“That has nothing to do with anything, and you know it. Unlike my stepmother and father, I have no interest in either shipbuilding or running ships across the Atlantic or down to the Caribbean.” She turned to Jason. “If you had paid any attention at all to that skinny little girl—to me—you would have realized that I was more horse-mad than you are, Jason Sherbrooke. Of course, even five years ago, you were a grown man with every woman in Baltimore after you. What was I but a fifteen-year-old skinny rope of a girl who paid you no attention at all?”
Suddenly she grinned, showing lovely white teeth and a smile so beautiful it should have made the sun burst through the overhanging clouds. “Yes, I was shy, and thinner than a windowpane. Tell me, did Lucinda Frothingale, who’s never been any of those things in her entire life, ever get you into her bed? Did Horace try to bite you?”
“Do you mind telling me what you know of Lucinda Frothingale?”
“I get letters from my siblings and my parents. Genny occasionally tells me which ladies manage to snag you, if but for a little while, since you’re fickle. Well? Did Lucinda finally manage to get a hook in your mouth?” She tossed him another impudent grin, and with that grin, he suddenly saw her father’s face. He waved away her words. It was hard to tell if she had his astounding male beauty, but pull a gown over her head, scrub her face, and he would wager she’d be a stunner, a lady to stop the male population of London in its collective tracks.
She said, a wealth of disappointment in her voice, “I suppose you won’t speak of Lucinda. It wouldn’t be gentlemanly, even though—”
“It’s best you don’t finish that thought, Miss Carrick. I believe I can see your father in you now.”
“Glory be,” she said and rolled her eyes. “But you might as well be honest, Mr. Sherbrooke. My father is the most beautiful man ever born, to my mind more beautiful than you two. As for myself, I gave it up years ago.”
James said, fascinated, “Gave what up?”
“Thinking I would ever have even a dollop of the beauty he has.”
Jason said, “I suppose you could take off that ridiculous hat again, then we could see.”
She didn’t say a word, but her horse snorted.
Fact was, Jason thought, she could have looked like an old crone and it wouldn’t have mattered. He said, “I’m buying Lyon’s Gate, Miss Carrick, not you. It seems to me you’d be better off buying something closer to home. Where is your father’s estate?”
“Carrick Grange is in Northumberland. It isn’t particularly good horse country.”
“Fine, then buy something close to Ravensworth. How about some property in America, near Baltimore? You could race Jessie Wyndham.”
“No, it’s Lyon’s Gate for me. Get used to the idea, Mr. Sherbrooke. It’s mine.”
James felt his brother stiffen beside him, and since he knew Jason as well as he knew himself, and he knew bloodshed was close, he said before Jason could leap on her, “Do you have step-siblings, Miss Carrick?”
She nodded and shoved her old hat so low on her head, she nearly covered her eyes. “Yes, I have three stepbrothers and one stepsister, the youngest. We’re a large family, as the dolt here could tell you if he ever applied his brain to anything other than getting women into bed, and racing horses.”
Jason looked ready to leap, James thought, followed by throwing her into the dead flower bed. He said rather loudly, “Then there are step-siblings who will carry on the Carrick shipping tradition?”
“You are certainly nosy, my lord.”
“He’s trying to keep me from pulling you off that brute’s back and throwing you in that horse trough, Miss Carrick.”
“It’s empty.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You just try it, Jason Sherbrooke. Charlemagne would pound his hooves into your belly.”
James cleared his throat. “I believe you were going to tell me about your step-siblings, Miss Carrick.”
“Very well. Go ahead and protect him. He probably needs it. He is on the puny side, isn’t he?” Since both men looked at her like she was a moron, which maybe she was in this particular instance, Hallie gave it up. “Very well, my father and mother are building very few sailing vessels now. It’s all steamships, and that is a very different thing indeed. Can you imagine, it takes only two weeks to voyage from Baltimore to Portsmouth on a steamship? It was closer to six weeks when I was a little girl.”
“Progress is everywhere,” James said to his twin. “There are gaslights in most all the public buildings in London now.”
“London is behind. Gaslights are simply everywhere in Baltimore, my father tells me,” Hallie said. Since all she got for that remark was a raised eyebrow from James, she continued. “If you must know, my lord, I have one stepbrother, Dev, only thirteen, but I know he will be a very accomplished shipbuilder by the time he’s twenty. My oldest stepbrother, Carson, will run the company one day, and my youngest stepbrother, Eric, is only ten but still, he’s sailing mad. My sister, Louisa, wants to write novels. However, she’s only nine years old, a bit early to know if her stories will improve.”
Jason said. “I know your step-siblings. They are friends with the Wyndham children. Whenever I was close by, Louisa would spin a tale for me. She always told me she wanted me to be the hero of all her novels, and that there would be at least one hundred since she planned to write until she croaks over her quill at the turn of the century. She’ll have me perform deeds of derring-do and rescue ladies from villains, starting with her, she hopes, when she grows up.”
Hallie rolled her yes. “Louisa doesn’t know any villains. The thought of my father letting a villain get near her is about as likely as a week passing in England without rain.”
“A novelist, Louisa has given me to understand, can spin villains out of red yarn if she wishes to.”
She looked him up and down. “I must write Louisa about losing her perspective over a pretty face, wide shoulders, and a flat belly.”
CHAPTER 6
“I thought I was a dolt.”
Not even a second passed before she said, “That’s true enough, but Louisa is small for her age and simply doesn’t recognize it as yet.”
Jason laughed at that quick, clean shot, and smiled, thinking of Jessie Wyndham.
Hallie felt a glow in her own belly at that laugh and smile. “I’m the only one in the family who prefers four-legged transportation to rudders and wood. I sailed all my life until I came to live year-round in England. Let me tell you, I’ve run my uncle’s stables for two years now. It’s time I went out on my own, that’s what my uncle finally told me since I was tired of waltzing with chinless young men and lecherous old men who wanted to stare down my gown.”
Jason said, “Ha. Did you get your uncle drunk?”
“There was no need to. I had his sons tell him it was time. I’m not stupid. I got them on my side two years ago.”
“I should have known. Given that they’re young and impressionable, they were easy targets.” Jason turned to his brother. “This is the typical behavior of an American female, James. Yes, yes, I know you’re English, but you were raised in America for much of the time, and that’s what counts.”
“That’s not true. I spent my first five years traveling the world with my father.”
Jason ignored her. “James, American girls plot and scheme and simper and wheedle, all with equal facility. They are a scary lot, particularly those with a modicum of intellect and a pocket full of groats. In Miss Carrick’s case, evidently her father has allowed her to dip deep into his pockets. Did I forget to mention spoiled? Another American female trait. Hopefully she isn’t instructing our English girls on how to—” He stalled, Judith’s face so clear in his brain that he wanted to pound his head with a rock to get her out.
“Trust me, Mr. Sherbrooke, your English girls don’t need any assistance from me. The way they can freeze you in place with only a raised eyebrow—” She shuddered. “They are very much in control, your English girl
s.”
James, who had seen the sudden pallor on his twin’s face, wanted to tell him not to think about the girl who’d betrayed him, who’d betrayed all of them, but he knew he couldn’t. He said, all bland and easy, “So all the gentlemen in London bored you, Miss Carrick?”
“Yes, they bored me senseless, my lord. I told my uncle that I had no intention of marrying, no intention of returning to America or moving in permanently into Carrick Grange, and that announcement helped spur him toward agreement to my buying my own property. Naturally he hied himself off to his study to write my father, but my father won’t interfere.”
“I can see why your uncle would resign himself,” Jason said. “Since you haven’t managed to find yourself a husband and are well on your way to your dotage, he doesn’t want you hanging about Ravensworth. How many seasons have you had? Five? Six? Of course if your father is providing a big dowry, it wouldn’t matter if you were sixty, without a tooth in your mouth. Some fool would be on his knees begging you to make him the happiest of men.”
“Not so far into my dotage as you are, Mr. Sherbrooke. May I ask why you bothered to come home? I heard you were content to live with James and Jessie Wyndham and raise their children.”
“Didn’t you say I only thought about sleeping with women and racing?”
“That too.” She frowned as she patted her horse’s neck, keeping him calm. Charlemagne loved to fight or gallop with the wind, he didn’t care which. She knew he was keeping a hopeful eye on the two Sherbrooke horses, hoping she’d let him go kick them into the fodder bin. She let him rear up on his back legs, fling his great head from side to side, and give a very fine show.
“See to your horse, Miss Carrick,” Jason said, “else the gentlemen will have to rescue you.”
“As if I would ever expect one of your ilk to rescue me.” She sneered.
James felt as if he’d been pulled back in time. He burst out laughing, couldn’t help himself. It was a Corrie sneer, one she’d perfected more than seven years before and used with flawless timing to make him so angry his eyes crossed. He wondered if his twin would fall for it, turn purple in the face, yank her off her horse, and wallop her butt.
But Jason merely sneered back at her, a sneer more potent than hers. He’d learned that in America? “Listen to me, Miss Carrick,” Jason said slowly, as if speaking to the village idiot, “I plan to buy Lyon’s Gate. It will be mine. Go away.”
“We will see about that, won’t we?” Hallie Carrick wheeled Charlemagne about, let him rear up and paw the air one more time. She smiled as he bugled a clear challenge to Bad Boy and Dodger, whose eyes were rolling, on the brink of pulling free of their tethers.
Jason spoke in a low quiet voice and both horses calmed.
“Wait,” James said. “Where are you staying? Surely Ravensworth is too far a ride for you today.”
“I am staying at the vicarage in Glenclose-on-Rowan with Reverend Tysen Sherbrooke and his wife.” She struck a pose. “Why, I do believe they’re your aunt and uncle.”
Jason stood there, shaking his head back and forth. “No, that isn’t possible. Why ever would they have you there? Rory wrote me from Oxford, not above a month ago, so even he’s not at home any longer, and there are no spinsters your age—”
“Leo Sherbrooke is marrying a dear friend of mine, Miss Melissa Breckenridge. I’m supporting her to the altar on Saturday, and that’s why I’m visiting the vicarage.”
“You make it sound like you’re going to have to carry her.”
“No, Melissa is actually a blithering idiot when it comes to Leo. She’ll probably be running, skirts held high, to get to him as fast as she can. I will precede her, strewing rose petals from Mary Rose’s garden, all the while praying that Melissa doesn’t gallop over me to get to her groom. Whilst I’m strewing, I will marvel at the stupidity of girls giving over all their freedom, not to mention their money, to a man.”
“Their father’s money,” Jason said.
“Jessie Wyndham would surely shoot you if you said that in her hearing. As would my stepmother.”
“That’s true,” Jason said, surprising her. “There are exceptions, albeit very few.”
James’s eyebrow arched. “I take it you don’t care for Leo?”
Jason said, “I think Miss Carrick would like to serve all men up in the same soup, chopped into small pieces.”
She gave him a considering sneer. “Very small pieces. However, for a man, Leo isn’t all that bad. I wouldn’t care to deal with him every day of my life, but I’m not the one who has to marry him. If he follows in his father’s footsteps, at least he won’t run to fat or lose his teeth, and that’s saying something. Perhaps he laughs as much as his father as well. All in all, I suppose I must admit that if one has to be shackled in leg irons, Leo just might be one of the best of the lot.”
James said, “Leo is more stubborn than his hound Greybeard. Does your friend know that?”
“I don’t know, but I imagine it’s too late to tell her now. She wouldn’t believe me. Or if she did, she would doubtless believe it charming.”
“Greybeard also sleeps with Leo.”
“Oh dear, Greybeard is rather large.”
“Indeed,” said James. “I see conflict on the near horizon.”
“Surely Leo would rather sleep with his new wife than his old dog.”
“For a while, at least,” Jason said, cynicism dripping from his mouth.
James said, “So Leo is all right, as is my uncle Tysen. I assume you also admire your father and uncle?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I must.”
James said, “Well, then, it seems to me you can hardly say we’re a bad species.”
“You have made a good point, my lord, but the fact is, you could be a rotter and I just don’t know it yet. But experience with your twin here suggests that a girl—spinster—better tread warily around him or suffer the consequences.”
“What consequences?” Jason asked.
He’d stumped her, both James and Jason saw that he’d left her with not a word to fire back. She opened her mouth, closed it. She looked at Jason like she wanted to ride her beast right over him. She finally managed to get out, “To my mind, calling men a species grants them too much importance.”
“That was paltry, Miss Carrick,” Jason said, a potent sneer on his mouth. “Let me ask you, what man hurt you so badly that you’ve painted every one of us with your manure-covered brush?”
She froze in the saddle. Jason watched her force herself to ease, force herself back in control. It was amazing how quickly she got hold of herself again. What he’d said had hit close to home. So, there had been a man who’d hurt her. Would she screech at him like a fishwife? What came out of her mouth was, “I found out about this property from your uncle Tysen. He was telling us about Squire Squid and how he’d spent so much money on the stables and paddocks. And Leo chimed in about the son, Thomas, who was a wastrel and a bully, and how he wanted to sell out to pay off all his creditors. Leo brought me here yesterday and I knew the moment I saw the stables I wanted it. He also agreed to escort me here today, but since he is a man, and since today he managed to drag Melissa along, he clearly had other things on his mind. Since Melissa would try to shoot the moon out of the heavens if Leo wanted it, you can be certain that he’s hauled her off to some private place in the woods to frolic.”
“Frolic?” Jason’s eyebrow was up, the sneer sharp. “What a blurry, watery-as-soup word that is, fit only for females who don’t like to speak clearly and to the point.” An infinitesimal pause, then, “Or they can’t be any clearer since they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
James eyed his twin. What was going on here? Well, it had been five years, and Jason had been living in a foreign country. Perhaps men in America insulted women in this fashion?
James cleared his throat, bringing both sets of eyes toward him. “The house is a disaster. Surely you don’t wish to be bothered with such a moldering ruin.”
“Who cares? It’s the stables, the paddocks, this beautiful breeding room and birthing stall that are important. Did you see the tack room? I will be able to work there with my head stable lad.”
Jason wanted to tell her he’d shoot her between the eyes before he’d let her buy Lyon’s Gate, but instead, he turned to his brother. “Let’s go. I intend to buy this property immediately. You, Miss Carrick, are out of luck. Good day, ma’am.”
“We’ll just see about that, Mr. Sherbrooke,” she called over her shoulder as she galloped off down the drive.
“Leo getting married? I can’t imagine Leo married,” Jason said, laughing.
“I suppose no one mentioned it in their letters to you. You haven’t seen him in five years, Jase. He’s as horse-mad as you are, spent the last three years up at Rothermere stud with the Hawksburys.”
“Have you met the girl he’s going to marry? This Melissa who’s mad for him?”
“She’s quite charming, really. Very different as girls go, you could say. I hadn’t met her friend here, though.”
“Even being British by birth, she still acts like an American, more’s the pity. That means what I said before—she’s brash, overconfident, doesn’t know when to back down . . . Well, that’s neither here nor there.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
Jason shrugged. “Why isn’t Leo trying to buy this property? How old is Leo now?”
“About our age, maybe a bit younger. Actually, Leo has his eye on a stud up near Yorkshire, near Rothermere and his future wife’s family. Oh yes, we’re all going to the vicarage Saturday for the wedding, spending the night there, which ought to be an experience given that Uncle Ryder is bringing all the Beloved Ones. We’ll be piled to the rafters. Oh yes, Uncle Tysen is marrying Leo and Melissa.”
Jason had turned to watch Hallie Carrick ride away, that fat braid of hers flopping up and down against her back. She rode well, damn her. Could be she rode as well as Jessie Wyndham.
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