Unbefitting a Lady (3 page)

Phaedra finished with the riding wing and moved to the centre
section. ‘This is the carriage house. We have six carriage bays. As you can see,
most of the bays are currently occupied. There’s the ducal travelling coach,
there’s the landau for spring outings, the gig for trips to the village and so
on. It will be important to familiarise yourself with them. On occasion they
will need some light maintenance.’ She seemed willing to move through this
section far more quickly than she had the prior. He saw why and it more than
provoked his curiosity.

Bram put a light hand on her arm. ‘What’s that?’ He pointed
towards what appeared to be a large full-sided wagon complete with windows and a
roof in the last bay.

‘It’s a horse trailer,’ Phaedra said tersely, determined to
move on with her tour. But Bram was intrigued. He strolled over to the
contraption, compelling Phaedra to follow him. He circled the perimeter, bending
low to take in the undercarriage.

‘It’s for horses,’ Phaedra said finally, giving him the
distinct impression she didn’t want to talk about it.

Bram stood back from the vehicle and gave her an encouraging
look. ‘Transporting horses when they could just as easily walk?’ That loosened
her tongue a bit. It appeared Phaedra Montague couldn’t stand stupidity in any
form.

‘It’s for racehorses, so they don’t
have
to walk,’ she replied sharply. The offering was enough. The
pieces fell into place rapidly after that.

Bram nodded with approval, studying Phaedra with a new
excitement that had a little less to do with the sway of her skirt. ‘To take a
northern horse south, perhaps?’

He could see the ingenuity of this. Most racing was regional,
confined to a district because of issues with distance.

In the north, racing was done in Yorkshire and at Doncaster,
while in the south of England, the great tracks were at Newmarket and Epsom.
Racehorses couldn’t walk to far locales and be in top shape for racing after a
lengthy journey. It was one of the reasons racing magnates congregated in
Newmarket with their strings—to avoid the travel and risk of injury to the
horse.

‘Precisely.’ Phaedra smiled a bit in reply, starting to warm to
the subject.

‘It’s ingenious.’ Bram took another tour around the wagon. He
didn’t have to ask for whom the wagon was intended. It was for Warbourne and
wherever she meant to take him. ‘You were pretty certain you’d win the bid
today.’ Lady Phaedra had invested quite a lot in that horse before he’d even
been bought. The wagon couldn’t have been cheap. In itself, the purchase had
been a risk. ‘What if you had lost?’ Bram held her eyes, watching her expression
carefully.

‘I am not accustomed to losing, Mr Basingstoke. Shall we
continue the tour?’

After that, she showed him the last bay where the carriage
horses were kept—matched greys for the ducal coach and a set of Cleveland bays
for the landau. Then they were off outdoors to see the facilities—the oval
training track put in by her great-grandfather at the height of the racing craze
in the previous century, and the riding house, also a legacy of her
great-grandfather.

‘It’s an amazing facility,’ Bram said at last when they
finished walking through the indoor riding house with its viewing gallery of the
arena below.

She fixed him with a stern stare. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘That’s what you wanted me to say, isn’t it?’ He grinned.
‘You’ve been trying to overwhelm me since we started.’ Bram held out his hands,
palms up in surrender. ‘You have succeeded admirably.’ He
was
impressed with the facility and with her. Warbourne had not been
a spontaneous purchase driven by the whims of a pretty, impetuous young
lady.

‘Yes,’ Phaedra admitted. ‘You’ve landed yourself a plum. You
should be thankful for a job when so many people are out of work. This is more
than simply a job. It’s a very
good
job at a very
fine stable. It’s not quite on par with Chatsworth just yet, but any horseman
would be grateful for it.’

Bram chuckled outright at the mention of the great northern
stable. To compare one’s self to Chatsworth was brave indeed for fear of coming
off wanting. But Castonbury was in no risk of that. ‘We’re not too proud are we,
princess?’

‘Not proud. Honest,’ Phaedra countered with a confident tilt of
her head. ‘Let me show you your quarters and introduce you to Anderson.’

‘I’ll want to talk about an exercise schedule for Warbourne
too, so I can get started with the horses right away,’ Bram asserted as they
began the walk back to the stable block. The assignment he’d taken on was
becoming more intriguing by the moment, largely due to the woman beside him. She
had wanted Warbourne. She saw something in him others had not. After seeing the
stables, Bram was starting to think there might be something to that. He was
itching to get his hands on that colt.

Phaedra faced him squarely. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, Mr
Basingstoke. You’re here to help Anderson. Warbourne is mine.
I
don’t need your help.’

Bram tossed her a smile. ‘Of course you don’t.’ He’d not
expected her to say otherwise. But that didn’t mean it was true. She would need
him before they were through in one way or another.

Chapter Three

L
ady Phaedra Montague was a haughty minx,
but that was part of her charm. His intuition about women was seldom wrong and
his first impressions from the auction had been correct. Bram was still
chuckling as he stowed his things in the small room he’d been given over the
stable block. Regardless of the hauteur she cultivated so successfully, she was
all fire. He must tread carefully.

Bram folded a shirt and put it in the three-drawer chest in the
corner. She was a duke’s daughter. He hadn’t expected that. He
had
expected her to be nicely situated country gentry
and gently born, but not quite so
high
born. One
simply didn’t open affairs with such lofty creatures. The penalties were too
high. One might tolerate facing pistols at dawn over the Mrs Fentons of the
world but there would be no scandalous pistols over Phaedra Montague. There
would only be a ring and marriage, two very permanent reminders of one’s
momentary lapse in judgement. It was probably for the best. Giles Montague was
no doubt a deadly shot when it came to his sister’s honour.

It was too late to back out now. He’d taken this gamble on
scant knowledge, lured to it by Phaedra’s spirit and the challenge of the colt
to offset the looming boredom of six months in Derbyshire. He’d never imagined
she’d be Rothermere’s daughter. He didn’t know the duke personally, but the
peerage was not so large that a duke could escape notice. Bram knew
of
Rothermere but no more.

Still, he could leave whenever he chose if he didn’t like how
things progressed. He wasn’t reliant on the position for a wage or a reference.
He could vanish in the night and no one would be the wiser. As long as he
dressed the part...

Bram studied the items in the drawer—three linen shirts and two
waistcoats from London’s finest tailors. They simply wouldn’t do for stable
work. He’d have to go down to the village and look for ready-made work clothes.
He’d also have to see about making arrangements to discreetly retrieve his trunk
from the inn in Buxton too. It was unmistakably a gentleman’s travelling trunk
and would have raised too many questions. There’d been only time to stop by the
inn on the way out of town and pack a quick valise. Even that had been tricky
since the inn had been in close proximity to the luxurious Crescent area of
Buxton, expensive quarters for a man looking for work.

Bram shut the drawer. What did he care if he was caught? The
scandal would serve his father right. There was an irony to it. He’d been sent
away to avoid further scandal, not to foment it. His father would die a thousand
social deaths if it became known his son had taken employment as a groom in a
duke’s household and lived above the stables with the other grooms and male
workers. He didn’t want to get caught too soon though, not before he had a
chance to see if the colt could be tamed—or Phaedra Montague for that
matter.

A heavy footfall at the door caused him to straighten. He had
company. He half expected it to be Phaedra. ‘So, you’re the one who has come to
replace me.’ The voice was thick with the broad sounds of Derbyshire, the sounds
of a man who’d grown up here all his life and wandered very little, a man who
would see assistance as an intrusion.

‘Not to replace you, to
help
you.
For a while,’ Bram said in friendly tones. He strode forward, his hand
outstretched. ‘You must be Anderson.’ The man looked sixty at least, with a
shock of white hair and weathered face. But he was sturdy in build with the
stocky frame of a Yorkshire man.

He shifted his cane to his left side and shook hands. ‘Tom
Anderson I am.’

‘I’m Bram Basingstoke. Have a seat. I’d like to talk to you
about the horses.’ Bram belatedly glanced around the tiny room to realise the
only place to sit was the bed.

‘Why don’t you come down to my rooms once you’re settled. We’ll
talk more comfortably there.’

‘I’m ready now. I didn’t have much to unpack.’ Bram gestured
towards the door. ‘I am hoping you can recommend a place in the village I can
get work clothes,’ he said as they made the short trip towards Anderson’s rooms
on the first floor.

Anderson waved his cane. ‘Don’t bother. I’ve got a trunk of
shirts and trousers left over from the last fellow who was here. He was tall
like you, they should fit well enough.’

Anderson’s rooms were slightly larger as befitted his status as
the stable manager, and furnished comfortably with well-worn pieces. A fire was
going in the hearth, a definite improvement over Bram’s cold chamber.

‘The last fellow?’ Bram enquired, taking a seat near the
fire.

Anderson chuckled. ‘You don’t think you’re the first man Lord
Giles has hired to help out, do you?’ He pulled out a jug of whisky and poured
two pewter cups.

‘I hadn’t thought either way on it,’ Bram said honestly. He’d
been too busy thinking about Phaedra and the colt to contemplate the nuances of
his position.

‘You’re about the fourth in as many months.’ Anderson passed
him a cup. ‘Winter hasn’t been kind to this old man. I’ve been down with one
thing or another since November and now my hip is giving me trouble. I can’t
work the horses with a bad hip.’ Anderson paused and raised his cup in a toast.
‘Here’s hoping you’ll last longer than the rest.’

Bram studied Anderson over the rim of his cup. Bram could see
the age around Anderson’s eyes, his face tanned and wrinkled from a life lived
outdoors. Anderson reminded him of the old groom at his family home. His father
still hadn’t found a way to pension him off without hurting his pride. ‘The
stables are well-kept and the quarters are decent. What drove them off?’

It was Anderson’s turn to eye him over a swallow of whiskey.
‘It wasn’t a “what”. It was a “who”. Some men don’t like taking orders from a
lady.’

Ah. Phaedra Montague. He should have guessed. She’d been far
from pleased with her brother’s announcement at the fair. ‘She makes life
difficult?’ Bram asked. Did she plant frogs in their beds? He couldn’t envisage
her stooping to such juvenile levels.

Anderson wiped his mouth with his hand. ‘Nah. She doesn’t do it
on purpose. It’s not her fault she knows more about horses than they do. She
doesn’t mean to drive them away.’

The first thing that struck Bram was that he doubted it. She
probably did
hope
they would move along. She had not
hidden her disapproval at the horse fair. The second was that she had the old
groom wrapped around her finger. He was clearly defending her.

‘She’s that good?’ Bram took another swallow, trying to
cultivate an attitude of nonchalance while he probed for information. It was
always best to know one’s quarry before one began the hunt.

‘She’s that good. Lord Giles is a bruising rider but she holds
equal to him. It’s not just the riding though. It’s everything else. It’s like
she can look in their souls, that she can reach them on a level no one else
can.’ Anderson poured himself a second drink. ‘I’ll tell you something crazy if
you want to hear it and if it won’t send you packing.’

Bram was all ears. This part of the country was known for its
superstitions and ghost tales and Anderson had the makings of a fine
storyteller.

‘Two years ago last June we had a white stallion named
Troubadour. He belonged to her brother Edward. Edward was off fighting Napoleon
but Troubadour had been left home. One night around the fourteenth, he started
acting all crazy-like in his stall, kicking, stomping. He wouldn’t eat. No one
could get near him except Miss Phaedra. She sat with him for hours getting him
to calm down. Mind you, there was no one here. All four of the boys were at war.
It was just Lady Phaedra and Lady Kate and the duke, of course. When Lady Kate
came out to see her, Lady Phaedra was crying something fierce. She told Lady
Kate Troubadour was dying and that she feared young Lord Edward was dead. Before
sunrise, Troubadour lay down in his stall and refused to get up. A month later,
word reached us that Lord Edward had fallen at Waterloo, the very night
Troubadour died.’ Anderson tapped his head with his finger. ‘She knows them,
knows what’s in their heads.’

Bram nodded. He’d heard stories about horses that could sense
their masters’ distress. He’d never heard of anything quite as drastic as
Anderson’s tale. So, Lady Phaedra talked to horses and read their minds. Well,
he’d see about that for himself, but it was clear Tom Anderson believed it in
full.

They passed a companionable evening discussing the horses and
their workout needs. There was the spirited mare the eldest daughter, Kate, had
left behind when she’d gone to America not long ago. There were the general
horses kept for guests, not that there’d been many guests outside of family in
recent months. There was Giles Montague’s black beast of a stallion, Genghis,
nearly as dark as Warbourne. And there was the elegant chestnut thoroughbred,
Merlin, Lord Jamie’s horse.

‘Lord Jamie?’ He quirked his eyebrow in question. Yet another
younger brother, perhaps? How big was this family? Bram was beginning to
wonder.

‘Lord Jamie is the eldest. But he went to war too, and didn’t
come home. Only Lord Giles and Lord Harry returned.’ Anderson shook his head.
‘It’s been a bad business all around for the family. Lord Giles wanted to be a
career military man. He never wanted to be the heir, never was jealous of Lord
Jamie. But it wasn’t to be.’

‘He died too?’ Bram asked quietly. He knew several families in
London who’d lost loved ones thanks to Napoleon. Families both rich and poor
alike had lost sons.

Anderson shrugged, a light twinkling in his old blue eyes.
‘Don’t know. That’s a whole other kettle of fish brewing up at the house these
days. Lord Giles is pretty closemouthed about it, as he should be. But there was
no body ever recovered and then last fall this woman shows up with a little ’un
just about the right age claiming she’s Lord Jamie’s wife. She’s living at the
Dower House. The family is trying to do right by her, although the whole thing
seems off to me.’

‘Why?’

Anderson jerked his head the general direction of the horse
stalls. ‘Merlin’s still alive. He and Lord Jamie were as close as a horse and
human can be, just like Edward and Troubadour,’ Tom Anderson answered
matter-of-factly, as if everyone bought into folklore without question.

Bram refrained from comment. He supposed stranger things had
happened. When he’d driven through the gates of Castonbury today, it had looked
normal enough—the manicured grounds, the outbuildings in decent repair, the
stables immaculate. It had looked
better
than
normal. From the outside, one would never guess the turmoil that simmered
beneath the surface. What exactly had he let himself in for? Whatever it was, it
certainly wasn’t ‘boring.’ All fears of ennui had been effectively banished.

* * *

Phaedra rose early and dressed quickly in breeches and a
loose shirt. Rising early was imperative if she wanted to escape the eagle eye
of Aunt Wilhelmina. She did not approve of Phaedra roaming the estate in
breeches nor did the redoubtable lady approve of rising before ten in the
morning. Neither of which was surprising. Aunt Wilhelmina spent most of her life
disapproving. Still, Phaedra preferred not to be on the receiving end of her
aunt’s disapproval and there seemed to be a lot more of it headed her direction
since Kate had left after Christmas with her new husband.

In the breakfast room, Giles was already present with his
coffee and newspapers. He looked up as she entered and uttered a brief
good-morning. She nodded. This had become their ritual. Both of them enjoyed
rising early but early rising was not synonymous with a desire to engage in
conversation. They wanted to eat first, let their minds sift through the agenda
of their days.

Phaedra piled her plate with eggs and hot toast. Chances were
she wouldn’t be back to the house for luncheon. Her mind was already sorting
through the things that needed doing at the stables: check on the gelding with
the sore leg, make sure the hay delivery had arrived from the home farm, do a
general walk-through to check on the stalls and horses. There was Warbourne to
see to and horses to exercise.

The activity would fill her day until sunset. The busyness was
a blessed relief from the empty house. She’d grown up in a large family, used to
being surrounded by brothers and a sister, but war and the passing of years had
brought an end to that. The boys had gone to battle. Only Giles had come home
and then only because duty demanded it. Harry had come home and left again. Kate
had married. Really, Kate’s marriage was the last blow, the last desertion. The
two of them had lived here together during the years the boys were at war. It
had brought them close in spite of the difference in their ages. Now Kate was
gone, choosing Virgil and a new life in Boston over Castonbury and the familiar.
And her.

Now it was just her and Giles, the oldest and the youngest,
nine years separating them. She hoped it wasn’t disloyal to Jamie to think of
Giles as the oldest. But Jamie was dead now, whether there was a body or not,
and Giles had done his best to pick up the reins of duty in the wake of great
tragedy.

Phaedra sighed and bit into her toast. Since Kate had left,
mornings were hardest of all, the time when she was most acutely aware she’d
been left behind. The once merry and heavily populated breakfast room was empty.
Giles was here but he had Lily and in the summer they would marry. They would
fill Castonbury with a new generation of Montagues. Time would move on. Would
she? What would happen to her? What would
become
of
her? Anything could happen. She told herself she had Warbourne now. He was her
chance.

Phaedra pushed back from the table, her appetite overruled by
the need to see Warbourne, to get to the stables where worries and thoughts
wouldn’t plague her.