An Unwilling Conquest

“Indeed, we’ve had an adventuresome day.” Lucinda sat back in an armchair by the fire and sipped the tea Em had dispensed. Lifting her gaze, she smiled at Em. “I can’t thank you enough, Lady Hallows, for taking us in.”

“Nonsense,” Em replied with one of her snorts. “And you could please me by dropping all the ladyships and just calling me Em, like everyone else in the family. You’re Melrose’s daughter and that’s close enough for me.”

Lucinda smiled, a trifle wearily. “Em, then. What’s it a contraction for? Emma?”

Em wrinkled her nose. “Ermyntrude.”

Lucinda managed to keep her lips straight. “Oh?” she said weakly.

“Indeed. My brothers delighted in calling me all the contractions you might imagine. When my nephews came along, I declared it was Em and nothing else.”

“Very wise.” A companionable silence settled as they savoured their tea. Lucinda broke it to ask, “Do you have many nephews?”

From under heavy lids, Em’s eyes glinted. “Quite a few. But it was Harry and his brothers I had to guard against. A rapscallion lot.”

Lucinda shifted. “He has a lot of brothers?”

“Only two—but that’s quite enough. Jack’s the eldest,” Em blithely rattled on. “He’s—let me see—thirty-six now. Then comes Harry, two years younger. Then there’s quite a gap to their sister Lenore—she married Eversleigh some years back—she must be twenty-six now, which makes Gerald twenty-four. Their mother died years ago but my brother still hangs on.” Em grinned. “Dare say he’ll manage to cling to life long enough to see a grandson to carry on the name, the cantankerous old fool.” The last was said affectionately. “But it was the boys I had most to do with—and Harry was always my favourite. Blessed by the angels and the devil both, of course, but such a good boy.” Em blinked, then amended, “Well—a good boy at heart. They all were—are. I see most of Harry and Gerald these days—what with Newmarket so close. Harry runs the Lester stud which, even if ‘tis I who say so—and Heaven knows I know next to nothing about horses—such a boring subject—is hailed as one of the premier studs in the land.”

“Really?” There was not the slightest trace of boredom in Lucinda’s face.

“Indeed.” Em nodded. “Harry usually comes to watch his runners perform. Dare say I’ll see Gerald this week, too. Doubtless he’ll want to show off his new phaeton. Told me when last he was up that he was going to buy one, now the family coffers are full and overflowing.”

Lucinda blinked.

Em didn’t wait for her to find a subtle way to ask. One hand waving, she airly explained, “The Lesters have traditionally been strapped for cash—good estates, good breeding, but no money. The present generation, however, invested in some shipping venture last year and now the whole family’s rolling in an abundance of the ready.”

“Oh.” Lucinda readily recalled Harry Lester’s expensive elegance. She couldn’t imagine him any other way. Indeed, his image seemed to have fixed in her mind, oddly vivid, strangely enthralling. Shaking her head to dispel it, she delicately smothered a yawn. “I’m afraid I’m not very good company, Lady—Em.” She smiled. “I suspect I’d better follow Heather.”

Em merely nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning, m’dear.”

Lucinda left her hostess staring into the fire.

Ten minutes later, her head pillowed in down, Lucinda closed her eyes—only to find Harry Lester on her mind. Tired, adrift, her memories of the day replayed, her interactions with him claiming centre stage. Until she came to their parting—which left one question to plague her. How would it feel to waltz with Harry Lester?

A mile away, in the tap of the Barbican Arms, Harry sat elegantly sprawled behind a corner table, moodily surveying the room. A smoky haze wreathed a forest of shoulders; gentlemen mingled freely with grooms and stablemen, tipsters wrangled with bookmakers. The tap was all business this evening; the first races, those for non-bloodstock, would commence the next day.

A barmaid came up, hips swaying. She set a tankard of the inn’s finest on the table, smiling coyly, one brow rising as Harry flipped a coin onto her tray.

Harry caught her eye; his lips curved but he shook his head. Disappointed, the girl turned away. Harry lifted the foaming tankard and took a long sip. He’d abandoned the snug, his habitual refuge, where only the cognescenti were permitted, driven forth by the all-but-incessant questioning as to his delectable companion of the afternoon.

It seemed as if all in Newmarket had seen them.

Certainly all his friends and acquaintances were keen to learn her name. And her direction.

He’d given them neither, steadfastly returning their bright-eyed enquiries with a blank look and the information that the lady was an acquaintance of his aunt’s he’d simply been escorting to her door.

Those facts proved sufficient to dampen the interest of most; the majority who frequented Newmarket knew of his aunt.

But he was definitely tired of covering the lovely Mrs Babbacombe’s tracks, particularly as he was trying his damnedest to forget her. And her loveliness.

With an inward growl, Harry immersed himself in his tankard and tried to focus his mind on his horses—usually an enthralling subject.

“There you are! Been looking all over. What’re you doing out here?” Dawlish slumped into the chair beside him.

“Don’t ask,” Harry advised. He waited while the barmaid, with a fine show of indifference, served Dawlish before asking, “What’s the verdict?”

Dawlish shot him a glance over the rim of his tankard. “Odd,” came mumbling from behind it.

Brows lifting, Harry turned his head to stare at his henchman. “Odd?” Dawlish had gone with the coachman, Joshua, to fetch the wainwright to the carriage.

“Me, Joshua and the wainwright all thinks the same.” Dawlish set down his tankard and wiped the froth from his lip. “Thought as how you should know.”

“Know what?”

“That the cotter-pin on that wheel was tampered with—half-sawed through, it was—before the accident. And the spokes had been got at, too.”

Harry frowned. “Why?”

“Don’t know as how you noticed, but there were a curious lot of rocks strewn about that stretch of road where the carriage went over. None before—and none after. Just along that stretch. No way a coachman could miss all of ‘em. And they were just round a corner so he couldn’t see them in time to pull up.”

Harry’s frown was intense. “I remember the rocks. The boy cleared them away so I didn’t have to drive over them.”

Dawlish nodded. “Aye—but the carriage couldn’t avoid them—and as soon as that wheel hit, the cotter would have snapped and the spokes after that.”

A chill swept Harry’s nape. Five mounted men in frieze, with a wagon, hiding in the trees, moving towards the road just after the carriage went down. And if it hadn’t been a race-week, that particular stretch of road would almost certainly have been deserted at that time of day.

Harry lifted his gaze to Dawlish’s face.

Dawlish looked back at him. “Makes you think, don’t it?”

Grim-faced, Harry slowly nodded. “It does indeed.” And he didn’t like what he thought at all.

Chapter Three

“I’ll have y’r team out in a jiffy, sir.”

Harry nodded absentmindedly as the head-ostler of the Barbican Arms hurried off towards the stables. Pulling on his driving gloves, he strolled away from the inn’s main door to await his curricle in a vacant patch of sunshine by the wall.

Before him, the courtyard was busy, many of the inn’s guests departing for a day at the track, hoping to pick a few winners to start the week off on the right note.

Harry grimaced. He wouldn’t be joining them. Not, at least, until he’d satisfied himself on the score of one Mrs Babbacombe. He had given up telling himself she was none of his business; after the revelations of yesterday, he felt compelled to brave her dangers—long enough to assure himself of her safety. She was, after all, his aunt’s guest—at his insistence. Two facts which undoubtedly excused his interest.

“I’ll get along and see Hamish then, shall I?”

Harry turned as Dawlish came up. Hamish, his head-stableman, should have arrived yesterday with his string of thoroughbred racers; the horses would be settling into their stables beyond the racetrack. Harry nodded. “Make sure Thistledown’s fetlock’s sufficiently healed—I don’t want her entered unless it is.”

Dawlish nodded sagely. “Aye. Shall I tell Hamish you’ll be along shortly to see it?”

“No.” Harry studied the fit of his gloves. “I’ll have to rely on your combined wisdom this time. I’ve pressing matters elsewhere.”

He felt Dawlish’s suspicious glance.

“More pressing than a prime mare with a strained fetlock?” Dawlish snorted. “I’d like to know what’s higher on y’r list than that.”

Harry made no effort to enlighten him. “I’ll probably look in about lunchtime.” His imaginings were very likely groundless. It could be no more than coincidence, and two likely females travelling without major escort, that had focused the attention of the men in frieze on the Babbacombe coach. “Just make sure Hamish gets the message in time.”

“Aye,” Dawlish grumbled. With a last keen glance, he headed off.

Harry turned as his curricle appeared, the head-ostler leading the greys with a reverence that bespoke a full appreciation of their qualities.

“Right prime ‘uns, they be,” he averred as Harry climbed to the box.

“Indeed.” Harry took up the reins. The greys were restive, sensing the chance of freedom. With a nod for the ostler, he backed the curricle preparatory to making a stylish exit from the yard.

“Harry!”

Harry paused, then, with a sigh, drew in his impatient steeds. “Good morning, Gerald. And since when do you arise at this ungodly hour?”

He had spied his younger brother amongst the crowds in the tap the night before but had made no effort to advertise his presence. He turned to watch as Gerald, blue-eyed and dark-haired as was his elder brother Jack, strode up, grinning broadly, to place a familiar hand on the curricle’s front board.

“Ever since I heard the story of you escorting two excessively likely looking females who, according to you, are connections of Em’s.”

“Not connections, dear brother—acquaintances.”

Faced with Harry’s languidly bored mask, Gerald lost a little of his assurance. “You mean they really are? Acquaintances of Em’s, I mean?”

“So I discovered.”

Gerald’s face fell. “Oh.” Then Dawlish’s absence registered. Gerald shot a keen glance at his brother. “You’re going to Em’s now. Mind if I hitch a ride? Should say hello to the old girl—and perhaps to that dark-haired delight you had up beside you yesterday.”

For an instant, Harry was shaken by the most absurd impulse—Gerald was his younger brother after all, of whom he was, beneath his dismissive exterior, distinctly fond. He concealed the unexpected emotion behind his ineffable charm—and sighed. “I fear, dear brother, that I must puncture your delusions—the lady’s too old for you.”

“Oh? How old is she?”

Harry raised his brows. “Older than you.”

“Well—perhaps I’ll try for the other one then—the blonde.”

Harry looked down on his brother’s eager countenance—and inwardly shook his head. “She, if anything, is probably too young. Just out of the schoolroom, I suspect.”

“No harm in that,” Gerald blithely countered. “They have to start sometime.”

Feeling distinctly put-upon, Harry heaved a disgusted sigh. “Gerald…”

“Dash it all, Harry—don’t be such a dog-in-the-manger. You’re not interested in the younger chit—let me take her off your hands.”

Harry blinked at his brother. It was undoubtedly true that any discussion of Mrs Babbacombe’s situation would proceed a great deal more openly in the absence of her stepdaughter. “Very well—if you insist.” Within Em’s purlieu, Gerald could be relied on to keep within acceptable bounds. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Almost gleefully, Gerald swung up to the curricle’s seat. The instant he was aboard, Harry clicked his reins. The greys shot forward; he had to exert all his skills to thread them through the traffic thronging the High Street. He let them stretch their legs once free of the town; Em’s leafy drive was reached in record time.

A stableboy came hurrying to take charge of the curricle. Together, Harry and Gerald mounted the steps to Em’s door. The oak door was set wide open, not an uncommon occurrence. The brothers wandered in. Harry tossed his gloves onto the ormolu table. “Looks like we’ll have to go hunt. I expect my business with Mrs Babbacombe will take no more than half an hour. If you can keep Miss Babbacombe occupied until then, I’ll be grateful.”

Gerald cocked an eyebrow. “Grateful enough to let me tool your greys back to town?”

Harry looked doubtful. “Possibly—but I wouldn’t count on it.”

Gerald grinned and looked about him. “So where do we start?”

“You take the gardens—I’ll take the house. I’ll call if I need help.” With a languid wave, Harry set off down one corridor. Whistling, Gerald turned and went out of the main door.

Harry drew a blank in the morning room and the parlour. Then he heard humming, punctuated by the click of shears, and remembered the small garden room at the end of the house. There he found Em, arranging flowers in a huge urn.

At his languid best, he strolled in. “Good morning, Aunt.”

Em turned her head—and stared in stunned surprise. “Devil take it—what are you doing here?”

Harry blinked. “Where else should I be?”

“In town. I was sure you’d be there.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Harry conceded with the obvious. “Why?”

“Because Lucinda—Mrs Babbacombe—went into town half an hour ago. Never been there before—wanted to get her bearings.”

A chill caressed Harry’s nape. “You let her go alone?”

Turning back to her blooms, Em waved her shears. “Heavens, no—her groom accompanied her.”

“Her groom?” Harry’s voice was soft, urbane, its tone enough to send chills down the most insensitive spine. “The young tow-headed lad who arrived with her?”

He watched as a tell-tale blush spread over his aunt’s high cheekbones.

Disconcerted, Em shrugged. “She’s an independent woman—it doesn’t do to argue overmuch.” She knew perfectly well she should not have let Lucinda go into Newmarket this week without more tangible escort, but there was a definite purpose to her ploy. Turning, she surveyed her nephew. “You could try, of course.”

For an instant, Harry couldn’t believe his ears—surely not Em? His eyes narrowed as he took in her bland expression; this was the last thing he needed—a traitor in his own camp. His lips thinned; with a terse nod, he countered, “Rest assured I will.”

Turning on his heel, he strode out of the room, down the corridor, out of the door and around to the stables. The stableboy was startled to see him; Harry was merely glad the horses were still harnessed.

He grabbed the reins and leapt up to the seat. His whip cracked and the horses took off. The drive back to town established a new record.

Only when he was forced to slow by the press of traffic in the High Street did Harry remember Gerald. He cursed, regretting the loss of another to aid in his search. Taking advantage of the crawling pace, he carefully studied the crowded pavements from behind his habitually unruffled mien. But no dark head could he see.

He did, however, discover a large number of his peers—friends, acquaintances—who, like himself, were too experienced to waste time at the track today. He entertained not the slightest doubt that each and every one would be only too willing to spend that time by the side of a certain delectable dark-haired widow—not one would consider it time wasted.

Reaching the end of the street, Harry swore. Disregarding all hazards, he turned the curricle, missing the gleaming panels of a new phaeton by less than an inch, leaving the slow-top in charge of the reins in the grip of an apoplectic fit.

Ignoring the fuss, Harry drove quickly back to the Barbican Arms and turned the greys into the loving hands of the head-ostler. The man confirmed that Em’s gig was in residence. Harry surreptitiously checked the private parlour and was relieved to find it empty; the Arms was the favourite watering-hole of his set. Striding back to the street, he paused to take stock. And to wonder what “getting her bearings” meant.

There was no lending library. He settled on the church, some way along the street. But no likely looking widow haunted its hallowed precincts, nor trod the paths between the graves. The town’s gardens were a joke—no one came to Newmarket to admire floral borders. Mrs Dobson’s Tea Rooms were doing a brisk trade but no darkly elegant widow graced any of the small tables.

Returning to the pavement, Harry paused, hands on hips, and stared across the street. Where the devil was she?

A glimmer of blue at the edge of his vision had him turning his head. Just in time to identify the dark-haired figure who sailed through the street door of the Green Goose, a tow-headed boy at her back.

Pausing just inside the inn’s door, Lucinda found herself engulfed in dimness. Musty dimness. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she discovered she was in a hall, with the entrance to the tap on her left, two doors which presumably led to private parlours on her right and a counter, an extension of the tap’s bar, directly ahead, a tarnished bell on its scratched surface.

Suppressing the urge to wrinkle her nose, she swept forward. She had spent the last twenty minutes examining the inn from outside, taking due note of the faded and flaking whitewash, the clutter in the yard and the down-at-heel appearance of the two customers who had crossed its threshold. Extending one gloved hand, she picked up the bell and rang it imperiously. At least, that was her intention. But the bell emitted no more than a dull clack. Upending it, Lucinda discovered the clapper had broken.

With a disgusted grimace, she replaced the bell. She was wondering whether to tell Sim, waiting by the door, to raise his voice in summons when a large shadow blocked out what little light penetrated from the inn’s nether regions. A man entered, burly, brawny—very big. His face was heavy-featured but his eyes, sunk in folds of fat, appeared merely uninterested.

“Aye?”

Lucinda blinked. “Are you Mr Blount?”

“Aye.”

Her heart sank. “You’re the innkeeper?”

“Nay.”

When no more was forthcoming, she prompted, “You’re Mr Blount, but you’re not the innkeeper.” There was hope yet. “Where is the Mr Blount who is the innkeeper?”

For a long moment, the burly individual regarded her stoically as if his brain was having difficulty digesting her question. “You want Jake—m’brother,” he eventually offered.

Lucinda heaved an inward sigh of relief. “Precisely—I wish to see Mr Blount, the innkeeper.”

“Wha’for?”

Lucinda opened her eyes wide. “That, my good man, is a matter for your brother and myself.”

The hulking brute eyed her measuringly, then humphed. “Wait ‘ere—I’ll fetch ‘im.” With that, he lumbered off.

Leaving Lucinda praying that his brother took after the other side of the family. Her prayers were not answered. The man who replaced the first was equally burly, equally overweight and, apparently, only fractionally less dim-witted.

“Mr Jake Blount—the keeper of this inn?” Lucinda asked, with no real hope of contradiction.

“Aye.” The man nodded. His small eyes swept her, not insolently but with weary assessment. “But the likes of you don’t want to take rooms ‘ere—try the Barbican or the Rutland up the road.”

He turned away, leaving Lucinda somewhat stunned. “Just a minute, my good man!”

Jake Blount shuffled back to face her but shook his head. “Yer not the sort for this inn, see?”

Lucinda felt the breeze as the inn door opened. She saw Mr Blount’s eyes lift to the newcomer but was determined to retain his attention. “No—I do not see. What on earth do you mean—’not the sort for this inn’?”

Jake Blount heard her but was more concerned with the gentleman who now stood behind her, hard green eyes on him. Gold hair, gently waved at the ends, cut in the latest style, a well-cut coat of light brown worn over buckskin breeches and Hessians so highly polished you could see your face in them, all added up to a persona Blount recognised very well. He didn’t need the many-caped greatcoat that swung from the gentleman’s broad shoulders, nor the patrician features and hooded eyes nor yet the tall, lean and well-muscled frame, to tell him that one of the bloods of the ton had deigned to enter his humble inn. The fact made him instantly nervous. “Aaah…” He blinked and looked back at Lucinda. “Not the sort who takes rooms ‘ere.”

Lucinda stared. “What sort of lady takes rooms here?”

Blount’s features contorted. “That’s wha’ I mean—no ladies. Just that sort.”

Increasingly certain she had wandered into a madhouse, Lucinda stubbornly clung to her question. “What sort is that?”

For an instant, Jake Blount simply stared at her. Then, defeated, he waved a pudgy hand. “Lady—I don’t knows wha’ you want wi’ me but I got business to see to.”

He lifted his gaze pointedly over her shoulder; Lucinda drew in a portentious breath.

And nearly swallowed it when she heard a drawling voice languidly inform the recalcitrant Blount, “You mistake, Blount. My business here is merely to ensure you deal adequately with whatever the lady desires of you.”

Harry let his eyes meet the innkeeper’s fully. “And you’re perfectly correct—she is not that sort.”

The particular emphasis, delivered in that sensual voice, immediately made clear to Lucinda just what “sort had been the subject of her discussion. Torn between unaccustomed fluster, mortification and outrage, she hesitated, a light blush tinging her cheeks.

Harry noticed. “And now,” he suavely suggested, “if we could leave that loaded topic, perhaps we might proceed to the lady’s business? I’m sure you’re breathlessly waiting to discover what it is—as am I.”

Over her shoulder, Lucinda shot him a haughty glance. “Good morning, Mr Lester.” She gifted him with a restrained nod; he stood behind her right shoulder, large and reassuring in the dingy dimness. He inclined his head gracefully, his features hard-edged and severe, suggesting an impatience to have her business aired.

Inwardly grimacing, Lucinda turned back to the innkeeper. “I believe you were visited recently by a Mr Mabberly, acting for the owners of this inn?”

Jake Blount shifted. “Aye.”

“I believe Mr Mabberly warned you that an inspection of your premises would shortly take place?”

The big man nodded.

Lucinda nodded decisively back. “Very well—you may conduct me over the inn. We’ll start with the public rooms.” Without pause, she swept about. “I take it this is the tap.” She glided towards the door, her skirts stirring up dust eddies.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Blount stare, open-mouthed, then come hurrying around the counter. Harry Lester simply stood and watched her, an inscrutable expression on his face.

Lucinda swept on—into the gloomy, heavily shuttered room. “Perhaps, Blount, if we were to have those shutters wide I might be able to see well enough to form an opinion?”

Blount cast her a flustered glance, then lumbered to the windows. Seconds later, sunshine flooded the room, apparently to the discomfort of its two patrons, one an old codger wrapped in a rumpled cloak, hugging the inglenook, the other a younger man in the rough clothes of a traveller. They both seemed to shrink inwards, away from the light.

Lucinda cast a shrewd glance around the room. The interior of the inn matched its exterior, at least in the matter of neglect. The Green Goose was fast living up to Anthony Mabberly’s description as the very worst of the Babbacombe inns. Grimy walls and a ceiling that had seen neither brush nor mop for years combined with a general aura of dust and slow decay to render the tap a most unwelcoming place. “Hmm.” Lucinda grimaced. “So much for the tap.”