Lovely and spirited, he thought, as he rode slowly back to the house. She was no simpering miss, for sure: her eyes could dance with mischief and she was capable of the sharpest retort. When she’d thought herself being forced into an unwanted liaison, she had fought hard and he could not blame her; he knew how it felt to do battle with an intransigent family. Once she’d realised that she was safe from the threat of matrimony, she had relaxed into a different girl. He had enjoyed her company and found himself wanting more. But he should nip in the bud any interest she aroused, for, spirited though she was, she was also young and inexperienced and no match for a worn lover such as he.
He wondered where the years had gone since Julia had left him humiliated. Years spent in every kind of sport, in travelling, drinking, gambling, in careless affairs. Not one of those so-called friendships had had meaning. And here he was at thirty, still escaping the noose his sisters intended, still unable to put the past behind him. He shook himself, trying to banish the invisible shroud that had settled around his shoulders. He must make for Merry’s as soon as he was able. He was missing all the fun.
Or was he? The gathering would be like every other exclusive house party he had attended in the past eight years: he would play the congenial guest among the men, the attentive swain with the ladies, and return to London as bored as he’d arrived. The attraction of Hampshire did not seem quite so strong now and he fell to wondering why. Was it the girl? Had she got under his skin without his realising it? She was a beauty beneath that nonsense of last night, and she intrigued him. This business about living with her brother—but that would die a natural death when either or both decided on marriage. There was more, though. He sensed an unease that lay just below the surface of life at Verney Towers. The house was spartan, lacking all comfort, lonely, too. Lucinda appeared to live a solitary life, her uncle enclosed in his own small world and her brother nowhere to be seen. There had been something in her manner when she spoke of her twin that suggested trouble. That made him curious.
The horses in the stable block whinnied softly as they picked up the sound of his approach. Only a single lad was at work, busily washing down the cobbled yard.
‘Did you enjoy your ride, my lord?’ he asked cheekily.
‘No, I did not. There was never a more stubborn beast.’ He slipped from the saddle.
‘He has his notions, like his master.’
Jack thought it best not to enquire too closely of the boy’s meaning. He pulled a stray cigarillo from his inside pocket and lit it with a sigh of contentment. The smoke curled upwards in the clear air and he stood smoking for a while, leaning against the warm wood of the stable shutter. As always, it helped him think. What had possessed Francis Devereux to invite him when he must have known that his niece would react with animosity? Did the man genuinely believe in a foolish promise made years ago, or was his invitation more practical than that?
Lucinda Lacey had never been to London, it seemed, never enjoyed a Season or had the chance of finding a suitable husband. Was the baronet hoping to marry his niece off with the least amount of trouble? If so, the man must have been delighted to receive Georgina’s letter. Jack cursed his elder sister for her interference. She had always been too keen on minding other people’s business and Hester had happily joined forces with her, chorusing together that their brother must marry, and marry soon, to ensure the succession. As very young women they had dutifully agreed to the liaisons arranged for them and had little understanding of their brother’s revulsion at being bound to a woman he hardly knew. Now Maria had joined the fray. She had taxed him for showing no interest in the young women he’d met or at least not the kind of interest that led to wedlock. What could be better, she had said in her soft, die-away voice, than to bring two old families together by choosing this young, unspoilt girl who had known nothing but a quiet country life? What indeed!
The lad had almost finished rubbing down Sir Francis’s mount and Jack sauntered towards him, gesturing at the row of partitions. ‘You run a small stable.’
‘Three horses, sir. Enough for me.’
‘Three? Where is the third?’
‘She’s a little shy.’
Jack craned his neck and glimpsed a half-hidden stable at the far end of the long building. He walked towards it. An odd circular wooden door appeared to have been cut into its farthest whitewashed wall.
‘Where does that strange-shaped door lead?’
‘I don’t rightly know, sir. It’s been locked since I started here.’
But it was the horse that interested Jack. He would have liked a choice of mount this morning, but had been given none. ‘What’s her name?’
‘That’ll be Red. She’s a chestnut, a real beauty. Belongs to Mr Rupert.’
Rupert Lacey’s name seemed inseparable from this morning’s conversations.
‘Mr Rupert is Miss Lucinda’s brother, I collect.’
‘Yessir.’
‘He lives here?’
‘Not at the moment ‘e don’t,’ the boy said carefully.
Jack knew better than to press a servant who clearly did not wish to talk, so he said nothing, but walked slowly towards the far stable and leaned over its open door.
The boy was right. The horse was a beauty. A tall chestnut mare, coat gleaming even in the weak October sun, and a soft white blaze down the centre of her forehead lending her the look of a magical creature.
A white blaze. Something rattled his memory. A clearing, a white diamond-shape blaze on a chestnut horse, moonlight silvering horse and rider. Surely not! This could not be the highwayman’s mount! Yet when he looked closer, he was almost certain that she was. His mind began to race, searching for an explanation. Had the mare been stolen in order to perpetrate the crime? But how do you steal a horse from private land, ride her like the wind, then restore her to the stables without anyone being the wiser? It was hardly possible; it was more likely a member of the household—a servant, a groom, perhaps? But who would have been so audacious and why?
He turned to the boy. ‘How many grooms work here?’
‘Jus’ me, sir, with these horses. Dexter’s the coachman, but the carriage horses are kept in a different block t’other side of the house and ‘e sleeps above their stable.’
So if a servant had staged a brazen attack, it would have had to be this boy and that seemed impossible. He gave the lad a small coin for his time and began to walk towards the house, eager to regain his room and think through the conundrum. As he walked, he extinguished his cigarillo and buried the butt in his pocket. His fingers touched something soft, a handkerchief, no—he brought the article into the light—a piece of lace torn from the ruffle of a shirt.
He stood stock still, his brain once more churning. It was a man’s shirt, but a gentleman’s, not a stable boy’s. A gentleman from Verney Towers. Apart from Francis Devereux, there wasn’t one. Did Lucinda have a secret admirer who took to the road for fun? He’d said to Fielding that he thought their ambush had been a jape gone wrong. But she had been adamant that no lover existed and, truth to tell, he could not imagine a swashbuckling youth as her admirer. She was too considered, too restrained, in her dealings with men. He remembered the way she had pulled away when he had touched her. Her wrist, her left wrist! She had winced from an injury, from pulling a recalcitrant bush from the ground, she’d said. But was that a cock-and-bull
