Lord Beecham threw up his hands, snagged his riding crop and jacket from his acting butler, Claude the footman, because Mr. Crittaker, the butler at Heatherington House since before Lord Beecham had come into this world, had finally died peacefully in his lovely room on the third floor with Mrs. Glass on his left side and Lord Beecham on his right side. All the other servants were ranged in a line according to rank, from right to left at the foot of his bed. Mr. Crittaker’s last words had been: “The upstairs maid should not be standing next to the tweeny, my lord. Claude, you must do better than this.”
“Er, have a nice ride, my lord.”
“Thank you, Claude. How are you doing with the polishing of the silverware?”
Claude’s narrow shoulders rounded themselves. “My fingers are rubbed raw, my lord. It is beyond me how Old Crit ever got those spoons so shiny you could see your own dear ma’s heavenly soul shining back up at you.”
“Keep trying, Claude. Speak to Mrs. Glass.”
“Old Crit always said that a housekeeper, being a female and all, had no notion of how to provide a good polish, my lord.”
“Old Crit was from the last century, Claude. Bring yourself up to modern times.”
“Mrs. Glass doesn’t like me, my lord. She will not tell me the proper silver procedure.”
“She simply misses Crittaker. She will adjust, if you are properly deferential.”
“But Old Crit said—”
I am surely in Bedlam, Lord Beecham thought, waving Claude away. He walked down the front steps of his town house and turned right toward the small stables, set beneath newly leafing oak trees, some twenty feet from the house.
Lord Beecham would say one thing for Blunder—when he set his mind to something—he got it done quickly. Luther, his big, mean, graceful gelding, was saddled and waiting for him.
He was enjoying the cool spring air on his face as he cantered through the park. He waved to friends, paused to speak to ladies, who laughed and waved at him from their landaus, and then spotted Reverend Older. The two gentlemen reined in and rode side by side for a while. Reverend Older was a distinguished and popular churchman, a fine orator, an eccentric, and a horse-racing fanatic, who, Lord Beecham had heard from a St. Jude sexton whom the reverend had fleeced, spent some of the money from the collection plate to wager on the races. Reverend Older had called it a rotten lie and given the sexton a bloody nose.
“I am thinking about traveling down to the McCaulty racetrack next week,” Reverend Older said. “Not on Sunday, of course. That is the one day I am simply too busy.”
“True enough,” said Lord Beecham, trying not to laugh between Luther’s big bay ears. Was this the way it would be from now on? There would be a laugh behind every tree to ambush him? He supposed he could accustom himself. “I didn’t know you had any interest in the cat races, sir, just horse races.”
“Ah, the little nits can run faster than the wind, my boy. The trick is to keep them focused, many times difficult since they get distracted so easily. Have you ever attended a cat race?”
Lord Beecham shook his head. “Not yet. Perhaps one day. A friend of mine, Rohan Carrington, Baron Mount-vale, is one of the major patrons of the cat races.”
“Yes, indeed. His racing cats win regularly. Also two of the preeminent cat trainers, the Harker brothers, are gardeners at Mountvale’s country estate. That is certainly to his advantage.”
Everyone had heard of the cat races at the famous McCaulty racetrack. Actually, huge sums of money were won and lost at the cat races. Lord Beecham, however, couldn’t imagine such a thing.
Lord Beecham had been to one horse race in his life—at the racetrack in York—and had found it a dead bore. He had even won a hundred pounds betting on a horse he had never heard of, but the horse’s name had appealed to him. It was Muddy Boy, a huge, rawboned gelding who looked more vicious than his great-aunt Honoraria when she had caught him as a lad walking behind her and pulling stuffed birds out of the massive wig she wore.
“True enough. I once stayed with Rohan Carrington for the cat races. Nearly lost my clerical collar when a thin little white tube of a cat streaked past the favorite—and the racer I had laid fifty guineas on—in the home stretch.”
They rode alone together for some minutes before Reverend Older, sawing on his horse’s reins, shouted, “Oh my! I very nearly forgot. The dear ladies of Montpelier Place are giving me a tea this afternoon and I must attend. I can’t disappoint the sweet dears. I am even thinking of marrying one of them.”
Now this was a shock. Reverend Older also had something of a reputation, not for debauchery, naturally, but the fact was that over the years, the good reverend, in addition to all his other achievements, had become an accomplished flirt.
“Which good lady, sir?”
“Why Lilac Murcheson, Lady Chomley. You remember Chomley, don’t you, Spenser? He was a loose-mouthed codbrain who thankfully croaked it before he had gone through his fortune. As I recall, he fondled a man’s wife in the very nave of my church, and the husband was forced to call him out. Put a bullet neatly through his forehead. Lilac’s son gave her a neat little stud in Wessex. I fancy I will retire there when the holy words dry up in my brain, and breed my own horses one of these years.”
Lord Beecham just shook his head as he watched Reverend Older canter away, his bottom bouncing up and down on the saddle. It had to be painful. He couldn’t imagine the reverend no longer exhorting sinners from his pulpit, then laughing when the choirmaster tripped on his gown and fell into the organist, who brought forth a chord that had the entire congregation covering their ears.
He just could not understand how his own father and Reverend Older could have possibly been friends. The reverend Older was eccentric and enjoyed betting perhaps a bit too much, but he seemed to be awash in good humor and honor, unlike Gilbert Heatherington, Lord Beecham’s sire.
He breathed in deeply as he turned Luther off the well-trod path into an area of the park that would allow him to gallop for just a bit. “All right, Luther,” he said close to his stallion’s ear, “do what you will.”
Luther, nothing loath, stretched his neck, kicked back his hind legs, and shot forward. Lord Beecham laughed aloud, a good clean sound and he liked the feel of it. He leaned down close to Luther’s neck, breathing in his horse’s clean wild sweat. “I might enjoy watching you race,” he said. “You could have raced that damned Brutus into the ground. If you do ever race, I will ride you myself.”
He was thinking that perhaps he should give racing another chance when suddenly, without a hint of warning, a female body slammed into him from out of nowhere and sent him crashing to the ground.
He saw white bursts of light. He couldn’t breathe. A weight was crushing him.
The lights dimmed. He swallowed. He slit open his eyes, all he could manage. Miss Helen Mayberry was all in a heap on top of him. A thick blond braid was wrapped around his face. Her riding hat tipped over her right eye. Her nose wasn’t an inch above his.
“Oh, dear, are you all right, Lord Beecham? Please say something. Can you look at me?”
His wits were still on the jagged side, his brain hovered in the ether. He couldn’t quite breathe yet and he wondered if his leg was broken. But he was a man of strong parts, strong will, and he realized his leg wasn’t broken, thankfully, just twisted a bit. Finally, not two minutes later, he managed to blink a couple of times and focus on the lovely face above his.
“Did I not tell you that I wouldn’t care for the process of you bringing me down, Miss Mayberry? Just the end result?”
“But, sir, my horse threw me. I was riding happily along, saw you out of the corner of my eye, started to wave at you, and just in that split second, a bee stung my poor mare on the neck, she raced up close to you, and then tossed me right into you. It was all a ghastly accident. I haven’t broken anything, have I?”
“My leg was in question for a bit, but I think no bones are snapped in two. Please remove yourself, Miss Mayberry. If you remain where you are, then I will probably get myself back together well enough to start caressing you. My hands are very close to your hips as we speak. Do you want to be caressed in the park? Or would a lady from East Anglia shrink from that?”
“It would be a novel form of discipline,” Helen said slowly, still not an inch from his face. She felt all of him beneath her. He felt quite nice.
He lightly touched her chin with his fingertips. “Actually, I would call it discipline only if the pleasure you took from me was balanced by the imminent chance of discovery by one of society’s matrons, say, for example, Sally Jersey. Have you met Sally?”
“No, but I fancy that my father would like to meet her. I understand she adores champagne.”
“It’s true. I can even see them together. Yes, there he is, carrying her under his right arm, and she has a bottle of champagne tucked close. Now my body has recovered from its appalling shock, Miss Mayberry, and is more than eager to commence.”
“I had no choice, Lord Beecham. I had to act. You have kept your distance for three days. I suppose you were punishing me.”
He lightly touched his hands to her hips. She jumped, then didn’t move a muscle. “Not at all, Miss Mayberry. It is psychological discipline. I am a master at it.”
She felt him against her belly, felt his large hands now caressing her bottom, and quickly rolled off him. She imagined he was a master at many things. She came up, clasping her arms around her knees.
He took a very deep breath, then whistled. Luther, cropping grass some ten yards away, looked up and whinnied. “No, stay there, boy,” he called. “Where is your horse, Miss Mayberry?”
She whistled through her teeth, just like a boy, louder than he had whistled. A chestnut mare with a white star on her forehead and four white socks cantered over to within a foot of them and pulled up sharp.
He had never heard a woman do that before in his life. She had whistled louder, he thought, than he had been able to, even as a boy, when no one could best him at it.
No, surely that was impossible. She was a big girl with big lungs, but he was a man. He decided he would practice when he was alone. “Your hair is falling down,” he said, pulling up a spike of grass and chewing on it.
She calmly wound the thick braid of hair round and round her head, tucked it into itself, then smashed her riding hat down over it.
“My mare’s name is Eleanor, named after the wife of King Edward the First.”
“You are a historian, Miss Mayberry?”
“In a manner of speaking, sir.”
“I was lucky this time, Miss Mayberry. I don’t believe you broke anything when you landed on me. Come now, what did you really do, hurl yourself off Eleanor’s back?”
“Yes. It gave me a bit of a scare. I was surprised you didn’t hear me.”
“I was hunkered down against Luther’s neck, breathing in his sweat and thinking about my mistress and the many ways she teases me to distraction.”
Her voice was colder than the wooden floor beneath his bare feet in February when she said, “You don’t currently have a mistress.”
“Why don’t you give me a list of your sources and I can provide them accurate information for you?”
She waved her gloved fist under his nose. “Why haven’t you come to see me, damn you? Why haven’t you even sent me some nice posies, a poem praising my eyebrows, anything that gentlemen regularly do? It has been three days.”
He chewed on the grass, gave her a lazy smile, and leaned back, bracing himself on his elbows. “I am a man, Miss Mayberry. I do the chasing.”
She rose very slowly to stand over him, her hands on her hips. “There was no chasing. You weren’t doing anything at all.”
“Psychological discipline. I would have acted when I felt it was appropriate. I am much better at this form of discipline than you are, Miss Mayberry. I would never take the chance of killing my prey, as you just tried to do. A mathematician could have told you that the weight of such a big girl hurtling through the air would flatten most poor mortals, rendering them beyond earthly cares. Behold me. Even I am nearly expired, and I am a very large male mortal.”
“You are no such thing. I mean, you are large, but you are not nearly dead. You are whining, Lord Beecham. It is not appealing.”
He sighed. “I fear you are right. The next time you choose to do the chasing, however, I would ask that you consider something along a more intellectual, rather than physical, approach.”
“I didn’t have time to think of anything else. You see, my father informed me over breakfast this morning—yes, the dining room still reeks of smoke—that he wishes to return home next week.”
“Ah, then, that certainly changes things. That forces my hand.” He rose, dusted himself off, and straightened her hat, tucking more hair beneath it. Three small grapes decorating her bonnet had come untwisted and were hanging by the side of her cheek. He gently pulled them off and slipped them into his jacket pocket. “Very well, Miss Mayberry, would you like me to bed you and teach you a bit about my sort of discipline before you hark back to the country to all your potbellied squires and all the various and sundry short men who swoon at the sight of you?”
Her mare lightly pushed her nose against her back. Helen laughed, turned, and patted her. “It’s all right, Eleanor, he is just being outrageous and intriguing me. I would be disappointed with anything less.” With those words, she turned back to him. “Lord Beecham, I don’t want you for a lover.”
A dark eyebrow shot up a good inch. “I beg your pardon, Miss Mayberry? You wanted to meet me, you threw yourself at me; your ease with men and all their aberrations is remarkable, at least for a woman. Of course, you are rather long in the tooth, so you have had time to hone your skills. If you don’t want me for a lover, then what do you want me for?”
“I want you for a partner.”