A Rogue in Sheep’s Clothing (9 page)

“Ah, but Manifesto will win.” Ellie patted her pocket, and then bolted upright. She felt one pocket, then the other. Leaping to her feet, she jammed her hands in her breeches. “It’s gone!”

“What’s gone?”

“The necklace isn’t in my pocket. I specifically put it in my right pocket to keep it safe. Could I have left it in the barn?” With growing desperation, Ellie circled her bedroom.

“Maybe it’s in another garment?”

“I haven’t changed my clothes in two days.” Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she began tearing the bed apart.

“Think, Ellie. Where else could it be?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” she cried, flinging a pillow across the room.

“You couldn’t have lost it while you were riding Manifesto?”

“No. No, I had it with me while I was cleaning the barn.”

“Maybe when you were training Old Nell?”

“I know it was in my pocket when … oh, dear God,” Ellie said, clutching her hair. “I don’t remember when I had it in my pocket last.”

• • •

Ellie directed a footman to load the last trunk on the coach, as her parents and sisters burst into the courtyard escorted by a pack of dogs and a fringe of curious cats. Peggity twirled a hat box containing her new bonnet, Claire chased a giggling Snap, her parents beamed with pride and good will, and around them all the dogs cavorted and barked with excitement.

The scene stabbed Ellie deeper than any knife. Their happiness could be blackened like a cloud across the sun, and she would be responsible — she’d lost the necklace.

Lady Albright danced over to Ellie and took her hand. “Write daily — especially if anything interesting happens with Lord Davenport,” she said.

With a heart too heavy to look in her mother’s eyes, Ellie nodded and turned away to tighten the lead attaching Old Nell to the back of the coach.

“Now listen to me, my darlings,” her mother said, clapping her hands for attention. “I want each of my girls to be seen in the Fitzcarry pearls. Ellie has them now, but she’ll be sure to share them, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Ellie replied, wincing with the effort of appearing enthusiastic.

“What a good girl.” Her mother kissed her on the cheek. “Such wonderful daughters I have. Now, everybody into the coach!”

Ellie dove in, and her sisters clambered after.

“Oh my girls, how I envy you,” her mother continued, leaning in the door. “Your father and I met at the Topperhorns’ house party.”

“We talked until three, your mother and I,” Ellie’s father said, taking his wife’s hand.

“And we danced the next night, hunted together in the afternoon,” her mother took up the reverie. “You read Shakespeare to the gathered guests.”

Ellie’s heart sank another notch, looking at the joyous faces of her parents.

“Mama wants you to have this,” Snap said, tossing a sack of food through the door. A hound jumped in after it.

Peggity whipped her white linen skirts out of the way. “Out!” she commanded.

The hubbub spooked the horses, which began to head down the driveway despite Jimmy James’s commands to “Whoa.”

Lord Albright threw a book for each of them in the coach window, shouting, “Here’s something to keep your minds sharp while you’re away.”

“Goodbye! Goodbye, my loves!” Lady Albright cried, rescuing Snap from the moving vehicle.

They all shouted goodbyes as the horses picked up speed and rounded the bend.

• • •

As her waving family disappeared from view, Ellie’s gloom was replaced by determination. She punched one hand into the palm of the other. “I’ve got to get out of this dress,” she said. “Old Nell needs to be back in the Davenport barn before we arrive. We’ll stop the coach at Old Drover’s Inn and I’ll walk to meet you for our arrival at Cowick Hill.”

“Help me with her,” Claire told Peggity, turning Ellie around to undo the buttons on her dress.

“What are you up to?” Peggity asked.

“She’s pretending to be a boy for Hugh Davenport.”

“What an interesting strategy,” said Peggity. “I’m sure your wedding day will be the talk of the county.”

“I’m not marrying him,” Ellie replied irritably, untying her delicate walking boots and replacing them with rough barn ware. “He’s a brute. A handsome, roguish brute, but a brute all the same.”

A thought occurred to her — a wonderful, marvelous thought, filled with the certainty that all her family’s problems would be solved. “I’m going to enchant him,” she told her sisters. “Then I’ll ask him to let me buy back Manifesto as a token of his esteem.”

Claire looked at her in shock. “Enchant him?”

“As long as we can avoid bankruptcy the Albright girls are the most eligible ladies in Devon,” said Ellie. “You have to agree we’re lovely and men find us attractive.”

“We have our assets.” Peggity shrugged. “But what will you do with Lord Davenport after you enchant him?”

Ellie smiled. “Nothing.”

“It would do us a lot more good if you married him,” Claire said. “Then you’d own Manifesto, and have a handsome husband and all the riches of Cowick Hill.”

“But then I’d be expected to spend my life in the house planning dinners and embroidering screens. Aunt May was only allowed to run her horse farm after Uncle Ian died. You know it’s true.”

Claire shook her head. “That doesn’t excuse deception.”

“Humph,” said Ellie.

“Besides, what will happen when Hugh Davenport recognizes that Ellie and Toby are the same person?” Claire continued.

“He won’t,” said Ellie. “It’s extraordinary, but men just don’t see past the pants. Still, I ought to make it a little harder for him to catch the similarities. I’ll have to disguise myself as Ellie.”

“But he’s already met you at the ball,” Claire added. “Forget this madness. Think of something else.”

“There is nothing else,” Ellie replied.

Peggity’s lip turned down. “Why are you persisting with this foolishness? You’re going to have to grow up and leave that stallion of yours alone. No more making a fool of yourself dressing as a boy and throwing your leg over a horse. Every other woman of breeding has resigned herself to riding sidesaddle, it’s high time you did, too.”

“The Albrights made their fortune breeding horses,” Ellie barked. “There’s nothing foolish about wanting to preserve our legacy.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake.” Peggity picked up one of the books their father threw into the coach and dug in her reticule for her spectacles. Designed to focus the eye forward, their tortoiseshell frames were a quarter-inch thick and round as an owl’s eye. When she put them on, they obliterated every fine feature of her pretty face.

Ellie leaned forward. “You brought your reading glasses?”

Peggity yanked them off. “Yes. What about it.”

“Those glasses are our future.”

“Oh dear,” said Claire. “Ellie’s got that look in her eye.”

“Don’t you think for one moment I’m going to support any part of this charade.”

“I tell you, he will not recognize me in those tortoiseshell horrors.”

“You cannot seriously expect to enchant the most eligible bachelor in Devon with these on your face,” Peggity cried.

“Men adore studious women.” Ellie grabbed Peggity’s hand and pulled her fingers off the spectacles one by one. Having gained possession, she propped the eyewear on the bridge of her nose. Trying to catch her reflection in the coach window she added, “As Toby I’ll keep Manifesto wild. As Ellie I’ll charm him into selling the horse at a low price.”

“And what money are you planning to use?” Claire said. “The pearls are gone.”

“Do you mean the Fitzcarry pearls?” said Peggity, confused.

“Unfortunately, they seem to have been misplaced,” Claire replied.

“You lost the pearls?” Peggity’s voice rose.

“Thank you, Claire,” Ellie grumbled. “That was helpful.”

“But those pearls are all we’ll have once the estate is gone.”

“I’ll find them.”

“We’ll have nothing without the pearls.”

“I’ll find them.”

“How will we survive? What will Mama say?”

“Peggity, I will find them!” Ellie barked. “Both of you, swear that you’ll keep my identity a secret. Swear that you’ll search every inch of Cowick Hill for the pearls with me.”

Claire closed her eyes. In a hoarse whisper she said, “I will agree to help in this mad plot on one condition — that you do not demean yourself by ‘enchanting’ or ‘charming’ Hugh Davenport. You must marry him. If he sells Manifesto to us out of the goodness of his heart, so much the better.”

Ellie smacked the wall of the coach. “My sister wants to ruin my life.”

“I will not waver,” Claire said with deadly calm.

“So I must sacrifice my future happiness to keep us all from bankruptcy?”

Claire folded her hands in her lap. “Many young women have done as much.”

Ellie slumped in the corner. “You are the biggest prude in England.”

“I’m sorry,” Claire replied. “If you hadn’t lost the pearls there might have been other options.”

Guilt stabbed like a knife. Ellie turned her back on her sisters and stared at the countryside turned to a haze of green by tears and thick lenses.

• • •

After she’d handed off Old Nell to a stable boy at Cowick Hill, Ellie ran to the stallion barn.

Mercifully, Manifesto’s stall hadn’t been cleaned since she’d left two days before. She picked through every strand of straw, sifting it slowly into a wheelbarrow, praying the pearls would drop from a clump, complete and unharmed. Nothing.

Next, she tore through the blankets she’d slept on, hoping against hope to find the necklace tucked in their folds. Nothing again. She traced her steps to the blacksmith’s, through the breeding paddock, inside the granary.

And then she remembered falling back in the cushioned chair when she visited Hugh in the library. She took a sharp breath.
Somehow, some way, I’ve got to get into that room
.

Wracking her brain for a reason a stable hand would have for being admitted to the library, Ellie mounted the stairs to the stone façade of Cowick Hill. Lank stood at the top of the stair, poised to lift the knocker. She tried to back away, but her boots ground on the stone path. He turned and saw her.

“Toby,” he said. “Ah, no, it’s Lady Ellie. I correct myself.”

“Mr. Lank.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I might ask the same of you, sir.”

“And what an interesting costume you have on. I wasn’t aware you dressed in Toby’s clothes … off Fairland’s premises.”

Ellie’s tongue glued itself to her teeth. “Actually, I’m training Manifesto for Lord Davenport,” she blurted. “You know perfectly well the horse can’t be handled by anyone but me. You abused that animal so no man can touch him.”

“And is his lordship aware of your true sex?”

Ellie’s cheeks grew hot. “Of course.”

“Still, he permits you to ride?”

“He does permit me, Mr. Lank,” she retorted, anger replacing caution, “as any man with common sense would. Manifesto is a better horse with me aboard.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“You? You’ll see nothing of the kind. You’ve done enough damage to that stallion already. Papa may have his head stuck in a book, but Lord Davenport will listen. Of that you can be sure.”

“Since you no longer own the beast, you can be sure of nothing, Miss Ellie.”

“Good day, Mr. Lank,” she said, pushing past him. She lifted the brass knocker and landed it hard on the door.

If he exposed her, which she had no doubt he would, what could she say to Hugh? He’d want his expensive new horse trained, and would probably be willing to overlook her sex to do it. But if he learned of her father’s title, he wouldn’t permit her to ride astride. She looked over her shoulder. Lank watched.

The butler, a solid brick of a man with no neck, not a hair on his head, and shoulders the size of a bull stood in the door. “You wish to see a member of the family, good sirs?” the butler said.

Ellie nodded curtly. “Yes, I’d like an audience with Lord Davenport, at once.”

“As would I,” Lank barked.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you both,” said the butler. “His lordship is not at home this morning.”

“Oh,” said Ellie. “So sorry. I’ll see him another time.”

“Would you like to leave a message?”

“Yes, I would.” She stepped into the front hall.

“I’ll return later,” Lank told the butler, a greedy smile bending his colorless lips.

Ellie’s stomach clenched. “I’ll write him right now.”

The butler gaped in wide-eyed surprise.

“Well, not every lad wot rides a horse is ignorant as a pauper’s son,” she said in irritable cockney.

“Hmm,” replied the butler. Keeping a watchful eye, he produced a quill and sheet of paper from a side table drawer.

“I’d like to write me note in privacy,” she told him, taking a few forceful strides toward the library door. A powerful grip on her jacket collar halted her in her tracks.

“Stable boys write in the hall,” the butler told her. “The library’s for gentry.”

“It’s a message for his lordship’s eyes only,” Ellie replied sternly. But the butler wasn’t put off.

“Have a seat on the bench there, laddie. Those with manure on their boots sit in the hall.”

“Turn your head then, mate. I’ll not have you spying over me shoulder.” Ellie smacked her piece of paper down on an elegant side table by the library door.

“Use the bench,” the butler growled.

She stomped to the bench, plopped down, and tried to focus through her agitation.

Dear Lord Davenport
, she began her note,
The Albrights were quite upset when I told them I’d accepted employment elsewhere. Lord James Albright has threatened to sue.
They tell me you are having a house party, and the Albright daughters are invited. If it’s all the same, I’d like to stay out of sight while the daughters are here. We can still work with Manifesto, but I think it’s best if we meet only in the early morning. Sincerely, Toby Coopersmith
.

Colors swam before Ellie’s eyes.
If only everyone would stand still
, she thought, feeling a bit seasick. The glasses blurred all objects more than a few feet away.