The Gallant Guardian (17 page)

Charlotte sighed again, laid down the paper, banked the fire, and headed toward her bedchamber and the welcome oblivion of sleep.

Perhaps she was just tired. A good night’s rest was bound to dispel her melancholy state of mind.

~~~~

The next day, while it did not bring answers to the questions troubling her, certainly brought diversion. Charlotte was in the housekeeper’s room discussing the inventory of linens that they had been conducting when William came bounding in. “Charlie, Charlie, there is a man out there with a horse and…and…he says it is for me, and he says it is a present from Cousin Cecil, and it is all for me! Come see, come see!”

Casting a rueful glance at Mrs. Hodges, Charlotte excused herself and hurried along to keep up with her brother as he raced back down the long echoing corridor to the entrance hall, out through the wide portico, and onto the drive where an enormous bay stallion was tossing its head, rolling its eyes, and shifting uneasily from one foreleg to another. “Look Charlie, isn’t he wonderful? And this man says he is mine.”

The scrawny, weaselly looking man, who was holding the bay’s reins with some difficulty, touched his cap with exaggerated deference. ‘Tom Piggott at your service, my lady. I am here on the instructions of Sir Cecil to deliver this here horse to the young master.” He glanced nervously at his charge as though he expected at any moment to be dragged the length of the driveway or trampled to death.

“You see, Charlie, Cousin Cecil
does
like me after all.”

However, Tom Piggott’s ingratiating manner was lost on Charlotte, who eyed him skeptically. “And how is it that Sir Cecil has suddenly become a fancier of fine horseflesh, and even more suddenly overcome with generosity?”

The groom began to shift as uneasily as the animal. “As to that, my lady, I could not say. All I was to do was to bring this horse and help the young master ah, er, get to know him.”

“I doubt if William needs your assistance in that.” Charlotte looked over at her brother who, having extracted one of the ever-present lumps of sugar from his pocket and offered it to the horse, was now chatting earnestly with the enormous stallion as it licked greedily at his hand.

The groom’s jaw dropped in amazement, but he recovered quickly enough. “Well,” he laughed with forced heartiness, “they seem to be in a fair way to getting to know each other, but this is one spirited animal and he wants looking after by someone as what is wise to all his little tricks, and there is no one who knows them better nor Tom Piggott does, my lady; of that you can be sure.”

“Very well, Mr. Tom Piggott. You will find the coachman, Mr. Speen, in the stables and he will direct you as to the proper quarters for the horse and for yourself. In the meantime, why not leave your charge here and William can look after him while you see to your lodgings.”

“That is very kind of you, my lady, but I hardly think the lad is up to handling…”

“I have every confidence in my brother’s ability with horses. You need not concern yourself,” Charlotte replied serenely as she turned to join William in welcoming his new acquaintance.

His protests effectively squelched, Tom Piggott swallowed his chagrin at being so quickly and easily dismissed, touched his cap, and led his own horse toward the stables while Charlotte took a closer look at the unexpected present from Cousin Cecil.

“Isn’t he magnificent, Charlie? Just look at those shoulders—and those hindquarters. He should be a very sweet goer. Just look, Charlie.”

“I
am
looking, dear.” But while William exclaimed over the powerful shoulders and hindquarters, his sister was viewing the rolling eyes, tossing head, the nervous twitching of the tail, and the stomping of the wicked-looking hooves with some dismay. “Perhaps we should let Speen take a look at him, dear. He appears rather ill-tempered to me, and you know that if a horse is vicious there is nothing that can be done to change it.”

“No, Charlie, please. He is not vicious. I know he is not.
Please
may I keep him? I know he and I can be friends.”

Charlotte would have been hard-put to resist the pleading in her brother’s eyes, but then he softly stroked the stallion’s nose and she could see the animal relax under his reassuring touch. There was no doubt that William had a gift where horses were concerned, and if anyone could calm this nervous, high-strung animal, most certainly he could. Besides, she did not have it in her heart to deny him. He asked for so little and tried so hard to please. Though he was not aware of it, life had deprived him of so much, the least she could do was to give him a chance with his new present. “Very well; you may keep him, but I want you to be guided by Speen in all of this. This horse is more horse than you have ever had to cope with and I want you to be careful.”

“I will, Charlie, I will.” His face bright with happiness, William turned to whisper into his new friend’s ear all the fine things they would do together.

“I expect you had better choose a name for him.” Charlotte smiled fondly at her brother’s excitement, “Why don’t you and he discuss it while I go and tell Speen about the latest addition to our stables.”

~~~~

Charlotte found the coachman overseeing the stabling of Tom Piggott’s horse. “I hear the young master has received a surprise,” the sinewy leather-skinned old man greeted her. “I have just instructed the lads to show Mr. Tom Piggott to their quarters and make a place for him there.”

“Thank you, Speen.” Charlotte directed a significant look at the coachman, jerked her head toward the door of the stable, and walked toward the cobbled courtyard.

Speen followed her out into the sunlight and waited until they were well out of earshot before turning to his mistress. “What is it, my lady? Something is troubling you for certain.”

“It is this horse, Speen. For one thing, you know as well as I do that my Cousin Cecil is as uncomfortable around a horse, a pony even, as a rabbit is with a fox, and a more thorough-going nip-cheese you could not hope to find. Furthermore, he detests William. Now why would a man like that suddenly give William a very expensive present, especially a present that is as nervous and temperamental as this animal looks to be? I do not like it. No, I do not like it in the least, but William has his heart set on keeping the animal and we shall just have to do what we can to keep him from getting hurt. But what is Cecil up to, I wonder?”

“Nothing good, if you do not mind my saying so, my lady.” The coachman scratched his head. “It is a puzzle to be sure. Here is a man who would not give the time of day to someone and now he has sent a horse. It does not make a particle of sense. I’ll keep an eye on the lad and the horse, though from what I see, there is not an animal alive as does not take to Master William. As I see it, the boy has some kind of magic in him.”

Charlotte’s eyes filled with sudden tears. “He does, doesn’t he, Speen? And we must see that he gets a chance to do the best he can with that gift.”

“We will, my lady. I promise you that.” The sudden gruffness in the old man’s voice was not so much for the boy, who was too simple ever to suffer anything more than a transitory and easily comforted sorrow that a child suffers, as it was for the sister, who endured the constant sorrow of trying to make a place for him in a cold-hearted world—a place where he would feel accepted, understood, and happy with who and what he was. It was a crying shame that such a lovely young woman as the mistress should have such a heavy burden to bear all alone with no one to confide in. Certainly, her relatives were of no help—a pair of scavenging dogs snapping at her heels, trying to get as much as they could of Harcourt for themselves. Lady Charlotte was right to mistrust the shifty-eyed Cecil and his imperious wife. The coachman was in complete agreement with her on that score; and he was equally in agreement with her in her suspicious reaction to this unexpected present that had just appeared upon the scene without warning.

Chapter Nineteen

In fact, William was the only one in all of Harcourt who did not question mightily the appearance of the big bay stallion and its groom. And he was the only one who did not immediately condemn the animal as being a nasty, vicious brute, fit only to be a cart horse that would be worked hard enough to keep it too exhausted to exhibit any temperament at all. Indeed, it was a miracle that the horse did not subject the boy to the wicked kicks and nips that it gave to everyone else who tried to approach it. When William appeared, the flaring nostrils relaxed and the rolling eyes focused on him with something akin to trust.

“I think he likes apples,” William confided to his sister the morning after the horse’s arrival. “Cook gave me a bit of apple tart yesterday afternoon when I was feeling a bit peckish and he licked my fingers. I shall ask Mrs. Hodges if I may take some from the storeroom to give him.” Just as William predicted, apples were a huge success and the household grew accustomed to seeing him with his pockets bulging awkwardly as he headed toward the stables.

Caesar, as the horse had been named, seemed to be ready to act like a reasonable creature for a few bits of apple and words of gentle encouragement from his young master. “I shall just let him become my friend first and then we shall see.” William was firm in his resistance to Tom Piggott’s urgings to put the stallion through its paces. No amount of recounting the stallion’s prowess in speed and jumping could dissuade William from following his program of leading the horse around the pastures of Harcourt, acquainting it slowly with its new home and master.

“And in truth the lad seems to know what he is about for the creature is a good deal calmer now, and even lets Jem and Tim near him without getting into a pucker. He won’t do the same for Tom Piggott, though. ‘Tis clear as the nose on my face that he does
not trust the man, nor do I, my lady,” the coachman remarked to Charlotte one morning as he drove her into the village.

“I am afraid you are in the right of it, Speen. I too have my doubts about Tom Piggott, but I can hardly send him back to Cecil without some sort of explanation, especially if he was meant to be part of Cecil’s gift to William. And I can hardly say that I suspect Cecil of trying to do William a mischief. In the first place, if he
is
trying to harm William, I must prove it and that is best done if I do not put Cecil on his guard by sending his servant back. In the second place, it is not polite to accuse a relative of being havey-cavey, even if…even if…”

“Even if he is,” the coachman replied with all the familiarity of a servant who had helped Charlotte on her first pony and reassured her after all her subsequent falls. Speen considered himself, along with Mr. Tidworth of course, as a father figure for both the Winterbournes, and he was not about to let such a minor thing as a difference in station stand in the way of plain speaking. “For it is my opinion, my lady, that Sir Cecil is up to no good.”

“Oh, undoubtedly; though I would not have thought that even Cousin Cecil would have wished any disaster to befall William. However, it does appear that he presented him with an unmanageable horse in the hopes that that is precisely what would happen. Fortunately for William, Cousin Cecil reckoned without my brother’s knowledge of horses. We shall just have to make Piggott report back with an account of how changed an animal Caesar is. Why, the beast is practically docile now. That will make Cousin Cecil think twice about making William look the helpless fool.”

Privately, Speen thought that Sir Cecil had something rather more dastardly in mind than proving the young earl to be hopelessly incompetent, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Time would tell, and in the meanwhile, he would keep a close eye on William while Jem and Tim did the same for Tom Piggott.

Though she had put a brave front on it for Speen, Charlotte was made uneasy enough by the entire episode that she wrote a long, detailed report to Lord Lydon, a report that held no illusions as to her cousin’s nefarious behavior, and then she waited anxiously for a reply, trying all the while to keep a watch on her brother without letting on to the rest of the household her very real fears for his safety.

As far as William was concerned, he could not have been happier. His patience and dogged persistence paid off and soon he was
riding Caesar around the pasture and then on nearby lanes, returning every time full of praise for the horse’s action and stamina. “You don’t often find a horse that walks as well as he gallops, but Caesar is good at all of it,” he exclaimed over and over to his sister until she was thoroughly tired of hearing it. In fact, William’s only reservation was that he was neglecting poor Duke for his new mount until he had the happy thought that Tom Piggott could exercise Duke for him. “I don’t think he likes Caesar much, but he’ll like Duke. He is always telling me to ride Caesar because horses need exercise, so I must make sure that Duke gets exercise too.”

‘That is an excellent idea, dear, and I am sure that Duke understands that at the moment Caesar needs your attention.” Charlotte refrained from commenting that Tom Piggott’s theories had less to do with promoting the welfare of horses than they did with making sure that William was constantly in the company of a powerful, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous animal. However, she knew that her brother’s sixth sense where horses were concerned would keep him from taking unnecessary risks. If, on mounting Caesar, he were to feel the least bit of nervousness on the horse’s part, he would stop immediately, not so much to protect himself as to protect the animal’s peace of mind, and it was this concern for his mount that would keep him safe.

Speen seemed to agree with Charlotte in her assessment of the situation so that if anxiety for William caused her faith in him to waver, the coachman could be counted upon to reassure her. “Aye, my lady, the lad may not be so bright as some, to be sure,” he agreed with her one morning as they watched William and Caesar head off toward the home woods, “but he knows his horses better than any man I have ever seen. Do not fret yourself; he’ll not do anything rash, nor will that horse. That animal trusts William and he won’t let any harm come to the lad any more than the lad would let it come to him—almost like a dog, that horse is, and he don’t like it above half if Tom Piggott gets too close to the boy.”