The Sport of Baronets Page 8

  His calm made her want to shriek. “I have not been used to thinking about what I want. And I have not been accustomed to getting angry. But I am angry now, Mister Crosby, because you want to take away my colt. You know what he represents to me.”

  Bart’s jaw clenched, and his dark eyes looked like those of a stranger. “But you must realize what else he represents, Miss Chandler. In trying to cheat each other, our parents have lamed one horse and could easily have maimed another. There’s no good here. They have cheated us too.”

  “Just because they’ve cheated us doesn’t mean you have to cheat me. I don’t need the money nearly as much as I need what I chose to buy with it.” Something of her own. Her choice, her freedom, her power.

  She wanted to fall on her knees, to beg him not to fail her. She wanted to strike out like an unbroken colt, because she knew he would fail her all the same.

  He did. He turned away from her to exchange quiet words with Morrow, who had remained carefully still during the heated conversation passing around him. The groom slid from Golden Barb’s back and—traitor, traitor—handed Bart up into the saddle instead.

  Bart spoke down to her. “Even so, I shall find a way to pay you back. But for now, I need to take Golden Barb home. Enough harm has been done for today.”

  Harm, he called it. He had said he’d abide by any word she cared to use, had he not? “I should instead call it a betrayal.”

  For a moment, a stricken look crossed his features—and then, recalled to himself, a smooth calm returned. He stuffed the swinging watch back into his waistcoat pocket and buttoned the loose, drab coat over the red satin. “As you wish.”

  With an easy pressure of his knees, he clucked Golden Barb into motion, and they cut back through the crowd in the direction of Sothern.

  ***

  Sothern looked as though he wanted to speak protests by the barrowful, but Bart’s dark look was sufficient to quiet the groom. Together they rigged a line to allow Bart to lead his gelding home while riding Golden Barb. “I shall have your tack returned as soon as it’s been cleaned,” Bart assured the Chandler groom.

  Somehow he and the other groom, Morrow, would have to return to Chandler Hall one horse short. They would manage. No one in Newmarket lived far from the racecourses.

  Before Bart rode off, he looked back in the direction from which he’d come. Hannah still stood there with Morrow. One of the only feminine figures at the track this morning, she looked trim and lovely—and positively infuriated. As Bart watched, she batted at the plumes on her cap, then tugged free the long feathers and cast them to the turf.

  He turned away, giving a quick pat to Golden Barb’s dark-dyed neck. “Let’s go, boy.”

  The short ride home was made longer by the need to keep both horses at the same pace, a walk. And then the overhanging clouds began to weep, a light shower of tears that made Golden Barb shiver and bob his proud head in irritation.

  By the time they reached the Crosby stables, dark dye was beading on his coat. Bart called for aid, and Jack and the still-bandaged Russ rushed to help him unsaddle the pair. While one boy fetched feed and fresh water, Bart handed over the gelding to the other and rubbed down Golden Barb. With each swipe of the cloth, a bit more dye came off, though it might be weeks before it was all gone and he looked like his bright bay self again.

  As a quiet trio, Bart and the stable boys made sure the tack was clean, that the horses were dried and curried and fed. Bart never left the stable until his horse was happy, no matter how he felt himself.

  He did not want to think about how he felt. He did not want to think at all.

  As he passed down the row of stalls, water dripping from the brim of his ruined hat, the chestnut Hannah Chandler had threatened to buy poked forth his head and whickered. Good-tempered, this entire bloodline. “I found your son today, Nottingham.”

  The old horse should have been stabled at the family’s stud farm. But the other stallions had been sold, the broodmares sold, the buildings closed up.

  So quickly, it had all been dismantled. It would be the work of years to rebuild.

  Indifferent to these concerns, the chestnut nuzzled Bart’s coat.

  “No apples with me this time.” By way of apology, Bart scratched behind the horse’s ears until the old fellow’s head drooped with contentment.

  There was no itch someone could scratch for Bart, nothing that could make him forget. Hannah, crushing her jaunty plumes into the dirt. Hannah’s voice, accusing him of betrayal after it had so recently cried out in pleasure.

  A week ago, he had not known the sound of her voice. Now he had come to crave its every incisive word. He longed for the sight of her. The touch of her.

  Once he let himself start wanting things, he wanted far too much. It was not wise. He needed to pay attention to what he had instead of what he wanted.

  Or what he had lost.

  This colt was meant to carry us both away, she had once said. But only one person could ride Golden Barb. Only one of them could take him home.

  And he belonged to Bart, for God’s sake. If someone gave a person—or a relative—money to buy his home, unsolicited, that did not make it theirs. A thing could not be bought if it was not for sale. The Chandlers, with all their money, had forgotten this simple fact.

  No, someone had wrongly taken his colt, had dyed it to deceive bettors and owners and jockeys. When theft married deceit, how could it be wrong to undo both at once?

  He thought he and Hannah could close the rift between their families, but any attempt they made could only be temporary. One never knew when it would yawn open again beneath their feet.

  There was someone, he knew, who had far more to do with this new rift than she had admitted. Rarely did she give a helpful answer to a question. By now, though, Bart thought he had enough answers to ensure she was honest with him about the missing pieces of this puzzle.

  “Carry on with your work,” he told the stable boys. “If the horse’s behavior shows any change, let me know at once. I shall be in the house, speaking with Lady Crosby.”

  ***

  As usual, the first thing Bart did upon entering his mother’s bedchamber was cross to the window and raise the sash.

  He had paused only long enough to exchange his wet coat and boots for dry ones, and the rain that had dogged his journey home still fell. Droplets spattered the sash, bringing in a damp breeze and the faint scent of wet earth.

  Propped with pillows against the head of her bed, Lady Crosby looked up from the book in her lap. “Bartlett.” She set aside the quizzing glass she now used to assist her reading.

  He dove right in. “How much of Hannah Chandler’s money did you give Northrup?”

  The left side of her face sagged and stilled like the right.

  “Who injured Bridget’s Brown, Lady Crosby?”

  “No one,” she croaked. “Bartlett, I am ill—”

  “You are only ill when you choose to be. When you handle business—whether or not it’s legal for you to do so—you seem healthy and resourceful enough.”

  For a long moment, mother and son stared at each other. She was the first to look away. “I need my vinaigrette.”

  Striding to her bedside, he found the silver case and flipped it open for her. She took a brief, sharp breath, then nodded. Done.

  Snapping the case closed again, Bart hesitated, then sat upon the edge of the bed. “I know some of the answers,” he said more quietly, “but I need the rest. I think you have them.”

  Today her dressing gown was of red satin. She tugged at its collar and gave Bart one of her half-smiles. “Your waistcoat. We match, Bartlett.”

  “We don’t match.” He waited again. He would wait until he got the truth, no matter how long it took.

  “No one hurt Bridget’s Brown.” She picked at her collar, looking toward the open window against which gray raindrops pattered. “He developed a crack in one hoof. Such things happen sometime
s.” The slur in her words was thicker than usual, and Bart struggled to make out these quiet words.

  “When he did, Sir William Chandler approached me about buying Golden Barb. He had lost his best hope of winning the Two Thousand Guineas, so he wanted to take mine. He said he would forgive the rest of my debts in exchange. I said no.”

  “It is too much, probably, to hope that you said no because you recalled that Golden Barb was mine.” Bart stood, pacing away to fix his gaze on a portrait on the wall. The Crosby children: Bart and his three older sisters, painted two decades earlier. They had married years ago and had moved to different parts of England, never to return. Not even when Lady Crosby suffered her seizure. Not even when Bart discovered there was almost nothing left of the family legacy.

  Hannah wasn’t the only one who felt trapped sometimes.

  “I said no because he wanted me to say yes.” The voice was as quiet as the raindrops. “And then, when I thought of a way to hurt him…”

  “Then you said yes after all, accepting ready cash in place of forgiveness of a much larger debt. You did not think he would become suspicious?” Bart’s painted sisters—three look-alike brunettes of varying age—regarded him with pity. He turned away, back to the dowager in red satin. She wore much the same expression.

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Bart muttered. Lady Crosby would give up a large future gain for ready money in the present. Gambling was an illness with her. He knew that, and evidently Sir William knew that too and was willing to profit from it.

  Bart wanted to wash his hands of them both. “So you hired Northrup to carry out your plan. What was it? To hide my horse in Sir William’s stable in disguise as Bridget’s Brown? Sir William would not race a horse he thought was injured.”

  A crooked shrug. “He’s dotty about injured horses. Didn’t give up on Bridget’s Brown. Hid the news about his hoof and kept Sothern caring for the colt all the time.”

  The pieces fit together with diabolical sense. “When Northrup substituted Golden Barb in disguise, he also injured Sothern, which kept the groom away from the Chandler stables. So the other stable hands carried on with their work, exercising a horse they thought to be healthy.”

  “And Sir William thought his fine care had worked.”

  “Then what? You were going to cry fraud and reclaim Golden Barb at the last moment before the race? After betting a great deal on him at long odds, I suppose.”

  “I thought you would cry fraud,” she said. “I overestimated you.”

  “Underestimated me, rather. I’ve no taste for your gambling. For these bitter tricks.” One last glance up at the boy in the painting. He was dark like his sisters; unlike them, he bore a friendly smile on his young features. The fool, to be so trusting. “Why was it so important to hurt him? Why dispense with family loyalty just to triumph over Sir William when you could ignore him and still win?”

  Her head sank back against the pillows, and she stared up at the ceiling. Facing her good side in profile, Bart could almost forget she had been stricken and ill. “I could never hurt him enough. Hurting him is family loyalty.”

  The anger in her voice was bewildering. Bart had always regarded the Chandlers with an impersonal resentment, but this was deep and bitter. “You would hurt us just to hurt him?”

  “You do not have all the answers you thought you did.” She turned her face away, toward the wall.

  Our association is at an end… Bart recalled the short letter Hannah had found. A realization dawned on him, so unexpected that he had to place a hand on the wall to steady himself. “You loved him once, didn’t you? You loved him, and he—he broke off the association, and now you hate him.”

  Lady Crosby was quiet so long that Bart suspected she was pretending to be asleep. He was just drawing forward to retrieve her vinaigrette when she spoke. Slowly. As clearly as he had heard her speak since the apoplexy struck. “Sir William and I…are more alike… than you know. That’s why…we began our…association. And why it ended a short while later.”

  “And you cannot forgive him.” With a sigh, he sat on the edge of the bed again. “Are you angry at him for being a better businessman than you? For holding fast to his money instead of gambling it away?”

  “I do not think I am a businessman at all.” Her laugh rasped forth.

  Bart made an impatient sound. “You know what I mean.”

  She turned to face him again. “I don’t want to forgive.” Her mouth sagged with more than just paralysis.

  For sixteen years, she had been in the habit of hating, with all the power of love turned thwarted and sick.

  “Did Father know you had betrayed him? Before he died?”

  The small shake of her head was a relief. One fewer heart that had been hurt by the strange, tangled history of the Crosbys and Chandlers.

  No one knew anymore how the feud had started decades before. With two ambitious hearts, maybe, each wanting the same thing. Each desperate to get it at any price. There was nothing as everyday or as powerful as simple selfishness.

  Well, not much that was as powerful.

  He should have sent Golden Barb back with Hannah. You know what he represents to me. He did know, but he had still ridden away. Angry, so angry. This was how feuds began, and how they continued.

  He wondered how they could be stopped. He was determined to find out.

  Sifting through the bedside bottles, he retrieved the vinaigrette that would inevitably be required. “I intend to assume all the responsibilities for the family property, as allowed by my title. You are entitled to an income proportional to that of the estate, but you will have no financial authority beyond that.” As he opened the silver lid, the smell of vinegar pinched at him. “I hope your gambling days are behind you.”

  Shoving herself over in the bed, she batted the vinaigrette from his hand and it fell to the carpet. “You want to put me in a cage. As though my own body hasn’t failed me enough.”

  “I don’t see any failure before me. I see a woman who could have become helpless, and who taught herself to speak again and use her left arm. I see a mind as sharp as ever, as full of knowledge. You could do much good. We still have horses to train and to race.”

  She lifted the claw of her right hand. “Look at me. I can’t.”

  And Bart played his trump card. “Sir William Chandler spends time in his stables every day. If he can go about his business using a wheelchair, why cannot you?”

  “Wheelchair,” she sniffed. “Nonsense. I could walk if something helped me to balance.”

  “Perhaps one day you can push him around. Until that day, it would be my honor to help you in a chair of your own.”

  “Sooner than you think, Bartlett,” she said. “If you’re pitting me against Sir William, maybe I underestimated you after all. We should have all done this a long time ago.”

  “Not pitting against.” He rolled his eyes. “Comparing. To become stronger.”

  Peace between her and the Chandlers might be a process of years, if it happened at all. But Bart had a different idea of family loyalty than she did, and it was one that bridged rather than broke.

  It was one that included apologies and balances. Old letters and new notes. Newmarket and London. Horseback rides and the promise of a waltz.

  Chandlers as well as Crosbys.

  Eagerness drove him to his feet. Something hard beneath his boot made him check his balance: the silver vinaigrette, now flat as his chronometer. He picked it up, recoiling at the strong odor of vinegar, and replaced it on the bedside table.

  “Horrid piece.” The dowager grimaced. “Throw it out the window.”

  The silver made it valuable, so Bart left it in place—though diplomatically, he covered it with a handkerchief to mask the sharp scent. “I’ll let you rest now. Would you like the window closed, Mother?”

  “Not Lady Crosby?” Her half-smile trembled.

  “Not anymore.” He crossed to the window, savoring the clea
n drizzle. “I was angry at you, you know. For your gambling. I lost trust in you, and I don’t know if you ever had any trust in me.” Pulling in a rain-cool breath, he added, “I hope you will someday, because I deserve it. I am your son, but I am also the head of this family. I expect you to respect that. No more gambling with our futures, Mother. Our family cannot afford it, for more reasons than the economic.”

  “And you want someone else to be Lady Crosby.”

  “See there? I knew your mind was as sharp as ever.”

  “I shall try not to hate her. For your sake.”

  “I’ll take that as a starting point. Though I hope one day you will love her for her own.” If he had not broken too much between himself and Hannah.

  Even so, there was hope. For if love could turn to hate, surely hate could turn to love.

  Left hand picking absently at the trim of her red satin dressing gown, the dowager studied him. “Your waistcoat is a horror.”

  “We match,” he replied, and she laughed.

  “Leave the window open, please, Bartlett. I like the breeze.”

  With a smile, he bowed his way out. She was right: they should have had that conversation a long time ago.

  He strode in the direction of the stables, one more conversation on his mind.

  Chapter 8

  Hannah returned home in early afternoon, tired and cold and hungry and dismal.

  After sending Morrow home on foot, she and Sothern had ridden through a chill drizzle to the lands of Sir Jubal Thompson. She knew the knight by reputation, though she had never met him in person, and she was initially relieved to find him both at home and inclined to believe her tale about a misplaced Thoroughbred.

  “Now, now. You’re not to blame yourself, Miss Chandler, when something like this happens.” Holding a great black umbrella over her head as he led her to the stable holding his equine visitor, he addressed Hannah in the same tone one might speak to a nervous maiden who had put too much sugar in a caller’s tea. “Your father’s right hand; that’s a great honor for you. I’m sure you’re doing the best you can. This is a gentleman’s sport, and it doesn’t come naturally to others.”