showing, Scrugthorpe. Please remember that our primary aim here is to discredit Mrs Babbacombe—not satisfy your lust for revenge.”
Scrugthorpe snorted.
“As I was saying,” Joliffe went on. “We watch and wait. If Harry Lester succeeds—he’ll have done our work for us. If not, we’ll continue to pursue the lady—and Scrugthorpe here will have his chance.”
At that, Scrugthorpe smiled. Lecherously.
Chapter Four
When Lucinda drove into the yard of the Barbican Arms the next morning, Harry was waiting, shoulders against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, his boot against the wall for balance. He had plenty of time to admire the artless picture of mature womanhood seated beside Grimms in his aunt’s gig. Elegantly gowned in a cornflower blue carriage dress, her dark hair restrained in a severe chignon thus revealing the delicate bones of her face, Lucinda Babbacombe predictably turned the heads of those still dawdling in the yard. Thankfully, the thoroughbred races were to commence that morning; most of Harry’s contemporaries were already at the track.
Grimms brought Em’s gig to a neat halt in the centre of the yard. With an inward snort, Harry pushed away from the wall.
Lucinda watched him approach—his graceful stride forcefully reminded her of a prowling tiger. A very definite thrill coursed through her; she avoided smiling her delight, contenting herself with a mild expression of polite surprise. “Mr Lester.” Calmly, she extended her hand. “I hadn’t expected to see you this morning—I thought you were here for the races.”
His brows had risen sceptically at her first remark; on her second, his green eyes glittered. He grasped her hand—for an instant, as his eyes held hers, Lucinda wondered why she was playing with fire.
“Indeed,” Harry replied, his habitual drawl in abeyance. He helped her from the carriage, steadying her on the cobbles. “I own to surprise on that score myself. However, as you are my aunt’s guest, and at my instigation, I feel honour-bound to ensure you come to no harm.”
Lucinda’s eyes narrowed but Harry, distracted by the absence of groom or maid—Grimms had already disappeared into the stables—did not notice.
“Speaking of which, where’s your groom?”
Lucinda allowed herself a small smile. “Riding with your brother and Heather. I have to thank you for sending Gerald to us—he’s entertaining company for Heather—I dare say she would otherwise grow bored. And, of course, that leaves me free to tend to business without having to worry my head over her.”
Harry didn’t share her confidence—but he wasn’t, at this point, concerned with her stepdaughter. His expression hardened as he looked down at her. He was still holding her hand; tucking it into his arm, he turned her towards the inn door. “You should at least have a groom with you.”
“Nonsense, Mr Lester.” Lucinda slanted him a curious glance. “Surely you aren’t suggesting that at my age I need a chaperon?”
Looking into her eyes, softly blue, their expression openly independent, challenging yet oddly innocent, Harry inwardly cursed. The damned woman didn’t need a chaperon—she needed an armed guard. Just why he had elected himself to the post was not a point he was willing to pursue. He contented himself with repressively stating, “In my opinion, Mrs Babbacombe, women like you should not be allowed out alone.”
Her eyes twinkled; two tiny dimples appeared in her cheeks. “Actually, I’d like to see the stables.” She turned to the archway leading from the main yard.
“The stables?”
Her gaze ranging their surroundings, Lucinda nodded. “The state of the stableyard frequently reflects the quality of the inn’s management.”
The state of the stables suggested the innkeeper of the Barbican Arms was a perfectionist; everything was neat, clean and in its place. Horses turned their heads to stare as Lucinda picked her way over the cobbles, still wet with dew, forced more than once to lean heavily on Harry’s arm.
When they reached the earthen floor of the stables, she determinedly straightened. Regretfully withdrawing her fingers from the warmth of his sleeve, she strolled along the row of loose boxes, stopping here and there to acknowledge their curious occupants. She eventually reached the tack room and peered in.
“Excuse me, ma’am—but you shouldn’t be in here.” An elderly groom hurried out.
Harry stepped out of the shadows. “It’s all right, Johnson. I’ll see the lady safe,”
“Oh!—it’s you, Mr Lester.” The groom touched his cap. “That’s all right and tight, then. Ma’am.” With another tug of his cap, the groom retreated into the tack room.
Lucinda blinked, then shot a glance at Harry. “Is it always so ordered? So…” She waved at the loose boxes, each with their half-doors shut. “So exact?”
“Yes.” Harry looked down at her as she stopped beside him. “I stable my carriage horses here—you may rest assured of the quality in that respect.”
“I see.” Deeming all queries on the equine side of business satisfied, Lucinda turned her attention to the inn proper.
Ushered through the main door, she looked with approval on half-panelled walls, well-polished and glowing mellowly. Sunshine reflected from crisply whitewashed walls; stray beams danced across the flagged floor.
Mr Jenkins, the innkeeper, a neat, rotund person of genial mien, bustled up. Harry performed the introductions, then stood patiently by while Lucinda explained her purpose. Unlike Blount, Mr Jenkins was all gratified helpfulness.
Lucinda turned to Harry. “My business with Mr Jenkins will keep me busy for at least an hour. I wouldn’t for the world impose on your kindness, Mr Lester—you’ve already done so much. And I can hardly come to harm within the inn.”
Harry didn’t blink. For her, the Arms played host to a panapoly of dangers—namely his peers. Meeting her innocent gaze with an impenetrable blandness, he waved a languid hand. “Indeed—but my horses don’t run until later.”
Which comment, he noted, brought a flash to her eyes. She hesitated, then, somewhat stiffly, acquiesced, inclining her head before turning back to Mr Jenkins.
Wearing patience like a halo, Harry followed his host and his aunt’s guest about the old inn, through rambling passageways and storerooms, to bedchambers and even to the garrets. They were returning down an upper corridor when a man came blundering out of a room.
Lucinda, opposite the door, started; glimpsing the man from the corner of her eye, she braced herself for a collision. Instead, she was bodily set aside; the chubby young gentleman ran full tilt into a hard shoulder. He bounced off, crumpling against the door frame.
“Ouf!” Straightening, the man blinked. “Oh—hello, Lester. Slept in, don’t y’know. Can’t miss the first race.” He blinked again, a puzzled frown forming in his eyes. “Thought you’d be at the track by now.”
“Later.” Harry stepped back, revealing Lucinda.
The young man blinked again. “Oh—ah, yes. Terribly sorry, ma’am—always being told I should look where I’m going. No harm done, I hope?”
Lucinda smiled at the ingenuous apology. “No—none.” Thanks to her protector.
“Good-oh! I’d best be on my way, then. See you at the track, Lester.” With an awkward bow and a cheery wave, the youthful sprig hurried off.
Harry snorted.
“Thank you for your assistance, Mr Lester.” Lucinda slanted him a smile. “I’m really most grateful.”
Harry took full note of the quality of her smile. Coolly, he inclined his head and waved her on in Jenkins’s wake.
By the end of her tour, Lucinda was impressed. The Barbican Arms, and Mr Jenkins, were a far cry from the Green Goose and Jake Blount. The inn was spick and span throughout; she had found nothing remotely amiss. Her inspection of the books was a mere formality; Mr Mabberly had already declared the Arms a model of good finance.
She and her host spent a few minutes going over the plans for an extension to the inn. “For we’re full to overflowing during race-meets and more than half full at other times.”
Lucinda gave her general approval and left the details for Mr Mabberly.
“Thank you, Mr Jenkins,” she declared, pulling on her gloves as they headed for the door. “I must tell you that, having visited all but four of the fifty-four inns owned by Babbacombe and Company, I would rank the Barbican Arms as one of the best.”
Mr Jenkins preened. “Very kind of you to say so, ma’am. We do strive to please.”
With a gracious nod, Lucinda swept out. Once in the courtyard she paused. Harry stopped beside her; she looked up at his face. “Thank you for your escort, Mr Lester—I’m really most grateful considering the other demands on your time.”
Harry was too wise to attempt an answer to that.
Lucinda’s lips twitched; she looked quickly away. “Actually,” she mused, “I was considering viewing this race-meet.” She brought her eyes back to his face. “I’ve never been to one before.”
Harry looked down at her ingenuous expression. His eyes narrowed. “Newmarket race-track is no place for you.”
She blinked, taken aback—Harry glimpsed real disappointment in her eyes. Then she looked away. “Oh.”
The single syllable hung in the air, a potent testimony to crushed anticipation. Fleetingly, Harry closed his eyes, then opened them. “However, if you give me your word you will not stray from my side—not to admire some view, some horse or a lady’s bonnet—” He looked down at her, his jaw setting. “I will engage to escort you there.”
Her smile was triumphant. “Thank you. That would be very kind.”
Not kind—foolish. It was, Harry was already convinced, the most stupid move he’d ever made. An ostler came running in answer to his curt gesture. “I’ll have my curricle. You can tell Grimms to take Lady Hallows’s gig back; I’ll see Mrs Babbacombe home.”
“Yessir.”
Lucinda busied herself with the fit of her gloves, then meekly allowed herself to be lifted to the curricle’s seat. Settling her skirts, and her quivering senses, she smiled serenely as, with a deft flick of the reins, Harry took the greys onto the street.
The race-track lay west of the town on the flat, grassy, largely tree-less heath. Harry drove directly to the stables in which his string of racers were housed, a little way from the track proper, beyond the public precincts.
Lucinda, drinking in the sights, could not miss the glances thrown their way. Stableboy and gentleman alike seemed disposed to stare; she was unexpectedly grateful when the stable walls protected her from view.
The horses were a wonder. Lifted down from the curricle, Lucinda could not resist wandering down the row of loose boxes, patting the velvet noses that came out to greet her, admiring the sleek lines and rippling muscles of what, even to her untutored eyes, had to be some of the finest horses in England.
Engaged in a brisk discussion with Hamish, Harry followed her progress, insensibly buoyed by the awed appreciation he saw in her gaze. On reaching the end of the row, she turned and saw him watching her; her nose rose an inch but she came back, strolling towards him through the sunshine.
“So all’s right with entering the mare, then?”
Reluctantly, Harry shifted his gaze to Hamish’s face. His head-stableman was also watching Lucinda Babbacombe, not with the appreciation she deserved but with horrified fascination. As she drew nearer, Harry extended his arm; she placed her fingertips upon it without apparent thought. “Just as long as Thistledown’s fetlock’s fully healed.”
“Aye.” Hamish bobbed respectfully at Lucinda. “Seems to be. I told the boy to just let her run—no point marshalling her resources if it’s still weak. A good run’s the only way to tell.”
Harry nodded. “I’ll stop by and speak to him myself.”
Hamish nodded and effaced himself with the alacrity of a man nervous around females, at least those not equine in nature.
Suppressing a grin, Harry lifted a brow at his companion. “I thought you agreed not to be distracted by horses?”
The look she bent on him was confidently assured. “You shouldn’t have brought me to see yours, then. They are truly the most distractingly beautiful specimens I’ve ever seen.”
Harry couldn’t suppress his smile. “But you haven’t seen the best of them. Those on that side are two-and three-year-olds—for my money, the older ones are more gracious. Come, I’ll show you.”
She seemed only too ready to be led down the opposite row of boxes, dutifully admiring the geldings and mares. At the end of the row, a bay stallion reached confidently over the half-door to investigate Harry’s pockets.
“This is old Cribb—a persistent devil. Still runs with the best of them though he could retire gracefully on his accumulated winnings.” Leaving her patting the stallion’s nose, Harry went to a barrel by the wall. “Here,” he said, turning back. “Feed him these.”
Lucinda took the three dried apples he offered her, giggling as Cribb delicately lipped them from her palm.
Harry glanced up—and saw Dawlish outside the tack-room, standing stock-still, staring at him. Leaving Lucinda communing with Cribb, Harry strolled over. “What’s up?”
Now that he was beside him, it was clear Dawlish was staring at his companion, not him.
“Gawd’s truth—it’s happened.”
Harry frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Dawlish turned a pitying eye on him. “Ridiculous, is it? You do realize, don’t you, that that’s the first female you’ve ever shown your horses?”
Harry lifted a supercilious brow. “She’s the first female ever to have shown an interest.”
“Hah! Might as well hang up your gloves, gov’nor—you’re a goner.”
Harry cast his eyes heavenwards. “If you must know, she’s never been to a race-meet before and was curious—there’s nothing more to it than that.”
“Ah-hah. So you says.” Dawlish cast a long, defeated look at the slight figure by Cribb’s box. “All I says is that you can justify it any ways you want—the conclusions still come out the same.”
With a doleful shake of his head, Dawlish retreated, muttering, back into the tack-room.
Harry wasn’t sure whether to laugh or frown. He glanced back at the woman, still chatting to his favourite stallion. If it wasn’t for the fact they would shortly be surrounded by crowds, he might be inclined to share his henchman’s pessimism. But the race-track, in full view of the multitudes, was surely safe enough.
“If we leave now,” he said, returning to her side, “we can stroll to the track in time for the first race.”
She smiled her acquiescence and laid her hand on his arm. “Is that horse you were talking of—Thistledown—running in it?”
Smiling down into her blue eyes, Harry shook his head. “No—she’s in the second.”
Lucinda found herself trapped in the clear green of his eyes; she studied them, trying to gauge what he was thinking. His lips twitched and he looked away. Blinking as they emerged into the bright sunshine, Lucinda asked, “Your aunt mentioned you managed a stud?”
His fascinating lips curved. “Yes—the Lester stud.” With ready facility, prompted by her questions, he expiated at length on the trials and successes of his enterprise. What he didn’t say but Lucinda inferred, it being the logical deduction to make from his descriptions, was that the stud was both a shining achievement and the very core of his life.
They reached the tents surrounding the track as the runners for the first race were being led to the barrier. All Lucinda could see was a sea of backs as everyone concentrated on the course.
“This way—you’ll see better from the stands.”
A man in a striped vest was guarding a roped arena before a large wooden stand. Lucinda noted that while he insisted on seeing passes from the other latecomers ahead of them, he merely grinned and nodded at Harry and let them by. Harry helped her up the steep steps by the side of the planks serving as seats—but before they could find places a horn blew.
“They’re off.” Harry’s words echoed from a hundred throats—about them, all the patrons craned forward.
Lucinda turned obediently and saw a line of horses thundering down the turf. From this distance, neither she nor anyone else could see all that much of the animals. It was the crowd that enthralled her—their rising excitement gripped her, making her breathe faster and concentrate on the race. When the winner flashed past the post, the jockey flourishing his whip high, she felt inordinately glad.
“Well raced.” Harry’s gaze was on the horses and riders as they slowed and turned back to the gates.
Lucinda grasped the moment to study him. He was intent on observation, green eyes keenly assessing, shrewdly calculating. For an instant, she saw him clearly, his features unguarded. He was a man who, despite all other distractions in his life, was totally devoted to his chosen path.
He turned his head at that moment. Their eyes met, their gazes locked. He was standing on the step below her so her eyes were almost level with his. For a moment, he said nothing, then his lips twisted wrily.
Lucinda suppressed a delicate shiver.
With a gesture, Harry indicated the crowded lawns before them. “If you truly want to experience a race-meet, then you have to promenade.”
Her own lips curving, Lucinda inclined her head. “Lead on, Mr Lester—I’m entirely in your hands.”
She saw his brow quirk but pretended ignorance. On his arm, she descended the steps and exited the private enclosure.
“The Jockey Club maintains the stand for the use of its members,” Harry informed her when she glanced back.
Which meant he was a well-known member. Even Lucinda had heard of the pre-eminence of the Jockey Club. “I see. The races are run under their auspices, I take it?”
“Correct.”
He led her on a slow perambulation through the milling crowds. Lucinda felt distinctly round-eyed—she wanted to see everything, understand the fascination that drew so many gentlemen to Newmarket.
The same fascination that drove Harry Lester.
He showed her the bookmakers, each surrounded by knots of punters eager to lay their bets. They paraded before the tents and pavilions; again and again they were stopped by some acquaintance of Harry’s, keen to exchange a few words. Lucinda was prepared to be on her guard, but she encountered nothing but polite deference in the glances thrown her way; all those who stopped to talk were disarmingly correct. Nevertheless, she felt no impulse to withdraw her hand from the security of her escort’s elbow, where he had tucked it, drawing her close. In the press of male bodies, it was unquestionably comforting to have Harry Lester by her side. There were, she discovered, some ladies present. “Some have a real interest in the sport—usually the older ones.” Relaxed, in his milieu, Harry glanced down at her. “Some of the younger ladies have a vested interest;
their families, like mine, have a long-standing connection with the turf.”
Mouthing an “oh”, Lucinda nodded. There were other ladies, too, whom he had not seen fit to comment upon, who,
she suspected, held dubious right to the title. The race-track, however, was an overwhelmingly male domain—every subcategory of the male population was certainly represented. Lucinda was quite sure she would have neither the courage nor the inclination to attend again—not unless Harry Lester was her escort.
“It’s nearly time for the next race. I must speak to Thistledown’s jockey.”
Lucinda nodded, conveying with a glance her intention of staying with him.
Harry threw her a brief smile then concentrated on forging a path to the mounting yard.
“She seems very lively, sir,” the jockey vouchsafed as he settled in the saddle. “But the competition’s stiff—Jonquil—that mare out of Herald—is a starter. And Caught by the Scruff, too. And some of them others are experienced racers—it’ll be a miracle if she wins, what with her fetlock just come good an’ all.”
Harry nodded. “Just let her go—let her set her own pace. We’ll consider this a trial, nothing more. Don’t cram her—and no whip.”
Lucinda left his side to pat the mare’s velvet muzzle; a huge, dark brown eye invited her understanding. Lucinda grinned. “Hopeless, aren’t they?” she crooned. “But you don’t want to listen to them—men are notoriously hopeless at judging women. They should never so presume.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Harry’s lips lift; he exchanged a glance with the jockey, who grinned. “You just go out there and win the race—then see how they react. I’ll see you in the winner’s circle.”
With a last pat for the mare, she turned and, with divine disregard for the expression on Harry Lester’s face, allowed him to lead her back to the stands.
He secured seats in the third row, almost opposite the post. Lucinda leaned forward, eagerly scanning the horses trotting towards the barrier. She waved when Thistledown appeared.
Harry, watching her, laughed.
“She’ll win—you’ll see.” With smug confidence, Lucinda sat back.
But when the horn sounded and the barrier was dropped, she leant forward again, eyes keenly searching the thundering charge for Harry’s colours of green and gold. So intent was she that she didn’t even notice she rose to her feet, in company with all the other spectators, as the horses rounded the bend. As they entered the straight, a gap appeared in their ranks—Thistledown shot through.
“There she is!” Lucinda grabbed Harry’s arm. Only deeply entrenched decorum kept her from jigging up and down. “She’s winning!”
Harry was too riveted to answer.
But Thistledown was indeed showing the field a clean pair of heels. Halfway down the straight, her stride lengthened even more—she appeared to be flying when she flashed past the post.
“She won! She won!” Lucinda grasped both Harry’s arms and all but danced. “I told you she would!”
Rather more accustomed to the delights of victory, Harry looked down at her face, wreathed in smiles and lit by the same joy he still felt every time one of his horses came home first. He knew he was smiling, as delighted as she if rather more circumspect in showing it.
Lucinda turned back to locate Thistledown, now being led from the course. “Can we go and see her now?”
“Indeed we can.” Harry took her hand and tucked it tightly in his arm. “You promised to meet her in the winner’s circle, remember?”
Lucinda blinked as he steered her out of the crowded stand. “Is it permissible for ladies to enter the winner’s circle?”
“There’s no rule against it—in fact—” Harry slanted a glance at her “—I suspect the Head of the Committee will be delighted to see you.” When she shot him a suspicious glance, he laughed and urged her on. Once out of the enclosure and free of those members keen to press their congratulations, a path cleared before them, leading directly to the roped arena where Thistledown, shiny coat flickering but clearly untired by her dash, waited patiently.
As soon as Lucinda emerged from the crowd, the mare pushed her head forward, dragging on the reins to get to Lucinda’s side. Lucinda hurried forward, crooning her praises. Harry looked on indulgently.
“Well, Lester! Another trophy for your mantel—surprised it hasn’t collapsed.”
Harry turned as the President of the Jockey Club, present Head of the Race Committee, appeared at his elbow. In his hands, he held a gold-plated statuette in the shape of a lady.
“Remarkable run—truly remarkable.”
Shaking hands, Harry nodded. “Particularly as she’s just recovered from a strained fetlock—I wasn’t sure I’d race her.”
“Just as well you did.” The President’s eye was on the horse and the woman apparently chatting to the beast. “Nice conformation.”
Harry knew very well that Lord Norwich was not referring to the mare. “Indeed.” His tone was dry; Lord Norwich, who had known him from the cradle, lifted a brow at him.
Glancing at the statuette, Harry confirmed that the lady was indeed decently garbed, then nodded at Lucinda. “It was Mrs Babbacombe who delivered the inspirational address prior to the race. Perhaps she should accept the award on my behalf?”
“Excellent idea!” Beaming, Lord Norwich strode forward.
Shielded by her brimming happiness, the aftermath of fulfilled excitement, Lucinda had succeeded in blithely ignoring the avid interest of the spectators. Lord Norwich, however, was impossible to ignore. But Harry strolled forward to stand by their side, quieting her uncertainties.
Lord Norwich gave a short speech, praising the mare and Harry’s stables, then gallantly presented the statuette—to her.
Surprised, Lucinda looked at Harry—he smiled and nodded.
Determined to rise to the occasion, she graciously thanked his lordship.
“Quite, quite.” His lordship was quite taken. “Need to see more game fillies at the track, what?”
Lucinda blinked at him.
Harry reached for her elbow and drew her to his side. He nodded at his strapper. “Take her back to the stables.”
With a last lingering look for Lucinda, Thistledown was led away. Lord Norwich and the rest of the crowd turned away, already intent on the next race.
Still conscious of the fading thrill, Lucinda looked around, then cast a glance upwards.
Harry smiled. “And you have my heartfelt thanks, too, my dear. For whatever magic you wove.”
Lucinda met his eyes—and stopped breathing. “There was no magic.” She felt his fingers on hers; she watched as he raised her hand and brushed his lips across the backs of her fingers. A long shiver traced its path down her spine, leaving an odd warmth in its wake. With an effort she veiled her eyes, breaking his spell. Catching her breath, she made a bid for her usual confidence; she raised the statuette and presented it to him, defiantly meeting his eyes.
He took it in his other hand, his gaze steady on hers.
Time lost its meaning; they stood, largely forgotten, in the centre of the winner’s circle. Men crowded about, jostling each other but not touching them. They stood close, so close the small ruffle on Lucinda’s bodice brushed the long lapel of Harry’s coat. He sensed its flutter as her breathing grew more rapid but he was lost in her eyes, in a world of misty blue. He watched them widen, darken. Her lips softened, parted. Her bodice made contact with his coat.
His head had begun its slow descent when sanity awoke—and frantically hauled on his reins.
Great heavens! They were in the winner’s circle at Newmarket!
Shaken to the depths of his soul, Harry dragged in a quick breath. He tore his gaze from her face, from the consternation that was filling her eyes, and the soft blush that had started to tinge her cheeks, and looked about them. No one, thank heaven, had seen.
His heart pounding, he took a firm grip of her elbow—and took refuge in action. “If you’ve seen enough of the racing, I should get you back to Em’s—she’ll be wondering where you are.”
Lucinda nodded—the faintly bored drawl left her no choice. She felt—she didn’t know what—shaken, certainly, but regretful, and resentful, too. But she couldn’t argue with his wish to be gone from here.
But they still had the gamut of well-wishers to run—they were stopped constantly, more than one gentleman wishing to make an offer for the mare.
Harry faced the hurdles with what patience he could, conscious that all he wished to do was escape. With her. But that was impossible—she was his danger, his Waterloo.
From now on, every time he looked into her face would be like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun. A weapon that could land him in painful slavery.
If he was wise, he wouldn’t look too frequently.
Lucinda sensed his withdrawal although he cloaked it well. His urbane charm came to the fore—but he would not meet her eyes, her puzzled glances.
They finally escaped the crowds and walked back, in silence, to the stables. He lifted her to his curricle and swung up beside her, his expression closed.
He drove back to Hallows Hall without a word, his apparent concentration on his horses a wall Lucinda made no attempt to breach.
But when he drew up before the steps and secured the reins, then came around and lifted her down, she held her position in front of him even though his hands fell immediately from her. “Thank you for a most…instructive morning, Mr Lester.”
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Stephanie Laurens
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A successful horse breeder and self-proclaimed rake, Harry Lester samples women like wines.But after having his heart trampled upon by someone he actually loved, he has no intention of falling for a woman again, let alone be ensnared by the trap of marriage. Now, with a large inheritance to his name, Harry knows that he′d best start running from London′s matchmaking mothers and widows.Harry heads for the racing town of Newmarket, only to encounter Mrs. Lucinda Babbacombe, a beautiful, independent widow. And before he knows it, Harry vows to protect Lucinda from the town full of lonely gambling men, despite her refusal to accept his countless offers of help.Lucinda is extraordinary-an intelligent, tender, marriageworthy woman-but will Harry let himself be taken prisoner in this most passionate of traps?