“Ha!” shouted Craven with a laugh. “Now we see why Violet was so enraged. Not the below-stairs maid but her apprentice. No doubt who’s already laid claim to the little vixen.”
Verderan saw a flash of fury in Osbaldeston’s face. So that was his quarry, not Violet at all. What a revolting thought. Such a charming morsel deserved a gentle hand.
“If you say so,” said Verderan blandly. “But I assure you the cover’s undrawn as yet, so who’s to say in which direction the vixen will break? Lay your bets, gentlemen.”
That was enough to distract the whole group from the identity of the lady seen in his company that morning. The betting book came out and hundreds of guineas were wagered on the disreputable futures of Violet Vane and her promising little protégée.
But though they joined in, Verderan and George Osbaldeston were weighing other odds and making other silent wagers.
In the cool of the next morning, Emily stood in the pleasant pungency of the stable yard and surveyed her assets.
The family stock consisted of two hacks which could also be harnessed to the gig or small carriage; Emily’s own riding horse, a grey gelding called Corsair; and six hunters. Three had been bred by her father for eventual sale, the others bought as yearlings or two-year-olds. There were never enough hunters, and Sir Henry had reckoned to make a tidy profit while ensuring himself and his son fine mounts for the season.
Three of the horses were still too young to hunt; they probably would have to be sold but would bring very little. Three, however, were in their prime: Nelson, Wallingford and Oak-apple. Sir Henry had ridden Wallingford and Oak-apple, and two others that he’d sold, the year before. This would be Nelson’s first time out. They could all be worth a lot of money, but the whole scheme depended on someone riding them in the field and handling the subsequent gentlemanly bargaining.
Emily went over and fed a windfall to the pride of the stables, Nelson. He was a chestnut with a deep chest, well-sloped shoulders, and strong quarters. He could jump almost anything.
“Oh, you could go like the wind, Nelson,” she said as she rubbed his forehead. “If they once saw you in action, all those silly Meltonians would be bidding their all to own you.”
The big chestnut gently butted her and she laughed. “Yes, of course I’ll ride you today. I wish I could ride you in a hunt but it isn’t done, you know. Even if I were to be so bold, I couldn’t go to the Old Club and get the best price. And anyway, all those arrogant men would refuse to be impressed by a mount ridden by a female. It would be demeaning, wouldn’t it, to sell you for a hundred or so as if you were just another horse?”
Nelson tossed up his head and snorted at the very idea.
Haverby, the groom, came out of the tack shed. “Want me to saddle ’im, Miss Emily?”
“Yes, please.” Emily suddenly realized that soon these magnificent horses would be gone. She hadn’t looked ahead so far in her plans. How empty, how ordinary, the stables would seem without them.
She went the rounds, dispensing largesse and paying particular attention to Corsair so he wouldn’t be jealous, until the groom led out Nelson ready for her. “We’re going to have to sell them, you know, Haverby,” she said.
He was stoical. “Better so, I reckon. No life for them stuck here.”
“I think I’ll have to hire someone to ride them, though. Do you know of anyone?”
“You want a roughrider, miss. Dick Christian’s best, they say, but I doubt you’ll get him this close to hunting.”
“I’ve heard of him. He rides for the horse-copers and sometimes for gentlemen?”
“That’s right. There ain’t a horse born he can’t ride, and ride well. He’d make even old Venus there”—he nodded at the oldest hack—“look like prime blood.”
The unlikely notion made Emily smile. “I’d like to get the best. Can you get word to him that I’d like to hire him? It does no harm to ask. And see who else may be suitable as well?”
“Right you are,” he said and tossed Emily into the saddle. “Where you be off to, then, Miss Emily?” he asked. It was the only restriction put on Emily these days, to let someone know where she was heading.
“Up to High Burton,” she replied and gave Nelson the office to go.
She took it slowly for a while, letting the horse stretch and settle, and then began to try his paces. They cantered over a fallow field, and she set him at an easy woven hedge. He hopped over it and tossed his head.
“Too tame for you, is it?” she chuckled. “Very well.”
She let him have his head and they raced across grass towards a higher fence with a ditch behind. She collected him, then set him at it. It was like flying with a smooth, controlled landing at the end.
“Oh, you beauty!” she said, laughing, and they raced on to the next obstacle.
In a little while she reined him down to a trot, then to a walk. “You could go on for hours, couldn’t you, my fine fellow? But that’s enough for now. I want to look at the land.”
He obediently walked along, his step as light and frisky as if he had just come out of the stable, as Emily looked over the disputed property. It needed the sheep. The grass had grown long during the wasted months. In Two Oak Field the gash in the earth was unrepaired after old Casper’s attempted plowing, but already grass and weeds had disguised the damage.
Two Oak bordered directly onto the Sillitoe estate and Emily saw that the field beyond contained a well-tended covert of gorse and ferns. She wasn’t surprised, for Casper had been a great supporter of hunting, and if you wanted foxes available for the chase you needed coverts for them to hide in when their earths were stopped.
It was a bother, though. She hardly wanted to encourage foxes to lurk next door to her flock. As she frowned over the brush fence at the covert she heard the thumping of hooves and looked up. A fine dark horse ran easily up the sloped field towards her. As it came closer she recognized with a tremor of alarm that the rider was Mr. Piers Verderan. Reacting perhaps to an involuntary jerk of her hand, Nelson jibbed and sidled away as the horse and rider drew up on the other side of the fence.
Mr. Verderan raised his hat. “Miss Grantwich. What a pleasant surprise.” He sounded as if he meant it, and Emily thought the surprise part was doubtless honest. How different she must look now, dressed in a bright green habit and a small-brimmed hat with a trailing veil. And mounted on what he must recognize as a handsome bit of blood.
She had been slow to respond. His smile cooled. “I must apologize. I did promise not to encroach, didn’t I? Shall we assume we have never met?”
“No, of course not,” she said quickly and extended her hand over the fence. “My mind was just slow to turn away from the problem of that covert, Mr. Verderan.”
To her surprise he raised her gloved hand briefly to his lips before turning to look at the large area of gorse and fern. “Problem? It looks to be in fine shape.”
That out-of-place salute of her hand flustered Emily even though it clearly had no significance for him. There had been no speaking look, no lingering over the touch. So why had he done it?
The part of her mind that was still rational responded to his comment. “But the foxes will eat the lambs.”
He raised a brow and gazed about at empty fields.
She smiled at her foolishness. “The lambs born to the sheep I intend to put on these fields, Mr. Verderan,” she explained.
That caught his attention. “Do you indeed? You will need a good shepherd, then, to care for your flock.” His elegant lips twitched. “How very pious that sounds, to be sure.”
Emily knew she was smiling in return. “But I hardly expect to receive divine intervention, sir,” she remarked. “Definitely a case in which God helps those who help themselves. I will certainly need a good shepherd.”
“Forgive my curiosity, Miss Grantwich,” he said, “but is this land yours?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied, seeing no point in regaling a stranger with the sorry story of the dispute. “Or, at least, my father’s. I manage the estate for him.”
A finely curved brow quirked. “Do you know, Miss Grantwich, you are a creature of infinite surprises. Next you will be telling me you hunt that fine beast.”
His tone reminded her that she’d found this man insufferably arrogant. Emily’s spirit sparked in response to the challenge she detected, and she raised her chin. “I would hunt Nelson if I had any wish to do so,” she retorted, who had never considered such an outrageous thing before. “As it is, I have no taste for the sport.”
“And yet presumably you like to ride.”
“I can ride as much as I want, sir, without having to chase an animal to death to get pleasure from it.”
“That only shows that you’ve never ridden in a hunt,” he drawled in that tone which made her want to contradict everything he said.
Before she could think of an abrasive response, he looked out over the misty landscape stretched around them, the rolling grassland and high fences that made the Shires ideal hunting country. When he spoke, it was in a soft, thoughtful voice.
“There’s a challenge in the chase, Miss Grantwich, and the greatest treasure in life—an unpredictable ending. The fox will lead where a sane horse and rider would never go of their own volition, and despite his reputation for cunning, the fox does not twist and hide. He runs straight and fast and long, and he who hesitates in his wake is well and truly lost.”
He turned and looked at her. “Therein lies the challenge, Miss Grantwich, which you will never get when out hacking. The speed, the danger. And the glory of facing fears and conquering them. And,” he added with a smile, “surviving.”
Though Emily’s head advised that he described insanity, her faster breathing and a rapid heartbeat showed she was in danger of Bedlam too. She, who had always been so sensible, so careful, so moderate, suddenly wanted to take a risk, face a terrifying challenge, and achieve a dizzy triumph.
He spoke again in a normal, offhand voice. “If you’re going to condemn that horse to tame canters along bridle paths, Miss Grantwich, it will be a damn shame.”
Emily stared at him, startled by the word. “I beg your pardon?”
He was coolly unmoved. “Do you expect an apology for a mere ‘damn’? You must surely hear worse as you go about your father’s business.”
That was true, but she was nettled that he did not think her worthy of common courtesy. “Another religious reference, Mr. Verderan?” she asked tartly. “You’ll have me thinking you a man of the cloth.”
“You are far too intelligent to think anything so absurd, Miss Grantwich.”
And that was true, thought Emily. With his crisp dark curls and sardonic features, Piers Verderan brought the devil to mind, not God. The notion of him in a pulpit exhorting the local farmers to honest labor and charitable works was totally impossible.
“Lost for words, Miss Grantwich?” he challenged.
Emily was perilously close to it. Nothing in her life had prepared her for Piers Verderan. “All I can say, Mr. Verderan,” she said primly, “is that your conversation is not that of a gentleman.”
“Ask anyone,” he said with a slight smile. “They’ll tell you it’s been my life’s work to avoid being anything so tedious as a gentleman.”
Emily was utterly confused. “What pray are you, then?”
His smile widened into that devilishly charming one, and it was as if little flames sparked in his eyes. “Why, Miss Grantwich, haven’t you guessed? I’m a rake. And I’m also Casper Sillitoe’s heir. I believe this land is contested between our two estates. I’ll have to consider carefully this matter of your sheep.”
Before she could say a word, he turned his horse and set it back the way he’d come at a gallop, flying over a fence with elegance. Emily felt Nelson twitch with the urge to follow and challenge that dark beauty. She felt the same urge herself, but it was not a riding challenge that called her. It was something else.
She’d never met a man who behaved quite as Piers Verderan did. Though she couldn’t exactly say he offered her insult, he did not treat her as a gentleman should treat a lady. Just by a gesture or a tone of voice he seemed to suggest they were already more than that.
Surely he could mean nothing by his manner with her, even though it created in her a feeling of intimacy which was turning her giddy.
“You’re twenty-six,” she reminded herself, “and plain, and unromantic, and businesslike ...”
No amount of self-debate helped. “Damn,” she muttered, using just the word she’d objected to from him, as she set Nelson back towards Grantwich Hall at a good speed.
She spent the whole canter home obsessed by the man. A self-confessed rake. A libertine of the first water. Doubtless a gambler and drunkard. She had never met a rake and never wanted to. No sane and decent woman would want anything to do with a man who consorted with loose women, drank himself under the table every night, and wagered his all on a fly on the window or the parentage of some poor lady’s child.
She should have guessed, however, that a rake would have skills expressly designed to set the most sensible lady’s head spinning like a whirligig.
4
E
MILY GALLOPED the last mile to the Grantwich Hall stables to let Nelson have his head and to try to blow a certain man out of her own. The ride was wonderful, but thoughts of the man lingered. He was surely a Meltonian and would stay for the season, living at Hume House—Casper’s old place—and therefore their nearest neighbor. How was she to avoid him? Did she want to avoid him?
And to add to her problems, as an avid hunter he’d probably set up more coverts for foxes and positively encourage the hunt to work this part of the country. That meant trouble.
Not that Emily was fond of foxes. They were vermin and an utter nuisance, but traps and guns would get rid of them more efficiently than a hundred men and twenty couple of hounds chasing one poor beast for hours. In fact it was getting to the point where people were carefully preserving the foxes to ensure good sport and heaven help anyone who destroyed one. The world was assuredly mad.