A Gentleman’s Game Page 4

“No, it’s not the hay,” Nathaniel said. “Or the grain or the salt. There is no problem with anything the horses have eaten.”

  “There’s no problem with it by chance or accident.” Sir William shut his eyes. “Someone must be tampering with the stables.”

  Four

  The following morning, Rosalind cut across the grounds from house to stable, ignoring the tidy angles outlined by Sir William’s crushed stone paths.

  I’m tracing the hypotenuse, she realized as her feet slipped over neatly trimmed grass, green and full from spring rains. She could thank her last position as a governess for that bit of geometry. Nathaniel’s “serious” subjects of yesterday’s dinner had brought it to mind again.

  In preparing for each of her posts, she had tipped a slurry of random knowledge into her head. Her current post as Sir William’s secretary was the best of them all, or it had been as long as she could pretend it was what it seemed. That her letters to Aunt Annie were just the correspondence of a young woman to her curious benefactress, and that her real work was organizing Sir William’s papers and occasionally venturing where his wheelchair could not.

  The sick horses were a sign that those days of pretending were over. Rosalind had tossed and fidgeted for hours, waiting for sleep to cover over that knowledge. She had no idea what would come next.

  Her strides grew faster, as though she could slip ahead of this thought, until she finished crossing the grounds at a run.

  Nathaniel Chandler was already waiting at the stable door, swinging a silver watch at the end of a fob. He grinned. “Rosalind Agate, three minutes past the hour. Tut-tut. No gold medal for you.”

  She bent over, tried to catch her breath. The ropy scars on her back tugged, a sharp physical reminder to pull herself together.

  Wincing, she straightened. “It was a gift to you. I suspected my slight lateness would allow you to win a medal instead, which would put you in a marvelous mood.”

  “Indeed not, for it deprived me of your company.” His blue eyes crinkled as he stuffed the watch back into the pocket of his nut-brown waistcoat, trim and practical with a dark coat and snug buckskin breeches. “Or was that too much like a compliment? Forget it. Go away and be even later.”

  “And cause the horses to wait? For shame, sir. If we don’t go in together, we cannot go in at all.”

  Sir William had decided on this security measure the previous evening, after returning to the stable to examine the fourth animal with colic. Until the cause was identified, he stated, no one was to be alone in the stables. Anyone who wished to enter was to find someone else with whom to keep company.

  When they returned to the house, Nathaniel Chandler had requested the aid of Miss Agate the following morning. Sir William, of course, agreed. He seemed to trust his secretary implicitly, a realization that came buttoned to a pang of guilt for Rosalind.

  “Then in we go.” Nathaniel slid one of the great doors to the side, nodding a greeting to the pair of stable boys who stood on indolent watch within the building. “I shall ask you to carry far more than buckets today.”

  “Because I am being punished?”

  “Should you be? Have you done something scandalous?” He shot Rosalind an odd look. “Actually, it’s because you said you wanted to help.”

  She had to shake off the cobwebby remains of her nighttime worries. “Right, yes. Of course. I—yes, I shall do it.”

  “So agreeable.” Another odd look, this time with a knowing smile. “You probably want a bucket of coffee right now, do you not? I know that expression well. You passed a sleepless night, and not the pleasurable sort.”

  That comment woke her up. “I’m all right.” She tried to smile. “Which animal first?”

  He blinked down at her, as though deciding whether to press the matter—then let it drop. “Pale Marauder. He will need the least attention, I believe.”

  After retrieving the now-customary bucket of warm water and cake of salt, they made their way to the cream-colored Thoroughbred’s stall. Sir William’s stables were made up of linked, winding rows, all constructed for the ease of their owner’s navigation in his wheelchair. Everything was the most modern, the most costly, the widest and largest and smoothest and finest.

  The scent of horses—that unmistakable combination of hay and dust and sweat—drew Rosalind back to the stables at the Eight Bells, though she hadn’t seen them for almost ten years. Her parents’ inn was cramped in comparison to Chandler Hall, and the stables were built on the same slight lines. Five stalls could have fit in the space two of Sir William’s stalls occupied, and they never drained quite right. But if sweeping could clean a floor of packed dirt and straw, that one was made clean. New animals arrived at every hour of the day and night, and there was always someone to see to their needs and those of the people who brought them in. Her father had sometimes joked that he’d needed a large family so his children could serve as his staff.

  Maybe it hadn’t been a joke at that. But he had always smiled when he said it.

  Pale Marauder was as little like the job horses for which Rosalind had once cared as the royal princesses were like Rosalind herself. Sinewy and tall, the colt had fine bones that spoke of generations of breeding for speed.

  He also had a fragile temper, as the talented and coddled often did. Today the colt laid back his ears at the sight of them.

  “Don’t be a brat, Roddy.” Nathaniel unlatched the stall door. “Come on, boy. You know us.”

  “He knows you,” Rosalind corrected. “He must not remember me. Or he didn’t like my song for him yesterday. I’ll wait out here until you get the halter on.”

  “Cowardly?” Nathaniel tossed back with a smile.

  “Prudent,” Rosalind replied.

  “He’s all right.” Nathaniel approached the horse slowly, voice calm and low. “If he felt worse, he would be listless. I think his temper is a sign he’s recovering. He might even be hungry. I see he kicked a dent in his feed bucket.”

  “I certainly get in a temper when I haven’t been fed.”

  “Yet he still has some hay.” At the horse’s side now, where a stray hoof could not catch him, Nathaniel laid a hand on the colt’s coat. “You’re hungry, aren’t you? Look, silly fellow. You have food right before you.”

  The horse’s flattened ears pricked up at the sound of this soothing voice. With Nathaniel nudging him forward, he deigned to take a mouthful of hay.

  “He likes your company,” Rosalind said. “He must have been lonely.”

  “Maybe he was at that. I might be in a temper too, if I were three years old and sick and left alone all night.”

  If you only knew. “I could feel that way at far more than three years old.”

  “Let’s see if we can get him to walk again. That will help him to feel more like himself.” He looked around. “Which would be much easier if we had a halter. Which we don’t. Will you fetch one?”

  “Can I, while following your father’s instructions? We wouldn’t be together.”

  “Oh. You’re right.” He gnawed at his lip. “All right, take this handful of hay and hold it out to him. Walk back to the tack room, and with any luck he’ll follow you. Sing that drinking song again—the one you thought I didn’t hear yesterday.”

  “You have the ears of a bat.” She filled her fists with sweet-smelling lucerne. “And what will you do?”

  “I’ll follow him.”

  Had anyone been present to observe, they would surely have laughed at the spectacle thus made: a young woman in a capacious gown of riding-habit green, singing a bawdy song as she walked backward, her outstretched hands full of hay. A colt, dancing on light hooves and stretching out its fine head. At its side, Nathaniel keeping a hand on the horse’s withers and a stream of half-overheard chatter in its ear.

  “That’s right, she’s a chestnut. Chestnut hair. You like chestnuts, don’t you? You’ve met chestnuts before. Be calm, now, Roddy my boy. Just follow…follow. You’ll get the hay soon enough. Almost there
.”

  The colt snapped his teeth, catching some of the hay a mere inch from Rosalind’s fingers. She bit back a yelp. “I am being punished,” she muttered. “You denied it, but I know it’s so.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I denied it,” Nathaniel said with a cheeky grin. “I just reminded you that you wanted to help. Ah, look! Here we are at the tack room, and I am sure this fine pair of stable boys would be glad to fetch Pale Marauder a halter and take him for a bit of exercise.”

  As he explained to the youths what he intended for the care of the horse, Rosalind found herself…confused.

  As Nathaniel had guessed, she had slept badly the night before, her mind turning over the surprising events of the day. What did it mean, so many sick horses all at once? What to do next? She’d had no letters from Aunt Annie in a week. Now she might be sent to Epsom, entirely the wrong part of the country—unless she could convince Sir William that Nathaniel ought to travel without her company.

  Should she fight to stay? How hard could she fight without arousing suspicion? Or ought she to go, if the information she was meant to find had to do with the horses themselves? Whatever you can find from Spain, 1805. Aunt Annie never gave much guidance as Anweledig, but this latest instruction was more vague even than usual.

  Nathaniel finished his conversation with the stable boys, then returned to Rosalind with his fine mouth pulled into a grim line. “Epigram is in better health today, but Jake is bad off.”

  “Jake?” For a moment, Rosalind thought he meant one of the stable boys, but then she understood. “Oh no. He’s one of the sweetest creatures in the stable.”

  “Indeed he is.” Beckoning Rosalind to follow, Nathaniel retrieved their salt and bucket from Pale Marauder’s stall. “My father and a groom are with Jake now, so you and I can check on Sheltie.”

  “But you were a help to Epigram yesterday. Would you not like to see Jake?” The memory of the gelding’s curious muzzle poking over the stall door, friendly and puppy-like, gave her a pang.

  “My father would rather handle the horse’s care himself. I’m sure you noticed yesterday that he doesn’t welcome my help.” He hoisted the filled bucket and held out a hand for the salt.

  “In Epigram’s stall?” At his nod, she said, “It wasn’t the help with Epigram he minded. He was upset when you moved his chair.”

  Nathaniel dropped the block of salt onto his booted foot. “I beg your pardon?”

  Shuffling her feet in the straw bedding of Pale Marauder’s stall, she folded her arms across her chest. Her scarred right elbow protested the angle. “You did not ask before rolling his chair. For you, it would be as if…” She struggled for a comparison. “As if someone picked you up from behind without asking whether you wanted to be lifted.”

  Without removing his gaze from her face, Nathaniel bent to fumble for the brick of salt. “He did not like being helped?”

  “In that way, I think not. He knows best how to move his own chair.”

  She paused, then decided against saying more. It seemed odd that Nathaniel would not know such a thing about his own father. But maybe it was Rosalind’s own understanding that was odd, born of her long recovery from the burns that had nearly taken her life. She had been so helpless for so long that she was determined never to be again.

  When she met Sir William, she had, of habit, rubbed at her scarred elbow before taking up a quill. He had recognized the signs of an old injury, had commented on it. She wondered whether that was the reason he had hired her.

  It certainly wasn’t because of her illustrious references, because for once Aunt Annie’s forger had failed to deliver a product on time. Rosalind had come to Chandler Hall with no references at all—which she didn’t altogether mind. She had used false names for past posts, serving as governesses named Davis and Hall and Burdock, but this time she could go under her own name.

  By the time Rosalind met Lady Crosby—Sir William’s younger daughter Hannah, who had been his secretary before she married—her employment had been secured. All Sir William had asked of Hannah was that she give Rosalind a bit of instruction, since the man who had preceded Rosalind had hared off in a flurry of incompetence and temper.

  No, she said none of this to Nathaniel, keeping a safe silence instead.

  “You must think me an incredible arse,” murmured Nathaniel at last.

  Again, she declined to reply. You meant well was perfectly true, but she had never found the phrase to be comforting.

  He straightened up, handing the salt block back to Rosalind. It felt heavier than before, as though she now held the burden of all their unasked questions.

  He asked just one. “But what kind of arse would I be if I could help my father and I did not?”

  His expression was troubled, and she sensed he referred to much more than the rolling of his father’s wheelchair.

  “I cannot say.” She exited the stall. “Maybe just a different sort of arse. Maybe not an arse at all, if he wanted the help.”

  He followed before latching the stall door behind them both. “Well, there’s no point to discussing it further. Come, let’s see how Sheltie does today.”

  * * *

  Before encountering Sheltie, Rosalind had never been close to a Shetland pony, though she’d had girlhood dreams of riding one around a village fete with a crown of flowers in her hair. Because it was too small to work, a pony seemed a living luxury to one who saw job horses rented out like the rooms at her father’s inn.

  There was no luxury surrounding Sheltie today, though. “She usually shares a stall with any animal that needs calming,” explained Nathaniel as he knelt in the straw piled as padding over the stone floor of a storage room. “With the stable full of Derby horses, well…”

  “There’s no room for her to have her own stall.”

  Not that the pony seemed aware of her undignified surroundings. Her little barrel of a body, all shaggy splatters of brown and white, lay prone as only a horse in the deepest slumber could rest. The long-lashed eyes were closed.

  Without thinking, Rosalind sank to her knees beside the pony and tucked a hip against the swayback of the elderly creature. The pony’s eyes blinked, showing deep brown irises, and her ears flicked forward.

  “She doesn’t seem to be in pain,” Rosalind said.

  “She doesn’t anymore,” agreed Nathaniel. “Thank God for that. Before you arrived, I got a quick report from a stable boy. Sheltie was up all night rolling and twisting as though her intestines were hurting her. This peaceful sleep is a good sign.” He sat down by the little animal’s head. “So is her movement. Look.”

  Eyes now half-open, the pony was shifting to press closer to Rosalind. “She’s herding me.” A smile spread across her features.

  “She’s comforting you. You’re part of her stable now.”

  The simple sincerity of his words, of the pony’s actions, made her heart squeeze. Rubbing her fingers over the salt brick, she reached over Sheltie’s large head to dab salt on the pony’s muzzle. “She’s so small.” Unlike the leggy Thoroughbreds, the pony had short and sturdy limbs. Would she reach Rosalind’s waist? She would be a bit taller, maybe.

  “Poor old girl.” Nathaniel, seated by Sheltie’s head, dribbled water over the pony’s mouth. “You’re tired, aren’t you? You passed a bad night.”

  For a moment, Rosalind thought he was speaking to her. Then Sheltie sighed and put forth her tongue to catch the drops.

  “Good girl.” More water. “Wait, Rosalind—no more salt just yet. Let’s see how much water she’ll take first.”

  Rosalind searched for something helpful to do. “Would she like to be groomed?”

  “I’m sure she would.”

  Rosalind found a currycomb and returned to her spot behind the pony’s withers. She began with the mane, teasing tangles and straw from the coarse chestnut hair. It was almost the same color as Rosalind’s own. Chestnut, Nathaniel had called her to Pale Marauder. “How old is Sheltie?”

  “She’s at
least twenty years old. She’s been trotting in and out of Chandler stalls since I was a boy.”

  The image made her smile. “Like a hound.”

  “In a way. Some stables keep dogs or goats. We keep Sheltie. She’s steady enough to calm any nervous horse. The Thoroughbreds like having her around.” Drop. Drop. More water. “My younger sister and I used to find our way to Sheltie’s side too. Hannah, now Lady Crosby—you’ve met her. She was only ten when our mother died. The months after that were…”

  “Difficult,” suggested Rosalind.

  “Yes. Very.” The light was low in this corner of the stable, and Rosalind couldn’t read the expression on Nathaniel’s face. “If I couldn’t find Hannah in the house, I’d always look for her in the stable. Once I found her asleep in a pile of hay she had pitched down from the hayloft. Sheltie was standing right next to her. Not eating the hay; just keeping vigil.”

  The simple memory, sweet and everyday, stood in contrast to the Eight Bells. Horses there were for working, not affection. Rosalind had never had the opportunity to love an animal as much as the Chandler children loved Sheltie.

  But instead, the Agates had a mother and father to give them love. Busy though her parents had been, they smiled. They gave hugs. They did their best.

  Nathaniel had gone silent for a moment. “Well, now you know a great deal more than you wanted to, I’d guess. You have the sort of face people want to talk to, Rosalind Agate.”

  She looked up, a blush heating her cheeks. “What sort of face is that?”

  “What I just said. It’s the…” His hands flailed shapes in the air, then settled. “Devil take it, I don’t know. You look as though you don’t mind listening.”

  “I don’t. Though I hoped you’d say it was my charm or persuasive ability or something like that.”

  “No compliments, remember?”

  The treacherous blush deepened. “No false ones,” Rosalind said primly.

  Slowly, his gaze swept over her from top to toe, from unpinned hair to her folded-up legs beside the back of the drowsy pony. “In that case,” he said, “I like telling you things.”