Joan Smith (12 page)

His account with Miss Barten was once again out of balance, but the time would come when she paid for this day. He went thundering back to London in a towering rage. She had never had any intention of accepting his patronage. She’d made a May game of him.

He reached Belgrave Square late at night, tired, hungry, dusty, and too irritated to eat or rest. He sat drumming his fingers on a mahogany table with marble insets in the shape of a short-pointed star. “Very well, Miss Barten,” he said in a menacing voice. “You want to cross swords with me, we shall see who cries craven first.”

His information that Peter was at Newmarket was unreliable, since it had come from Peter and that female. He made a fresh toilette and spent the remainder of the night running around the city, questioning friends and parrying questions on the stunt at White’s. He learned Peter had been at Brighton with a woman who sounded exactly like Miss Barten. They had been seen not only in Peter’s carriage but in a public inn together. The informant mentioned that there had been a largish group. She was drawing poor, innocent Peter into her rackety set, filling his head with God knew what pernicious ideas.

If he didn’t put a bullet through that vixen before this was over, he’d be surprised. But no, shooting was too good for her. She deserved a slow, tortured death, contrived in the most public and degrading manner possible. Luten derived some small satisfaction from mentally arranging her demise, but as he lay in bed imagining ingenious tortures, he decided he was more softhearted than he had ever realized. In the last scene, he always seemed to be rescuing her from her perils and being thanked for his heroics by a much humbled and affectionate Miss Barten.

Mrs. Harrington took a look around the dull, flat countryside and said, “I doubt we shall like it here at Newmarket, Trudie.”

Her spirits revived somewhat when Norman was on hand to meet them at the coaching stop with the family carriage. She would have preferred that he wore a clean shirt and decent cravat, but at least he was there.

He bounded forward to help her descend. “I have found us a dandy little cottage, one of the brick lodges right beside the heath,” he said, even before saying hello. “We shall all be as snug as bugs in a rug.”

What she felt the need of at that moment was space and air. “Has it got a good-sized drawing room?” she inquired.

“Oh, there is a drawing room, certainly. The greatest luck, Trudie,” he rattled on, turning to include his sister in the news, “the stables are enormous.”

“How nice,” Trudie said faintly, and smiled a wan smile
.

“Is it clean, Norman, in good condition?” his aunt asked.

“We haven’t had time to clean it, but now that the Bogmans are coming, it will be put into shape in jig time. Where are the Bogmans?”

“They will be on the next coach,” Trudie told him. “They are bringing our belongings—the linen and plate.”

“Excellent,” Norman said. “There aren’t any linens at the house. I have been sleeping on a curtain I ripped from a window. But there is a set of old cracked dishes—two of the cups even have handles. About the stables, Trudie—a dozen loose boxes and as many stalls! The roof is in perfect repair, and there is a cozy room for John Groom, with an excellent feather tick on the floor.’’

“Sleeping on a curtain! No handles on the cups!” Mrs. Harrington asked, bewildered.

“It is no matter,” he assured her. “I’ve been taking all my meals except breakfast at the inn. Oh, and the location of the cottage couldn’t be better. Within a stone’s throw of the practice runs. They are in excellent condition. The club is very strict about which course can be used on any given day, to keep them in shape.”

“Is the cottage handy to town?” Mrs. Harrington inquired as Norman helped her into the carriage.

“Downtown? Why, what would you be wanting to go there for? There is nothing worth seeing in town.”

“Is there a conservatory?” she asked hopefully.

“Eh? No, who would want a conservatory? A place with such frills would have cost me a monkey. Even Northfield— that’s what my lodge is called—was very expensive, but I have struck a deal with Peter and Nick. They are putting up at an inn, since I have to billet you ladies, but they are stabling their nags with me.”

“Wouldn’t it be more convenient for them to stable their nags at the inn? They must do a deal of walking,” Mrs. Harrington said.

“I don’t mean their hacks or carriage horses,” he explained. “Naturally
they
are stabled at the inn, but when they drive out to the tracks, they leave them with me during the day, then at day’s end, they bring their racers back to Northfield and ride their hacks to the inn. A very tidy arrangement, really. Ideal. They help pay the rent of Northfield for me, and it saves them on stabling fees elsewhere.”

“Clappet and Nick have already made their purchases, have they?” Trudie asked.

“Peter bought a colt, after all his ranting about wanting a filly. The nag he got is a cribber, but Lightning is a sweet goer, I must say—that’s Nick’s bit of blood.”

Mrs. Harrington was very little interested in these equine matters. She asked, “How many bedrooms has Northfield got?”

“Five or six, I think. I have set the best one aside for you, Auntie. Trudie and I shan’t mind going without clothespresses and mirrors in our rooms.”

“My room
does
have a bed, I hope?” Trudie asked curtly, and was assured that it had.

After a quantity of such oblique remarks, the ladies were not surprised to see Northfield was less than elegant. From the outside, and at a distance of several yards, it looked an impressive enough place. The brickwork was not perishing in the least, and the building was not yet tilting in any direction, but as they drew closer, the peeling paint around the windows, the opaque condition of the glass, and the general decay of the surrounding vegetation came into prominence.

“Isn’t it pretty. Auntie? Such a lovely fan window above the doors,” Trudie pointed out, selecting the best feature of an indifferent facade.

“This is nothing. Wait till you see the stables!” was Norman’s ill-advised comment.

Within, the place was every bit as bad as Norman had inadvertently implied it would be. Having been hired by three gentlemen the Season before, it was badly abused. Nothing but drunken orgies, Mrs. Harrington was convinced, could account for a fine marble mantelpiece having six bullet gouges in it. How else but in a drunken stupor could a sofa have suffered a disfiguring burn? Why were three pillows resting on a table, and why did one chair have no legs but sit with its seat on the floor? The remains of a varnished leg protruding from the uncleaned grate suggested their fate.

Trudie exchanged a resigned look with her aunt and said, “We have got our work cut out for us.”

“A bit of elbow grease will have us as fine as ninepence in no time,” Norman assured them.

“I expect houses are in short supply so close to the racing season,” Trudie mentioned, trying to smile.

“And so close to the practice runs,” Norman added. “You can hear the noise very well from here, so you always know when there’s something to watch.”

“How convenient!” Mrs. Harrington said, but Norman was impervious to irony. “You have certainly taken great concern for our comfort, Norman. I daresay there is a terrific amount of dust and dirt kicked up.”

“We shall take dinner at an inn tonight. Tomorrow, when the Bogmans come, we shall oversee the cleanup.”

“An excellent idea.” Norman looked around the drawing room and actually saw it for the first time. “It needs a little brightening,” he admitted sheepishly, “but really, the stables are something out of the ordinary, I promise you.”

“That, of course, is a great consolation to us,” his aunt said, in such a tone that even Norman recognized sarcasm, and blushed.

To atone, he took them to the best inn, where he hired the best private parlor available. He wanted to make up for the solecism of the house by being particularly considerate, but his enthusiasm overcame him, and in the end he spoke of nothing but horses.

The shadows of evening had grown long by the time they got back to Northfield. Aunt Gertrude took up a brace of tallow candles to tour the chambers abovestairs while Trudie went to the stables with her brother to inspect his racer and see the cribber Peter had been fool enough to pay four hundred guineas for.

True Lady had been admired at Brighton. She was a fine filly with a good deep chest, long, strong legs, and an intelligent eye. The animal had been placed under the supervision of a certain Bingo Rourke, who was giving Norman invaluable tips on winning races. Bingo was also to be the jockey, when the great races arrived.

Next she was taken to see Nick’s filly, Lightning. As she was being ruthlessly overtrained by someone other than Bingo Rourke, her chances of ever giving her owner anything but grief and expense were not high. While she was admiring Lightning, there was a sound of splitting wood from the next stall.

“That cribber of Peter’s is at it again!” Norman declared, and darted around to hit the colt’s rump, while Trudie followed fast at his heels.

The top bar of the stall was between his teeth, and the floor was littered with pieces of wood that still bore the imprint of his teeth. While he gnawed at the wood, Fandango inhaled, drawing in noisy breaths. He was not at all happy to be interrupted at his meal, and threw his head back and whinnied, while his eyes rolled dangerously.

“Demmed cribber! I’ll be charged for the repair of this stall if Peter don’t do something to stop him,” Norman said angrily.

“Red pepper!” was her reply. “That’s what Papa used when our gig cob took to biting her stall. He put red pepper on it.”

“And salt too, I suppose, to make it nice and tasty. A muzzle is what he shall have. I ain’t standing buff for putting in new stalls. Furthermore, Peter puts him in a different box every night. This is the third he’s chewed up.”

The criminal owner appeared at the stable door at that moment. He and Sir Charles had arrived by hack from town. While Nicolson bowed and did the pretty with Miss Barten, Peter had his ears chewed off quite as thoroughly as Fandango was chewing at the stall.

“I want a muzzle on this cribber, or out he goes,” Norman decreed.

“I ain’t muzzling my thoroughbred,” Peter maintained stoutly.

“Thoroughbred? Thoroughbred cob is what you’ve got here. You was duped, Clappet, and if you had any sense, you’d sell this old screw for dogmeat.”

Peter investigated the chewed-up lumber, making little of the damage, then pulled Fandango’s jaws open to check for slivers within.

While Norman and Nick examined the stall, Peter asked Trudie how things had gone in London. “As a matter of fact, a little difficulty arose,” she said reluctantly. “Could we step outside and talk about it? The smell here is rather strong.”

He stared that anyone could find the acid reek of manure and horseflesh less than ambrosial, but humored her whim and strolled outside.

“You may, perhaps, be hearing from your uncle Lord Luten, Peter,” she began reluctantly. “The fact is, he called on me before we left your apartment.”

“Did he, by Jove? How did you come to meet him? I hope you didn’t tell him I’d bought Fandango.”

“I didn’t know it at the time. The thing is, Peter, he disliked it that I was using your apartment.”

“It’s none of his dashed business. It’s just like him to be butting into my affairs. I hope you sent him off with a flea in his ear.”

“Well, yes, I did, actually,” she said, which set Clappet to stare in wonder that anyone should stand up to Luten.

“Really?
What did he say?”

Since Luten was now involved, there was no way to keep the story from Peter, and she explained the situation from the beginning, adjuring him not to say anything to Norman. “So what do you think I should do?” she finished, and put herself in his hands.

“You won’t have to do a thing. Luten will kill you,” Peter said. He stood blowing silent puffs of air through his lips, trying to calm his nerves at this dreadful tale.

“I think he would like to, but it is really the outside of enough for him to be accusing me of being
...
”

As Peter considered the story more fully, he realized that Luten was actually in the wrong, for once. It gave him much pleasure, and a little courage. “Yes, by the living jingo. He ought to be called to account.”

“But you mustn’t tell Norman!”

“Got to tell him,” Peter advised sadly. “Luten will kill him too. Best shot in—second-best shot in—well, one of the best shots in the country in any case, whereas Norman couldn’t hit an elephant at ten paces. Nick is a capital shot, but Norman never had the eye for it. Nick is up to all the rigs.”

“I hoped the matter could be settled in some other way than killing people,” Trudie exclaimed.

“Keep mum about it, you mean?”

“Yes, I won’t be in London, and Luten won’t be here, so perhaps it will all just blow over. I just wanted you to be aware of the matter, in case your uncle said anything, you know.’’

Peter silently shook his head. “He
will
be here. Luten always comes to Newmarket in the spring. Member of the Jockey Club. Got half a dozen nags running. He won the Oaks twice. He may not be here for a week or so, but long before you and Norman have gone, you must certainly expect to see him.”

Trudie's heart felt as if it were shrinking inside her. “Could you explain to him that it was all a mistake?” she asked.

“Be very happy to. Not that he’ll believe me. He ain’t a cloth head, after all. Sent all the way to Tunbridge Wells searching for mares’ nests—and the stunt at White’s—they were no mistakes. The thing is, Luten is proud as a Spanish grandee. You don’t happen to have any relatives in Cornwall or Wales?” he asked doubtfully.

While they were still discussing it, Sir Charles decided it was time to relieve Miss Barten of Clappet’s insufferable company and went after her. “Norman is going to have a porker on his hands if he don’t stop overfeeding True Lady,” he mentioned. “I do believe the filly toes in as well.”