Joan Wolf (33 page)

Jack grunted. He was listening to me intently.

“I have built up a nice little business out of retraining Thoroughbred racehorses to hunt,” I continued, “but lately I have been wondering if one might do even better by setting up a stud which had as its specific purpose the breeding of horses for hunting.”

Jack’s eyes were burning like light blue crystals in his hard, concentrated face. “A stud to breed hunters,” he said slowly, almost reverently.

I nodded. “Most of the Thoroughbreds I look at aren’t suitable to hunt. I have to shop very carefully to find ones with the proper size and disposition.”

“You’d want to breed Thoroughbred crosses,” Jack said. “Aim for foals that combine the speed and agility of the
Thoroughbred with the bone and temperament of, let’s say, the Irish horse.”

I nodded again.

“It’s a brilliant idea, Annabelle!” Jack said.

I smiled at his enthusiasm. “I think it has merit. I can’t begin to supply the market that wants my retrained horses. If hunting people had good young stock available to them, I think they would buy, and what is more, I think they would pay a good price.”

“I know they would,” Jack said. His burning, crystal-like gaze searched my face. “Are you implying that you will pay me to help you start such a stud? “

“No,” I shook my head definitely. “What I want to do is advance you the money so that you can start it all by yourself.”

The color drained from Jack’s face. “You can’t do that,” he said thickly.

I mimed surprise. “I thought you just said you thought it was a brilliant idea!”

He shook his head as if to clear it. “I meant you can’t advance me that kind of money.”

I lifted my brows in an even more exaggerated gesture of surprise. “Why ever not?”

Jack said, “Well, for one thing, neither Adam nor Stephen will countenance your risking Giles’s money on such a scheme.” Two spots of hectic color had appeared on both of his cheekbones. “And they will be right, Annabelle.”

“Neither Adam nor Stephen has anything to say about what I do with my own money,” I replied. “I’ll have you know that over the last few years I have made quite a tidy little profit from my hunters, and I propose to invest it in you.”

The color in his cheeks was now a bright, burning red. “I can’t let you do that.”

I leaned toward him, willing him to believe me. “Why not? I promise you that I won’t miss the money.”

A muscle twitched in the corner of his mouth. “I can’t take that kind of money from you, Annabelle,” he said.

I looked at Elf, who was standing in front of me so patiently, waiting for me to decide to get back on her again, and tried to think of what I might say to overcome Jack’s scruples.

“I would consider the advance to you an investment, Jack. I don’t need the capital at the moment. In fact...” I hesitated, then decided to be frank. “I shall probably be getting married again one of these days, and I simply will not have the time to get into a new business. Nor will money ever be a problem for me, so you needn’t worry that you’ll be taking her sustenance from a poor widow. I shall be well provided for, believe me. Even if the hunter scheme fails, I won’t be losing anything I can’t well afford to do without.”

There was a long silence.

“Stephen did receive a nice inheritance from his mother,” Jack said.

I shot him a look out of the side of my eyes and didn’t reply.

“I won’t fail, Annabelle,” Jack said.

I turned back to him and smiled. “I don’t think you will, either.” A leaf fluttered down from the sky and landed on the lap of my riding skirt. I picked it up and said, “Do you have enough room at Rudely to start a small stud? “

“I think so. The present stable will have to be enlarged, but that can be done easily enough. I haven’t got the paddocks that you have here at Weston, of course, but they can be built, too.”

The prospect of my marrying an extremely solvent Stephen had evidently relieved Jack of his scruples about taking my money.

I said, “Later, if you become a big success, you might have to buy a larger property, but it will be best for now if you can keep your costs as low as possible.”

He laughed unsteadily. “Hold up, Annabelle! I have a long way to go before you can start talking about larger properties!”

“I will give you Aladdin to start your breeding program,”
I said. “Magpie is too slender to sire hunters, and besides, I want Magpie for Stephen.”

Jack’s breath caught and his eyes glittered brilliantly. I grinned at him. He was mad for Aladdin.

Giles and Eugenia had turned away from the lake and were beginning to come toward us.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Annabelle,” Jack said, speaking with obvious difficulty. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

I shook my head. “We’re family, Jack. There is no need for you to say anything.”

“I shall pay you back with interest,” he said fiercely.

“That would be nice,” I replied.

Giles and Eugenia arrived back at our log, and Jack stood up. “We couldn’t find it, Mama,” Giles reported.

Eugenia’s eyes flicked from Jack to me and then back again to Jack. Obviously she saw from his face that something had happened between us. He gave her a quick grin, and her expression lightened.

My own heart felt lighter than it had in a while as I put my toe in the stirrup and swung up into my sidesaddle. I was relieved to have the problem of Jack’s future resolved. I did care about him, and that feeling of affection had certainly been my main motive in helping him.

I tried not to think too overtly about my second motive.

Now that Jack knew he could make a future for himself, I wondered if the strange accidents that kept befalling Stephen and Giles would cease.

We had a delightful ride back to Weston. Jack had been the first one down to the stable this morning, and he gave us a hilariously funny description of the havoc Cracker had created with his escape maneuvers.

We arrived back in the stableyard to find it in a different kind of uproar. I watched a lathered Magpie being led into the stable and scowled down at Grimes, who had come trotting over to stand next to me.

“I thought you said you had caught all of the horses, Grimes,” I said angrily. “Why is Magpie lathered like that?”

“Mr. Stephen came home not fifteen minutes after you’d left for your ride, Miss Annabelle, and he decided he’d try to catch up with you. He rode after you on Magpie, and Magpie has just come back to the stableyard with his saddle under his belly and without a rider!”

Chapter Twenty-three

I could feel the color draining away from my face and my heart beginning to race with fear.

“Have you sent men out to look for Stephen?” I said to Grimes. My mouth was suddenly so dry that I had a difficult time getting the words out.

“I was just about t’do that, Miss Annabelle.”

I tried to force my brain to work, though I felt almost paralyzed with terror. “He said he was going to look for us?”

“That is what he said, Miss Annabelle.”

“Did you tell him we were going to the lake?”

Grimes shook his head. “You didn’t say where you was going, Miss Annabelle. Mr. Stephen said he would look for you first on the Downs.”

“All right,” I said, beginning to turn Elf around. “I’ll ride back that way immediately.”

“I’ll come with you, Annabelle,” Jack offered. “You may need help if you find him and he’s hurt.”

“Do you want to take the dogs, Annabelle?” Eugenia asked calmly.

“Not yet,” I said. “Go with Giles,” I commanded the two spaniels.

Giles had dismounted, and now he came to kneel beside Portia and put his arms around her. “It’s all right, Mama,” he said. “They’ll stay.”

I nodded and urged Elf forward. She laid back her ears and dug in her heels, excessively put out that she was not going to be escorted into her nice box and given a rubdown
and some hay. I smacked my long whip briskly against her side in the exact spot where my leg would be if I were riding astride, and she leaped forward. I rarely use my crop, but when I do my horses know I mean business.

As soon as I was clear of the stableyard I pushed Elf into full gallop. I knew Stephen was not on this particular section of ride because we had only just returned this way ourselves.

Jack was riding Topper, and he moved up alongside me and the two of us galloped all the way to the main drive. At the drive we picked up a different bridle path from the one we had taken to the lake, and Jack suggested we slow our horses to a trot.

“If he’s gotten off the road and under the trees, we might miss him if we’re going too fast,” he said.

I knew that he was right, and even though my whole being wanted to gallop as fast as I could, I forced myself to slow down and search the right side of the path just as Jack was searching the left.

We reached the end of Weston Park, and still there was no sign of Stephen. In grim silence, Jack and I turned onto the public track that would take us up to the Downs. The dirt track led through woods for another mile or so before it reached the open turf of the Downs, and we had not gone above a quarter of a mile before we saw a horse approaching, led by two men on foot.

One of the men was shirtless and was obviously supporting the other man as they walked haltingly along.

The injured man was Stephen.

The relief that rocked through me when I saw him walking was so intense that it made me momentarily dizzy. It was only then that I realized I had been braced for the sight of his lifeless body stretched across the path.

The two men halted and waited as Jack and I trotted up to them. I didn’t even glance at the second man until I was swinging down from the saddle.

It was Jem Washburn.

“You!”
I said with loathing.

“Don’t, Annabelle,” Stephen said. “I don’t know what I would have done if Jem hadn’t come along when he did.”

His voice sounded strangely thick and unsteady. His hair was hanging down, curtaining his forehead, and there was dirt on his right cheek and his chin.

“He hit his head,” Jem said to Jack. “He was dead out in the midst of the road when I got to him. I stopped the blood best I could do it with my shirt whilst I waited for him to wake up.”

By this time I was standing directly in front of Stephen, scanning his face intently.

“I’m all right,” he said to me in that alarmingly thickened voice.

“You don’t sound all right,” I said. I pushed back the hanging curtain of hair with gentle fingers. The bullet graze wound on his temple had been beginning to scab over nicely, but it had been reopened by the fall and a nasty-looking bruise was forming all around it. The blood from the graze wound was minimal; certainly it was not enough to account for the blood that had soaked Stephen’s hairline.

I felt Jack come up behind me. “What happened, Stephen? “ he asked.

Stephen blinked twice and then looked over my shoulder in the direction of Jack. He was white as a ghost, and his eyes did not seem to be focusing properly. “Must’ve come off of Magpie,” he said.

“That’s what musta happened,” Jem agreed. “I was coming along the opposite way when I heard the horse squealing and plunging. Then he come tearin’ past me without a rider. Well, a booby woulda known somebody was in trouble, wouldn’t he? So I gallop on up the road and find Stephen lyin’ there like he was dead. By my reckonin’, he was out for almost fifteen minutes. We just now begun to walk back.”

“Why didn’t you put him up on your horse?” I asked Jem angrily. “He’s obviously in no condition to walk.”

“Couldn’t make it into the saddle,” Stephen said. “My legs feel like rubber.”

“I was feared he’d fall off t’other side and smack his head again, wasn’t I?” Jem said, once more addressing himself to Jack.

“I think that between us we can probably put him up on Topper,” Jack said. “Annabelle, you stand at Topper’s head and Jem and I will get Stephen up.”

It frightened me to see how wobbly Stephen was. Jack gave him a leg up, but if Jem had not done it for him, he would not have been able to throw his other leg over Topper’s back.

“Can you hold yourself in the saddle, Stephen?” Jack said sharply.

“Yes,” Stephen said. His face had gone from white to gray.

I said to Jack, “I’ll lead Topper, and you and Jem walk on either side of Stephen in case he needs help.”

The walk back through Weston Park seemed endless. Jack, who was walking beside Stephen and leading Elf, spoke only once, asking Jem if he had any idea of what might have startled Magpie.

“No,” Jem answered briefly from Stephen’s other side, where he was leading his own horse. “I didn’t see nothing.”

We were halfway home when we ran into Adam, who was also out looking for Stephen.

He looked relieved
when he saw Stephen sitting on Topper.

“Ride back to the house and send for the doctor, Uncle Adam,” I said. “Stephen hit his head and he most probably has a concussion.”

Without another word, Adam turned and galloped back along the path in the direction from which he had come.

We brought Topper right to the back doorway of the house, and Jack and Jem made a seat with their hands and carried Stephen in through the door and up the stairs to his room. Aunt Fanny had come running as soon as she heard us.

“I have warm water waiting up in Stephen’s room, Annabelle,” she told me.

“We’ll need ice, too,” I said, and ordered one of the footmen to go to the kitchen and fetch some chipped ice.

Aunt Fanny followed the men upstairs, and I turned to Adam, who was hovering in the hallway, looking upset. “Did you send for the doctor? “

“Yes. Jasper rode to get him, Annabelle,” Adam replied.

“Good,” I said, and began to turn away to follow Aunt Fanny.

“Dear God, Annabelle,” Adam said, “This is the second blow to his head that Stephen has sustained within the week!”

I knew that, of course, and I was terrified. I had seen head injuries before—anyone who hunts regularly has—and I knew how serious they could be.

I couldn’t answer Adam; I simply nodded and ran up the stairs.

Inside Stephen’s room I found him sitting in the same chair where he had had his last injury attended to, with Jem engaged in pulling off his boots. Aunt Fanny was standing next to him with a bowl of water in her hands, obviously waiting for her chance to get at the new wound.