by Joan Wolf
I was so surprised by the change of subject that I just stared at him.
“Well?” he said a little irritably.
“The bulk of my clients are children, but I occasionally teach adults as well. In fact, Mr. Watson is the second gentleman student I have had this spring.”
Savile gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. “And did this other ‘gentleman’ also drive over by day, or did he stay in the house here?”
I was beginning to see where he was going, and I felt myself beginning to get angry. “He was from London, so he stayed in the house.”
“And how old was this ‘gentleman’?”
“He was about my age,” I said. “Not that this is any of your business.”
“Perhaps not, but I think I know more of the world than you do, Gail, and I tell you now that you are asking for trouble if you continue to have strange men staying in your house.”
I felt the blood rush into my cheeks. “These ‘strange men’ are here to learn how to ride a horse, my lord, not for any unsavory reason. I can assure you that nothing happens under this roof that is not entirely proper.”
“I am quite certain that your intentions are entirely proper,” he said grimly. “I am not quite so certain about the intentions of the men you might bring in.”
I stared at him incredulously. “Are you implying that one of my clients might attack me, my lord?”
“It has been known to happen,” he replied, “and you are virtually unprotected, Gail. The Macintoshes live downstairs, and Mr. Macintosh is totally lame. Nicky is a child.” He was looking more and more grim. “It is not a good idea to have strange men staying in this house with you,” he repeated.
I hated to admit it, but he was beginning to frighten me. Since Tommy’s death I had never had anyone but women and children to stay in the house.
“Nonsense,” I said bravely. “Mr. Curtis was a perfect gentleman the whole time he was here.”
This was true, but I remembered the way I had caught him looking at me sometimes, and I bit my lip.
“Isn’t there an inn in town where your male clients could stay?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing that would be suitable.”
“Well, think about what I have said.” He looked at me, his eyes very golden. “And consider any male over the age of seventeen dangerous.”
I leaned back in my chair, crossed my arms, and regarded him speculatively. “I am just wondering if I ought to send you to sleep in the stable,” I said.
He smiled, and I felt my breath begin to hurry in a way that was definitely frightening.
“Ah,” he said. “Every rule has an exception, and I am yours.”
But you are not mine, my lord, I thought. And you never will be.
Surely it could not be regret that I was feeling?
I stood up. “I will think about what you have said, Savile. In the meantime, I am going to make my usual evening check on the horses, and then I am going to bed.”
He stood up. “I’ll come to the stable with you.”
“That is not necessary, my lord,” I said. “I can assure you I shall be perfectly safe walking down to my stable. I do it every night.”
“I could use the air,” he said blandly.
Together we went to the front door, where I slipped an old hunting jacket of Tommy’s over my short-sleeved dress and picked up a lantern. Outside, the April night was dark and still. I looked up at the brilliant star-filled sky and said softly, “I wonder where your brother-in-law’s comet is.”
“Oh, it cannot be seen in our own skies,” Savile replied in a voice as quiet as mine had been. “It’s somewhere way out in space. Gervase found it with a telescope.”
Savile carried the lantern, and when the ponies in the paddock saw us coming they nickered and came to the gate. We entered the stable and Savile hung the lantern on a hook on the wall so that we could see. Sampson and Noah were already lying down and the rest of the horses were drowsing and looked at us with heavy eyes.
All of the horses, mine as well as Savile’s, were wearing rugs, and I decided that the night was warm enough to leave the windows open. Savile helped me to change the water buckets, substituting the full ones in front of the stalls for the half-full ones inside. Then he collected the lantern and we moved to the door of the stable.
We paused again as we came out into the night, standing close together under the great dome of starlit sky. I felt a shiver pass through me and a flame licked under my skin and part of me knew that I had to defend myself against this man and part of me didn’t want to.
I drew in a long, unsteady breath. “We had better get back to the house,” I said. “We want to make an early start in the morning.”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice sounded oddly faraway. He began to walk forward and I followed.
Chapter Ten
Our trip to Savile’s stud farm was accomplished fairly smoothly. Grove and I rode a little behind the earl’s curricle, with Grove and his placid Domino acting as a barrier between my mare and the middle of the road. In general, Maria behaved very well. She shied once or twice at what she obviously thought was a horse-eating vehicle, but with the curricle in front of her and Domino beside her she managed to feel sufficiently protected from menace and soon quieted down.
It had rained lightly the night before, so the road was neither muddy nor dusty. The traffic was light, the April sky was brilliantly blue, and the sun was warm on my head and my back. I rode beside John Grove and watched the back of the earl’s shapely golden head as he patiently answered what appeared to be an endless stream of questions from my ever-curious son.
At Epsom we turned off the highway and began to travel westward along a smaller country road. Epsom, the home of the Derby, is one of England’s most famous racecourses, and race meetings were held there during both the spring and the fall. A number of stud farms were to be found within the vicinity of Epsom, as there were within the vicinity of any of England’s larger courses. The closer a farm was to a course, the less distance an owner had to walk his horse to get there.
Unlike Newmarket, which was a preserve of the aristocracy, Epsom attracted racegoers of all classes. During an Epsom race meeting, thousands of spectators would flood the grounds, and dicing, gaming, wrestling, and boxing all vied with the horses for attention. I had never before been to a race meeting at Epsom, but Tommy had gone once with his father and had told me all about it.
The road we had turned onto was far prettier than the highway. I regarded with pleasure the brilliantly colored spring wildflowers that grew along its wide, grassy margins: blue speedwell, yellow cowslips, pale primroses, and in some places I even saw early marsh orchids. Birds sang loudly from the thickets and hedgerows, and fields of wheat stretched away on either side of the road, flowing over the gently rolling landscape.
“Rayleigh is only a few miles farther along this road, ma’am,” Grove said. “Close enough to walk the horses to the racecourse the morning they are due to run.” He grinned his gap-toothed grin at me. “We like to keep ’em safe at home for as long as we can. Less chance that way of ’em being nobbled.”
As I knew that disabling the favorite was an all-too-common practice of English bookmakers, this information did not shock me.
The hedgerows and fields on our left soon gave way to a six-foot-high iron fence. I could not see what was behind the fence due to the tall elm trees that were planted all along its inside perimeter.
“This is it now,” Grove said, waving his hand toward the fence. “Rayleigh.”
We followed the fence for another mile before we reached a great iron gate. It swung open for the earl, and Grove and I followed the curricle as it moved slowly along a wide, gently descending graveled avenue that was lined and shaded with tall elms. Then the carriage in front of us drove out from under the trees into the full sunshine, and we followed.
My breath caught in my throat, the scene before me was so beautiful. On either side of the path, the t
hick, rich, shin-high grass waved gently in a sea of ripe spring green. Two pastures, so large that the wooden fences disappeared from view, enclosed small herds of mares and foals. The sun shone brightly on black, gray, bay, and chestnut coats. Some of the mares were folded up in the grass, in that amusing doglike way horses have, and one chestnut mare was actually stretched right out on her side, her legs stuck out in front of her, looking for all the world as if she were dead. Long-legged foals played baby games, romping and squealing and batting their tiny hooves at one another, while their mothers looked on with calm eyes, knowing that as soon as the first hunger pang struck, baby would be back.
The road went across a small stone bridge that forded a crystal-clear stream that ran through the pastures and afforded the horses their water.
I sighed.
Grove grunted, as if he perfectly understood my feelings.
Nicky turned around on the curricle seat and called to me, “His lordship says that the yearlings are in another pasture, Mama. And the stallions have their own paddocks all to themselves.”
I nodded and waved to indicate that I had heard him.
The mares’ pasture fences that fronted the road ended as the path began to rise, and once we reached the top of the small hill I saw the rest of the farm spread out before me. The stable buildings looked as if they were at least another mile away, and as we descended the hill a new fenced pasture appeared to the left of the road.
“This is where we keep the mares who haven’t foaled yet,” Grove informed me. I looked at the half dozen or so heavily pregnant mares standing together under a clump of trees, lazily switching their tails. The glossiness of their coats told me that they were groomed regularly.
“They look well cared for,” I commented to Grove.
“And so they should be,” the groom retorted. “The foals those mares are carrying are worth a small fortune each.”
Maria, meanwhile, was becoming very excited by the sight, smell, and sound of all these strange horses. I had to keep patting her neck and talking to her, and if she hadn’t been tired from her four-hour journey, she might have given me serious difficulties.
I was glad when we finally arrived at the stable yard and I could dismount.
“She did very well,” the earl commented, as he lifted Nicky down from the curricle seat.
Maria snorted a few times and began to prance in place. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air.
A small, gray-haired man with amazingly bowed legs had come up to us. Savile said, “Mrs. Saunders, allow me to introduce my trainer, Fred Hall.”
“How do you do,” I said.
He nodded at me. “Fine-looking mare ye’ve got there, Mrs. Saunders. Nice deep chest. She looks as if she’d be a stayer.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hall,” I said.
“As you can see, Hall, she is somewhat excited,” Savile said.
“Aye, my lord. She probably smells the stallions.” He looked at me. “Their paddocks ’re on t’other side of the stables, ma’am, and the breezes is coming our way.”
Maria certainly smelled something, because she tried to rear. I gave a sharp tug to the rein I was holding and said, “No!”
“I’ll put her out by herself, ma’am,” Hall suggested. “That way she can buck and rear to her heart’s content. When she gets tired she’ll begin to eat grass and quiet down.”
This seemed to me an excellent suggestion.
Once Maria was safely behind a paddock fence, with a groom to watch her to make sure she didn’t do anything foolish, Savile lifted me up to the curricle seat along with Nicky and we drove toward the house.
It was as different from Savile’s main residence as it could possibly have been. Instead of authentic medieval castle walls surrounding a Jacobean jewel, Rayleigh was a simple red brick gentleman’s house of the sort that could be seen all over England. It was three stories high with wood trim and a central pediment, and the third story was lit by windows in the roof. The shrubbery that surrounded it was simple as well, in harmony with the rolling grasslands of the stud farm.
I guessed immediately that this was a very masculine house. Its situation on a stud farm and its proximity to the race track would lend themselves to gatherings of men. I imagined late nights of drinking and of reckless wagers being placed on horses. I pictured dark colors and comfortable leather chairs and pictures of horses and dogs all over the walls.
The servant who came to take the curricle from Savile was not wearing livery, and my suspicions about the more casual character of the house deepened.
Savile lifted me down from the high seat of the curricle, and the feel of his hands on my waist seemed to burn right through my riding jacket. I didn’t look at him as I walked beside him and Nicky through the front door of Rayleigh House.
It was not at all what I had expected. We walked through the ivory paneled hall and into a small parlor, where the walls were covered with faded pink damask, the furniture was covered with faded crimson silk, and family portraits adorned the walls. This room did not look dilapidated or decayed, however, as my rooms at Deepcote did. This room was muted and soothing and beautiful.
Even at his stud farm, the Earl of Savile lived in elegance.
He said, “I will have my housekeeper show you and Nicky to your rooms, where I am sure you would like to freshen up. Luncheon will be served in half an hour, and then, if you like, I will take you to see the stallions.”
“That sounds very nice, my lord,” I said.
Nicky’s hand crept into mine.
Savile saw it and gave him a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, your room will be right next to your mother’s, Nicky.”
“It’s a very big house, my lord,” Nicky said in a small voice.
“Oh, it’s not as big as it looks,” Savile said carelessly. “You’ll soon find your way around without any trouble at all.”
If Nicky thought this house was big, I wondered what he would say if he ever saw Savile Castle.
At that moment a middle-aged woman with gray-blond hair pinned neatly into a bun came into the room.
“Ah,” said Savile, “here is Mrs. Abbot now. Mrs. Abbot, I want you to take Mrs. Saunders and her son, Nicholas, to their rooms. And show them where the dining room is, will you, before you take them upstairs.”
“Certainly, my lord,” said Mrs. Abbot. “Will you follow me, ma’am?”
With Nicky’s fingers still clinging to mine, we trailed out of the parlor after the housekeeper.
The dining room was paneled in late seventeenth-century wood, and several extremely large paintings of ships at sea looked down on the long, rectangular mahogany table at which we sat.
“In a house like this I would expect to see pictures of horses, not boats,” I commented as I took my place next to Savile.
He grinned at me. “My grandmother had the ship paintings hung. She was brought up on the south coast and said that if she had to endure hours of talk about horses, she demanded to have something to look at that she loved.”
I reminded myself never again to say anything that might cause him to smile at me.
Nicky said politely, “They are very nice pictures, my lord.”
We had a nice, civilized luncheon of soup and cold meat, then Savile took us to see his stallions. I had told Nicky upon my return from Savile Castle in the winter that I had had an opportunity to look at only one of Savile’s stallions, and that he was going to let us take our choice from the three he owned.
The stallions were kept in three separate, strongly fenced paddocks, and I watched as the one nearest to us, a tall, red-gold chestnut with a white blaze on his face, trotted around the railings of a white-painted wooden fence, his mane and tail flying, the muscles under his gleaming coat moving visibly in the bright afternoon sun.
“He’s magnificent,” I said.
“That’s Rajah,” Savile said. “He’s the youngest of the three and consequently the least proven as a stud. He had a splendid record on the racecourse, tho
ugh—he won the Guineas at Newmarket two years ago.”
“What is the Guineas, sir?” Nicky asked.
I saw a flicker of surprise cross the earl’s face at Nicky’s betrayal of ignorance on the subject of one of the most prestigious races in the country. As I listened to Savile explaining about the Guineas to my son, I reflected, not for the first time, on the fact that Tommy’s death had hurt Nicky in more ways than one.
After watching Rajah for about ten minutes, we walked along the dirt path that led from one paddock to the next, Nicky between us. As we came up to the fence where a dark bay was contentedly eating grass, he raised his head to look at us and then came trotting slowly to the rails. He was as glossy and smooth as polished mahogany, the shape of his head was classic, and his long legs were unblemished. From the slightly stiff way he moved, however, I guessed that he was no longer young.
“Hello, boy,” Savile said in a gentle voice. He held out his hand and the stallion took the sugar he was offered.
“This is Monarch,” the earl told us. “He’s eighteen years old, but I can assure you that he is still very interested in girls.”
This provoked a giggle from Nicky.
“He looks wonderful,” I said.
“He’s a grand old fellow,” Savile said affectionately, bestowing another piece of sugar upon the bay.
“Why didn’t you give sugar to Rajah, sir?” Nicky asked.
“Stallions are tricky creatures, Nicky,” Savile replied. “It is never a good idea to give food out of your hand to a stallion. One day you may find yourself missing a few fingers.”
Nicky looked horrified.
“His lordship does not mean that stallions are vicious, sweetheart,” I said quickly. “It is just that they tend to be somewhat aggressive.”
“Why?” asked my innocent son.
I gave Savile a look that was an unabashed cry for help.
He came to the rescue. “You see, in the wild, a stallion is the head of a herd,” he explained to Nicky. “He has to be suspicious and aggressive if he is to protect his mares and their foals from danger. It is a trait that domesticated stallions have inherited from their wild ancestors, and it is especially strong in stallions that are standing at stud.”