Just Deserts (21 page)

Chapter eight

‘
God, no!’ burst from Persephone.

Next instant she was streaking away, galloping back towards
the track that led to the Buckfastleigh mansion.

Shock held the rest of the company still, staring after
her, until Viscount Fitzwarren, his voice curt, took command and
galvanised them all into action.

‘
Get after her, Rossendale! You will not catch her, but at
least if she takes a rattling fall, which is not unlikely, you will
be at hand.’

Lord Rossendale nodded and took off after his cousin. He
was soon followed by one or two others, after a quick consultation
among them about who should stay to see the race and bring back the
result. Sir Charles Bunbury went off to see the stewards and Fitz
rode over to tell Penelope what had transpired.

‘
I must go back,’ she said urgently, all thought of her own
troubles swept from her mind. ‘If that horse dies, Seph will be
distraught. She will need me.’

‘
Don’t fear, Pen. I will escort you immediately. I cannot
myself answer for Chid if the worst should happen.’

Persephone, meanwhile, riding as if all the devils of hell
were after her, and with a prayer in her heart, made such good
speed that she covered the distance to Buckfastleigh’s place in
record time. Cantering up to the stables, she slid from the saddle
and called the nearest groom to her, giving him the reins and
bidding him rub down the animal.

‘
Where is Lord Chiddingly’s horse?’

The groom was staring open-mouthed at the steaming flanks
of her own horse and she had to rap out the question
again.

‘
Lord Chiddingly, dolt! Where is he?’

Coming to himself, the groom directed her to one of the
large stable blocks and she ran across and entered it, searching
frantically from one stall to the next, calling out.

‘
Chiddingly! Chiddingly, where are you?’

In the dim light she saw a tall figure step out into the
corridor that ran past the stalls.

‘
Here,’ said Chiddingly’s curt voice, adding as she hurried
up to him, ‘though what you want here is beyond me.’

‘
Where is he?’ Persephone asked, heedless alike of his words
and his manner.

Then she looked into the stall and gave a distressed cry.
In the pool of light cast by a lamp that had been brought in and
hung on a peg on the wall, she could see the great black stallion
lying on his side in the straw, his velvet head thrown back, huge
eyes rolling as he uttered grunts of protest. His breathing was
stertorous and laboured.

Behind him knelt a middle-aged man in respectable suit and
wig, but with a coarse apron over all. He was feeling for the
horse’s heart and Persephone took in at once that he must be the
local horse-doctor.

To one side stood Tidmarsh, his eyes glowering as he stared
down at the fallen horse, beating now and then with a clenched fist
against the wall. Near him was Siegfried, his sharp cockney
features screwed up in grief, tears coursing down his
cheeks.

Persephone turned a haggard countenance to the Baron. ‘Is
he dying?’

‘
I fear so,’ he answered. ‘We shall know more when the
doctor concludes his examination.’

‘
Oh God,’ she whispered.

Chiddingly’s anxiety found expression in a sudden
gust of rage. ‘Why you should look so, I am at a loss to
understand. This is
your
fault! You, with
your vindictive tongue, abusing him before the rest so that I felt
myself compelled to vindicate his powers. Now see what has come of
it. Some unscrupulous blackguard has done his worst. Doubtless to
stop him running today. Well, he is stopped, do you see? Thanks to
you, he may never run again.’

Overcome by emotion, he flung away from her to bury his
head on his arms against the doorway of the stall.

Persephone gazed at his back, ashen-faced, as the awful
truth of his words struck home. Her voice was a thread of
sound.

‘
I did not mean it so. Before God, I would
kill
myself
before I offered such harm to a
horse!’

Tidmarsh came up to her and put a hand on her arm, saying
in a low tone, ‘He is overwrought, ma’am. He does not mean what he
says.’

Persephone looked at him, lips trembling. ‘But it is true.
God help me, it is true!’ Then she turned to look again at the
suffering horse and a sob tore itself from her throat.

‘
Oh,
Indigo
!’

She fell on her knees in the straw and flung her arms
across the horse’s neck, weeping into his inky black coat. Her
golden hair, loosened by her wild ride, spilled from her shoulders
to mingle with the flowing dark mane.

Chiddingly, catching Tidmarsh’s words, had turned in time
to see her throw herself down and stood for a moment paralysed with
horror at the memory of the things he had said. The anguish of her
racking sobs wrung his heart.

Leaving his work, the doctor tugged unavailingly at her
shaking shoulders. He looked up, annoyance in his face.

‘
Take her away, for God’s sake! She is impeding my
examination.’

Chiddingly started forward, and seizing her about the
waist, dragged her up. ‘Persephone, come away!’

She struggled against him, crying out incoherently, lost in
grief.

‘
Persephone
!’

Chiddingly pulled her bodily away from the vicinity of the
horse, turned her about and dealt her a light slap on the
cheek.

Persephone gasped in shock, her hysteria arrested, and
stared at him blankly, her lovely face ravaged and
tear-stained.

‘
Persephone, I did not mean it,’ Chiddingly said, low-voiced
and urgent, his fingers gripping her shoulders. ‘I was beside
myself. Of course you are not to blame.’

‘
I am, I am!’ she returned huskily.

‘
Nonsense. In this game there is always a risk. So much
money as there is at stake. Anyone might have done it, to any
horse.’

‘
But I lied,’ she protested breathlessly. ‘I
never—thought badly—of the horse
at all.
He is
a—wonderful horse! The greatest horse I have ever
seen!’

In spite of all,
Chiddingly felt a grin splitting his face.

‘
Oh, Seph, you little fool.’

Her tears spilled over again. ‘If he dies, Chid, I will
never forgive myself.’

Chiddingly caught her to him and she wept quietly into his
chest, while he held her golden head close against his
shoulder.

The doctor’s voice interrupted them. ‘My lord!’

The baron let Persephone go and they turned together,
anxiety in both their faces. The doctor was holding the horse’s
head still and looking closely within his eyes.

‘
My lord,’ he said, without looking up, ‘I dare to hope we
may be more fortunate than we thought. I think he is only
drugged.’

‘
Drugged?’ echoed Persephone.

‘
Pray heaven you may be right,’ Chiddingly said.

‘
The eyes have that look, my lord,’ the doctor continued.
‘The breathing, too, is symptomatic. And for all his complaints, I
cannot find that there is any abdominal pain.’

‘
But drugged how?’ demanded Persephone, reviving
fast.

‘
Opium balls, I suspect,’ the doctor told her.

‘
I have heard of that,’ Chiddingly said.

‘
Administered in his feed, no doubt,’ Tidmarsh
suggested.

He and Siegfried, who was once more dry-eyed and sharply
listening, had moved close to hear the doctor’s
diagnosis.

‘
I’d like to get a-hold of him as done that, so I
would,’ the jockey announced. ‘Darken his daylights, I will, no
question. But who done it, I arst yer?
Who?’

‘
Yes,’ Tidmarsh agreed, ‘this wants
investigation.’

‘
Find out what you can, Tidmarsh,’ his master said, and
turned once more to the doctor. ‘Why is Indigo not asleep,
then?’

‘
No, no, opium does not act as a soporific,’ the doctor
explained. ‘It is as if he were drunk, my lord. That is why he
cannot stand. His groaning is doubtless in protest against
hallucinatory dreams.’

‘
Oh, poor Indigo,’ Persephone cried, her sympathy
stirred.

‘
Yes, but it is a deal better than poison,’ Chiddingly said.
‘At least the villains spared us that.’

Persephone was suddenly radiant. ‘Then he will be well
again?’

‘
With care and due attention, yes,’ the doctor concurred,
watching now with some indulgence as Persephone fell upon her knees
once more, this time to pet and croon over the ailing
stallion.

Chiddingly frowned. ‘You are sure?’

‘
Certain, my lord. If it were poison, he would be sinking
fast by now. If you will but look at his ears, you will see how
alertly they still twitch.’

It was true. Indeed, Indigo’s head was even tossing a
little. Finally convinced, Chiddingly breathed an enormous sigh of
relief and, hearing running footsteps, turned to find a number of
new arrivals crowding into the doorway of the stall. Grinning, he
relayed the good news in answer to anxious queries, and on the
doctor’s acid request herded them all out of the improvised
sickroom and into the stable yard.

Bestowing upon Indigo one final pat, Persephone rose up and
followed them out. As she stood watching Chiddingly fielding the
crossfire of question and exclamation, a movement—familiar somehow
and yet alien—caught at the periphery of her vision. She looked
round. At the edge of the crowd about the baron, a man with a
pronounced limp moved round, craning his neck as if to get a better
view.

With a sense of dread rising in her breast, Persephone
raised her eyes from the legs to stare at the face. Across it ran a
scar, livid and white.

***

For all the relief of Indigo’s recovery, the incident had
cast a pall of gloom over the company. Those who had left the
racecourse felt no inclination to return there, but stood or sat
about in forlorn groups, making desultory conversation.

Chiddingly remained nearly all day in attendance at the
stables, but he sent Persephone away, greeting with relief the
arrival of her sister and Fitz.

‘
For God’s sake, Penelope, persuade her to go inside. She
keeps babbling of some man with a scar and driving me
distracted.’

On seeing the scarred man, Persephone had plunged
incontinently towards the group, bent on alerting the baron,
convinced that this villain who had shot Papa must be guilty of the
wicked trick perpetrated upon Indigo. But by the time she had
managed to get to Chiddingly, pushing through the press of persons
about him, the man had disappeared.

‘
But he was here. I saw him!’

‘
Miss Winsford, you are overwrought,’ had said Chiddingly.
‘Besides, I cannot think that a highwayman would calmly enter these
premises.’

‘
He is not a highwayman. At least—’

She stopped, aware of how foolish she must seem claiming to
see here a man who had held them up on the open road, but who could
not now be found.

Chiddingly made no attempt to conceal his belief that her
imagination was playing her tricks. But she had seen him! Unable to
rest, and fearful for the horse’s safety, she ran back to the stall
to check on him and embarked on a search of every nook and cranny
to make sure the man had not concealed himself preparatory to
committing another assault upon Indigo.

Only when she had been assured not merely by Chiddingly,
but by both Tidmarsh and the doctor, that someone would remain with
the stallion at all times, did Penelope succeed in dragging her off
to their bedchamber to change her soiled garments and rearrange her
disordered locks.

‘
The villain saw me, of course, and knew I must
recognise him,’ she told her sister, as Penelope relentlessly
dragged a comb through her tangled tresses. ‘You may be sure he has
made himself scarce.’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘If
only
I could recall where I had seen him before that
hold-up.’

‘
Drat you, Seph, keep still! Unless you wish me to fetch
Mama to you.’

This threat made her twin groan, but she
submitted to her sister’s ministrations and presently emerged from
the bedchamber freshly clad in a gown of chintz cotton with her
hair once more frizzed and curling down her back in ringlets
á la conseilleur.

In this guise she appeared with the remainder of the guests
in the drawing-room before dinner only to hear the startling news
that Magnet, who, without Indigo to challenge him, had been
expected to walk away with the new sweepstake, had lost the
race.

‘
Most astounding thing I ever saw,’ said Clermont who, with
a horse running, had stayed to see the race. ‘There was Magnet, way
out in front, with little more than half a mile to the post. When
up sweeps Ganymede—eight years old if he’s a day—and damme if he
don’t nick the prize from under Magnet’s champion nose.’