The Baron’s Dangerous Contract Read online

  Petit nodded thoughtfully while Doom stared him down. “Tis all true,” Petit said, “and the boy’s got skill. I only don’t want to push the lad too fast.” He raised his hand threateningly toward Doom in case he would have something to say over that opinion.

  Penny walked back to the table and sat next to the boy. “Doom, now I want you to put aside all your pride. It will be Newmarket. There will be crowds, there will be enormous sums laid on the race. Can you imagine yourself there without trembling? And remember, no pride in your answer!”

  “I was born for Newmarket,” Doom said gravely.

  Penny was convinced. “Very well,” she said. “Doom rides Zephyrus.”

  Doom, to signal his approval of this plan, picked up a biscuit and ate it with gusto.

  Petit cleared his throat and said, “We might consider Bella for the three-year-old fillies’ thousand guinea race?”

  “We might,” Penny said, laughing, “if we had not already considered it.”

  Bella was a jewel. Penny had bought her last year—her pedigree was good, going back as far as Selim. What Bella was not, though, was ready for Newmarket.

  “I know she could use more experience,” Petit said. “But here’s your only chance with her for the high stakes. She won’t be three next year.”

  Penny knew that was true, but she also knew a horse like Bella should not be pushed too hard. Bella had her own mind and went at her own pace. She did a thing when she was ready to do a thing. Penny had discovered it when she’d pressed Bella to jump a fence higher than the horse was accustomed to. Though Bella could jump such fences now, she’d not been ready on that particular day. Penny had felt it and pushed her forward anyway. She’d landed in a field for her trouble. Many a horseman would have insisted on keeping her running at the fence until she complied, but Penny had felt in Bella an iron will—she might be pushed over it, but she’d never forgive her rider for the insult. Penny had let it go for that day, and eventually, Bella decided on her own that it was time to take the high fence.

  “I cannot consider it, tempting though it may be,” she said with finality. “One such as Bella needs to be ready. Running a disastrous race will ruin her. We will bring her, though, as it would be well to expose her to the atmosphere of such places.”

  Petit nodded, knowing that was to be the final word on the subject.

  “Do be of cheer, Petit,” Penny said. “I understand my father is running four of his horses and you shall have your hands full.”

  Both Petit and Doom did cheer up at the notion. There was nothing the stable hands liked more than to be off to the races.

  *

  Lord Cabot had searched his mind for a source of money for the stakes. He had studiously avoided thinking of one who definitely did have the money to spare, but who could be difficult to approach.

  His grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Wentworth, had made London her home and kept an elegant house on Grosvenor Square. The lady’s dowry had been enormous and her jointure allowed her to maintain the house, as she preferred not to reside in the dower house on the estate. Or, to rot away in the dower house, as she termed it. Her Grace had plenty of money in her pocket, but she was never enthusiastic about doling it out. His only hope was to appeal to his grandmother’s soft spot—family honor. Surely, he could convince her that having entered the stakes he must pay for it as a matter of honor. At least, he hoped so.

  The dowager was a stern lady, one of the old guard that peered down their noses at modern goings-on. She hosted no end of card parties with the rest of the old guard in which they delighted in talking about how it had been in their day. Cabot had last seen her at Christmas and had studiously avoided being alone with her. He did not know what she thought of the Dukes’ Pact and had not been anxious to find out.

  Yet, here he was out of options and being led into number forty-two of the square. Bancroft showed him in with a frown. The butler was as old as the hills and apparently not afraid, at this late date in his history, to let his opinion be known. He’d glared at the prodigal grandson, no doubt wondering what one who never called was now up to.

  The dowager’s drawing room looked as if it had not been redecorated since Queen Anne’s time—decidedly baroque, with all curved lines and cabriole legs. It had the faint powdery smell that he remembered from his youth. Those were terrifying visits when he was marched in front of the dowager in his best clothes for a sizing up. The visit only lasted minutes, as then his governess would march him back out again, but he had always likened it to creeping into the dragon’s lair and somehow getting back out again unscorched.

  The dowager swept in, seeming all energy. He’d thought she’d slow down at some point, but it seemed that as the men died off, their wives only increased their vigor. She looked at him as skeptically as Bancroft had.

  “Well?” she said.

  The dowager was dressed in a heavy brocade and tightly corseted. Her wig was high and powdered and Cabot was amused to note a silk butterfly lurking in the complicated twists and turns of the thing.

  He bowed low and said, “Ma’am.”

  “Hardly an answer,” the dowager said. “I suppose we’d better sit down. Bancroft will anticipate me and bring in tea. Both of us know what a winding path you may take to your purpose.”

  It was not an auspicious beginning, but Henry comforted himself that interviews with his grandmother never were.

  “Out with it,” the dowager said. “I have not seen you since Christmas, where you avoided me as if I carried the plague. Now, you’ve turned up on my doorstep. What do you want?”

  Henry clasped his hands together lest they give away his nerves. “As always, I appreciate your directness.”

  “I have no time to be indirect—I’m on the far side of seventy,” the dowager said with some aspersion. “Get on with it.”

  Cabot had hoped to smooth the path in front of him. Perhaps engage in some pleasantries. Clearly, that was not to be.

  “I’ve encountered a small difficulty, ma’am,” Cabot said cautiously. “I turn to you for guidance.”

  “Do you?”

  “Indeed, I do,” Cabot said, feeling he’d better get right to the point. “I’ve engaged to run a horse at Newmarket. The difficulty is I do not have the stake for it. It seems to me a matter of family honor that I come up with the sum.”

  “Does it?”

  “Just so, ma’am. After all, were I to fail, it would be spoken of. Spoken of derisively, I might add. I do not like to think of our name so muddied.”

  “And that is your problem?”

  “Yes,” Henry said, beginning to become even more wary than he had been. His grandmother’s piercing eyes, those eyes which one might hope to be dimmed with age, bored into him.

  “That is not your problem,” the dowager said curtly.

  “But truly, it is,” Henry said, flummoxed over how she could not understand it was his problem when he’d just said so.

  The dowager folded her hands and looked over his head, as if admiring the line of ancestors that hung on the far wall.

  “Do you know,” she said quietly, “that Lord Rariton and his lady were here for cards the other evening? And do you know they had been present at Lady Hathaway’s absurd Tudor ball? And do you know that they spoke of my grandson?”

  Cabot swallowed. Wherever this was going, it was nowhere he cared to be.

  “It seems,” the dowager continued, “that my grandson was rude to a lady. To Lord Mendbridge’s daughter, to be specific. A lord I have known since he was a young man. A lord whose mother was a dear friend of mine. And you come here claiming that your problem is a horse race?”

  “That was an unfortunate circumstance,” Henry said hurriedly. “Which I intend to repair at Newmarket. Lord Mendbridge has invited me to stay at his house.”

  “Has he?” the dowager asked. “In my day, a father would take a stripling like you to task for such an affront. Severely to task. I can only claim to be surprised by the lord’s lib
erality.”

  Henry ignored the idea that he was to be characterized as a stripling, he towered over his grandmother and was certain he could pick her up with one hand. “Uh, I do not believe Lord Mendbridge is aware of the…discussion…that took place between myself and Miss Darlington.”

  “I’ll wager he is not,” the dowager said, looking satisfied with the prediction.

  Bancroft softly knocked and entered, leading in a footman with a tea tray. The dowager rose. “Only one cup, Bancroft. My grandson must depart this instant to discover within himself what are really his problems. I have done him the courtesy of assuring him it has nothing to do with a horse race.”

  Bancroft only nodded, but Henry was certain the old fellow was delighted to see him thrown from the house.

  He would need to find the money somewhere else.

  *

  The trip to Newmarket would take them two days, with an overnight at an inn at Bishop’s Stortford. Penny would have liked to drive her phaeton, but her aunt was vociferously against the idea. According to Mrs. Wellburton, it was one thing to be seen galivanting about town atop the contraption, but quite another to drive it like any coachman on a route. Penny had negotiated that the phaeton must be brought for her use, though she would forbear to drive it there herself. Her aunt had relented on that point, satisfied enough.

  Once the arrangements had been made, Penny began to see that it might be for the best, after all. Her father would be on horseback for most of the journey and it would give her ample opportunity to have a confidential conversation with her aunt.

  They had left the town far behind and just now briskly trotted through pleasant countryside. Petit, Mrs. Payne, Doom, the housemaids, and the rest of the stable staff had set out the day before with the preponderance of the trunks, horses, and carriages. Now, it was only the family and three carriages following behind carrying Montrose, the lord’s valet, Mrs. Wiggins, and the lady’s maids, that comprised their current caravan. Penny said, “Aunt, I would wish you to know of something that occurred at the Hathaways’ ball.”

  Mrs. Wellburton had been fussing with various baskets stocked with edibles for the journey. She glanced up and said, “Lord Cabot, I presume?”

  “Indeed, Lord Cabot,” Penny said, surprised. “How can you know it?”

  Mrs. Wellburton smiled and looked indulgently at her niece. “I suppose you think your old aunt too feeble to engage in the social realm these days? Do you think nobody talks to me?”

  “Goodness, no, certainly I did not think so,” Penny said. “Though, I did not know my conversation with Lord Cabot was widely spoken of.”

  “Of course it was spoken of,” Mrs. Wellburton said. “There were several people nearby who overheard Lord Cabot’s rudeness. I must say, though I do not favor the fellow, I would have thought he’d have better manners than that.”

  “As I feel, too,” Penny said, at once relieved that she would not have to repeat the vile circumstance and irritated that it should have been bandied about in conversation so widely.

  “I was surprised when you wished to leave Lady Hathaway’s ball so precipitously, as you are rarely ill. Though, when I understood the cause I comprehended well enough. Of course, your father knows nothing of it, as far as I can gather,” her aunt said. “Else he would not have invited the man to stay. I cannot say I am surprised at his ignorance of the matter, the only gossip your father would ever hear is if it came riding up on a horse and whinnied at him.”

  Penny laughed at the idea, as it was all too true.

  “Now you wonder,” her aunt said, “what are we to do with the loathsome fellow while he lurks around the breakfast table and hangs about the drawing room?”

  “That is it, exactly,” Penny said. “Of course, I had imagined I must see him at some party or other. I’d planned to be decidedly cool toward him and engage in nothing more than the shortest of pleasantries.”

  “Quite right, my dear,” her aunt said. “And that is precisely what you shall do. He will understand your meaning quick enough and not bother you further. It is all for the best, in my mind. Lord Cabot can move on to dispense his attentions elsewhere and God help the girl who falls for it. He strikes me as a determined bachelor and I think him very like his father—his duke was nearly forty when he married and had the gout before he was five years into it. I imagine his duchess to be a long-suffering sort of person.”

  Penny could not ignore that she felt a tinge of regret at her aunt’s assessment of how Lord Cabot would react when he understood their previous good-natured exchanges were to be at an end. While she had worked to imagine her scathing attitude toward Lord Cabot upon their first meeting, she had less examined what his response to it might be. Or, if she had thought of it, she had envisioned him to be very struck by it. Perhaps in her wildest moments she had thought he’d be devastated by it. Now, she was to understand he would pack his attentions in his panniers and ride elsewhere with nary a look back.

  Her aunt, seeming to sense her disappointment, said, “Now, then, Penny. It does no good to wish it was anything other than a trifle. Further, Lord Cabot’s attentions may have crowded out some other more suitable gentlemen. I know your head was turned because he has your own keen interest in horses, but hobbies do not a marriage make. You are coming to the end of your second season and it is time you put your eye toward your future.”

  Penny nodded, certain her aunt was right. After all, it was only horses that had been between them, it was only horses that had ever piqued her interest. That was right, was it not?

  Mostly right, in any case. She could not claim to be entirely immune to his tall frame and the broad shoulders that towered over her when they danced. Nor his deep brown eyes or the way they crinkled at the corners when he laughed. Or the particular timbre of his voice. She supposed no lady was immune to those attractions and so she was as any other in that regard.

  So she hoped, anyway. Further, her aunt was right. She could not go on from season to season without settling herself. Her father would allow it, of that she had no doubt. But that was only because her father would hardly notice it. She must rely on her aunt for good sense and her aunt was right. She had wiled away two seasons as she watched one lady after the next become betrothed. It was time she ought to be thinking of her own future. She had never envisioned herself a spinster and could not do so now. It was time to turn her attention to somebody she could have a real future with. Even if that fellow had the galling attribute of only a middling interest in horseflesh.

  Chapter Three

  Henry could not quite believe he found himself in Cheapside, standing in front of a dusty door that had nothing to recommend it but for the sign nailed to it that helpfully announced its occupants. It was the final effort to secure the money for the stake at Newmarket. Like most problems not easily solved, he’d taken on progressive remedies, running from the easiest to increasingly more difficult. As one idea fell by the wayside, he picked up an even more rash solution.

  He’d tried Dalton, Grayson, and Hampton. He’d tried Burke. Ashworth was out of his reach. He’d gone to his club and opportuned anybody he was on remotely intimate terms with. He’d even approached Mackery—a dissolute young man fond of gambling and too much wine. One never knew if Mackery had recently been on a winning streak. As it turned out, Mackery was worse off than he was. Thoroughly in his cups, the man had explained that he’d gone so far as to see a moneylender and had lost that money too. He was currently considering if he ought to shoot himself or remove to the continent. He was leaning toward a flight to the continent as he knew an old Contessa there who was likely to take him in.

  Though Mackery had claimed it was likely he would flee, rather than do a violence to himself, Henry had gone to his apartments to warn his valet to hide all the pistols.

  He had been disgusted to find Mackery in such a shape, but he had not forgotten his words. He’d got funds from a moneylender and Henry had pressed him for the details.

  It was a foolish
idea, he was well aware. The rate would be ruinous and if one did not pay a moneylender, he had some vague notion that they had their unpleasant methods. He did not understand exactly how they transacted their business, but everybody knew they were not to be trifled with.

  Still, what else was he to do? He must have the hundred guineas to pay the stake. In truth, he must have more than a hundred. He’d planned to be so careful with his money when his funds were cut. But then, he’d seen that what he had would not cover his expenses and he’d thought to increase his purse with some careful gambling. After all, Ashworth had made a career out of it, why shouldn’t he? Of course, when he lost some of the money, it had become even more imperative to recoup it through another gamble. It was a story as old as time, and just as stupid.

  Now, he needed the stake, as well as funds to pay the men who would transport Bucephalus to Newmarket in short, easy stages, and expenses for the groom who would care for her and ride her. He needed funds to hire a carriage, as his own had been sold—he could not turn up without a valet and luggage, after all. Then there were the incidentals that would come up at the races. What if he needed the services of a farrier? He lived on credit in town, but Newmarket tradesmen were not likely to extend it, only to have their quarry decamp after the races. As well, he would need some walking around money. If he ventured into a tavern to meet with likeminded gentlemen, was he not to have the coin in his pocket to buy a round of ale? And when was the last time he’d paid Jarvis? For all he knew, his valet was making plans to ditch him when the next likely gentleman passed by.

  There had been no other option. He’d have to see a lender.

  He knocked on the door, ignoring the various passerby looking at him curiously and knowing full well why he was there.