Just Deserts (19 page)

‘
Drat you, Fitz, I wish you will have done! And you will
not, I can assure you, find me in the thick of things tomorrow. I
shall be content to watch sedately from a carriage.’

Fitz laughed. ‘Now I
know
it is you,
Pen. As for your sister, if I am any judge, we shall be hard put to
it to stop her from joining in the race.’

***

There seemed little doubt that Fitz’s prophecy would prove
true, as the company gathered on Newmarket Heath next day.
Persephone seemed to be everywhere at once, riding hither and yon
on one of Buckfastleigh’s hacks, in a state of unprecedented
elation.

‘
This is capital, Pen,’ she called out happily to her sister
as she passed by Lady Buckfastleigh’s open carriage. ‘I shall see
you presently. I must go and inspect Egremont’s entry.’

Then she was off, cantering over to where a knot of racing
notables were discussing the points of several horses being walked
around preparatory to the next race.

‘
Come now, Miss Winsford,’ Egremont said, ‘what think you of
my Galway Wonder? Is she not a charming piece?’

‘
Very pretty, my lord,’ Persephone conceded, riding around
the grey filly to take an overall view. ‘But she looks to be over
at the knee, and I frankly would not back her against that little
lady.’

She pointed with her whip to where a jockey was leading a
small chestnut into the circle.

‘
Siegfried!’ Sir Charles Bunbury called out. ‘Over
here!’

The little man leading the horse looked round, saw who
hailed him and waved. He was a bow-legged individual, spare of
body, with a wizened, monkey-like face.

‘
Extraordinary little varmint, Siegfried,’ Bunbury told
Persephone. ‘Polish, he claims. Though you would never think it to
hear him. Pure London in his speech, is Siegfried. But rides like a
demon.’

‘
Well, he will not beat my Galway Wonder,’ said Egremont
with grim determination. Nevertheless he greeted the jockey as he
came up. ‘Hey, there, Siegfried, Miss Winsford here fancies your
lady against mine. On form, is she?’

‘
Lord luv yer honour, would I tell yer if she weren’t,
then?’ grinned the jockey cheekily, turning his eyes to Persephone.
‘Not but what the missie has more sense in her knowledge-box than
wot you has, putting up that great Irish fussock agin our
Firefly.’

The gentlemen about him roared with laughter, Lord Egremont
showing no offence at this outspoken insolence. Persephone, seeing
the truth of Fitz’s assertion that the racing aristocracy were easy
with their fellow men, smiled warmly at Siegfried.

‘
I take that to be a great compliment, and must congratulate
you on this Firefly. She carries a good head, and I make no doubt
we’ll see true action when she’s on the move.’

‘
That you will, missie. But you lays your blunt where you
chooses. And don’t go a-blaming of me if it don’t come back to
yer,’ Siegfried warned.

‘
Don’t heed him, ma’am,’ said a new voice, and Persephone
turned her head to see a fresh-faced young man on horseback by her
side. ‘He cries like a baby when he loses a race.’

‘
That I don’t neither, you fibbing Tidmarsh,’ denied the
jockey in shrill tones. ‘Nor I don’t need you a-coming chivvying of
me. I knows how to do.’

‘
Then keep the filly on the move, you misbegotten whelp,’
ordered the harsh voice of Baron Chiddingly.

‘
Salla!
’
muttered Persephone, startled into forgetting the proprieties and
dropping into the unbecoming language of her Indian
days.

Siegfried’s bravado collapsed as he recognised the voice of
authority. ‘Aye, aye, master. I’m a-going, I’m a-going.’

‘
She is
your
horse, then,’
Persephone said, flushing a little at the memory of last night when
he had carried her upstairs.

Chiddingly bowed his acknowledgement. Persephone watched
the jockey begin to walk the filly round to keep her muscles
warmed.

‘
She is a fine little lady,’ she said with unwonted
enthusiasm. ‘I will offer my Lord Egremont very good odds against
his Galway Wonder beating her, I assure you.’

‘
I’ll take you, never fear,’ Egremont told her.

‘
I am flattered,’ Chiddingly said, amusement in his
voice.

‘
You are a good judge, sir,’ Persephone said, and her low
gurgle of laughter rippled from her. ‘I will concede you that
much.’

‘
You positively overwhelm me,’ Chiddingly said, but there
was an answering gleam in his eye. ‘You should rather put your
faith in Tidmarsh, however. His is the hand that guided Firefly to
her present skill.’

He waved an introductory hand at his trainer as he spoke,
and Tidmarsh, rather red about the ears, pressed his mount civilly
forward as Persephone spoke to him.

‘
You trained her, then?’

He nodded. ‘I did, ma’am.’

‘
So he does all my horses,’ Chiddingly said. ‘No doubt he
will delight in telling you all about it.’

There was a chorus of
groans.

‘
No, for pity’s sake!’ cried Egremont.

‘
Not a Tidmarsh lecture!’ exclaimed Derby.

The young man grinned sheepishly. ‘Have no fear, my lords.
I am silent as the tomb.’

But their lordships were
edging their horses apart.

‘
My poor Tidmarsh,’ laughed Chiddingly with real amusement.
‘Let us take ourselves off before we empty the course.’

The baron rode away, and Tidmarsh rather shyly made to
follow him.

‘
No, don’t go,’ Persephone begged. ‘I would love to talk of
training.’

‘
I’ll tell you anything you wish to know, ma’am,’ Tidmarsh
said in a friendly way, ‘but his lordship was funning. His friends
all complain that I have but one subject of conversation, and I
disapprove of this custom of sweating their horses to get their
flesh off.’

‘
Oh yes, barbarous,’ agreed Persephone. She gestured at the
horses being walked apart by grooms. ‘I am reminded of nothing so
much as a row of toast racks.’

They talked for some time and Persephone acquired,
insensibly, a better opinion of Chiddingly, who could encourage
improvements in his stables. But the signalling of the imminent
start of the next race brought the conversation to an abrupt
end.

The three-year-old fillies were gathering at the post for
the two-mile sweepstake, Siegfried, up on Firefly, sporting
Chiddingly’s colours of peacock-blue. There were three other
runners besides Egremont’s Galway Wonder, and Persephone joined the
crowds converging on the starting post with a flutter of excitement
in her breast and her grey eyes alight. Here she encountered Letty
Smith, and, although they did not speak, a conspiratorial smile
passed between them and Letty winked before turning her eyes back
to the five horses straining at the leash.

There was a moment of hushed expectancy. Then the steward’s
handkerchief fell and they were off. Galway Wonder set the pace,
proving her reputation and her worth. For the first mile the huddle
of five fillies held well together, accompanied by the shouts of
encouragement all about them, from the watchers in the carriages on
the hill above and the populace on foot beside the
course.

Alongside and behind, only just out of the way, a knot of
hardened turfgoers swept along, riding from vantage-point to
vantage-point to get at every thrilling moment the best view of the
race. Of this company, breathless with excitement, Persephone made
one. Straining into the second mile, the lesser contenders began to
fall behind, leaving Galway Wonder and Firefly struggling for
supremacy.

Every muscle and sinew stretched, every breath a gathering
of fresh power, they flew down the makeshift track, now neck and
neck, now one a short head before or behind. But as they approached
within a few furlongs of the winning post, where stewards waited to
give judgement, Siegfried applied his spurs and called out hoarse
blandishments to urge his mount to greater effort.

Firefly began to creep ahead, her long muscles flexing as
her speed increased. Head up, she hoisted her courage for a final
burst of energy, and, passing the post at the gallop, took the race
to a roar of applause.

Persephone, her attention wholly concentrated upon the
filly, was unaware of having ridden with the others, until she
found herself hard by the winning post and crying out in triumph as
Firefly shot by. She was calling out to every face, an
indiscriminate smile of exultation creasing her countenance. There
was an instant of vague recognition of the faces of both Letty
Smith and Lord Goole.

Next moment, without knowing how it had come about, she
felt her fingers gripped in a strong hand and found herself looking
into the glowing blue eyes of Baron Chiddingly.

‘
Oh, Chid,’ she cried, ‘it was a capital go!’

‘
Was it not?’ he said, grinning.

‘
Beyond anything!’

His grip tightened, drawing her in. In automatic response,
her knee guided her mount closer so that the two horses stood nose
to tail, side by side, their riders face to face, a bare foot
apart. Their eyes locked.

Persephone was conscious all of a sudden of an intimacy
that held them frozen in time, and her lips parted, unaware that
her fingers returned his pressure, knowing only that her heart had
ceased to function and her breath was trapped in her
throat.

Then the pain in her fingers from the forceful grip of his
hand made itself felt.

‘
You’re hurting me,’ she gasped.

‘
I want to,’ he responded roughly.
‘Deeply.’

A vision of what he meant sprang full-blown into his mind.
Shocked at the enormity of his thought, he released his hold
abruptly and jerked his horse back.

A tide of crimson flooded Persephone’s cheeks, and he could
not doubt the answering fire in her that made her fully comprehend
what had been expressed so curtly and with the utmost spontaneity.
Unable to utter a single word for the confusion that swept over
him, Chiddingly merely stared at her, unaware that his stern
features grew grimmer by the second.

Persephone, utterly shamed, both by what he had said and
the surge of heat that had engulfed her at the words, wanted to
revile and curse him. But her tongue had become leaden, the thunder
of her heartbeat wildly pulsating in her brain so that she could
not think.

There was only escape. Pulling at her reins, she turned the
horse and cantered away to the relative calm and safety of the
bubbling fashionables in their carriages on the hill.

By a fortunate chance, she ran into Lord
Buckfastleigh, who had arrived late on the ground, having spent the
early part of the day in settling the aftermath of the hold-up that
had marred the Winsfords’
journey. His report on his activities so successfully
diverted her chaotic thoughts that she did not notice Lord
Chiddingly ride up to the hill.

He signed to one of his grooms, and, dismounting, gave the
horse into his charge. As he did so, he heard Penelope’s tinkling
laughter and looked over to where she stood, flirting impartially
with her cousin Rossendale and Count Leopold.

Watching her, he found himself subject to a strange
phenomenon. His eyes saw Penelope, and knew by both mannerisms and
voice that it was Penelope. But his mind insisted on superimposing
the voice and deep gurgle of Persephone’s laughter. Yet there was
nothing in him that responded to the sight of her.

By turning his head, he could see Persephone herself, also
now dismounted, clad not so very differently to her sister’s
greatcoat dress in a habit of blue with lace at her throat and
wrists. At once, his betraying pulses quickened and his loins
ached.

Confused, Chiddingly glanced from one twin to the other,
unable to comprehend how one such face and figure could have so
unsettling an effect, while the other left him cold.

He heard Penelope’s melodic laughter again and
winced. He could not have borne
that
for the rest of
his life.

‘
Changed your mind?’ said an amused voice behind
him.

‘
Long ago,’ he said, turning to look at his friend. ‘The
field is clear, Fitz. I have no further interest in the Winsford
fortune. Besides, it is only half what we had thought. But that is
of no consequence to you. So you may safely woo
Penelope.’

‘
I have no mind to cut out our assiduous Leopold, dear boy,’
Fitz said, shrugging. ‘Though I fancy Rossendale will win the
day.’

As he spoke, he looked round at the group and caught
Penelope regarding him. Rather wistfully, he thought. Quite
mesmerised, he left Chiddingly without a word, and strolled over to
her, ignoring both Leopold and Rossendale’s claims to her
attention.

‘
Miss Winsford, you look fatigued. Allow me to escort you
back to the carriage.’