Joan Smith (24 page)

“You ain’t paying a sou. O’Kelly gulled us, the same as he gulled Peter. I have no money to spare, and I won’t let you squander your dowry on Clappet’s bad judgment,” Norman said firmly. “I will call on Nick, though, and hear what Luten had to say when he went back to the inn. I must apologize to Peter. I swore up and down you had nothing to do with advising him to buy Sheba. I all but called him a liar. Still, I think he might have protected your name and taken the blame himself. I’m sure Nick agrees with me, for he was rolling his eyes the whole time.”

“It was that wretch of a Peter who begged me not to tell Luten; then he spills the whole story himself.”

“He didn’t spill it. Luten knew the worst, and just asked how Peter got bamboozled; that’s all.”

“I want to hear every word that’s said tomorrow.”

“I doubt they’ll be suitable for a lady’s ears. Let us not trouble Auntie with all this brouhaha, Trudie. There is no need to have her ringing a peal over us. I’m demmed sorry I ever took to the turf, if you want the truth. There is that old slice of a Rampling oiling around Georgiana all the time I am away. I think I shall cut my losses and go home.”

“Home to where?” she asked. “We can’t go back to Walbeck Park till the tenant’s lease is up.”

“I daresay we could sublet Northfield—probably at a profit, with the Season drawing closer—and rent up some little cottage near home. I am going to look into it.”

“Oh, Norman,” she sighed. “You mean to marry her, don’t you? I hoped this year would provide a cure.”

“It has. It’s cured me of the racing bug. It’s not what I thought it would be at all. It’s all business and worse—trickery! The owners don’t care for the horses at all. It’s just winning the money and plate. Can you imagine how poor Fandango must have felt, with that live eel in his gullet?”

“Yes, I have a very good idea how he felt, for I feel the same myself,” she answered sadly. Her sadness spread to encompass Norman. He would go home and become leg-shackled before he was twenty-one; but if that was what he wanted, she wouldn’t fight him any longer. Perhaps it was what he was cut out for. Now that he was cured of turf fever, he would settle into a good country squire, but she could not with equanimity face sharing a roof with Georgiana Halley, even if her name did become Georgiana Barten.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be for too long. She would marry someone, but the local gentlemen would seem even more tame and unsatisfactory after Luten.

“We might as well go to bed,” she said.

“You run along. I have a letter to write.”

“To Georgiana, or the real estate agent back home?”

“Georgiana.”

A soft smile took possession of his face. Trudie’s wore a totally different look. She would pay for Peter’s folly out of her own dowry and wipe that condescending glower from Luten’s proud brow. But first she would see what could be done about finding O’Kelly. He couldn’t just vanish. Someone must know where he was to be found.

It was late the next afternoon before Trudie heard the clatter of hooves advancing toward Northfield. She turned quite white and darted to the window. “It’s Peter and Nick!” she exclaimed, peering down the road to ascertain that they were unaccompanied by Luten. She didn’t know whether the slowing of her heartbeat was due to relief or disappointment.

“Excellent,” Norman said. “It will save me the trip into town to apologize. I would have gone sooner, if I hadn’t been busy with the real estate agent, putting Northfield up for hire.”

Mrs. Harrington was so happy with this plan that she was already in the kitchen with the Bogmans, explaining what meals were necessary to use up all the perishable food in the house before they left.

Norman steeled himself to do the proper thing, and Trudie remained in the saloon, intending to offer to pay the whole cost. She knew as soon as she saw the embarrassed face of Clappet that he regretted having drawn her fair name into the fracas.

“Clappet, I owe you an apology,” Norman said even before the guests had taken a seat. “I was unaware of my sister’s part in all this wretched business.”

“No, please! I am here to apologize myself. It was scaly  of me to hide behind a lady,” he said, turning to Trudie. “I don’t know what got into me, but when Luten goes into one of his freezes, I turn into a babbling idiot. I thought he would be less angry if he knew
you
were involved,” he explained.

“I
am
involved, and I shall certainly repay every penny to you,” she assured him. “Does Luten know you’re here? I think he would dislike it very much.”

“Of course he knows.”

“Sent him,” Sir Charles added, which earned him a scowl from Clappet.

“I had every intention of coming anyway,” Peter said. “Luten told me you had offered to pay, and I want you to know that I wouldn’t hear of it. For him to be telling me you are more a gentleman than I am—well, you can imagine how small I felt. And it’s true too. Did Uncle cut up very stiff last night?”

“Yes,” Norman admitted, “but not so stiff as Trudie. She combed his hair with a rake. Have you heard anything about O’Kelly?”

“We’ve been scouring the town talking to anyone who knew him,” Sir Charles said. “Luten says we ought to go after him, but we’ve come a cropper. No one knows where he has gone. It turns out he’s earned himself such a reputation in Ireland that it’s very unlikely he went there, as we first thought.”

“London, then .  .  .” Norman suggested.

Sir Charles shook his head doubtfully. “I think not. There’s a band of desperadoes on the lookout for him there as well. Shaved cards, bad debts, and quite possibly a young female whose family would split his head open if he showed up. He’s a cur. He didn’t pay any of his debts at Newmarket either. Luten says the only good in it is that he won’t dare show his phiz back here for a few Seasons.”

“He headed south out of Newmarket. His carriage was seen flying along at a great pace, with my poor Fandango bringing up the rear,” Clappet explained.

“He has to be somewhere,” Trudie said impatiently.

“Luten feels he’s hiding out in some little center that wouldn’t have heard of him,” Sir Charles told them. “He says September at Doncaster is the earliest we can hope to find him. He won’t dare to race Fandango himself, but will sell him, since he stole his breeding papers. He’ll summer at some cheap resort area, pull off a few more rigs, and go back into business. He goes to the tracks early in the season, as he did here, and fleeces some Johnnie Raw, then nips away before the Jockey Club catches hold of him.”

Peter grimaced to hear himself so disparagingly described, but remained silent.

“Then we should make a tour of the cheap resort areas,” Trudie said. “Which would you think likely, Nick?”

“Not Brighton. It’d be Margate, Weymouth, or Tunbridge Wells—somewhere like that. I, for one, don’t intend to waste my time looking for the blackleg, but if I ever see him ...” His ever-present crop was lifted, pistol-fashion, and his trigger finger quivered.

A light of interest flashed in her eyes. “Tunbridge Wells, did you say?”

“That’s one possibility,” Peter said. They exchanged a meaningful glance. Norman, who still had no idea of Luten’s infamous proposition to his sister, failed to read any significance in it, but Sir Charles perked up.

“Of course, O’Kelly would have no way of knowing there was a cottage—er—standing idle there. Would he?” he asked.

Trudie had a hunch so strong it amounted almost to knowledge that that was where O’Kelly had gone to hide. It would suit him right down to the ground—free, and holding the irony of another offense to this group he had diddled. She had told him the exact location, and he had even asked whose name it was hired in. He had been seen heading south too.

She shook herself back to attention. “No, he wouldn’t know that.”

“There would be cottages standing idle in all those summer places at this time of year,” Norman said. Trudie gave a nonchalant shrug and agreed.

“Did we tell you Luten is giving us rack and manger at Sable Lodge, and stabling our nags too?” Sir Charles asked.

“He mentioned it last night,” Norman said. “It is just as well, for I am leaving Northfield, and going back home.”

This was discussed at some length. Norman heard with apparent equanimity that he was too soft by half to be a proper man of the turf. He already knew it, and though he resented the description, he was glad of the fact. “I wasn’t raised to think winning was everything,” he said simply. “I leave the field to Luten and his sort.”

“Speaking of Luten,” Sir Charles reminded Clappet, “he is having his groom time Lightning this afternoon. We should be going, Peter.”

“Was he very hard on you, Peter?” Trudie asked.

“Well, you know, the oddest thing is, he wasn’t half so hard as I expected. He said it was as much his fault as my own that I hadn’t come to him in my trouble, and in future, he wanted me to feel quite free to consult with him on anything. It was demmed close to an apology. He must have been bosky.”

“He was, a little,” Sir Charles agreed. “It was brandy he was drinking, not wine. He don’t usually drink brandy. Something had him upset. I daresay it was being bested by O’Kelly that accounted for it.”

“But he won’t forward me any more money,” Peter said. “I shan’t be able to buy another colt till next spring.”

The guests soon left, promising they would all meet again before the Bartens left Newmarket.

“I’m happy that is patched up,” Norman said. “It was generous of them, apologizing when it was all your fault. And we needn’t worry about having to pay anything.”

“Norman,” Trudie said, choosing her words carefully, “it
is
my
fault, and I insist on paying, whatever they say. No, not out of my dowry!” she added hastily when his face took on its mulish look. “The thing is, I know where Mr. O’Kelly is hiding.”

“How could you possibly know?”

“I just know. He—he happened to let slip that he knows of a cottage paid for and unused at Tunbridge Wells.”

“I thought Nick said he
couldn't
know about that cottage. What cottage is it anyway?”

“He
does
know. I told him. It’s—it’s a cottage one of Nick’s friends hired for a ladybird, but at the last moment, she flew off on him.”

“Trudie, I’m shocked that you talked so broad to O’Kelly. Why, he must think you’re no better than a hurly-burly girl.” His first spasm of anger subsided, and he saw the possibilities of bringing O’Kelly to justice. “We must tell Peter and Nick about this.”

“No! No, it’s all my fault. I want us to go. I have it all worked out, Norman. We’ll tell Auntie we’re going back home to hunt out a cottage and will come back for her when we’ve found one. She hates traveling and won’t insist on coming with us.”

“But she’ll want you to stay with her while I go. Actually, that makes more sense. I can’t take you along to Tunbridge Wells, but Nick would love to go.”

“Not now, when Luten has taken him under his wing. It wouldn’t be fair to drag him away when he’s training Lightning. Why, it might cost him the Oaks, or even the Triple Crown.” And it would rob her of the pleasure of showing Lord Luten she not only knew the sportsman’s code but followed it.

It took a deal of talking, but eventually Trudie had convinced her young brother that the best solution was for the two of them to go after O’Kelly alone. Once convinced, he began to appropriate the idea for his own.

“And they said I was soft! This’ll show them. Even if I ain’t the sort who believes in pounding a perfectly innocent filly into the ground till her poor shins are busted, I’m not so soft as to let a blackguard like Okay O’Kelly off scot-free. We shall leave first thing tomorrow morning. Would you like to tell Auntie, or shall I?” As she wanted to make sure their aunt didn’t talk him out of it or convince him to go alone, Trudie told Mrs. Harrington herself.

They packed and left
...
early the next morning. In their rush, they didn’t think of such details as procuring a pistol, but it occurred to Norman that evening, after they had stopped for the night at an inn.

“You don’t suppose he would do anything foolish like resist?” he asked.

“We’ll take along a constable.”

“Yes, that makes sense. And he’ll be trespassing, along with all the rest. What was the name of the fellow who hired the cottage? A friend of Nick’s, you said. I must know him.”

“Mr. Mandeville,” she said, hoping her brother had forgotten Luten’s name.

It was no such a thing. “Luten?” he asked, staring. “What a wretched fellow he is. Imagine Peter having such a libertine for a guardian.”

“It’s shocking,” she agreed, and quickly changed the subject.

It was a long trip from Newmarket to Tunbridge Wells, and though they got an early start on the second lap the next morning, the afternoon was well advanced when they drove through the picturesque hilly moorlands where Kent and Sussex join, into the town of Tunbridge Wells.

They had spent a few weeks there when their mother was ill some years before, and were familiar with the layout of the place. They decided to hire a room at one of the inns on the Common. This was a large area of gorse and bracken behind the Pantiles. They drove along this promenade, which was the town’s chief gathering place and boasted a colonnade on one side, the other bordered by a row of lime trees.

“It’s fourpences to a groat we’ll see O’Kelly on the strut at this hour of the day, and we’ll confront him right in public if we do,” Trudie said. As the moment of confrontation drew near, she was strangely loath to meet it.

“That would be best. And we shall have a constable along with us as well,” Norman reminded her. He was no more eager than his sister to tackle the large Irishman, virtually alone. Trudie could do the arguing better than he could, but she’d be little help if it came to a brawl, as it very well might.

Trudie had already foreseen a host of difficulties, the first of which was presenting herself as Miss Barten, the lady in whose name the cottage had been hired, without letting Norman know it. “First, of course, we must make sure that he’s here. Why don’t you hire us the room, Norman, while
I
run around to the real estate agencies and find out if O’Kelly got the key for the cottage?”