“Who?”
“You know, the pretty one with the white blond hair and big blue eyes.”
“There were several young ladies of that description at the Mortimers’.”
“Yes, well, she’s coming here with her sisters.”
“Thank you, Mother, but I prefer to choose my own future.”
“Will it hurt you to try, for once, to be less than the wrath of Satan to me? I’ve invited that cabal of warlocks you met at Eaton, too. So you see, Hugh, I’m not unreasonable.”
“Ha.” He strode away, flipped his coat tails, and sat at his desk.
Lady Davenport hesitated in the doorway, then cleared her throat and marched to the front of the desk.
“You are a Peer of the Realm now. It’s time you realized that titles demand respectability. You are no longer free to dally with servant girls.”
Clenching his teeth, Hugh took out a piece of stationery, wetted the tip of his quill, and dated the top of a letter.
Not about to be dismissed, she took a paperweight and slammed it on the desktop. “I want you to know that the Mortimers’ maid, Hortense, has been dismissed.”
“What?”
“Your actions have consequences, Hugh.”
“You have ruined that woman’s life! Your actions caused the consequences.”
“If ever a woman deserved dismissal … It is time you were married. Every eye in society is waiting to see you settled.”
Hugh bolted from his chair. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to marry to satisfy that lot,” he roared. Coming around the desk, he backed his mother toward the door. “You and the rest of your bloodsucking crowd can roast in hell! I will not marry some palsied cull to make you happy.”
“It is for your own good,” Lady Davenport blurted as she retreated from the room. The door slammed behind her.
In the hallway she fanned herself, trying to calm her nerves. After a few deep breaths she cracked the library door. “You will be civil to the Albright girls, won’t you?” she said.
Hugh glowered. “Good heavens, I’m not an animal.”
“That could be debated. But you won’t spend all your time with the servants, will you?”
“Mother, I’ll do my best, but that’s as much as I’ll guarantee.”
“Excellent. Thank you, dear.” She closed the door.
• • •
Ellie had hoped to slip quietly into the house and tell Claire to tell their mother that Ellie would be at Aunt May’s until the running of the Haldon Gold Cup. However, with her first footfall on the front steps to the Tudor mansion, an excited baying of hounds erupted. The dogs hurled themselves at her as she opened the door. Their toenails beat a wild dance on the marble, and she received an instant coating of saliva, paw dirt, and hair.
“You’re home!” Peggity said from the top of the staircase. “Ellie, we have the most wonderful news.”
“Let me tell her. Let me tell her,” squealed Snap. Peggity swept down the stairs, but Snap beat her by sliding down the banister.
“The Davenports want us to play with them!” Snap said.
“What’s this?” asked Ellie, picking up her little sister and kissing her rosy cheek.
“The Davenports have invited us to a house party,” explained Peggity. “Snap may visit.”
“Are you in earnest?” Ellie said.
“Dear, you’re home,” cried Lady Albright, sailing into the front hall. She wrapped her daughter in a warm hug.
Lord Albright apparently heard the ruckus, and barged through his study door, his favorite black cat clinging to his shoulders. “Ah, Ellie, I’m glad you’re home. Come, dear, I must show you a most marvelous book I just received.”
“Papa, I have to tell you about Mr. Lank. He’s in league with … ”
A cloud passed over her father’s face. “There’s no need to discuss it further … ”
“No darling, there isn’t,” said Lady Albright, slipping between Ellie and her father. “But wherever is Claire?”
“I’m here,” said Claire, wading through the dogs to kiss Ellie.
“Isn’t it exciting?” Snap said, yanking on Ellie’s trouser leg. “You get a new dress, and Mama says I can have a cage for my rat.”
“A rat? When did you get a rat? One night away and I feel like I’ve been gone a week.”
“Yesterday the Literary Club ladies were over,” Lady Albright explained with a pained sigh. “In the middle of the meeting, Snap asked for a bag to catch a rat. Well, we all chuckled like mad — a wee girl wanting to catch a rat. I made the mistake of telling her to ask Cook. A few minutes later she returned with a rat in a bag.”
“I found it in a pipe,” Snap said.
“Yes,” added Claire. “She’s named it … ”
“Napoleon!” shouted Snap.
“My, you’ve been busy,” replied Ellie.
Peggity coughed. “Rats aside, we’re awfully glad you came home. The house party begins the day after tomorrow. We have so much to do before then.”
Aghast, Ellie blurted, “So soon?”
“According to Snap, our butler heard from Lady Davenport’s footman that you made a good impression on her son, Lord Hugh,” continued Peggity. “He’s notoriously shy around women.”
“Ha!” said Ellie. “Not from what I saw.”
“Be that as it may,” Peggity continued, “Lady Davenport wants us at Cowick Hill right away to capitalize on the attraction.”
“How grotesque,” Ellie said.
“Why, darling?” reasoned her mother. “Lord Davenport is handsome, rich, and a horseman. What more could you want?”
“Someone who’s not a charlatan and a rogue, for one,” said Ellie.
“But you will come?” Claire interjected, looking worried.
“Of course, the house party will put me near Manifesto.”
“That horse.” Peggity shook her head. “You’d marry the beast if it were legal.”
“I would indeed.”
“All that can wait.” Claire grabbed Ellie’s arm, pulling her upstairs. “You absolutely must tell me about your adventures with Aunt May.”
• • •
In the privacy of her bedroom, Ellie leaped on the quilt and lay flat in exhaustion. “Your head would spin if you knew what I’ve been through.”
“Tell me everything,” Claire said, sitting on the bed and heaving an overweight cat onto her lap.
Ellie lay motionless as pudding. Her lips were the only thing that moved as she told Claire about seeing Lank with Baron Wadsworth. “They’re in league together.”
Claire gave her a skeptical look. “How do you know Mr. Lank wasn’t just trying to get the best possible price for Manifesto by bringing the baron to the sale?”
“I just know it,” Ellie said, and banged her fist on the mattress.
“Well, you absolutely cannot tell Papa about Mr. Lank now,” Claire said, alarm in her voice. “Papa believes you were at Aunt May’s. He’d be beyond angry if he knew you went to a horse fair unescorted, and Mama would be so upset after telling you to watch our reputation.”
Ellie went silent. She had counted on her parent’s support. Now she was back to operating alone. “I know a way of getting Manifesto back without selling the necklace.”
“Oh, thank Heavens,” said Claire, emitting a huge sigh of relief.
Ellie nestled her head deeper into the pillow. “I’m going to bet the necklace on Manifesto to win the Haldon Gold Cup. I’ll get the pearls back after the race and the winnings should be enough to give the farm a new start.”
Claire’s hands flew to her face. “But what if Manifesto doesn’t win? We wouldn’t even have the horse to assure our future. Mama would die without the Fitzcarry pearls.”
“Ah, but Manifesto will win.” Ellie patted her pocket, and then bolted upright. She felt one pocket, then the other. Leaping to her feet, she jammed her hands in her breeches. “It’s gone!”
“What’s gone?”
“The necklace isn’t in my pocket. I specifically put it in my right pocket to keep it safe. Could I have left it in the barn?” With growing desperation, Ellie circled her bedroom.
“Maybe it’s in another garment?”
“I haven’t changed my clothes in two days.” Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she began tearing the bed apart.
“Think, Ellie. Where else could it be?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” she cried, flinging a pillow across the room.
“You couldn’t have lost it while you were riding Manifesto?”
“No. No, I had it with me while I was cleaning the barn.”
“Maybe when you were training Old Nell?”
“I know it was in my pocket when … oh, dear God,” Ellie said, clutching her hair. “I don’t remember when I had it in my pocket last.”
• • •
Ellie directed a footman to load the last trunk on the coach, as her parents and sisters burst into the courtyard escorted by a pack of dogs and a fringe of curious cats. Peggity twirled a hat box containing her new bonnet, Claire chased a giggling Snap, her parents beamed with pride and good will, and around them all the dogs cavorted and barked with excitement.
The scene stabbed Ellie deeper than any knife. Their happiness could be blackened like a cloud across the sun, and she would be responsible — she’d lost the necklace.
Lady Albright danced over to Ellie and took her hand. “Write daily — especially if anything interesting happens with Lord Davenport,” she said.
With a heart too heavy to look in her mother’s eyes, Ellie nodded and turned away to tighten the lead attaching Old Nell to the back of the coach.
“Now listen to me, my darlings,” her mother said, clapping her hands for attention. “I want each of my girls to be seen in the Fitzcarry pearls. Ellie has them now, but she’ll be sure to share them, won’t you?”
“Yes,” Ellie replied, wincing with the effort of appearing enthusiastic.
“What a good girl.” Her mother kissed her on the cheek. “Such wonderful daughters I have. Now, everybody into the coach!”
Ellie dove in, and her sisters clambered after.
“Oh my girls, how I envy you,” her mother continued, leaning in the door. “Your father and I met at the Topperhorns’ house party.”
“We talked until three, your mother and I,” Ellie’s father said, taking his wife’s hand.
“And we danced the next night, hunted together in the afternoon,” her mother took up the reverie. “You read Shakespeare to the gathered guests.”
Ellie’s heart sank another notch, looking at the joyous faces of her parents.
“Mama wants you to have this,” Snap said, tossing a sack of food through the door. A hound jumped in after it.
Peggity whipped her white linen skirts out of the way. “Out!” she commanded.
The hubbub spooked the horses, which began to head down the driveway despite Jimmy James’s commands to “Whoa.”
Lord Albright threw a book for each of them in the coach window, shouting, “Here’s something to keep your minds sharp while you’re away.”
“Goodbye! Goodbye, my loves!” Lady Albright cried, rescuing Snap from the moving vehicle.
They all shouted goodbyes as the horses picked up speed and rounded the bend.
• • •
As her waving family disappeared from view, Ellie’s gloom was replaced by determination. She punched one hand into the palm of the other. “I’ve got to get out of this dress,” she said. “Old Nell needs to be back in the Davenport barn before we arrive. We’ll stop the coach at Old Drover’s Inn and I’ll walk to meet you for our arrival at Cowick Hill.”
“Help me with her,” Claire told Peggity, turning Ellie around to undo the buttons on her dress.
“What are you up to?” Peggity asked.
“She’s pretending to be a boy for Hugh Davenport.”
“What an interesting strategy,” said Peggity. “I’m sure your wedding day will be the talk of the county.”
“I’m not marrying him,” Ellie replied irritably, untying her delicate walking boots and replacing them with rough barn ware. “He’s a brute. A handsome, roguish brute, but a brute all the same.”
A thought occurred to her — a wonderful, marvelous thought, filled with the certainty that all her family’s problems would be solved. “I’m going to enchant him,” she told her sisters. “Then I’ll ask him to let me buy back Manifesto as a token of his esteem.”
Claire looked at her in shock. “Enchant him?”
“As long as we can avoid bankruptcy the Albright girls are the most eligible ladies in Devon,” said Ellie. “You have to agree we’re lovely and men find us attractive.”
“We have our assets.” Peggity shrugged. “But what will you do with Lord Davenport after you enchant him?”
Ellie smiled. “Nothing.”
“It would do us a lot more good if you married him,” Claire said. “Then you’d own Manifesto, and have a handsome husband and all the riches of Cowick Hill.”
“But then I’d be expected to spend my life in the house planning dinners and embroidering screens. Aunt May was only allowed to run her horse farm after Uncle Ian died. You know it’s true.”
Claire shook her head. “That doesn’t excuse deception.”
“Humph,” said Ellie.
“Besides, what will happen when Hugh Davenport recognizes that Ellie and Toby are the same person?” Claire continued.
“He won’t,” said Ellie. “It’s extraordinary, but men just don’t see past the pants. Still, I ought to make it a little harder for him to catch the similarities. I’ll have to disguise myself as Ellie.”
“But he’s already met you at the ball,” Claire added. “Forget this madness. Think of something else.”
“There is nothing else,” Ellie replied.
Peggity’s lip turned down. “Why are you persisting with this foolishness? You’re going to have to grow up and leave that stallion of yours alone. No more making a fool of yourself dressing as a boy and throwing your leg over a horse. Every other woman of breeding has resigned herself to riding sidesaddle, it’s high time you did, too.”
“The Albrights made their fortune breeding horses,” Ellie barked. “There’s nothing foolish about wanting to preserve our legacy.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” Peggity picked up one of the books their father threw into the coach and dug in her reticule for her spectacles. Designed to focus the eye forward, their tortoiseshell frames were a quarter-inch thick and round as an owl’s eye. When she put them on, they obliterated every fine feature of her pretty face.
Ellie leaned forward. “You brought your reading glasses?”
Peggity yanked them off. “Yes. What about it.”
“Those glasses are our future.”
“Oh dear,” said Claire. “Ellie’s got that look in her eye.”
“Don’t you think for one moment I’m going to support any part of this charade.”
“I tell you, he will not recognize me in those tortoiseshell horrors.”
“You cannot seriously expect to enchant the most eligible bachelor in Devon with these on your face,” Peggity cried.
“Men adore studious women.” Ellie grabbed Peggity’s hand and pulled her fingers off the spectacles one by one. Having gained possession, she propped the eyewear on the bridge of her nose. Trying to catch her reflection in the coach window she added, “As Toby I’ll keep Manifesto wild. As Ellie I’ll charm him into selling th
e horse at a low price.”
“And what money are you planning to use?” Claire said. “The pearls are gone.”
“Do you mean the Fitzcarry pearls?” said Peggity, confused.
“Unfortunately, they seem to have been misplaced,” Claire replied.
“You lost the pearls?” Peggity’s voice rose.
“Thank you, Claire,” Ellie grumbled. “That was helpful.”
“But those pearls are all we’ll have once the estate is gone.”
“I’ll find them.”
“We’ll have nothing without the pearls.”
“I’ll find them.”
“How will we survive? What will Mama say?”
“Peggity, I will find them!” Ellie barked. “Both of you, swear that you’ll keep my identity a secret. Swear that you’ll search every inch of Cowick Hill for the pearls with me.”
Claire closed her eyes. In a hoarse whisper she said, “I will agree to help in this mad plot on one condition — that you do not demean yourself by ‘enchanting’ or ‘charming’ Hugh Davenport. You must marry him. If he sells Manifesto to us out of the goodness of his heart, so much the better.”
Ellie smacked the wall of the coach. “My sister wants to ruin my life.”
“I will not waver,” Claire said with deadly calm.
“So I must sacrifice my future happiness to keep us all from bankruptcy?”
Claire folded her hands in her lap. “Many young women have done as much.”
Ellie slumped in the corner. “You are the biggest prude in England.”
“I’m sorry,” Claire replied. “If you hadn’t lost the pearls there might have been other options.”
Guilt stabbed like a knife. Ellie turned her back on her sisters and stared at the countryside turned to a haze of green by tears and thick lenses.
• • •
After she’d handed off Old Nell to a stable boy at Cowick Hill, Ellie ran to the stallion barn.
Mercifully, Manifesto’s stall hadn’t been cleaned since she’d left two days before. She picked through every strand of straw, sifting it slowly into a wheelbarrow, praying the pearls would drop from a clump, complete and unharmed. Nothing.
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