Mendel Cleary, being the eldest son, had not served in the military. He’d inherited the entailed family seat from his father three years past and was still, apparently, in the strutting phase of having acquired his birthright.
He tossed his racket aloft with his right hand and caught it with his left. Weighing options, no doubt. Half the male assemblage badly wanted to see Cleary’s luck turn, even if I was the instrument whereby the scales were evened. The other half would appreciate just as much seeing me publicly disgraced.
The ladies were likely relieved to be spared further nonsense. A few had already drifted in the direction of the refreshment tent. Hyperia remained in her wicker chair, gaze impassive.
“Let’s make it interesting,” Mendel said. “My horse against yours, best of three volleys.”
Cleary was not known to abuse his cattle, and as interested as he seemed to be in amassing coin, I could doubtless buy Atlas back if I had to surrender him for honor’s sake.
“My horse is a seasoned campaigner, veteran of the wars, not some pretty hack who couldn’t jump a row of buckets,” I said, bouncing the shuttlecock on my racket. “Choose another wager.”
“Your spectacles for my horse,” Cleary retorted. “Or will you protest that the care and feeding of a second mount is too great an imposition on your finances? I, alas, have no spectacles to wager. I will throw in the saddle and bridle to sweeten the pot.”
Nasty sod. I bowed. “My spectacles, without which I cannot bear to venture forth on a sunny day, for your horse, whom I do not need and whom you can easily replace. Best of three volleys.”
“Your serve,” Cleary said, bowing in return and stepping off the required paces.
Among the spectators, a few murmured bets were placed. Hyperia looked bored—ominously bored—while Lord Longacre had left off singing the praises of his killer colt to aim a raised eyebrow in my direction.
Nearly rip his daughter’s earlobe off and come close to blinding a lady guest, and his lordship couldn’t be bothered to notice. A polite wager among the gents, and he turns up all sniffy.
Typical.
I let my myriad sources of irritation simmer while I removed my coat and turned back my cuffs. I was, in the opinion of the other guests, mentally unsound, socially undesirable, physically unimpressive, and morally deficient.
Very well. Guilty as charged.
I’d also grown up amid an army of older siblings who’d played battledore and every other sport nigh to the death, and I’d learned to hold my own against their larger, stronger, more powerful competition.
The situation merely wanted a little guile and fortitude. “Ready?” I asked as I resumed bouncing the shuttlecock on my racket.
“Any time before Michaelmas will do. Put off your comeuppance as long as you like.”
A clumsy attempt at public school goading, but the dictates of protocol had been met. On the next bounce, I popped the shuttlecock aloft and slammed it at Cleary’s face. His reflexes were sufficient to spare him the fate Miss Ellison had suffered, but I’d got the drop on him, and he and every onlooker knew it.
I let him find his feet and used a protracted volley to learn his style. Two polite bats, then he tried for a point, which I parried. I let him work in the same rhythm twice more—bounce, bounce, pounce—before I dispatched a stinger of my own on the second bounce. The shuttlecock glanced off my opponent’s boot, at which he stared with gratifying annoyance.
“Lucky shot,” I said. “Your serve.” I tossed him the shuttlecock, ready for the real battle to begin. His opening maneuver was conservative—I’d got his attention, apparently—and when he tried for his next point, I contrived to miss by a whisker.
He really wasn’t very nimble, though his confidence rose sufficiently that he bowed to a smattering of applause for having evened the score.
Don’t get too cocky. The mental warning came from Lady Ophelia, my mother, and all my siblings. The fate of England did not ride on the outcome of the next volley, but what was left of my pride certainly did.
Though I was at my best in enemy territory. I’d forgotten that—that too. The French had captured me solely because I’d chosen to be taken prisoner.
I served politely, and Cleary volleyed with equal good manners, though on the next return, he tried to steal my strategy and spike the shuttlecock at my boots. I replied with an underhand lob, inviting him to try for another spike, but he failed to note the opportunity.
The spectators gave tongue as the shuttlecock flew back and forth. “You’ll look a treat in those fancy glasses, Cleary!” and “Tire him out, Cleary, then finish him off!”
Nobody, not even Hyperia, spoke up on my behalf, but then, I didn’t need her to. Cleary was flagging, his next attempt at a point going a good three feet wide. I parried and decided that the better part of honor required me to end the exhibition forthwith.
Cleary tried again for the aggressive coup de grace, and for his trouble, I drove the shuttlecock hard at my target, thus ending the match.
He dropped his racket and bent over, rubbing furiously at his thigh. “Good God, Caldicott, three inches to the left, and you’d have unmanned me.”
“I beg your pardon?” I collected the shuttlecock and his discarded racket. “I did not hear you.”
He stared up at me. “I said you damned near hit me in a very unsporting location.”
And walloping Miss Ellison in the eye had been all in good fun? “I know. It’s more of your legendary good luck that I aimed my shot where I did and not where you deserved to have it land. Miss Ellison might well have been blinded, and Miss Longacre left the court to tend to a bloody ear.”
Lord Longacre appeared surprised at that last disclosure, but still he did not intervene.
Cleary straightened. “Bad business, I agree. The ladies are due an apology. I’ll see to it, Caldicott.”
Oh, how very noble of him. I examined my racket, which was of no particular interest to me save as a cudgel.
“I said, Caldicott, I will be only too happy—”
I held up the racket and studied its face, my temper driven by bad sleep, the beginnings of a reprise of my headache, and sheer stubbornness. “I heard what you said and how you said it.”
Perfectly arched blond brows drew down. “Trafalgar’s a good horse and quite sound. I’ll introduce you to him after breakfast tomorrow. One wants to enjoy a farewell hack with an old friend. I’m sure you’ll understand, Caldi—”
Somebody, possibly Hyperia, cleared her throat.
I cocked my head as if I hadn’t quite heard aright. “You were saying?”
The nattering spectators had fallen silent, the better to hear our verbal combat. From the home farm, the occasional desolate heifer bawled for her calf. Battlefields had the same sort of quiet, before every hell-spawned demon cut loose.
Cleary apparently yet claimed a modicum of intelligence. “I’d like to show you my gelding’s paces before you take possession. I’m sure you’ll understand… my lord.”
“Of course I do, and you will need a mount to see you home at the end of the house party, while I am in no hurry to acquire another horse. Atlas will pout if he has to share my custom with a younger fellow. You may surrender the horse anytime that’s convenient.”
I dropped the equipment on the ground, collected my jacket, and bowed. “You will excuse me. Even with my trusty specs, the sunshine grows unbearably bright.”
As I stopped by the refreshment tent for a glass of lemonade, the spectators began to dissipate in chatty twos and threes. Cleary headed for the house in the company of Lord Brimstock.
Had I not been observing Brimstock from the back, I would have failed to note that his gait was slightly uneven. He hadn’t been among the athletes either, despite being a robust specimen and something of a show-off.
Not quite limping, but surely favoring one foot. Well, well, well.
By nightfall, I was truly tired. For a few minutes on the battledore court, I had exerted myself physically and mentally, and the effort had done me good. I’d whacked Cleary in the thigh with the shuttlecock, after his open disregard for my standing had whacked me just as tellingly in the region of my self-respect.
As far as I was concerned, we were even. As for the rest of the guests…
Who were these people to judge me? Sir Thomas, as a fellow officer, could view me with contempt if he pleased to, just as I’d viewed him with contempt for bullying his subordinates. William Ormstead, the other former officer among the guests, took a more compassionate view of my situation.
But as for the rest of them… My superior officers, after giving my actions considerable thought, had decided to let the matter of my captivity and escape rest in all its messy ambiguity. More to the point, those superior officers had sent me back to my regiment to recuperate and resume my duties after the fall of Paris. Had they judged me to be a traitor, the outcome would have been very different.
Whether I’d betrayed my brother was no concern of military justice or the prancing ninnyhammers assembled by Lady Longacre. And speaking of mine hostess, what gave her the right to treat me as if I were a cousin on remittance who had turned up drunk at the Christmas feast?
These thoughts accompanied me as I ambled around the garden’s torchlit formal parterres, serenaded by the laughter of the other guests flirting and gossiping on the terrace. Hyperia seemed to be getting on well with Ormstead, so I’d left them to their diversions while I enjoyed the darkness.
“A message for you, my lord.” Canning approached with a slip of paper on a silver tray.
Would Lady Longacre give me my marching orders by letter? I moved closer to the nearest torch, took the note, and unfolded it.
Cleary reiterated his invitation to join him for a dawn hack, the better to acquaint me with his mount’s—now my second, unnecessary mount’s—paces.
“Olive branch or ambush?” I murmured.
“Beg pardon, my lord?”
My lord. I’d taken the polite address for granted until nobody save a footman yielded it to me. “I’m invited to ride out with Mr. Cleary at the crack of doom. I don’t suppose you need a horse, Canning?”
Canning’s usual ebullience faltered. “Could not afford to feed him, sir. Mr. Cleary cuts a dash on his chestnut. The beast will fetch a pretty penny at Tatts if you have no use for him.”
I admired pragmatism in anybody. “Not done, though, to win a fellow’s personal mount in a wager and turn around and sell the beast at auction. An unfeeling thing to do.”
Canning maintained his silence, and I wondered who had treated him unfeelingly. The Rifles were respected, but demand for sharpshooters in Merry Olde was curiously lacking.
“Suppose I’d best accept the invitation.” Atlas had had his day of rest and would benefit from the exercise. “Can you send somebody around to wake me at first light? I don’t trust myself to keep country hours, and Cleary will be insulted if I accept his invitation and then stand him up.”
“He would at that, sir. I’ll have the boot-boy knock on your door, unless you’d like some assistance dressing?”
The moment became awkward. Was Canning extending me a courtesy, angling for a vail, or looking for a way to emphasize his earlier point to Cleary about protocol and rank?
“That is kind of you, Canning, but if a former cavalry officer can’t get himself into riding attire, he’s not fit for the saddle. Besides, you are run off your feet and need every quarter hour of rest you can steal. Much like being on campaign, isn’t it?”
Canning grinned. “Hadn’t thought of it like that, my lord. If you ever do need a hand, dressing for dinner and so forth, please ask for me. I prefer the footman’s job—always plenty to do—but I’m a fair hand with the starch and iron when Lord Longacre’s valet is under the weather.” He studied the torch flame dancing in a night breeze. “I know what it is to find your tent moved to the edge of camp, no mates, nobody looking out for you. I don’t fancy it and suspect you don’t either.”
He bowed and departed on that extraordinary speech.
“Please convey my acceptance to Mr. Cleary,” I called after him, because I had no intention of seeking Cleary in the cardroom or billiard room or wherever he was trying his luck at such an hour.
Canning waved his acknowledgment with a gloved hand and trotted up the terrace steps.
“Cheeky fellow.” Cheeky, presuming, but also a former soldier who was apparently experiencing his version of the difficult solo mission. “God bless the Rifles.”
The Rifles had been oddly egalitarian for a military unit. They took a man who exhibited some native talent, gave him the best equipment, and turned him into an expert. A cobbler’s apprentice in the Rifles could march alongside a gentry family’s younger son, and they marched as equals.
They had marched as equals, but they were equals no longer, now that they’d marched home.
As I made my way up to my broom closet, I realized that Canning’s situation had inspired a different sort of thought regarding the war than I usually entertained. My typical musings were about France—what had I told those blasted Frogs, and why couldn’t I recall the telling?—or the horrors of battles and sieges.
The aftermath of a siege could make hell look like a garden party.
To reflect on the struggles of an infantryman upon returning to England was a different perspective on the whole campaign, a perspective that did not focus on me and my tribulations.
“Progress, I hope,” I said as I went through the nightly ritual of searching for brown hairs among the white. The exercise was undertaken more efficiently in bright sunshine with a hand mirror, and my evening maneuvers before the vanity were more in the way of a nervous habit.
Why bother?
I tended to my ablutions, lay down on the lumpy cot made no less lumpy for being covered by a worn quilt, and closed my eyes. Within moments—or so it felt—a solid thumping disturbed my slumbers.
“Up and at ’em, guv!” called a boyish soprano. “Canny says ye wanted rousing, and Cook says only a fool tries to rouse the Quality without bringin’ ’em a tray.”
I cursed in my first language—French—then realized what I was doing and switched to English. The thumping continued, and with a soldier’s ability to begin the day sleepwalking, I let the little wretch in.
“You don’t got no fire,” he said, strutting forth and setting the tray on the vanity. “I know how to make up a fire, guv. Won’t be no trouble.”
“Thank you, but no. Summer weather obviates the need for a fire.” I smelled salvation in the form of coffee. An army might march on its belly, as l’empereur had famously said, but the cavalry had survived on coffee.
The boot-boy stared up at me from beneath a mop of dark brown hair that somebody had recently dragged a damp comb through, to no avail.
“Ob-vee-ates,” he said, blue eyes narrowing. “’At’s a new one on me. Ain’t proper you don’t got a fire and you a guest. Canny won’t like it.”
“Then we won’t tell him, will we? What’s your name?”
My polite inquiry got me a thoroughly skeptical assessment. Asking for a name could be a necessary prelude to making a complaint. Any recruit learned as much within three days of joining up.
“For God’s sake, child, I already know you’re the boot-boy. I ask because you brought me coffee rather than tea, and that was good thinking on your part.”
“Canny said you’d prefer the coffee. I like chocolate meself, had it the once at Christmas, and I snitch from the breakfast pots whenever Cook ain’t lookin’.” He took himself back to the door and returned with my riding boots, polished to a gleaming shine.
“I don’t use champagne,” he said. “Waste of wine to polish boots with champagne, but I get ’em clean enough.”
I poured myself a cup of the elixir of redemption and sat on the bed. “You’ve done a marvelous job with the boots and an equally impressive job of withholding your name.”
The staff of a ducal residence took great pride in their posts and excelled at upholding the dignity of the family who employed them. That same staff wasn’t above swatting the arse of an uppish little lordling or dispensing homespun advice to a very young lady in the throes of her first romantic upheaval.
I had missed that sort of presumption, the kind that cared more for a family’s wellbeing than for the appearance of unrelenting deference. My staff in Town, all hired since Waterloo, tiptoed around me as if I were on my last nerve and ready to sack them all without provocation.
Perhaps I had been, six months ago.
“Me name’s Atticus,” the boy said. “Not Atticus Smith or Atticus Miller. Just Atticus. I’m a hard worker, or Cook will know the reason why. You want I should polish your Sunday boots?”
“I didn’t bring my Sunday boots, and with any luck, I won’t need them.” The coffee was strong, blessedly hot, and lacking the bitterness of the usual camp brew. “My thanks for a job well done. Snitch a croissant and be gone.”
Surprisingly clean fingers swiped one of the three offerings on the tray. “You ain’t so bad yourself, and I don’t care what ’em fancy valets have to say about you.”
“Maligning me as a traitor?” I asked, dunking a croissant into my coffee and trying not to sound interested.
“Something like that. Tattled to the Frenchies, but too highborn to pay the price. Canny took the king’s shillin’. Told the lot of bleatin’ old bounders to shut their gobs because they didn’t know shite. They hated that, but they stopped their gabbling. Valets is worse than butlers for puttin’ their noses in the air, but they wipe their arses same as the rest of us, I say. Can I have another croissant?”
My worst nightmare recited along with the imp’s opinions on domestic hierarchy was somehow comforting.
“You may, and then leave me in peace, if you please.”
Atticus speared me with a very adult look. “Mind you don’t fall back asleep, guv. I’ll hear about it, and it won’t be my fault. Cook’s temper has gone all raggedy with this house party, and she can swing a switch at my innocent rump like nobody’s business.”
“I am for the stable, and you had best make haste back to your post.”
He sniffed his croissant. “What was the word you said? About summer weather?”
“Obviate, to render unnecessary.” I took a coin from the nightstand and tossed it to the boy. “Best of luck, Just Atticus.”
He missed my play on words, of course, but he caught the coin. “Thanks, guv.” He slipped out the door and had the presence of mind to close it quietly in his wake.
I finished two cups of coffee and a croissant, dressed for riding, tucked my specs into a pocket, and made my way to the stable. A very dapper Cleary was waiting for me, tapping his riding crop against his field boot.
“Is this your idea of a joke, my lord?”
“Good morning, Cleary.” I bowed in retaliation for his sneered use of my honorific. “Something has upset you enough to part you from your manners.”
“Not upset me, by God, enraged me, and you know damned well what it is.”
“Until twenty-five minutes ago, I was fast asleep on a minimally adequate bed. I am here at your invitation and prepared to ride out with you for purposes which I need not recite. What has you in such a lather?”
William Ormstead sidled out of the barn, his expression troubled. “His horse has been stolen, my lord. Stall is empty. Door closed, halter and bridle missing from the door. If this is a prank, somebody’s sense of humor is sadly wanting.”
Ormstead peered at me with a complete lack of warmth.
“And you two prodigies,” I said, “have decided that I stole a horse which is already mine by rights, am I correct?”
“I hadn’t handed him off to you,” Cleary said. “Trafalgar was still in my possession, and somebody wanted to make me look like a fool.”
“That somebody,” I said as French curses piled up in my head, “is not I. I have no motive to steal from myself, and where exactly do you think I stashed this horse of mine, when I’m miles from my own mews and entirely without allies in present surrounds?”
“He has a point,” Ormstead said. “A man can’t steal what he already owns, and all manner of confusion can result at a house party. Somebody might be trotting about on the beast as we speak, thinking he took out a guest horse.”
And nobody had thought to question the stable lads. A pair of bleating bounders who didn’t know shite, to quote a wise fellow.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s have a look. Is the saddle missing?”
The bleating bounders exchanged a look. They’d been too busy labeling me a horse thief to even look that far, but I could remedy their oversight.
“Saddle’s gone too,” Ormstead said, surveying the gear filling a row of wooden racks in what might have been a feed room in bygone years. “Do we wait for the horse to come trotting over the rise, or do we organize a search?”
Cleary filled his sails with an audible inhale through his nose. “I’ll not be made a fool of like this. If Caldi—Lord Julian didn’t purloin Trafalgar to humiliate me, then who did?”
“I humiliated you yesterday,” I said, returning to the airy barn aisle and the sound of horses munching a morning’s ration of hay. “Rather, you humiliated yourself, and making off with the horse you no longer own is your attempt to humiliate me.”
Ormstead followed me from the saddle room and rubbed his chin, which was yet shadowed with stubble. “Humiliate… you?”
Cleary came along as well. “Denying you the fruits of your puerile display does appeal.”
I examined the stall’s closed half door and refrained from indulging in a you-started-it volley. “Did you just incriminate yourself, Cleary? You are quite fond of this horse, aren’t you?”
The mechanism was a simple, sturdy bolt. A bored and enterprising horse with nimble lips could wiggle the bolt free, but he could not close the door behind himself and put on his very own bridle and saddle.
Cleary commenced pacing. “I would ride only good-quality horseflesh, my lord. Trafalgar is sane, sound, and handsome. He’s worth a pretty penny.”
“He’s easy to sell, you mean.” And Cleary did so love his pounds and pence.
Cleary looked from me to Ormstead and resumed tapping his riding crop against his boot. “You’re suggesting I sent him off to be sold rather than honor the terms of our wager?”
“Or you sent him home, or you hired a groom to get him to the nearest livery. You are the only person I can think of with a motive to move the horse.” Cleary was also notably preoccupied with coin—winning it, even quasi-cheating to gain it. Parting with a valuable horse would not sit well with a miser.
His expression turned venomous. “I am the only person with a motive, other than you.”
“How do I benefit from making it appear that you stole my horse?”
“You slap the label of blackguard on another guest. You shift the burden of gossip to another man’s shoulders. I half suspect it was you who put your filthy hands on Miss West, and she’s too loyal to your family to admit—”
I had the crop out of his hand with a simple twisting maneuver my sisters had shown me ages ago. I tossed it to Ormstead.
“You have insulted me for the last time, Cleary. You either apologize for your pointless conjectures or prepare to defend yourself.”
I had not quite issued a challenge in the strictest sense. As a former officer, I knew exactly where that line lay, and I had not crossed it. I had merely warned the fellow I was in the mood to beat him bloody. I could not imagine a circumstance where I would willingly take another man’s life in peacetime.
“Lord Julian was with me when Miss West was accosted,” Ormstead said. “If you don’t believe him, Cleary, then please believe me. Baiting each other serves no purpose, you two. Somebody made off with a horse, which is a hanging felony if the intent was to steal it. I am more interested in solving that puzzle than in refereeing a round of fisticuffs between grown men.”
Cleary swiveled his glower to Ormstead. “He was with you? You’re certain?”
“He was with me at the orangery’s side terrace when Miss West cried out, and we were within view of the staff clearing the tables.”
“Then I do apologize.” Cleary bowed formally. “I was misinformed.”
I retrieved the riding crop, a nondescript article going a bit frayed at the handle, and passed it to him. “Who lied to you regarding my whereabouts?”
“I can’t…” He studied his crop as if even a moment in my hands might have somehow stolen its magical powers. “I heard idle talk around the decanter. Speculation made more confident for marinating in Longacre’s brandy. I am sorry, my lord, but any excuse to disparage you is tempting.”
“Tempting it might be, also ungentlemanly, ill-informed, and cruel. You did not serve in the military, Cleary, which makes your participation in these tactics doubly hard to stomach.”
He took out a pocket watch with an ostentatiously long chain and noted the time. My father had done the same thing when struggling to curb his temper.
“My family,” Cleary said, “sent two sons to Spain, and neither of my brothers returned unscathed. The one will never waltz as he once did. The other fell in with a bad crowd and sank himself into debt. I’ll thank you to hold your tongue on the topic of sacrifices and duty.”
“I’ve said all I have to say.”
“About the horse?” Ormstead muttered. “Do we search? The decision is yours, my lord, because the horse was yours at the time it was… He’s yours now.”
Cleary declined to take issue with Ormstead’s reasoning. Prudent of him.
“I search. Cleary, you may leave the matter in my hands, and I’d appreciate it if you’d exercise discretion.”
“My aunt will expect me to look in on her before breakfast. I leave you to your searching.” He sniffed, bowed, and withdrew.
If he and my brother Arthur ever met on the field of honor, they could have a sniffing duel. Except they wouldn’t meet, because Arthur was a duke, and Mendel Cleary was a commoner. Arthur also wasn’t a bleating ass, except on rare occasion.
The grooms, who’d been bustling up and down the barn aisle, taking this horse out to graze and bringing that one in from a night at grass, knew exactly what was afoot. They, however, were unlikely to talk to the guests about a horse going missing from their stable.
The grooms would, though, talk to the gardeners, who’d chat with the dairymaids, who’d flirt with the Makepeace footmen, who’d get to dicing with guests’ footmen, who’d pass along an idle word to the valets, who’d drop a hint to the companions, and the news would eventually be all over the manor.
Somebody had stolen my horse.
“Well?” Ormstead said, gaze on the empty stall. “To fuss or not to fuss?”
“Precisely. On the one hand, I hear various family voices telling me to make nothing of it. I don’t need the horse or the coin he’d bring. I have no wish to see another man hang on any account short of murder with malice aforethought, and the whole business will just stir up more talk of the sort I do not enjoy. Then too, I’m hungry.”
A wiry young groom went by, leading a pair of geldings in from the water trough.
“On the other hand?” Ormstead asked.
“I’m supposed to leave today or tomorrow. Whoever did this is figuring that I am more interested in quitting the premises than in catching a thief.”
“He might figure that selling that horse will keep his family fed for the summer.”
“Poaching a few trout is easier. Stealing eggs is safer. Hiring on at Makepeace for a month or so to prepare for and manage the house party is easier still.”
Ormstead ambled off toward the trough sitting outside the stable and to the left of the barn doors. I fell in step with him, though I’d have another look at the whole scene and chat up more than the head lad, who was bound by common sense to know nothing and say less than nothing.
“You think somebody wanted to make a point,” Ormstead observed. “What will you do about it?” Clearly, Ormstead wished I’d saddle Atlas and trot off to Town.
“Somebody took the correct saddle, Ormstead.”
“Noticed that, did you?”
A saddle had to fit the horse wearing it, or riding became more difficult. A poorly fitting saddle could also result in galls, a sore back, and even lameness for the horse. Some horses became fractious if the saddle impeded their movement or distributed the rider’s weight incorrectly. Bridles and bits were similarly fitted specifically for each horse. No former cavalry officer could overlook that Trafalgar’s saddle and bridle had been taken along with the horse himself.
“Which begs the question,” I said quietly, “how many people knew which saddle belonged to that horse?”
“And answers another question,” Ormstead replied. “You won’t let this drop, will you?”
“Would you?”
The groom led two more thirsty geldings out of the barn and waited a few yards off.
“How could I,” Ormstead replied, “how could anybody, possibly know what it is to stand in your boots, my lord? This might be another prank in exceedingly bad taste, or something more serious. Bruiting about a tale of horse thievery at the Makepeace house party will win you nobody’s favor, though, so I’d let it drop.”
I walked off to the shade of the nearest oak, a venerable specimen that had likely been guarding the stable yard since Good Queen Bess’s day. Ormstead came with me, and the groom went about his task watering the stock.
“I don’t intend to bruit anything about,” I said, “but while I’m here, I’ll see what I can learn.” The part of me that had come alive reading signs by the summer cottage approved of that decision, as did the former reconnaissance officer who’d been able to predict the location of the French camp by watching a rain shower move across an otherwise parched valley.
“They won’t like you for it.” Ormstead’s tone suggested he wouldn’t like me for it.
“The other guests will delight in despising me no matter what I say, do, imply, insinuate, or fail to mention. I have become like a shuttlecock to them, an object to bat about for their amusement. The French commandant who took me prisoner had more regard for his captives than these people have for me.”
A memory floated by, just out of reach. That French fiend Girard offering me wine and sympathy. Condolences on the loss of my brother… and something else. Something elusive and telling.
“I’m for breakfast, my lord. I’ll wish you good hunting and Godspeed.”
God speed you on your way. Ormstead was not my enemy, but he’d made it clear he wasn’t an ally either. He’d also taken his sweet time speaking up on my behalf in the face of Cleary’s aspersions.
A good officer learned to follow orders without question, to do as he was told and not step out of line. A smart officer learned to interpret his orders creatively on occasion, to set them aside for a prudent interval before reading them.
A brilliant officer defied orders and didn’t get caught.
I’d never been a brilliant officer, but I certainly excelled at bending rules. On that thought, I took myself back into the stable and asked to speak not to the head lad, but rather, to whomever had been first on duty that morning.
The wiry groom presented himself before me at the watering trough. “You wanted to see me, my lord?”
“I do, but let’s find some shade, shall we?”
He came along, his steps dragging. He apparently knew something pertinent to Trafalgar’s disappearance and wished he did not.