A Rogue in Sheep’s Clothing (27 page)

Startled, Hugh backed away. “Calm yourself, sweeting,” he said, gently blocking Snap’s blows.

“It’s all right,” Chase whispered. “What do you want?”

“Tell me where Lank is.”

The captain gazed at Ellie who still clutched the Fitzcarry pearls. The corners of his mouth tipped up. “Lank’s bought himself a race horse with your money,” Chase said. “I don’t know where he keeps the animal, but he’ll show up at the track. Get him, but more important, stop my uncle. Stop him, or he’ll destroy this family.”

A sob distracted Ellie. She looked away from Chase to see Lady Davenport standing in the doorway. Tears streamed down her face. “I told you he’s a good man,” she choked. She crossed the room, knelt at Chase’s bedside, and kissed the prostrated man’s hand.

Hugh turned on his heel and Ellie heard him open and slam the front door.

• • •

“What are you going to do?” Ellie asked, running after Hugh’s squared shoulders and singed coat. He ignored her and continued a brisk pace toward the stables.

In the night the mares had come back to the barn expecting their oats and hay. They were gathered in a disconsolate bunch by the gate to the stable yard, sniffing the acrid smoke that puffed from their former home.

“Well, at least the stallion barn was spared,” she observed.

“Hmm,” Hugh replied, stopping to study the mares.

Something about him frightened her. “And the outbuildings are intact — lucky for that,” she continued, trying to sound lighthearted.

“Yes.”

She’d been so relieved after Snap found the Fitzcarry pearls, but Hugh’s anger and seeing the broodmare barn in ruins crushed the joy from her. Her chest ached with gloom. “Is something ailing you?” she asked.

“Your horses are in a sorry state,” he replied.

“Lank didn’t feed them properly.”

“I’m going to wring the life out of that man.”

“If you can catch him.”

“But I can’t forgive you,” he continued without looking at her.

Ellie’s heart clenched. “I don’t deserve to be forgiven — when I think of it, I’m stunned by my stupidity.” The ground blurred as her eyes filled with mist.

The hiss of Hugh’s breath cut the air with frightening finality. He kicked a blackened stick, and walked away, circling the charred remains of the barn.

Ellie tried to memorize his angular shoulders, his straight back, and the swing of his long stride. An ache as thick as the steel of a sword pierced her gut. She trailed behind him — ashamed, afraid, but unable to say goodbye.

“Amazing thing I never noticed you were the same person,” he said, walking backward looking at her. “Glasses — that was your big disguise, eh?”

“Yes.” A bitter laugh leaked from her throat. “Perhaps you didn’t want to see the similarity.”

They passed the far end of the barn. Something white caught Ellie’s eye – a horse bone. Shuddering, she looked away. If Hugh hadn’t saved her, she might have been one of those anonymous bones. “You should know that I loved you,” she said.

His eyes were startled.

“Yes, truly,” she continued, “but with the horses. We were both better people outside of the parlor. The brocade chairs, the fine manners — so constricting they allow only the shape and shadow of a woman.”

She clenched her fists. “I’m so angry at myself, but also at the world, because having you at any cost was the only way I saw out of my family’s predicament. You, who saved my life last night, I would have destroyed yours just to keep this farm. Poor Hugh. Poor Lord Davenport.” She looked away, too overcome with remorse to face him.

“Rather dashing of me, bounding into the flames and carrying you out, wasn’t it?”

Light dared to creep into Ellie’s leaden heart. “No damsel could ask for more.”

“Damsel,” he laughed, but turned away before she could catch the expression on his face.

Overcome with a need to explain her actions, Ellie sought his eyes. “My Papa’s not a gambling man. He didn’t put himself in debt to Baron Wadsworth, and we wouldn’t be bankrupt if it weren’t for Lank. I saw the ledger books. He was stealing.”

The bones of Hugh’s jaw set, his eyes narrowed. “Unholy cur,” he spat.

He turned and looked at her. “Every single time I trust a lady … ” He shook his head, a bitter steel in his expression.

She closed her eyes.

“Manifesto and I should get going.”

All the air left Ellie’s lungs. “Right away? Are you well enough?”

Hugh stared at the field behind her, his expression blank, cool. “Can’t keep old Poultney in suspense. He and Algie will arrive with a caravan of wine and women if I don’t return soon.”

“True.” Ellie forced the corners of her lips to curl.

“That’s the spirit.” He laughed and kicked a hunk of charcoal out of his path. Sparks flew in a spray of light that turned black before it hit the ground.

He set a brisk pace toward the stallion barn.

Manifesto had his head over the stall door when they arrived. One look at him and Ellie’s legs nearly gave out. The horse put his muzzle to her cheek and snuffled her hair.

“I’ll go get the saddle,” Hugh said, heading to the tack room.

Her breath came in shallow heaves, her teeth chattered, and when she touched the stallion’s silky coat, grief swept through her, taking everything with it but pain. “This is unbearable,” she whispered into the horse’s neck. Her love and her horse would both be gone. No more rides with Hugh on the moors — she would never laugh with him in the barn or watch him hold carrots as Manifesto lipped them from his fingers. Never — the word echoed through her empty soul — and she was to blame. Sobs wracked her body and she buried her face in Manifesto’s mane.

“Here’s my handkerchief,” Hugh said, having silently come up behind her.

Without looking, Ellie held out her hand. He pressed the crumpled wad into her palm, and she dried her eyes, taking deep gulps of air.

“Thank you,” she said.

He took back the sodden handkerchief. “You’re welcome.”

His matter-of-fact manner drove her mad.
So that’s who he really is — the unfeeling parlor rogue
, she thought. And why shouldn’t he be cold? After all her lies, without money or horses, she was nothing to him or to anyone else.

She snatched the bridle from Hugh and placed the bit in Manifesto’s mouth. Pulling the harness over the animal’s ears, she buckled it beneath his chin. Next, she threw the saddle on Manifesto and tightened the girth before Hugh could move a muscle. Moments later she had the stallion in the stable yard.

“Lord Davenport,” she said, handing him the reins.

“And a fond farewell to you, too, Miss Ellie,” he said.

She hugged Manifesto, stroked his forelock, and breathed softy into his nostrils. “My greatest friend,” she whispered.

Her eyes drifted to Hugh. The word “goodbye” formed on her lips, but brought such a gale of emotion she couldn’t say it.

Hugh tried to put his foot in the stirrup. Manifesto dodged away, head up, eyes rimmed white with alarm. Rather than fight, Hugh lifted the reins off the horse’s neck and led the animal up the drive. At the stable yard gate, Manifesto baulked, skittering to avoid the exit. He lifted his fine white muzzle and whinnied pitifully to Ellie, but Hugh dragged on the reins and forced him away.

Unable to feel her legs, Ellie followed horse and man on the long walk up the drive until at last they turned a corner and disappeared from view.

• • •

Stumbling back toward the barn, Ellie wiped her sweating hands on her skirt and swept droplets from her brow. Trees, walls, the pebbles on the drive rose, dipped, spun. She sank to her knees on a little rise in the center of the drive and willed herself not to cry.

After steady breaths of warm afternoon air, focus crept back.
I do love him
,
and once he loved me
.
But I’ll never get him back. I’ve lost everything for all of us.
Her thoughts repeated over and over. How long she sat crumpled in the drive, she didn’t know.

It occurred to her that she was staring at the fields of Fairland, sweeping green and verdant to the far hills. Trees lined stone walls, glittering leaves fluttered, and flowers nodded in the soft wind.

“How lucky I am,” she said out loud, “to have known this place, to have lived in such beauty even for a little while.”

And then she spied the colt Lank kicked the night before. The little fellow was cavorting by his dam. He shook his wee head at a filly, playacting the aggressive stallion. Then flapping his broom tail and prancing in a springy trot, he circled back to his mama, ducked under her belly and began to nurse.

A laugh surprised her. Had she made that sound?
What a pretty fellow
, she thought.
He’s got Manifesto’s legs
.

It dawned on her that she was sitting in the middle of the lane. She rose, her body feeling as if it hadn’t moved in years. Everything looked new and more colorful — dreamlike.

She went to the pasture fence. The mare came to her, while her baby lingered shyly behind his dam. “Come, sweet,” Ellie cooed, scratching the crest of the mare’s neck and whispering in her nose. The mare closed her eyes in bliss, and the colt stepped closer. “That’s right, little one. Come visit me.” In one quick move, the colt went to Ellie, put his muzzle in her hand, and then bolted away.

She laughed again. “What a silly one you are. Are you going to be the savior of the Albright bloodline?” The colt pranced around his mama in an exaggerated display of agitation. “Ahh, there’s my answer. Good boy. You remind me of Manifesto.” The colt kicked his spindly hind legs in a miniature version of a buck.

A coldness Ellie hadn’t noticed began to melt in her body. Maybe all was not lost. With Lank gone, Papa would listen. She’d convince him to rebuild the herd. In two years this little colt could sire decent horses. And if they sold land and got tenants back, they could keep going.

A smile crossed her lips. She swung around, eyes feasting on the landscape. The barns, the sheds, the stone walls, the horses nipping rich blades of grass, and the brook curling like a dropped ribbon through the pastures. Love filled her with a glorious heat. “Why can’t I be the estate steward? Why not me?” With her last breath, she’d repay her family for all the stupid mistakes she’d made. She’d drag them back from the brink of poverty if she had to destroy herself to do it.

Running like a madwoman, Ellie went to the stable yard. She grabbed half burned timber and threw it into the smoldering ruins of the barn. She found a rake and cleared the yard of blackened boards.

Beneath a pile of ashes she came upon an iron barrel hoop. With a stick she poked it from the charcoal and stood it against a fence post. Then, using a horseshoe as a clapper, she banged and banged until a stream of disgruntled grooms sauntered from the outbuildings.

They stood in a circle, smoking woodbines and leaning on their hips. “This estate has suffered some terrible losses lately,” she told them. “But that is not a reason to lose heart. We will continue to breed fine horses. We will continue to race fine horses and we will win, as the Albrights have always won.

“Now, these animals have been vastly underfed,” she continued. “Double their rations of hay and grain. You will answer to me from now on. Mr. Lank has been fired.”

Jimmy James nodded his head. “That’s right, Miss Ellie,” he said.

Within minutes a groom brought out a wheelbarrow filled with grain and rolled it to the pastured mares. They nickered and jostled one another in excitement. As he poured oats into a trough, a rush of pride swept through her. There was fine bone structure beneath their unkempt coats. With these mares the Albright family could have a future of great horses. There would be a return to the wealth and prestige that was once a hallmark of the family name — she would make sure of it.

• • •

All night Ellie sat in her father’s study and pulled bills from the drawers until she had a mountain of paper on the desk. The full extent of the wreckage Lank left behind came as a shock. Even without the ledger books she cobbled together a grim picture of the estate’s finances. Most of the tenants had left under Lank’s management. Letters from creditors showed Fairland was in debt to more than Baron Wadsworth, and without young foals they had nothing to sell to pay their way out. Poor Papa. He’d never wanted to do anything but study forgotten languages. How many times had she watched him peer over a book at Lank and say, “Do whatever you think best.” And that crook had done what he thought best, for himself.

At dawn Ellie roused Toby and Jimmy James to help her ride the fifteen-thousand acre estate. They found fences needing repair, crop fields filled with weeds, and fallow fields that were neither seeded nor cultivated. The livestock was thin, dirty, and sometimes sickly, and the gamekeeper confessed that Lank accepted bribes from poachers who’d diminished the deer herd. The most immediate problem, however, was cutting hay for the winter. Without it, the horses and livestock would starve. Without the animals, they would all starve.

• • •

When Ellie returned from riding, tired as she was, she met with the farmhands and grooms to discuss the best plan for getting in the hay.

“Did ya know we ain’t been paid, Miss?” said Addie Mulligan, her least favorite groom, a bowlegged thing Lank hired a month ago.

“I had no idea,” Ellie said, shocked by the news.

“It’s true, Miss,” a gentle-eyed farmhand told her. “There’s a lot got left undone under the former management.”

“I’m beginning to realize that,” she said. “Well, if you’ll work now, we can pay you back wages when the crops are in.”

“And you want us to be livin’ on what, the dirt in the fields?” Addie said, nodding and looking about at the other hands. “My little ones aren’t eatin’ sweetmeats like in the big house. I’ll not give away the sweat on my back for free.”

“’E’s got a point,” a hearty lad agreed.

The others avoided Addie’s eyes or returned a furtive glance.

A painful knot formed in Ellie’s stomach. She looked into the weathered faces crowded about her in the tack room. “Addie Mulligan, we are not eating sweetmeats any more than you are. My family has been devastated by the dishonesty of Mr. Lank. We cannot make money unless we have something to sell. We’ll have nothing to sell unless the crops are harvested.”