Grace Gibson (11 page)

Denley let Lucifer have his head for a few miles, and flew down the road toward Newcastle. But he eventually brought him down to a saner pace and took full measure of what he was about. Thrusting himself into a crowd, many of whom were of his own set and might recognize him, was a risk he was forced to take. But he was done hovering around like a common criminal. He resolved never to disguise himself again.

As he approached the town, the Marquis set his back up very straight and assumed an expression of noble hauteur. Fortunately the market was in full spate and the mood was too high for anyone to really notice yet another member of the quality arrive amongst them. He rode carefully around, containing his wilful horse with some effort and searching out green waistcoats.

Eventually, his quarry appeared — a young man with riding boots, a green satin waistcoat, of medium build and medium colouring, but with a face so disfigured by anxiety as to be recognizably that of a boy in the grip of a fatal losing streak. The Marquis angled Lucifer over that way and allowed his beast to thrust the boy aside.

“I say there!” Will said very crossly.

“Oh,” Lord Robert looked vaguely down his nose, “I beg your pardon, sir. Is the next race due to start?”

“Momentarily,” Will replied in agitation. “And I cannot see over your horse.”

“Quite right.” The Marquis dismounted and pushed Lucifer back a pace. “Which one have you backed?”

“The dun mare to the right,” Will pointed, having nailed his horse with his eyes.

“I have gotten here too late,” Lord Robert explained, “and they won’t take my paper. But she looks like a slow-goer to me.”

This provoked Will, predictably. “I say you will soon see that she is a winner, sir.”

“One hundred pounds says you are wrong, my young friend,” he said in a bored voice.

Will hesitated. Lord Robert realized he had come almost too late, and that perhaps young Mr. Fanley had just dropped his last note on this very race. “That is to say, if you believe she is so
very
fast. But how you can say so I will never know. I have seen dogs with more spirit.”

“I will show you spirit,” Will said hotly. “You can take your hundred pounds to the devil!”

“Oh, in that case, if you are so sure, I will wager that same hundred pounds that she wins,” Lord Robert said amiably. “But quickly, they are set to start.”

“The devil she will!” Will exclaimed, pumping Lord Robert’s hand in vague triumph. They shook hands and a pistol fired, starting the race. Lord Robert watched with detachment as the dun mare gave a valiant run for third place, and instantly put one hundred pounds, lodged ever so nonchalantly between his second and third finger, into the hands of his dazed companion. Then he melted away into the crowd.

In about twenty minutes, just as expected, Will Fanley found him. “Sir,” he said with bruised dignity, “I do not completely understand that wager. I believe I have taken your money unfairly.”

The Marquis of Denley, rarely in the habit of using his quizzing glass, removed it, and scrutinized Will to the point of discomfort. “I never haggle over money,” he said in a dampening tone. “You convinced me your horse would win and she did not.”

“But that is my own bad luck,” Will said despairingly. “I have only passed it on to you.”

“I believe if I am going to argue with
you
, you should at least be someone known to me.” With this Lord Robert took the reins of his horse and walked disdainfully away.

Like honey to a bee, this treatment caused Will Fanley to run after him and shout angrily, “Well, allow me to introduce myself, your highness! I am Will Fanley of Greenly and I don’t like your manner!”

A small crowd gathered around them in expectation of an exchange of fists. But Lord Robert only started and turned around in amazement. “Fanley did you say? William Fanley of Greenly Manor?”

“The same,” Will claimed, but with slightly less vehemence.

The Marquis of Denley made him as beautiful a bow as one could make outside the palace of Versailles. “Then I heartily beg your pardon sir. I am Denley, and I’ve just come from Greenly, where I breakfasted with your father and sister this morning.”

The crowd instantly dissolved for lack of interest, leaving Will and Lord Robert to fumble through their astonishment in the privacy of a bustling market.

“Never tell me you are the Marquis?” gasped Will.

“And never tell me you are Miss Mary’s brother,” chuckled Lord Robert. “Now, tell me how I have wronged you, my buck, but refrain from making our affairs public. Let us go down to the inn by the road and have a bowl of punch, shall we?”

Once at the Rose Tree Inn, the Marquis bespoke some refreshments in the coffee room and they took possession of table in the corner.

“I suppose everyone of consequence is at the horse market,” explained Will to his companion.

“Oh, indeed,” Lord Robert dutifully looked around in bewilderment. “I believe you are right.”

“What was that strange trick you played?” Will asked. Then, progressing to the more pressing question, “And how come you to Newmarket from Greenly, sir, if it isn’t out of place to ask? You were not there as of yesterday morning, and can have only arrived…”

“I arrived yesterday afternoon.”

This news bewildered the young man. “Then what are you doing here?”

“Searching for you,” his Lordship said enigmatically, sipping his spiced wine.

“Good God, for me? What has happened? Tell me instantly! It is my father, isn’t it?”

Lord Robert allowed himself to look insulted. “Really, Will. Were I the bearer of bad news, I would hardly have stopped to place an idle wager on a dun mare.”

“No, but I would know instantly why you have come in search of me…” The light in his eye turned martial. “It was Mary wasn’t it? By God, she has broken my confidence and sent you out to nursemaid me!”

“You mistake me if you think I ever nursemaid anyone. Nor am I in the habit of being sent on errands of parental supervision by every country miss who demands it.”

Will’s expression turned sulky. “Oh. Then I cannot fathom why you are here.”

“I am here because I learned yesterday, quite casually I might add, that you have fallen into an acquaintance with Oscar Neville.”

“And if I have?”

“No doubt you feel free to take that tone with your papa, Will, but I will box your ears for it. If you will stop your tantrum, I will tell you what you most likely already know — Oscar Neville is a snake.”

The fight left Will’s body instantly, and he sagged back into the settle. “You are too late, sir. I am already lost beyond all salvation.”

Lord Robert laughed out loud. “That is rich! And now I suppose you are going to take that hundred pounds and buy yourself a place in the militia? Or is it the bridge with a stone necklace for you?”

The reaction was immediate and predictably violent.

“Sit down, Will,” Lord Robert said, still laughing. “Now, let us reason together. Do you think you should put your head in a bucket first or can we speak as grown men, in less passionate tones?”

“Very well,” Will said angrily. “You have come to tell me what I know already. Now, what do you suggest?”

“I have a very great resentment against Mr. Neville for imposing himself on your family, Will. If you would know the truth, I am very fond of Greenly, and I intend to be a very faithful neighbour of
yours
for years to come. I have come here to enlist you, for I have a mind to give Mr. Neville a dose of his own medicine.”

This was all Will needed to hear. “How do you propose to do it? I have duelling pistols you know, and I’ve a mind to slap my glove on him.”

“You are by no means the first, but that will hardly do. You are to be a man of responsibility: you cannot go around duelling like some reckless profligate.”

“Why not? I have a right to assert my manhood and defend my honour!”

“Certainly, but I’m compelled to point out that unless the honour you defend is that of a lady, it is hardly seemly. Besides, if you have a lady in mind, which I suppose a man like you does, then she will never forgive you for it.”

“How would
she
come to know?”

“Oh, things that are most secret are the first and most talked of, you know. She would hear of it instantly. And then, of course, if you were dead, I doubt you could keep her from knowing it.”

Will cast him an accusing glance. “You are very schooled in duelling.”

“Oh, I am indeed very schooled, I assure you. But that we will hash out at a later date. Now, let us go back to the races and bet like rational men, shall we?”

Will Fanley looked reluctant to engage his luck again. “I have wagered like a rational man and look where it’s got me,” he complained.

The Marquis of Denley only smiled. “Yes, but I have never done so before; I would like to try it out.” They began with fifty pounds apiece and proceeded with extreme care. Races in which the favourites were very well matched they avoided; they made small bets in races with a clear favourite, scrutinizing the horses, the riders, and watching for all the winks and nods that signalled unfair play. In the end, having bet pound for pound alike, they had realized two hundred pounds between them.

Riding out of Newmarket the following morning, Denley remarked casually, “So, that is how it is done, is it?”

“It was prodigiously boring!”

Lord Robert fell into a peal of laughter. “Bravo, my buck,” he said wiping his eyes, “and that is why we, of all people, should avoid it.”

Will Fanley’s homecoming was met with nonchalance from his father and astonishment from his sister.

“Will!” she cried, bursting from her chair and flying to the parlour door to hug him.

“Good gracious, Mary. I was only gone two days together.”

“Yes, certainly there is no cause for such a display my dear,” Mr. Fanley said peevishly, for he was not a man who could like what he did not understand.

The Marquis however, understood that Mary’s great anxiety had been relieved by the restoration of her younger brother. He leaned on the doorframe and crossed his arms, watching her in amusement and satisfaction as she stammered and blushed her excuses.

“I’ve grown used to company, Papa, that is all. Come, Will, I will call for tea. And you, sir — ” She turned shyly to Lord Robert and gave him a beautiful curtsey. “ — you are very welcome here, indeed.”

“Welcome! And so he is,” Mr. Fanley cried, rising and extending his hand.

The afternoon and evening progressed interminably for Mary, while her brother and his evil accomplice delighted in drawing out fabricated details of their sojourn to the horse market. Sensing that she was bursting to know what had truly transpired, they lorded over the time and kept Mr. Fanley’s interest well past the usual early hour which took him to his bed.

When at last Mary was able to call a weary “Good night, Papa,” her patience had worn thin.

“So, I expect you are dying to hear about Newcastle, Mary?” Will taunted her.

“Dying?” she replied with an arched brow. “Indeed, I am nearly dead with tales of it, already. I am in a fair way,” she yawned affectedly, “to be sound asleep if I hear of so much as a single horse hair.” With this she rose very languidly and made her way to the tapers, lighting one to take upstairs.

“Oh, sit down. We were only funning you!. Where has your sense of humour run off to?”

“It ran off its very legs with worry, you sorry, craven boy!, she returned brutally. “So what has happened?”

“Well, I lost a great deal of money,” Will said disheartened, “but,” brightening, “Denley and I have had a rightful coze, and we mean to make meat of Oscar Neville.”

“Make meat?” She cast an angry glance at Lord Robert. “You mean to tell me your plan is fighting?”

The Marquis threw up his arms in defence. “Oh, my fighting days are nearing an end, I assure you, Rabbit. Your brother only means we will see Mr. Neville ride out of this county quite penniless, and for good.”

“Rabbit?” Will said, much struck at the oddness of the exchange, while oblivious to its intimacy. “Why ever would you call her Rabbit?”

“If you have to ask,” Lord Robert replied, with amusement dancing in his eyes, “then you don’t deserve to know.”

“What? I mean to know,” he turned from the Marquis to his sister, whose face had gone red to her roots. “Why does he call you Rabbit?”

Mary cleared her throat in complete confusion, and after an interminable moment of silence, Lord Robert came to her aid. “Does she never remind you of a rabbit?” he asked lightly. “She bounces from room to room, her ears always plucked upright listening for some incident that will induce her to throw down her sewing and dash out of the room.”

Will’s consternation vanished. “Oh, quite right. Her nose almost trembles, don’t you know?”

“
You,”
Mary said darkly, “will never be allowed to call me what the Marquis of Denley chooses out of some inborn need to show his spleen.”

“Oh, indeed, Will,” the Marquis said, holding Mary’s eyes with his own. “I would not attempt it if I were you.”

Dimly sensing exclusion, Will became impatient. “Oh, keep your rabbits then. I may as well tell you,
Mary,
I’ve lost your blunt.”

She looked at him with motherly compassion. “Oh, well, you know I don’t care a pin for money. I am just so pleased to see you in spirits again.”

“Well, I’m in spirits, as you call it, because Denley and I have made an alliance against the dastard, and we mean to shake him by his heels till his pockets are empty.”

Mary clasped both hands together in delight. “That is what I have waited this age to hear. How do you mean to go about it?”

They talked late into the night, until Jim, despairing and suddenly uncertain that Lord Robert had really arrived at Greenly, knocked softly on the parlour door.

Lord Robert allowed the interruption in a rare display of amiability. “Jim, I am delighted to see you. Eversham’s man is excessively fastidious, and I’ve missed your cow-handed treatment of my neckcloth. Yes, we have been overly late I’m afraid. And Miss Fanley, here, is very likely to be late for her breakfast unless we send her to bed — you know how she despises city hours.”

Jim beamed, stammered his concurrence and slavishly escorted His Lordship to his hallowed chamber, leaving Will to laugh in the company of his sister. “You did not lie when you said Jim is making a great cake of himself. But I cannot imagine how you found
him
so devilish, Mary.”

She flashed him a heated look. “I find he is unaccountably civil to
you.
He has often treated me abominably! Besides, the country has softened him a great deal. When he first arrived, he never saw anything without having to stare down the bridge of his nose at it.”

They parted in a light-hearted argument over Mary’s shocking misperception of Will’s newly minted hero. “He is a great rake you know,” Mary said in a vicious whisper on the stair.

“Aye, of course I know it,” Will hissed through his teeth. “I ain’t green, you know. It’s what makes him tolerable, you ninny hammer.”

Late as the hour had grown, Mary laid on her bed in raptures for a long while before her eyes would close. Her brother had come home penniless but safe. Lord Robert had returned in a flurry of dust and horse hooves, with his piercing blue eyes ablaze with amusement and a fire she had never before seen in them. She thought back on their first days together, when he had seemed to have perfected the art of stifled yawns, and cast up a haze of unending boredom in those often cloudy orbs.

Still, the most compelling news of the entire evening was that
she,
Mary Fanley, who had been nothing but a housekeeper to her father, would have a commanding role in their adventure.

In the morning, Lord Robert joined her for breakfast promptly, while Will lingered abed like the adolescent he was.

“Where is Mr. Fanley?” Denley asked.

“Papa? He is off to the rectory to see to the poor.”

“Is that not the rector’s domain?”

Her eyes twinkled merrily. “Certainly, but my father does not think he is going about it in the most efficient manner. He means to…make a few suggestions.”

“I own I have never met a busier person that your father…” He paused and then added nonchalantly, “…unless it was his daughter.”

Her brows lifted in mock disdain. “And that is why you call me Rabbit. I own until you pointed it out I had never given much thought to it. I thank you for it.”

“That is
not
why I call you Rabbit. But if I have to explain it you don’t deserve to know.” Then, in a kinder tone altogether, he asked, “Tell me, Mary, have you never craved a different life?”

She replied with unabashed directness. “Sir, it is not my habit to pine for what will never be. A woman must satisfy herself with what she has, for she cannot saddle her horse and ride out to see the continent, you know. To dwell on a different life would be disastrous to me.”

His face darkened perceptibly. “So it has been to me. You have borne your lot with a thousand times more grace than have I.”

“Never tell me
you
have craved a different life?” she gasped.

“I have. But let us not dwell on what we neither of us can change. Let us dwell instead on these next weeks. I begin to have misgivings. I would as soon not put you in the way of danger.”

She sprang up from her chair as quickly as tears of protest sprang to her eyes. “You will not deny me!” she cried. “You cannot put me in the parlour to make lace and fret over what happens between Neville and Will…and you…You cannot be so cruel!” This last was uttered with such a note of desperation that Denley could not ignore it.

“Good God, Mary, do you hate him so? He has done a mischief to your brother, but rare is the man of the world who hasn’t had to learn a hard lesson at the hands of a sharper. I own that two thousand pounds is a fortune, but it is the veriest commonplace to lose such a sum, I assure you.”

She coloured and sat down with lowered eyes. “I beg your pardon, sir,” she said coldly. “I fear I will never learn the art of silence.”

“Be done with that,” he said impatiently. “I would know what has caused you such distress.”

She pursued her lips in defiance. “It is just as you said, sir. I have never longed for a different life. But last night it looked as if…as if for a few weeks, though I own it is only a charade, I will have an…an adventure…”

He regarded her in momentary silence. “Then I will not take away your pleasure, Rabbit. But I will not like to see you in the grip of that man.”

She was still flushed, but replied with dignity. “I am not a schoolgirl, sir. I believe you can trust me to handle Mr. Neville.”

“You are mistaken, Mary. You are the veriest babe.”

Her stiffened shoulders slumped under the truth of his assessment. “Then I will rely on you for my safekeeping.”

He took her hand and squeezed her fingers tightly, but said no more.