Highest Stakes (71 page)

  To Mr. Thayer's dismay, Roberts volunteered the tutor's services to oversee the boisterous brood that he might converse privately with Mrs. Grey, who once recovered from her initial shock, proved a veritable fount of information.

  Sir Garfield, she recounted, had two years ago suffered a massive heart seizure while attending Newmarket races. Lady Felicia, beset with grief, divested the estate of all horseflesh, which she believed caused her husband's demise. To her credit, the lady took a good many servants to London with her, elsewise, where could they have found other employment?

  Charles Wallace, heir to the entire estate, had joined the infantry years ago and was later involved in that nasty business with the Scots at Culloden, commanded by Billy the Butcher. To Maggie's recollection, Charles had never returned to Yorkshire, even upon his father's death. "But as for that sister of his, I always knew she was no more'n a shameless hussy, though she put on such grand lady airs. There was that scandal whispered about his lordship, her husband, what was shot by his own bleedin' father. Let me say that was some queer business there!"

  Placing her hands on her hips, Maggie continued her diatribe. "After that, she, what was so wanting to be a countess, come off her high-and-mighty throne. Though she picked a ripe one in Sir George Tenbury, doddering old squire what he is. But I says, 'tis nobody's business if she makes a cuckold of him with the footmen."

  After these telling revelations, awkwardness ensued. Roberts had questions he dared not ask poised on his tongue regarding the fate of another member of the Wallace family. Maggie, however, broached the subject in her circuitous fashion.

  "Cap'n… er… Mr. Roberts," she amended, "ye never did say what brings ye back to Yorkshire after all this time."

  "My dear Mrs. Grey," he asked, "what do you know of my history these eight years past?"

  "Well, Ca… Mr. Roberts, ye was believed dead. That business in Leeds, well that was talked about all over. It was said ye was hauled off in chains and hung by the neck at Newgate, though I never put much stock in that tale, believin' officers is usually killed more dignified like. But Miss Charlotte"—in the midst of her prattle, Maggie missed the shadow that passed over his countenance and the hard lines that formed at the mention of Charlotte's name—"I done heard she mourned you, Cap'n, believing ye dead. Why the fates worked against the two of ye, I'll ne'er understand.
She
, poor thing, ain't known a moment's happiness to any account. Though she be a grand lady now, none thinks she got the better end
o'that
deal!

  "As for
him
… though I might once have had feelings for him, that was afore he come back from the wars. After Culloden, he ain't never been the same as what he was. Black-tempered and jugbitten, they say, and carin' for naught but his bleedin' racehorses. Best thing I ever did was marry John Grey." Her assertion was a bit too emphatic, as if to convince herself.

  "And it appears you have prospered for your decision," Roberts commented absently while he struggled to compose his churning emotions.

  "A good man, John Grey," she continued, oblivious. "But what of yerself? Ye've a pair of strappin' young lads. What of the Mrs. Roberts?"

  "There is no Mrs. Roberts. The mother of the lads passed away two years ago from smallpox," he replied quietly. "Thomas and Benjamin are my legal wards, but I care for them as if they were my own. The elder has come to England for his education, and not knowing how long I would be away, I could not bear to leave the younger alone in Virginia. Besides, there is nothing better than travel to broaden a young mind."

  "Aye, 'tis true enough for some, for those restless ones, anyways. My Ian is one like that, restless he is. Though he works in the smithy, his mind is always elsewhere. He be far too wont to woolgatherin', and John has little patience wi' the lad to begin with, ye ken."

  "The eldest works in the smithy? You remind me I must see to the progress of our carriage. I thank you, Mrs. Grey, for your time, your gracious hospitality, and most of all for your discretion?" He laid two gold guineas before her.

  "Your business ain't no business of mine, Mr. Roberts." She reassured him with a wink. Tucking the guineas deep in the ample bodice of her gown, she sashayed back to her taproom.

  Mr. Roberts then directed his steps to the smithy, where having already completed the axle repair, the smith was reshoeing the lame horse. As he held the horse's foreleg between his knees, the lazy gelding shifted his weight to bear on the man, who barked harshly at the lad holding the horse. The boy snapped to attention and corrected the horse with a sharp jerk on the lead shank. When the man finished with the final nail, he cuffed the boy roughly on the ear.

  "Ye'll pay better attention the next time, Ian! Now lead 'im back to the livery. No dawdling, ye hear!"

  "Yes, sir. I won't, sir," the boy answered. His lip quivered, but his dark gaze was direct and his bearing more defiant than submissive. Refusing to be cowed, with his chin raised and stiff shoulders, he led the big gelding out to the livery. Roberts thought the boy resembled a little soldier.

  He was about to address a remark to the burly man, but a thought suddenly arrested him. Tall and lanky for his age, which he guessed to be about eight, the contrast in both figure and feature of Maggie's eldest son, Ian, with the five other redheaded, blue-eyed children could not have been more marked. At once he understood Maggie's veiled references to her husband's jealousy and impatience with the boy.

  Ian Grey was the spitting image of Philip Drake!

The following day brought a change in Roberts's plans. Rather than traveling by coach to Doncaster, he left the boys at the tavern in the agitated tutor's care and hired a horse to depart Sheffield alone.

  In the confines of the coach, he had grown claustrophobic, and his encounter with Maggie had only dredged up painful memories. He needed air and space and time alone to think. He galloped the familiar paths and rolling heath he'd memorized from his boyhood, the same heath where he'd ridden with Charlotte, and was on his way to Doncaster, where his first fateful race had been run.

  He shook out of his angst of the past, forcing himself to look forward rather than back. The autumn racing season would soon commence. The time of reckoning was at hand.

T he Earl
of Hastings sat sullen and brooding, with his customary bottle of brandy within easy reach, as he awaited the arrival of an unknown gentleman who had earlier sent his card. Any who had known the earl a decade ago would be hard-pressed to recognize the handsome and charming cavalry officer he had been.

  He had once been one of Cumberland's key men, fighting valiantly against the French at Dettingen, where he had first distinguished himself for bravery, and later in their just-as-heroic defeat at Fontenoy, but it was for the infamous battle of Culloden that he bore his inner and outer scars.

  Swiftly and mercilessly, they had routed the supporters of the Young Pretender, the would-be usurper to the British throne. Completely crushing the insurrection, the commander in chief had allowed no quarter. But the price of victory had been high. Too high. Nicknamed the Butcher of Culloden and Billy the Butcher, among his colorful sobriquets, the Duke of Cumberland and all under his command had been condemned in the public eye.

  Major Lord Hastings had sold out after the Treaty of Aux Chappelle in '48, resolved to retire to his family seat in East Sussex and put his long-neglected affairs in order, but his vision of bucolic idyll was shattered when he found his properties a shambles.

  His estates had suffered decades of neglect under his father, who was more interested in politics and courtly intrigue than in the sowing of fields and mending of roofs. Though Philip had hired a steward to manage his affairs, his own disinterest and elected absence had only compounded the years of decay.

  Of all his holdings, the earl discovered only a single profitable enterprise: his racing stud. And to his complete bafflement, the success was singularly credited to his estranged wife, Lady Charlotte Drake, Countess of Hastings.

  Having a foundation of only a few mediocre leftovers from the Hastings stud and the broodmare Amoret he had given her as a peace offering, Charlotte had built a stable of superior runners.

  The first of these had been Amoret's foal by Lord Godolphin's Hobgoblin, the gangly chestnut colt, Shakespeare, which Philip had claimed for himself. The young horse had more than lived up to expectations. Having been a winner on the track, he was already enjoying success in the breeding shed.

  With her first success with Shakespeare, Charlotte was determined with all her being to follow the romantic dream she and Robert had nurtured those many years ago. Maintaining her faith in the superior genetics of the three progenitor sires, she built her stables around the very best mares put to the finest stallions her money could buy.

  In addition to Amoret, she sought out descendants of the original royal mares and the daughters of proven runners, adding Mother Western by a son of Snake, Ruby by Blacklegs, Meloria by Portmore's Fox, and Cypron by a son of Flying Childers to her broodmare harem.

  Carefully selecting stallions of the Darley, Byerley, and Godolphin blood, she paired them with her choice mares and began to produce winners. A colt, Midas, in '46 and a third colt, Slouch, in '47, followed Shakespeare. Two fillies, Miss Cade and Miss Meredith, by the fine stallion Cade, followed in '48. All had shown the capacity to run. And win.

  Charlotte's biggest gamble had been in putting Mother Western to the great Regulus, the still undefeated champion, who had run his first race that fateful day when Robert had wagered against Sir Garfield. The stallion's fee, at twenty guineas, was an exorbitant sum that had drained her available resources, but the resulting filly, Spiletta, was Charlotte's pride and represented her best hopes for the future.

  Under Charlotte's guiding hand, the Hastings's stud produced more winners than any other in the region, and although the horses ran under the earl's name and racing colors, Lady Hastings was universally recognized for their successes.

  This mortifying revelation came to Philip upon his election to the newly formed Jockey Club, when its members raised their glasses at the Star and Garter to its honorary member, the Countess of Hastings, first lady of the turf.

  Shortly thereafter, Lord Hastings took seriously to the bottle. His military career, brilliantly begun, had ended in disgrace. His centuriesold family seat was in such disrepair that it was little better than a pile of rubble. His only success was credited to his wife, and even their marriage, still a celibate arrangement, remained an atrocious farce.

  In their eight years together, had Charlotte ever played him for a fool or a cuckold, he would have divorced her. God knew he had just reason. But though she denied him an heir, and with it his full inheritance, she had never crossed the line of adultery. And it was Charlotte's successes, rather than his, that kept them afloat.

  Unhappily resigned to his failures, Philip had sought solace in his horses, his brandy… and his mistress. Sukey. His beautiful, witty, laughing Sukey. She was the one and only love of his life, but a life they could never share. Although wanting nothing more than to be his lawful wife, she had settled for mistress rather than allowing him to divorce Charlotte.