The British military operated on the principle that enlisted men should be more terrified of their superiors than of the enemy, and all too many officers liked it that way. I had not, and thus I’d followed in Harry’s footsteps and taken a job that freed me from ordering subordinates about.
I could not order this fellow about, so I adopted the sidewise approach common to most reconnaissance officers.
“I am in the awkward position of owning a horse I cannot describe,” I said. “Can you tell me what this Trafalgar looks like?”
The groom’s shoulders relaxed. “He’s a big fella, my lord. Seventeen hands, maybe seventeen one. Well-sprung barrel. Clean legs, deep chest. Looked like a prime goer, but quiet to handle.”
“He’s a chestnut?”
“Aye, four white stockings and a white star on the forehead. Pretty piece of horseflesh and in good condition. He’d be up to your weight over fences.”
“Any quirks?”
“My lord?”
We were enjoying the shade—and privacy—to be had under the oak, which was slightly downwind of the stable yard. Another groom led Atlas out to the water trough. Judging from my horse’s coat, he’d had a good roll somewhere pleasantly dusty and was enjoying house-party life.
At least one of us was having a fine time.
“That fellow,” I said, nodding at Atlas, “is terrified of geese. He’ll charge straight at enemy artillery, hold his own with a bossy mare, and swim the Channel, but a flock of geese sends him right ’round the bend. Always has.”
The groom’s lips quirked at one side. “Geese?”
“Parts with his dignity at the first honk, and him a warhorse.”
“I’ve known some that can’t stand sight nor sniff of the cows. Others take a fright at flapping laundry. There’s no telling what goes on in a horse’s mind.”
“Did Trafalgar have any such quirks?”
“Nothing in partic—” The groom fell silent as Atlas slurped noisily. “Trafalgar loathes ponies. Mr. Cleary didn’t bring a valet with him, but he has an older fellow along who’s a kind of man-of-all-work. Not quite a footman, not quite a groom. He said to watch the chestnut around ponies—proper hates ’em—but nobody told Wickersham that. He went to turn out the gelding for a night at grass and led him around the pony paddock. You’d have thought the end times were a-coming for those ponies. There’s Trafalgar, squealin’ and kickin’, ears flat to his head. You could have heard the ruckus clear to London. That horse despises ponies, or my name’s not Jamie Chubb.”
“I knew a mare like that once. She was gentle as a lamb most of the time, but a donkey wasn’t safe around her.”
Atlas finished drinking, water dripping from his hairy chin. He swung his head to peer at me.
“He knows your voice,” Chubb said. “They have sharper ears than we do.”
“And thank God for that. Wellington’s camps were always protected by pickets, but the pickets were protected by the keen hearing and night vision of the horses.”
“And who protected the horses?” Chubb murmured, revealing a true equestrian’s priorities.
Atlas pulled gently on the lead rope as if he’d like to come over and have a word with me. The sun was above the horizon, but I still had an hour or so before the brightness would become painful.
“Can you direct me to a shaded bridle path, Chubb? I’m of a mind to take yonder steed for a hack.”
“He’ll like that. He’s not a fellow given to idleness. Wick! Saddle that beast for his lordship.”
Wick—a lanky, tow-headed lad—grinned and led Atlas back into the barn.
“If you want to avoid the sun, my lord, stay near the river. That path is in shade all day, and it’s peaceful. You’ll come to the village in a mile or so, but mind Potter’s cider. Much more than a pint, you’ll land on your arse if you down it too quick-like.”
“My favorite kind of cider.”
“Will you want a groom with you, my lord?”
Did Chubb hope to come with me—to escape the barn chores for an hour?—or dread spending time in the company of the official house-party outcast?
“I should be able to navigate to the village unaided.”
Chubb eyed me in a manner a house servant never would have. He assessed me, not disrespectfully per se, but unapologetically. “You rode dispatch, my lord?”
“Some. Mostly, I was reconnaissance.”
Chubb scuffed at the dirt with a toe of a dusty boot. “That chestnut, Trafalgar, has four white stockings.”
“Very fashionable of him.” Or vain of Cleary. One paid more for a horse with matching markings on all four legs. A plain trot became a trifle flashy on such a fortunate equine.
“Right hind stocking is a couple inches shorter than the other four. Somebody painted it or powdered it to match. This time of year, the grass is high and the dewfall heavy. When we brought the gelding in yesterday morning, we could see where the white was fading. Cleary’s man complained about it. Said his duties were never supposed to include painting and powdering horses, but that’s the Quality for ya.”
Stranger tricks were pulled at Tatts every week, which explained in part why horse trading had such a scurrilous reputation.
“And this morning, when you went out to fetch the gelding from his paddock, he simply wasn’t there?”
“Not hide nor hair, and we looked all about, sir. We saw no trail through the wet grass, no scrapes along the top fence boards. The fairies snatched him.”
A very different scenario than if the horse had been taken from his stall. In some ways, the shrewder approach was to liberate the animal from the field rather than risk waking whoever was on night watch in the barn.
If I compensated Chubb’s honesty with coin, I risked offending a good man. If I did not, I risked offending a practical man.
“You have made it very easy for me to identify Trafalgar if I can find him in the next few days.”
“But you’ll be leaving soon, to hear Canny tell it.”
I had been an object of gossip in the servants’ hall, though perhaps not unkind gossip. “I’m reluctant to leave without my new horse. Which direction is the pony paddock?”
“Far side of the yearlings,” Chubb said, gesturing with his chin. “Little blighters are worse than goats for taking the grass right down to the roots, so they get the scrubbiest patches and thrive on ’em.”
“While the riding stock won’t keep weight on without extra oats. When the end times come, my money’s on the ponies and the mules.”
Chubb smiled and cocked his head. “You’re not a bad sort, my lord.”
High praise, and sincerely meant. “Thank you. My fondest wish is that Atlas shares your opinion of me. You’ll keep an eye on him until I take my leave?” That arrangement would allow me to pass along a vail on honorable terms.
“Aye, not that he needs much looking after.”
“He’s partial to apples and loves to have his shoulders scratched. Thank you for your time, Chubb.”
He nodded and marched off.
Once I gained the saddle, I assessed the information Chubb had passed along. A brisk canter beside the river appealed to me, and—based on some silliness in the stable yard—to Atlas as well, but one must not exert one’s mount too precipitously. I turned Atlas along the fence line to amble past the yearlings and on around to the pony paddock.
As I watched the bay yearling get up to his usual bad manners—he was bullying a sturdy gray today—I tried to picture what Chubb had described. Somebody had known which horse to steal, had known which saddle and bridle to carry out to the paddock, and had had the skill to catch the horse and get him bridled and under saddle by moonlight. That person had also been able to mount from the ground rather than with the aid of a raised mounting block—not so easy if the horse is tall and unsettled and the person short.
Had Trafalgar known his abductor? The facts suggested he had.
I was reminded that based on the tracks I’d found, whoever had accosted Hyperia had been about my height, perhaps a trifle shorter. Was I dealing with one culprit—an amorous horse thief?—or were the incidents unrelated? Miss Longacre had been adamant that Hyperia’s attacker had run hotfoot to the stable, and somebody had been happy to support that fiction.
Atlas toddled along the pony paddock and past an enclosure apparently allowed to lie fallow for a few weeks, and then we came to the slightly overgrazed pasture where Trafalgar had been turned out.
Something was bothering the back of my mind like a persistent mosquito interrupting a picnic. Atlas stood patiently while I considered Chubb’s recitation. A painted hind sock for vanity’s sake, or was that measure intended to disguise the horse’s true identity? But an adequate ruse would take more than adding a couple inches of white to the horse’s markings.
That wasn’t what bothered me. Something else, something to do with—
The bay brat began squealing and rearing at the gray, who wasn’t giving ground. The smaller fellow instead got in close when the bay went up on his hind legs and delivered a solid double-barrel kick to the bay’s belly.
“Serves you right.”
The lord of mayhem stood for a good minute, head down, ribs heaving. He’d not go after the gray again today. The gray sidled up to the previous day’s victim—a chestnut colt—and began companionably munching grass.
Pasture politics took all of five minutes to sort out, but the sorting was serious business.
“That’s it,” I said, urging Atlas forward. “Whoever stole Trafalgar knew not to make him pass the pony paddock again.”
Of course, it was possible that avoiding the ponies had been purely coincidence, but not likely given how the bridle paths ran in the vicinity of the stable. To get to the trail along the river, I’d have to pass the ponies. To avoid the park with its exposure to the manor house, I’d have to pass the ponies.
Somebody who knew Trafalgar and knew the property had taken the horse. Mendel Cleary again came to mind as the most likely suspect, or Cleary’s man had removed the horse from the premises at his employer’s behest.
That struck me as the likelier scenario. In the event of discovery, Cleary could deny any involvement and see his employee tried as a horse thief. I knew many an officer built to the same self-serving specifications.
I was pondering the ramifications of my theory when I reached the river path. Atlas was ready for a run, but that was not to be. Hyperia, perched sidesaddle upon a dainty black mare, came to the path from the direction of the stable. A groom on a cob trailed a respectable dozen yards behind her.
“My lord.” She nodded regally. “Good morning.”
“Miss West. Shall we ride together?”
Hyperia arranged her skirts, which needed no arranging, and sent a glance to the groom. “Lord Julian will serve as my escort, Thurlow. You may return to the stable.”
Thurlow touched a finger to his cap and reversed direction.
“Hyperia, I sense you are not in the best of spirits. Did you sleep poorly?”
“I am in fine spirits, but don’t think to charm me. I am out of charity with you, Jules, and I plan to stay that way.”
Part of me wilted at that scold. I had no idea what I’d done to fall from her good graces, and losing her approval hurt. Hyperia was fair to a fault, and even if we would not suit as spouses, I considered her a friend.
“Cleary has already branded me a horse thief, I take it? Fast work, but then, the best way for a culprit to deflect guilt is to loudly point fingers elsewhere.”
“Somebody stole a horse?” Hyperia asked, nudging her mare forward.
“Somebody made off with Cleary’s gelding, who is now my gelding, and Cleary attributed the crime to me. I’m that determined to make a fool of him, again, or so he’d have it.”
Hyperia peered over at me. “That’s not good, Jules. Stealing a horse is a serious accusation.”
“If I stole from myself, it’s merely malicious gossip. Cleary also tried to accuse me of mauling you.”
“You did not and could not have accosted me.”
Her spirited rejoinder was a minor comfort. “Ormstead set him straight, and he believed Ormstead.”
She flipped a lock of her mare’s mane so the whole lay smoothly on the right side of the horse’s crest. “You’re leaving today, aren’t you?”
“If Healy arrives.”
“I think, Jules, that you’d better go whether or not Healy shows up. I really do believe that would be for the best.”
The hell it would. “You are assaulted in the dark, somebody tampers with evidence of that crime, and my new horse is stolen before I even clap eyes on him. This somehow adds up to I’m supposed to leave the premises. Your reasoning eludes me. Please do explain.”
Hyperia galloped off rather than obey even a politely worded order, and Atlas gave chase, though being a sensible sort, his pursuit was undertaken a safe distance from the mare’s heels. We thundered past the village and kept on for a good half mile, by which time the mare was flagging.
Atlas, by contrast, was in good form. He had that quality known on the Peninsula as brío escondido—hidden fire, hidden verve. He was all docile good manners around the stable, but point him at a challenge, and he leaped into the affray with courage and spirit, provided no geese were on hand.
We hadn’t had a run like this in ages, and he gloried in pounding past the mare and then pulling away from her. I had to urge him to moderate his pace lest I fail in my duty as the lady’s escort. By the time I trotted him back to Hyperia’s mare, Atlas was passaging and snorting like a stud before his band of ladies.
“Don’t let Brimstock see Atlas go like that,” Hyperia said. “His lordship will try to wager the horse away from you.”
“Atlas is family,” I said, patting his sweaty neck. “And, for the present, my only riding mount. I would no more sell him than I’d leave this house party when there’s serious mischief afoot and your brother is kicking his heels in Town.”
We gave the horses a loose rein and turned them back in the direction of the village.
“Healy’s not kicking his heels,” Hyperia said. “I have the traveling coach and the baggage coach, and that left him only the Town coach, which has developed some problem with an axle or the singletree or something. Summer means everybody needs their conveyances to get out of Town, so he can’t borrow a vehicle. He doesn’t want me here without my own carriage, else I’d send the traveling coach back for him.”
“Then he can come by post.”
“With his luggage? Two weeks of proper attire doesn’t exactly fit in a satchel, Jules.”
“Is he avoiding his duty?”
“Oh, perhaps.”
Was Healy West avoiding me? Was he that angry at me for having backed away from an understanding with his sister? He and I had not crossed paths since I’d cried off, and perhaps that had been by design on his part.
“Hyperia, this business with the missing horse is serious, you are right about that.” The business with somebody assaulting her was more serious. I’d raise that point later if need be. “Our horse thief knew the animal’s particular habits—Trafalgar takes loud, violent exception to ponies—and knew exactly which saddle to put on his back. If we agree that the stable lads have no wish to be tried for horse thievery, Cleary appears in a very peculiar light.”
“A suspicious light?”
The sun was making its inevitable ascent, but the bridle path remained shady. I had time and privacy to explain my reservations to Hyperia, so I gave her the benefit of my concerns.
“Why wager your horse if you aren’t willing to part from him?” I asked in conclusion.
The clip-clop of shod hooves filled the bucolic quiet.
“Because you’re mad keen for battledore and certain of victory?”
“Cleary wagered his horse for my specs, Hyperia, and that is an unsound bet, unless he was desperate to virtually blind me in bright sunshine. I have three spare pairs of tinted glasses. I’m carrying a spare set now, in fact.”
“Your eyes are that bad?”
“They were that bad. Napoleon learned early in his military career that if he blew up his opponent’s powder wagon, he created a hell of an intimidating explosion, threw the enemy into confusion, and seriously curtailed their fighting resources. Our artillery learned to retaliate, and I got too close to a bit of minor good luck for our side.”
“But that was at least a year ago.”
And what a fine year it had been. “My point is, Cleary wasn’t thinking straight if he bet a horse he refuses to surrender against an opponent whose abilities he hadn’t assessed.”
“He probably did assess you. You are gaunt, white-haired, retiring to the point of eccentricity, have an unfortunate past, and you apparently cannot afford a valet.”
I seized on the only charge I could refute. “I have a valet.”
“I know that, and Ormstead might know that, but Cleary is not a former officer. He’s rusticating gentry who doesn’t travel in the same circles as your siblings. He judged you based on the available evidence, and you appeared eminently defeat-able.”
Cleary had not brought a valet, but nobody considered that an eccentricity.
“But to bet his horse, Hyperia, when he’s a pinchpenny miser in other regards, and Trafalgar is a handsome and well-trained specimen. Then Cleary tried to insinuate that I had attacked you. When I pressed him to reveal the basis for that accusation, he hedged.”
The village came into view, a snug little gathering of houses and shops arranged around a glistening market green and punctuated with a low steeple adorning a whitewashed granite house of worship.
For this—for this peaceful, pleasant, sleepy little village and hundreds of others like it—I would risk my life again gladly.
“What’s your point, Jules?”
“My point is that Cleary has behaved oddly. On the one hand, he’s supposedly all solicitous devotion to his aging auntie, the brother left humbly tending the home fires when battle rages, an eligible and well-heeled bachelor. On the other hand, he more or less cheats at cards and shows more antipathy toward me than the men who by rights hate me. Cleary makes me uneasy.”
“You make everybody here uneasy. What on earth was that battledore display supposed to prove?”
We had come at last to the reason for Hyperia’s ire. “My display was supposed to prove that when grown men get to scrapping over stupid slights to their pride, they ought not to risk injuring innocent ladies in the process.”
That seemed to spike her guns, albeit temporarily. “It wasn’t your place, my lord. You are an uninvited guest.”
What was she getting at? “Defending the defenseless is the place of every fellow of honorable character. I hope I didn’t leave the entirety of my honor in France, Hyperia.”
“Jules, you punished Cleary.”
“Cleary damned near ripped Miss Longacre’s earlobe off, and Lord Longacre refused to take a hand in matters.”
“You were intimidating. You frightened these people. You nearly gelded Cleary over a stupid game.”
Not nearly enough. “The shuttlecock went exactly where I aimed it. Is giving Miss Ellison a shiner within the rules of this stupid game? What of drawing Miss Longacre’s blood? Nobody stepped forth, Hyperia. Nobody put a stop to the nonsense even when it turned ugly. Cleary got less than he deserved, and if you disagree, then we are at point non plus.”
She gathered up her reins. “The men behaved badly, but your solution also put you in a bad light. Talk over breakfast is that you need a long repairing lease in the north to settle your nerves.”
The north being a euphemism for walled estates where hysterical spinsters and inconvenient wives were sent to be forgotten, the less genteel version of putting a relative on remittance.
“And this is why you want me to leave? Because my behavior has become yet another inspiration for gossip?”
She nodded and did not meet my eyes. The part of me that was sick of being unwelcome, sick of causing talk, railed against her judgment. The part of me that could systematically search out the ideal location for slaughtering French farmboys and their uncles took a different view.
“At the usual house party,” I said slowly, “my challenge to Cleary would have inspired him to wager his best sword stick against my pearl-handled peashooter. At worst, the loser would have had to swear off spirits for the duration of the house party or perform some aria for the amusement of the other guests. Cleary would have called me humorous names between points. I would have insulted his tailor. A winning shot that smacked his thigh would have inspired naughty innuendo from the onlookers. The same point would have been made, nobody the worse for the exercise.”
“But this is apparently not a usual house party,” Hyperia said. “I cannot put my finger on what exactly is amiss, but there’s rancid butter in the recipe somewhere, and I want you away from it.”
“You seek to keep me safe?”
She urged her mare forward at the trot. Atlas kept pace easily.
“You seek to keep me safe, but I’m not permitted to keep you safe?” I pressed.
“I am a spinster of no particular importance. You are… Lord Julian. You were a curiosity before you arrived, and now you have earned at least Cleary’s ire. You are better off away from here.”
Hyperia’s mare had not yet recovered her wind from the earlier gallop. “Hyperia, slow down. For the sake of your horse, let us resume a more modest pace.”
She acquiesced, while I entertained a riot of confusing emotion. Hyperia doubtless wanted smoother sailing for the house party and its guests going forward, but she was also protective of me.
Did I want her taking on that role? Did I need her to step into those shoes? Yesterday, she’d all but begged me to stay. Now, I was to decamp posthaste?
“Hyperia, is there something you aren’t telling me?”
Hyperia let the reins go slack, and the mare resumed the plodding pace of the winded charger. “I overheard Lord and Lady Longacre on my way to bed last night. I looked for a shortcut to my room and ended up in the family wing.”
“They want me gone too?”
“They were arguing with Miss Longacre, and, Jules, this was not a tiff. Miss Longacre was firing with both barrels, and her mother was returning insult for insult. They were furious.”
“With a house full of guests. Interesting.”
“Not interesting. Sad, wrong, completely uncalled for. Lord and Lady Longacre are going to great effort and expense to host this affair, and Miss Longacre was apparently against the whole notion. ‘You did not listen to me. You never listen to me. Why did God afflict me with parents such as this?’”
The late duke had bellowed a similar litany about me. “We say things in anger that we don’t truly mean.”
“That platitude is generally served up when somebody has for once said exactly what they mean. I hurried away lest I be caught eavesdropping and also because the whole exchange was completely out of bounds. If Miss Longacre has no interest in any of the eligibles on hand, she can be merely polite to them for a fortnight, and they will move along to the next house party. I don’t understand what fueled such a passionate disagreement.”
“And those angry words upset you.”
“Made me sick to my stomach, Jules. I might not adore my family at all times, but I’d never adopt such a scathing tone with them. If Miss Longacre seeks revenge on her parents for inflicting the house party on her, then you could become embroiled in an unfortunate situation.”
“To what end?” I posed the question even as I heard the hoofbeats of an approaching mount from around the next bend in the path.
“I don’t know to what end. I am worried, and I wish I had never accepted this invitation, except that I am glad to have spent some time with you. You truly are on the mend, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said with more confidence than I’d felt in ages. “I am.”
William Ormstead slowed his horse to the walk and tipped his hat to Hyperia. “Miss West, my lord. Good morning. Beautiful time of day, isn’t it?”
Hyperia bestowed on him a smile of quiet radiance. Had Atlas not been such a stalwart fellow, I might well have fallen from the saddle.
Miss Hyperia West was lovely. Not merely pretty, not just nicely curved or all the other things men said about women they couldn’t admit they truly admired. She was lovely. The morning light found fire in her dark hair, her gaze was gracious and benevolent, and her features were a perfect assemblage of feminine pulchritude.
She dressed so as not to call attention to herself, spoke modestly, and behaved circumspectly, but my dear friend Perry had made a conquest, and damn Ormstead for being perceptive enough to see what a treasure she was.
“Ormstead, good morning,” I said. “Atlas is ready for another run, while Miss West’s mare has yet to recover from our last gallop. Miss West, would you be very wroth with me if I excused myself in the name of keeping my equine fit?” Atlas had no need to leave the scene, but I did.
Hyperia’s smile dimmed but did not disappear, while Ormstead looked as if I’d gifted him with the Freedom of London’s Pubs.
“Enjoy your gallop,” Hyperia said, “but please consider what we discussed. Safe journey, my lord.”
“I will consider your observations most carefully, Miss West.”
Ormstead merely flicked a pleased glance at me and nudged his gelding alongside Hyperia’s mare. I asked Atlas for a canter, and we parted company.
Safe journey to London. The prudent course, the course my ducal brother would doubtless advise me to take. Life had challenges enough, according to Arthur. One needn’t use hornet’s nests for target practice.
At the slightest urging, Atlas lifted into a gallop and added a little buck for good measure. My boy was happy to be in the country and letting me know it. We sailed past the turnoff to the Makepeace stable and continued along the river, which made a long, shallow curve at the foot of the park bordering the formal gardens.
Even Atlas, though, had his limits, and when I felt him begin to tire, I brought him to the trot and then the walk, aiming him on a shady track across the park.
“We can’t work off the fidgets like that in London, can we?” As Atlas toddled along, I considered paying a call at the Caldicott family seat, a sprawling monstrosity over in Sussex. Arthur had not invited me to bide there this summer, and because I wasn’t sure of my welcome, I had remained in Town.
“Stinking Town.” Especially in summer, when the combination of higher temperatures and low water on the Thames turned the metropolitan jewel of the empire into an open sewer. I was toying with the notion that I did not truly want to return to Town—all house-party considerations aside—when a female voice joined the chorus of birds singing their greetings to the day.
The birdsong was lovely. The human contribution to the morning’s melodies was, by contrast, one of the bawdiest to ever grace my no-longer-virgin ears.
I urged Atlas over to a faux ruin that boasted a sturdy belvedere. A good thirty feet up, Miss Longacre had propped a casual hip against the railing. As she sang, she gestured to me with a silver flask that glinted in the morning sun like a signal mirror.
“Lord Julian, good day. Fine horse you have there. The Dey of Algiers, when afraid of his ears,
A messenger sent to the Court, sir. As he knew in our state the women had weight, he chose one well hung for the sport, sir.”
Great, roaring Jehovah. I knew not whether to burst out laughing or pretend I hadn’t heard her. Instead, I joined in as I dismounted and started up the steps.
“He searched the Divan till he found out a man, whose balls were heavy and hairy. And he lately came o’er from the Barbary shore, as the great Plenipotentiary.”
We were creating a racket sufficient to scare the game, but such was the morning breeze that I doubted we could be heard from the house. I gained the viewing platform, intent on coaxing the lady from her dangerous perch.
“I don’t know the next verse,” she said, waggling her flask at me. “Brimstone wouldn’t tell me, the blighter.”
Brimstone? An ironic nickname, and a tad less impolite than his nom de boudoir. I approached the balustrade cautiously and lowered my voice.
“When to England he came,” I sang, “with his prick in a flame, he showed it to his Hostess on landing, who spread its renown thro’ all parts of the town, as a pintle past all understanding.”
Miss Longacre smiled devilishly. “The rest, please. I must have the rest, and what a fine singing voice you have.”
“So much there was said of its snout and its head, that they called it the great Janissary: Not a lady could sleep till she got a sly peep, at the great Plenipotentiary.”
The verses went on from there, each more ribald than the last. I held out my hand to Miss Longacre rather than further corrupt a delicate blossom of English maidenhood.
“Come meet my horse. He’s a great fan of Captain Morris’s songs.”
She blinked at me owlishly, took my hand, got to her feet. “Morris wrote that verse?”
“And many others like it.”
“Very naughty,” she said with the exaggerated profundity of the inebriated. “A pintle past all understanding. They all baffle me. I haven’t one myself, you know. A pintle, that is.”
“No great loss, I assure you. Pintles have a tendency to lead one into foolishness. Atlas awaits us below. Shall we?”
I took my time on the dark, winding descent lest my singing companion lose her footing. She came along docilely, and we reached terra firma without incident.
“Miss Longacre, may I present to you Atlas, late of Iberia. Atlas, Miss Longacre, a fine soprano with very broad musical tastes.” At a cue from me, Atlas bowed, and Miss Longacre went off into raptures about the darling horsey and why couldn’t grown men be more like him—quiet and polite and ever so handsome? She did fancy his nose too. A grand nose, not a mere snout…
As she chattered on, I realized that Hyperia had been right: My continued presence at the house party had put me at risk to become embroiled in a very unpleasant situation. I had to discreetly return a sozzled Miss Longacre to the house and put her into the care of her trusted lady’s maid.
Pray God she had one of those. Not all Gothic heroines did.
What’s more, I had to accomplish this feat without appearing to have had any hand at all in bringing the young lady to her current state or location.
“How does the second verse go again?” Miss Longacre asked. “I can’t recall it.”
“When to England he came, with his prick all aflame…” I sang very quietly, Miss Longacre trundling beside me as I led Atlas around to the back of the belvedere. Trees and robust, blooming rhododendrons would obscure our presence from anybody at the house. I racked my brain for a solution to this peculiar contretemps—and for the rest of the verses to a most inappropriate song.
I sought a means of preserving both the lady’s good name and my freedom, because she and I were in the mother of all compromising circumstances.