A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (35 page)

She was the other reason he had dined from home—in order to remove himself as far away as possible from the warm circle of celebration attendant upon the announcement of his brother James’s engagement.

His mama had protested, and asked Will to put the dinner with Allen off, but Will had held firm. He could see it coming—the natural escalation of the Prestons’ intimacy with Sanderson House. It was only natural for the earl and countess to host dinners and balls to signal their approval of James’s choice of bride, and it was only natural that his Preston would be present at each and every one. Will decided to do them both a favor, and not embarrass or disconcert her with his presence. Anything else would make him go mad.

And God only knew how he would manage not to reveal himself to his family—especially his canny, eagle-eyed mother who seemed to be the only one in Sanderson House who had not taken note of his involvement with Preston, and who was also the only one in the house who would not be content to let him to his own devices—if he had to spend more than a few polite seconds within Preston’s proximity.

He would take himself elsewhere. All the way to India if need be.

But he could not resist, when James joined him upon his return for a late-night glass of cognac in the library, from asking after her. From reviving his discomfort, like a sore muscle he had to move. “How was your dinner with the Prestons?”

“Quiet. Miss Preston and her mother only were able to attend.” James imparted his information, leaving Will to make of Preston’s absence what he might, and pace the length of the library in peace and disquiet.

“Your pardon, Commander.” Pease, the Sanderson House butler, was at the door of the library. “Hambourne is below in the hall, and has asked to see you, if he may. He asked me to tell you that your friend has come calling at the stable gate.”

The hair at the back of Will’s neck lifted. “Preston.” He glanced at the clock over the mantel—half past midnight. Such a penchant for roaming about the night in filthy weather.

“Miss Preston?” James shot up from his comfortable slouch in his chair. “She just left. What on earth would she be doing at the stable gate at this time of night?”

“I reckon,” Will said carefully, though he was already on his way toward the door, “that it will prove not to be
your
Miss Preston, James. But we had better go speak to Broad Ham to be sure. Thank you, Pease.”

“Very good, Commander. Hambourne awaits below in the servants’ hall. If you’ll just follow me.”

Pease was a stickler for the proprieties, and insisted on guiding Will and his brother’s passage belowstairs, as if the servants’ portion of Sanderson House were as exotic and uncharted a territory as an island in the far-off Andaman Sea. As if James—who had followed with just as much alacrity as Will—and he hadn’t explored these very halls as soon as they were out of leading strings. It had been a few years, but Will reckoned he still knew his way.

Unlike Will and James, Broad Ham was not at home in the lower reaches of the house. The coachman had planted himself just inside the outer door to the servants’ belowstairs areas, as if he did not want to chance venturing farther into the deeply domestic interior of the house.

“Let me guess, Broad Ham—dressed in her worst and slouching about the stable gate?”

“It’s just as you suspicion, Master Will. I thought as you’d like to know. Thought you’d be none too pleased to find that she was out and about on a night like this. London ain’t Hampshire, I told her.”

“Yes. I’ll see to her.” It was only concern for Preston, and curiosity, that had prompted his speedy response. Concern for a friend. It was not undisciplined need that had him anxious, and all but vibrating with anticipation to see her. It wasn’t. He wouldn’t let it be.

“Begging your pardon, young sir.” Broad Ham put a hand to his shoulder to keep him from moving past. “But she didn’t ask for you. Didn’t want to see you, she said. Asked for Master Thomas. Said it was important.”

A sharp blade of jealousy rove through him with all the finesse of a handspike. Well, damn her eyes. “Thomas?” Even he could hear the incredulous envy soaking through his voice.

Broad Ham didn’t spare his feelings. “Aye. She’d already sent a message to him by the time I recognized her. Told her she ought to be home abed this hour of the night, and she bristled up like a hedgehog. Said she had important business, tho’ she didn’t say what it were.”

Will could not conceive of any business Preston might have with Thomas, but he saw his younger brother’s shadow pass the stairwell beyond the door on his way across the back garden. “Only one way to find out,” he muttered as he moved out the door and up the stairs as fast as ever he had sprinted on deck in the navy, so he might catch his younger brother before he passed out of sight.

“Thomas.” He stopped his brother’s progress across the garden with the command in his voice.

“Oh, hello, Will.” Thomas’s voice was muffled by a yawn as he ducked under the cover of the doorway, out of the rain.

Some of Will’s irrational jealousy dissipated in the face of such clear disinterest. “Well, Thomas, you’d best tell me what the devil this is about.”

“I don’t know.” In the spill of light from the house, Thomas’s open countenance, and hastily donned clothing—he had thrown a greatcoat over himself, but the lapels were caught inside out, his linen shirttails were falling from his waist, and his breeches were unlaced above his boots—showed he was just as surprised by the summons as Will.

Will pressed anyway. “Have you been out larking it about London with her?”

“With Miss Antigone? No.” Thomas’s tone grew more alert as he sensed the urgency coming from his older brother. “I have no idea what she wants. But a gentleman never abandons a lady—isn’t that what you told me?—even if she gets him out of bed and into the rain in the middle of the night.”

“So I did.” Will put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder in apology. And to turn his lapels and collar right side out. “So go see what she wants.”

Thomas was about to bolt across the rain-lashed garden to the shelter of the mews, but he stopped again when he saw that they—Will, James, and Broad Ham—meant to follow. “You do know it’s bad manners, not to mention rude, to eavesdrop?” There was something more of Thomas’s usual brash confidence.

Will did as only an older brother can do—he squelched it. “It’s also bad manners to meet a young lady alone, unchaperoned, after midnight, at a stable gate,” he countered reasonably. “Shall we put the distinction to Father? Or better yet, to Mama, to decide which is the more egregious fault? That’ll be fun.”

“No,” Thomas agreed instantly. “Let’s not do that.”

“Then you won’t mind if I do listen in on your conversation. For your protection, as much as hers.”

“When you put it that way—” Thomas shrugged as if the workings of Will’s mind were a mystery to him. “Why don’t you go ask her yourself, if you’re so all-fired curious about
my
private business.”

Will took a deep breath to keep himself from running out of patience. Thomas was his brother, not some recalcitrant midshipman under his command. And it wasn’t Thomas’s fault Preston had asked for him instead of Will. It wasn’t Thomas’s fault he was as jealous and angry as a bear with a sore paw. “Because she didn’t ask for me, and I’m going to honor her wishes. But I have the uncomfortable feeling our friend Miss Antigone is in trouble and may need help from both of us. So heed my words, Thomas. A frontal assault is rarely the best strategy. Especially with difficult females. Much is to be accomplished by careful stealth.”

Thomas tucked that bit of information away into his encyclopedic brain, but said nothing more, and turned and led their group in silence across the garden to the mews tucked against the high brick garden wall.

There, down the well-lit aisle between the stalls, was Preston, dressed in that damned ratty redingote and boots, leaning over the front of a stall, admiring its occupant. As if it were all perfectly normal for a young lady dressed as an urchin to visit a stable by herself, near midnight, in the middle of a mounting storm.

Damn his eyes he had missed her. It had only been a few short days, but he had missed everything about her from the ratty redingote right down to the dark circles under her eyes.

“Miss Antigone?” Thomas announced his presence as he walked down the aisle toward Preston, and Will drew back into the shadow of the door to listen.

“Master Thomas.” She put out her hand to greet him. As if she were on Bond Street greeting an acquaintance. Or drinking cognac with an old friend in a library.

Will ruthlessly ground his jealousy into the dirt floor, and held himself to listen.

“I hope you will forgive me for awaking you,” she was saying.

“Not at all,” Thomas responded. For all his youth, Thomas was indeed learning to be a gentleman. He both shook her hand and bowed. “How can I be of service?”

Preston took a deep breath, as if she were shoring up her reserves before she spoke. “I remembered that you were very admiring of my mare.”

Thomas scoffed self-deprecatingly and smiled. “That’s because I have eyes.”

Preston’s quick answering smile warmed a little at the offhand compliment. “Indeed, not everyone does. Or at least not the right eyes. But I’ve watched you—you see things the right way about horses. You watch, too, and you also understand. That’s a rare quality in a man. That’s what makes a true horseman.”

“Thank you.” Thomas’s cheeks were pinking with pleasure. “I’ll take that as a very great compliment coming from you.”

“And so you should.” She gave him that little flash of a smile before she sobered. “I hope you’ll take this the same way—I’d like to sell my mare to you.”

Thomas was so instantly excited that he did not hear the wobble in her voice, or see the tremor in her hands as she wrung them together in front of her. Thomas did not see what this offer was costing her. “Of course I’ll buy her. I’m honored by your trust. And thrilled. Of course, I shall have to get my father’s permission, but I should like nothing more than to have such a mare. But I thought you didn’t ever mean to sell her?”

She had her answer readily enough. “Needs must when the devil drives. But you’ll have to ask your father?” She seemed deflated by that, as if the air had fallen out of her sails. “I had hoped … I’m rather in a bind, you see. I need the money now.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Will could see James turn to look at him, as if to ask why Preston might need such a sum of money, but since he had no answer, Will simply shook his head, and kept his eyes on Preston. To make sure he heard and understood what she was saying. Not so he could drink in the sight of her like a man marooned on an island might gaze at the sea in the vain hope for a drink of fresh water. Not so he could punish himself with how much he had missed the sight of her.

“How much are you asking for her?” Thomas asked.

“I can only part with her for five hundred pounds.” Preston’s face was battened down now, tense with some need Will did not understand. Yet.

“That seems reasonable.” Thomas was glancing his way, unsure of how he was to proceed. “My father has paid two hundred fifty guineas for green hunters, so I should think he could be persuaded to let me purchase her for such a sum.”

Preston misinterpreted Thomas’s hesitation. “She’s a wonderful mare. She has the biggest heart. But a very tender mouth. I’m trusting you to have quiet hands with her. Very soft. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Thomas was nothing if not completely sympathetic to such concerns.

“But I’m also afraid she shouldn’t be bred. It’s only fair to warn you before you agree. It mightn’t be good for her. I can explain it all when I bring her to you, but I should like your promise. Someone else said it would be no great loss if he bred her and she died, but I must have your word as a gentleman that you wouldn’t do that.”

“Aldridge?” James murmured at Will’s ear.

“Undoubtedly,” Will answered. The bastard. But still, if Aldridge’s heartless treatment of the mare brought Preston to her senses about the man’s inevitable mistreatment of her, Will had to be glad of it.

Out in the aisle, Thomas was everything solemn and earnest. “You have my word,” he pledged.

Preston let out an audible sigh of deep relief, as if she had been holding her breath for hours. “Thank you. Then we’re agreed. You’ll buy Velocity from me for five hundred pounds?”

“Agreed.” In the time-honored tradition of horse traders the world over, Thomas spit in his palm and held it out for Preston to shake.

The appalling girl didn’t so much as hesitate, but spit in her own palm and clasped his hand. “Done,” she said. And then she let out another deep, shaky breath. “Now all you have to do is help me steal her.”

It was all the opening Will needed. “I think I’ve heard just about enough.” He stepped out into the spill of lantern light. “What do you think you’re about, Preston?”

Any happiness or relief that he had imagined was wiped off her face at his appearance. “Commander Jellicoe.” She retreated into formality to cover her surprise. “I did not know you were here.”

“Miss Antigone.” He bowed, very formally, just as he ought. As if they weren’t in the middle of his father’s stable, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a ferocious rainstorm battering down on the roof. “You seem to have an unfortunate penchant for nighttime forays in filthy weather. But you can’t go stealing horses no matter what time of night it is. And you can’t be stealing them from the likes of Lord Aldridge without proper planning. And the assistance of experienced confederates.”

The merest ghost of a smile stole across her lips. “I’m not stealing her, really. I’m taking back what’s mine, fair and square.” She patted her redingote. “I’ve got proof here. A letter with the seal of the Earl Grosvenor attesting that the mare is mine. She’s mine, and Lord Aldridge has no right to keep her against my will.”

Will looked at James, who had followed him into the mews, and together they turned to Broad Ham.

“Seems a shame to let his lordship Aldridge have a horse that ain’t legally his,” Broad Ham opined.