To Win the Lady
Authors: Mary Nichols
TO WIN THE
LADY
by
MARY NICHOLS
Originally
published in 1995 by Mills & Boon.
Copyright
1995 and 2013 by Mary Nichols
All rights
reserved.
The moral
right of the author has been asserted.
No part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the
prior permission in writing of the publisher. Nor be otherwise circulated in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which is it published and
without a similar condition, including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.
All
characters and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are
fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
Published
by Mary Nichols 2013
Cover
design: Elaine Nichols.
The cover
image is reproduced by permission of Anacronicos Recreacion Historica
Table of
Contents
Lacking a son and heir, Mr Henry Paget bequeaths his
elder daughter, Georgina, his horse-breeding stables with instructions to take
care of her young sister, Felicity, and make sure she makes a good marriage.
The stables are some of the best in the country; Henry Paget was renowned for
his knowledge of horses, a knowledge he passed on to his daughter. The problem
Georgie soon encounters is that men are reluctant to do business with a woman
and she is finding it difficult to make the business pay, let alone have time
and money to give her sister the come-out she deserves. The arrival of her aunt
back from abroad takes the problem of the come-out out of her hands but Georgie
is still left trying to convince the equestrian world that she knows what she
is doing. When Major Richard Baverstock returns from Waterloo seeking a horse,
her life becomes even more complicated. Her aunt is determined to marry
Felicity off to Richard and, as her sister’s happiness is more important than
her own, Georgie is prepared to promote the match, even when she realises she
loves Richard herself. Her life becomes even more complicated when the odious
Lord Barbour sets his cap at her, wanting to combine his failing stables with
hers and is prepared to employ any means, however dastardly, to have his way. There
seems no way out of her dilemma...
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In 1831 Squire George Osbaldestone, reputedly the finest
athlete in the early part of the nineteenth century, completed a historic
two-hundred mile ride round the four-mile long Newmarket Round Course in 8
hours 42 minutes 40 seconds, using twenty-eight horses. I assume this ride was
inspired by Dick Turpin’s legendary ride from London to York a century before,
which is also two hundred miles.
In 1993, the
jockey Peter Scudamore attempted to beat that long-standing record on the same
course, using fifty horses. He succeeded by a mere 4 minutes 49 seconds.
My story, set
in 1815, a few years earlier than Osbaldestone’s ride, has been inspired by
these rides, although I have made it more difficult for my hero by having the
ride take place on the road, which is how Dick Turpin would have done it.
Mrs Bertram was decidedly miffed. It was not so much that
there had been no one to greet her, for she was not expected and it was late in
the afternoon, but to be told by a servant that she would like as not find Miss
Paget in the stable was the outside of enough! What was the world coming to
when a visitor was expected to go in search of her hostess?
‘Can she not be
fetched?’
‘There’s no one
to fetch her,’ the housekeeper said. ‘If you don’t care to go to the stables,
ma’am, you could wait for Miss Felicity in the drawing-room.’
‘And, pray,
where is she?’
‘I believe she
walked to the village.’
‘And how long
is she likely to be?’
‘I am afraid I
can’t say, ma’am. She’s visiting Mrs Wardle.’
Mrs Bertram
decided she would have something to say about the rag-mannered way she had been
received when she came face to face with her nieces, but for now there was
nothing to do but wait until one or other of them put in an appearance. Drawing
herself up to her full height, which was nothing to speak of, for she was as
round as she was tall, she allowed herself to be conducted to the drawing-room.
It was a large rambling
house, full of solid furniture that had been there a half a century or more,
and though that in itself did not signify she was appalled by the general air
of neglect. Although the carpets could not be said to be threadbare, they had
certainly lost their colour and the paint on the doors was beginning to peel.
It smacked of genteel decay. Added to that, the drawing-room into which she was
conducted was cluttered to say the least and there was a film of dust on the
polished surfaces. A fringed silk shawl had been flung carelessly across a
sofa; there was an open book on a low table and a couple of wolfhounds were
sprawled across the hearth. A cat rose from a chair and stretched itself lazily
before jumping down and padding out of the room.
Bidding her to
be seated, the housekeeper excused herself on the grounds that she had a
bran-mash on the boil and must attend to it. Bran-mash! In the kitchen! Had
they run mad?
Mrs Bertram
looked about her for somewhere to sit and, deciding not to risk getting her plum-coloured
silk covered in animal hairs, turned about and left the house to go in search
of her niece. She walked round the side of the house and, holding her skirts
clear of the cobbles, crossed the yard to the stable block. In contrast to the
house, the stables exhibited every sign of being well-maintained. The paintwork
was good, the ground swept clean and the horses, looking out of their loose
boxes, were well-groomed and alert. There were grooms and stable-boys busy
about the yard and she asked one, who was raking straw out of one of the
stables, for the whereabouts of Miss Paget.
‘In the foaling
box, ma’am,’ he said, nodding towards the end of the row of boxes. ‘Though I
shouldn’t...’ But the lady had gone, striding off towards the box he had
indicated, and he shrugged and went on with his task.
‘Georgiana?’
Mrs Bertram peered short-sightedly into the gloom of the box. ‘Georgiana, is
that you?’
At the sound of
her name, the young woman kneeling in the straw beside the mare looked up with
a slightly puzzled expression. She had been so engrossed in the task of wiping
the mucous from the damp coat of the new-born filly, she had paid scant
attention to the sound of a carriage drawing up, knowing her sister would deal
with any callers. But her visitor had obviously eluded Felicity. Georgie did
not immediately recognise her, but there was something familiar about the plump
figure who stood on the threshold, silhouetted against the light. She had a
round pink face and corkscrew grey locks which were half concealed by a huge
mauve bonnet sporting a sweeping green feather.
‘You will
forgive me for not rising, I know,’ Georgie said. ‘This little one needs all my
attention at the moment.’ And with that she turned to concentrate on the
important task of looking after the filly, which was trying to get to its feet,
all spindly legs on a body seemingly too big for it. It had a good head,
though, an Arabian head with wide nostrils and brown eyes which hinted at the
intelligence she hoped it had inherited from its sire, Grecian Warrior, son of
Bucephalus, the stallion her father had bred for the Prince of Wales before he
had become the Prince Regent. Bucephalus had been a prince among stallions and
Warrior was almost as good. Georgie had high hopes for all Warrior’s progeny
and this one looked most promising. It had a dark chestnut coat, a white flash
on its nose and white socks. Georgie smiled as it tottered towards its mother,
already on her feet and whinnying to it. ‘Warrior Princess,’ she said aloud.
‘I beg your
pardon?’ The figure in the door moved slightly, allowing the sunlight which
flooded the yard to penetrate the dimness of the stable.
‘Oh, I am so
sorry.’ Georgie scrambled to her feet, revealing herself to be clad in a man’s
breeches and shirt. ‘It’s the filly’s name. Warrior Princess, sired by Grecian
Warrior. That,’ she added, pointing to the mare, ‘is Royal Lady. Foals are
nearly all born during the night, did you know that? The Arabs considered it
unlucky for one to be born in the daytime and would often destroy it. Thank
goodness we are not so barbaric, for this one is a little beauty.’ She laid a
hand gently on Royal Lady’s nose. ‘You let me have my sleep, didn’t you, Lady?’
‘It is
Georgiana, isn’t it?’ Mrs Bertram enquired again, as if she could hardly believe
the dreadful apparition which confronted her.
‘Yes, I am
Georgiana Paget.’ No one had called her Georgiana since her father died six
months before and he had only used her full name to express his displeasure at
something she had done or left undone and that in itself had been rare. To her
sister, Felicity, and close friends she was Georgie and to the servants Miss
Paget. ‘But I’m afraid...’
‘Don’t you know
me? I am your aunt Harriet. Your housekeeper said I might find you here, and
that was bad enough in all conscience, but I hardly expected...’
Georgie stroked
a lock of hair from her face and managed to daub her cheeks with dirt. ‘Aunt
Harriet! I am so sorry, I did not know you. It’s been years...’
‘Indeed it has
- eight at least. I should have come sooner...’ She stopped to survey her
sister’s elder daughter from her brown riding boots, up over the breeches stuck
here and there with straw, and the voluminous shirt with the sleeves rolled up,
to her smudged face and crop of auburn curls. They were cut in what, had she
been a man, might have been called the wind-swept style but which was really
the result of Georgie having taken the scissors to them herself to keep her
hair out of her eyes when she was working with the horses. It was convenience,
not fashion which dictated her looks and that much was painfully obvious to her
aunt. ‘I knew Henry had some very strange ideas about raising children, but I
never thought to see the day when his daughter took to being a stable-lad.’
Georgie looked
down and tried unsuccessfully to brush the straw from her breeches. ‘Petticoats
are hardly practical for acting midwife to a horse,’ she said, giving her aunt
a rueful smile. ‘Let us go back indoors and I will bath and change.’
‘Let us do
that,’ Harriet said crisply. ‘And when you are fit to be seen we will talk.’
‘Yes, Aunt, of
course.’ She turned to the stable-master who had been hovering in the shadows.
‘Look after them, Dawson,’ she said, indicating the mare and her foal. ‘And get
someone to see to Mrs Bertram’s carriage and horses.’ With a last wistful look
at the filly, now sucking strongly at one of the mare’s teats, she led the way
across the cobbles of the stableyard and into the house by a side-door.
‘Do sit down,
Aunt,’ Georgie said when they reached the drawing-room. ‘If only you had sent
word, we would have been in a better state to greet you.’
In spite of the
gravity of the situation, Harriet Bertram smiled; it would, in her opinion,
have taken an army of servants working a month to have made the place ready to
receive visitors. ‘Would the mare have postponed her lying-in for me?’
Georgie
laughed. ‘No, but Felicity would most assuredly have been here to welcome you.
I can’t think where she is.’