Billy gave a snort that expressed precisely what he thought about a lady who didn’t know that he cleaned the stall the moment one of his horses did something of that nature. Josie ignored her, going to Sharon’s side. She was saying something to Sharon in that dark little voice she had, and of course Sharon started arching her nose into Josie’s arm and making little snorting noises. Mayne leaned against the wall of the stall, raising his hand when Billy thought to take Sharon’s head.
Josie had stripped off her glove and was running her hand here and there on Sharon’s side. Billy moved forward again but Mayne shook his head.
She raised her eyes and looked at him, and Mayne knew. “Feel here,” she said quietly. His fingers came after hers, nibbling down Sharon’s shining side, just to the left of her backbone. She had been beautifully groomed; Billy must have worked on her for hours.
Josie’s fingers stilled and then moved to the side so he could feel. There were hard little nubbins under the skin. They rolled under his fingers. “What the devil is that?” he asked.
“It’s not serious,” Josie told him. “My father’s groom used to call it—” She hesitated.
Billy was there now, his dirty blunt-tipped fingers in the same place, his face dark. “The devil’s nuts, that is,” he said. “I missed it until this young lady found it. I should throw in my job, I should.”
Josie shook her head at him. “’Tis all I did, as a child. My father’s stables were very large, and he put me in charge of minding the horses’ health from the time I was twelve.”
“What do we do for these nuts?” Mayne asked. It didn’t seem to bother Sharon terribly when he touched them. A tiny ripple crossed her skin, as if a breeze passed over the shining surface of a lake.
“She can’t race with it—” Josie began, but Billy interrupted her.
“You knew it too, me lord. You axed me just an hour ago was Sharon all that she could be, and I said yes. And she’s not, is she?”
“You’ll want to check the other horses,” Josie said. “It can spread through a stable like wildfire.” She nodded toward the horse blanket hanging to the side. It was a splendid throw, embroidered with the earl’s crescent and the words COEUR VAILLANT.
“It’s spread through blankets?” Mayne asked.
“You might want to stop embroidering the blankets with your crest and put the horse’s name on instead. It stops the spread. But it can jump from horse to horse on a curry brush as well.”
Mayne nodded, seeing in his mind’s eye the way his gelding loped to the finish line this morning. “Damn it, I should have known about this.”
“There’s only the five horses of ours in London,” Billy was saying to himself. “And this is only a week or two old, because I would have seen that, I would have.”
“I’m sure you would have,” Josie said soothingly. “It’s only because I don’t know Sharon at all that I could see she was in a bit of discomfort.”
“I am sorry, Garret,” his sister said from the aisle outside the box. “You must be very disappointed not to be able to race her.”
“Not as disappointed as the punters will be. Sharon’s odds were three to one. I’d better escort you back to the boxes; Sylvie will be wondering what became of me. Billy, will you take care of scratching Sharon from the race, please?”
Billy nodded. “I’m that sorry I missed it, yer lordship.”
“We both missed it,” Mayne said.
Josie gave Sharon a last pat on the nose. “We were never able to come up with anything that takes the nuts away; it seems they simply have to run their course. But I do have a comfrey bath that seems to give some comfort. I’ll send you the recipe, Mayne.”
Billy closed the gate behind them, thinking that he was a lucky sod to have a master like that, and no one would know from the way Mayne looked that his heart was set on Sharon winning the race. And she would have, if she’d been fit to run.
“I just wanted you to win so much I didn’t see them devilish nuts,” he muttered to Sharon. “It’s the devil’s own luck.”
“There’ll be another race for Sharon,” the young lady said, leaning over the gate and giving Sharon a last scratch. “She’s a beauty, and she wants to race, you can tell that. I expect that’s why you didn’t notice her condition. She’s such a game one that she would have run her heart out, whether they vexed her or not.”
“Aye, and she would have done that,” Billy said, cheering up a little. He watched the young lady as she went. She was hanging onto the master’s arm and talking up at him. By the time they turned the corner at the end of the aisle, she had him laughing.
It wasn’t every young lady who knew what nuts were, and had a recipe for a horse bath. Of course, men being what they were, the master probably didn’t recognize that.
Josie was scandalizing Griselda by telling her how much she missed spending time in the barn.
“A barn!” Griselda screetched, clutching Mayne’s arm and generally acting as if she might be kicked by a bull at any moment. “I can’t imagine why you’d wish to be in a barn.”
“They have a peaceful sort of smell,” Josie said, “as if nothing bad could happen in the world.”
Mayne found himself nodding. “It’s harness dressing: grain and axle grease.”
“And new rope,” Josie said to him. “New rope has a wonderful smell. But mostly it’s hay. Well, hay and tired horses.”
“You have always spent far too much time in the barn,” Griselda told Mayne. “I remember mama being quite worried that you would end up looking like a stable boy.” She smiled at Josie. “Our mother was terribly happy when Garret suddenly developed an interest in his clothing.”
Mayne thought about the great red barn on his estate, that same barn he’d spent so many hours in as a child. He hadn’t spent an afternoon there in two years, likely. He was always in London, and even during the autumn and winter, he went to Rafe’s or another friend’s estate. His stables, for him, were a matter of buying horses, sending them off to his estate for training, and then having them shipped to the racetrack in question. Not that he didn’t visit, because he did so often. But he wasn’t part of the life of the barn, the way he had been when he was a boy.
“Time was,” he said wryly, “when the black cat couldn’t have another set of kittens without my knowing precisely the number.”
Josie grinned. “Kittens, pshaw! I knew the number of mice that our little tiger was catching. She always wished to show me their carcasses before she ate them.”
Griselda shuddered. “You might keep that detail to yourself, if you please.”
13
From The Earl of Hellgate, Chapter the Eighth
Dear Reader, you have not forgotten your promise to resist the impulse to identify the names of the dear women who were kind enough to share their company with me, have you? There is no need to tax your memory by investigating beautiful actresses who have played Titania in the past century…I will clasp her name to my bosom until death do us part.
All of us.
G riselda plucked the note off the salver Brinkley offered her. A smile spread over her face. She discounted the feeble attempt at bribery immediately. She had read genuine shame in Darlington’s eyes when he promised not to mock Josie again. But this invitation…