The Pretenders (2 page)

This was true, and I had never quite understood why.

Mama smiled at me now, and said, “Let the old animosities go, darling. You will be a happier person if you do.”

The late-afternoon sunshine slanted in through the window, gilding the coronet of silver-blond braids on the top of Mama’s head. Her sky-blue eyes smiled trustingly at me across the table.

We had the same coloring, I thought, but nothing else about us was alike. I had my father’s height, and 1 supposed I also had his nasty temperament. Unlike Mama, I didn’t forgive.

I forced myself to smile at my gentle mother. “Do you think it would be wrong of me to pray that Highflyer wins the Derby?” I asked lightly.

She laughed. She was so pretty, my mother, so soft and so delicate. She was forty-four and I was twenty-one and I had been taking care of her for years.

I grinned. “What do you bet that we get some hams delivered here tomorrow?”

“Darling Reeve,” Mama said. ”He is so considerate. I rather believe that I will pray for Highflyer, too.”

The next few weeks went by in the usual fashion. I rode Reeve’s magnificent hunters every day to keep them in condition. One thing I had to say for Lord Bradford, he didn’t stint Reeve on the normal things that a gentleman was expected to own. It was the gambling that made him put his foot down.

Unfortunately, Reeve liked to gamble.

Ambersley, Reeve’s house, was also maintained in beautiful condition. There was an army of servants to keep the house, and an army of gardeners to see to the grounds. In every way possible, Reeve looked like the incredibly wealthy young nobleman that he was.

Except that all the bills were paid by Lord Bradford, and that drove Reeve wild.

During the weeks before the running of the Derby, I went on several expeditions with local friends whom I had known forever. They were the same expeditions that we took every spring, and they were growing rather tedious, but I couldn’t spend every waking hour in the stable, and so I went. The expeditions also had the virtue of getting Mama away from the house and her garden, which I thought was good for her.

One afternoon a group of us went boating on the River Cam, just above the university from which Reeve had been so spectacularly ejected five years before. I found myself in the same boat as Cedric Liskey, the new vicar at our local parish church.

It was a beautiful day, and I watched the brownish water eddy around the boat as Mr. Liskey pulled the oars through it. There was scarcely the whisper of a breeze. The bulrushes on the shore were as still as their reflections. The willows trailed their branches in the water, and the irises on the shore were budding. The peace, the sunlight, and the warmth were very pleasant, and I smiled at Mr. Liskey as I trailed my fingers in the water.

“Everyone has been so kind to me since I arrived here,” Mr. Liskey said. ”Why, I don’t believe that I have dined at home more than once or twice.”

Of course he hadn’t dined at home, I thought cynically. He was twenty-seven, single, and in possession of a very decent living. Every unmarried girl in the parish was after him. In fact, I had been rather surprised to find myself sharing his boat. I rather thought that Maria Bates would have made certain of that place for herself.

“Are you connected to the Cambridge family?” I asked him now. I assumed that he was, of course. The Ambersley living was a good one, and Lord Bradford would not have given it outside the family.

He smiled at me. He was a nice-looking young man with good teeth and warm brown eyes. “Yes. I am a second cousin of Reeve’s, actually. We haven’t seen much of each other, but our lives did cross briefly at university.”

“Oh,” I said.

He stopped paddling and leaned on his oars. “My career was longer than his, but far less… sensational.”

I sighed. It often seemed to me that the prank in which the home of the Head of Reeve’s college had been painted daffodil yellow overnight was known throughout England. The joke had resulted in Reeve’s being sent down, which was exactly what he had hoped for, of course. He had hated Cambridge.

“I don’t like rules,” he had said to me defiantly when his father had banished him to Ambersley in disgrace after Cambridge had washed its hands of him. “I want to be in charge of my own life.”

Ironically, it was that particular prank which had been the last straw which caused his father to change his will to keep Reeve from coming into control of his inheritance until he was twenty-six. Reeve had accomplished exactly the opposite of what he had wanted.

“Reeve never liked Cambridge,” I said now quietly.

“No, he didn’t,” Mr. Liskey agreed. ”It was perfectly evident to me from the moment we met that he wasn’t going to last. He was like a… a comet blazing across the Cambridge skies. The fiery light he cast was mesmerizing, but somehow one knew that he was going to burn himself out.”

I thought that Mr. Liskey had probably described the Cambridge situation very well. I sighed.

Poor Reeve
, I thought.

“Tell me, Miss Woodly,” Mr. Liskey said, “will you be at the dance the Bateses are holding this Saturday evening?”

I brought my attention back to him. “Yes, I will,” I said.

He looked pleased. “Then I must beg you to be sure to save a dance for me.”

Dances such as the one the Bateses were throwing were completely informal. There were no dance cards j and one simply danced with whoever asked one at the moment. I didn’t want to seem to belittle the Bateses’ entertainment, however, so I simply smiled, and said, “Of course.”

“I shall look forward to it,” Mr. Liskey said. He picked up the oars and began to row us back toward the picnic.

HE STUMBLED ON
his way up the last hill and pulled up with the lower part of his leg dangling. He had snapped his cannon bone. They put him down right on the Epsom course.

“Oh my God,” I moaned when I read the account of the race in the
Morning Post
the following day. ”This is terrible. Poor Reeve. What incredibly rotten luck.”

“Let me see.” Mother reached across the breakfast table to take the paper from me.

“Oh dear, that is too bad,” she said in distress when she had finished reading the article. ”Lord Bradford will be very annoyed when he learns that he has to pay out training money and now Reeve doesn’t even have a horse he can sell.”

“It isn’t just the training money, either,” I said gloomily. ”Can you see Reeve not betting on his own horse? A horse that is the Derby
favorite
,’

“Oh dear,” Mama said again. She knew Reeve well enough to recognize the truth of what I had just said.

I didn’t see him for two weeks after the Derby fiasco. Then, one hazy June morning, as I was helping Mama in her garden, which fed us for most of the summer and half of the winter, he drove his phaeton up to the front of our cottage, pulled up with his usual flourish, and jumped down. I wiped my hands on my skirt and walked over to greet him.

“Hello, Reeve,” I said. ”How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” he replied shortly.

In fact, he looked ill. He had lost weight, which made his high, classical cheekbones more prominent than usual, and there were noticeable shadows under his eyes.

“I was so sorry to hear about Highflyer,” I said gently. ”What a terrible way to lose a good horse.”

He nodded tersely. Reeve had never been very good about dealing with his own feelings.

At that point, my mother came up. She patted him gently on the arm, and said, “It’s good to see you, Reeve. Thank you for the hams.”

She, too, knew him well enough to realize that an excess of sympathy would not be welcome.

“I’ve come to ask Deb to go for a drive with me,” Reeve said to Mama. ”Will that be all right, Mrs. Woodly?”

“Of course,” Mama said. ”Change your dress first, Deborah. You cannot be seen abroad in that dirty old gown.”

“She looks fine,” Reeve said impatiently.

“If you don’t mind, I would like to wash my hands at least,” I said mildly. ”I won’t be long.”

He gave me a very somber look. “All right.”

Good heavens
, I thought, as I went into the cottage.
Something must be very wrong indeed. Could Bernard have refused to pay his debts
?

A cold chill struck my heart.
Surely Reeve had not gone to the moneylenders? He would not be that stupid
!

I washed my hands and face, brushed off my dress, and was back downstairs in ten minutes. Reeve was standing beside his horses, talking with Mama and looking high-strung and tense.

“I’m ready,” I said lightly, and let him take my hand to help me up to the high seat of the phaeton.

As we rolled away down the country lane, Reeve was very silent, ostensibly concentrating on driving his matched pair of bays. I didn’t say anything either. He had obviously sought me out for a purpose, and from past experience I knew I was going to have to be patient until he was ready to bring it out.

Reeve steered the phaeton away from the well-kept paths and splendid gardens of Ambersley and aimed instead toward the river, following one of the local country roads that at this season were lined with leafy trees and small grassy meadows filled with wildflowers. At last he pulled off the road and stopped the horses. We were in a small glade that was hidden from the road by a stand of graceful beech trees.

He loosened his reins so the horses could stretch their necks and turned to look at me.

I could hold my tongue no longer. “Whatever is the matter, Reeve?” I asked. “Did Lord Bradford refuse to cover what you owed on the Derby?”

Dark color flushed into his cheeks. “If I live to be a hundred, Deb, I do not ever want to spend another hour such as the one I spent with Bernard after that race. He is such a clod. Do you know what he said to me? He said that race-owners were a congregation of the worst blackguards in the country mixed with the greatest fools. That is what he thinks me. A fool!”

Reeve’s eyes were glittering dangerously, and there was a white line around his mouth.

“Lord Bradford is a very conservative man,” I said cautiously.

“You won’t credit this, Deb, but he seems to have no understanding that what I owe on the Derby are debts of honor.” Reeve thrust his fingers through his dark hair. “I shall be drummed out of the Jockey Club if I do not pay up on my bets, do you realize that?”

“Of course you must pay your bets,” I said. I added carefully, “Er… exactly how much do you owe, Reeve?”

He scowled. “I bet sixty thousand pounds on Highflyer to win. Then, of course, there is the money I borrowed from Benton for training fees. That is another ten.”

My heart sank. Seventy thousand pounds!

“And has Lord Bradford refused to meet your obligations?” I asked.

“He has said that he will meet them, but he has made a stipulation.”

For the first time he looked away from me, averting his face and staring out over the shining dappled brown backs of his standing horses.

I looked in puzzlement at his profile, which was shaded by the overhanging canopy of leaves from the beeches. There was a single stripe of sunlight on the left shoulder of his rust-colored coat.

“And what is this stipulation?” I prompted when it didn’t seem as if he were going to continue.

I could see a muscle jump in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. “I have to get married.”

I was dumbfounded.

“Married?” I echoed. ”But what does getting married have to do with your debts?”

He didn’t answer immediately, and the truth slowly dawned on me. “Oh, I see. He has found you an heiress.”

Reeve’s reply was bitter. “I don’t need an heiress, Deb. Even Bernard knows that.” He turned around to look at me directly once again. “It seems that my esteemed cousin and trustee is a great believer in the set-fling effect of matrimony on a man. He has hopes that if I take a wife, and begin to set up my nursery, then my wildness will disappear. In fact, he has promised to give me access to half of my money when I marry and the other half if I can maintain what he calls a “decent life’ for a year.”

“Good heavens,” I said faintly. ”Can he do that? I thought your father’s will stipulated that you could not come into your inheritance until you were twenty-six.”

“Apparently he left it to Bernard’s judgment to put forward the time if he felt I showed sufficient ’maturity.” “ Reeve’s gloved fingers opened and closed on the loosened reins he was holding. He added grimly, ”A stipulation that Bernard has not seen fit to inform me of until the present.”

I stared at his clenched fingers and tried to make sense of what he was saying. “Lord Bradford told you he will not pay your debts unless you marry?”

“That is what he said.”

Here was just another example of the way Lord Bradford constantly mishandled his young cousin, I thought angrily. One of the worst mistakes one could make with Reeve was to put him in a position where his back was to the wall. And Lord Bradford was very good at putting him in that position.

I said, “What are you going to do?”

He growled.

I looked at him with compassion. “If you want your debts paid, it looks as if you are going to have to get married.”

He growled more ferociously than before. “I don’t want to get married.”

“Surely it won’t be so bad,” I said encouragingly. ”I read the papers. According to the gossip columns, there are dozens of young ladies who would welcome a proposal from the handsome Earl of Cambridge. You will have to marry someday, Reeve. Why not sooner rather than later?”

He moved a little closer to me on the seat of the phaeton. Feeling his movement, one of his horses tossed his head. The bit jingled in the warm June air.

Reeve said, “Those young ladies you talk about are the silliest collection of twittering idiots I have ever met in my entire life. It would drive me mad to have to spend my entire life leg-shackled to one of them.”

I watched as he moved another inch on the seat, intruding into my space. I felt like a mare about to be herded. He bestowed upon me his most charming smile, all white teeth and glinting dark eyes.

I regarded him warily. I never trusted that smile. I had seen too many times how unscrupulously he could use it to get his own way.

His voice deepened. “I have been thinking about this situation I find myself in, Deb, and I have come up with a splendid idea. Why don’t you and I become engaged?”

I stared up at him in utter shock. “Are you mad?” I finally managed to sputter.

“You wouldn’t really have to marry me,” he said reassuringly. ”Once Bernard hears that I am engaged, he will pay off my Derby debts. Why, if I play my cards right, I might even get him to sign over half of my money to me before the marriage takes place. After all, he can’t expect us to tie the knot immediately. Weddings take time to plan, don’t they?”

“I have no idea,” I said firmly. ”And, much as I would like to help you out, Reeve, this scheme of yours is impossible.”

He moved another inch closer to me. “Why?”

I moved an inch in the opposite direction. “For one thing, Lord Bradford will not consider me a suitable wife for you. You are a Peer of the Realm, Reeve, and I live in a cottage!”

“There’s nothing at all wrong with your birth, Deb,” he returned. ”You’re the daughter of a baron, aren’t you? You don’t need to have money. God knows, I have money enough to support the entire county—if Bernard would only give me control of it!”

I shook my head and repeated, “Lord Bradford would not consider me a suitable wife for a man of your station.”

“The hell with what Bernard will consider suitable,” Reeve said. His dark eyes flashed dangerously. ”He didn’t say that I had to marry a duke’s daughter. All he said was that I had to marry.”

He was bearing down on me with the full force of his personality, which was considerable.

“Stop trying to push me off the side of this phaeton,” I said crossly. ”I am not going to marry you.”

“You won’t have to marry me. I promise you that faithfully, Deb. All you will have to do is pretend to become engaged to me. We will inform Bernard, send out an announcement to the
Morning Post
, and then, according to his promise, Bernard will pay my Derby debts.”

“And how are we to sever this engagement, pray tell?”

As soon as I said the words, I knew I had made a mistake. I had opened a wedge, and Reeve was sure to move right in.

He did.

“Well, I think it would be a good idea to keep the masquerade going for a few months, Deb. If Bernard thinks that I am really serious about getting married, he might sign over to me the control of half of my money before the deed is actually done.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “You didn’t answer my question. How are we to sever this engagement?”

He returned promptly, “We will discover that we don’t suit.”

I frowned. “I don’t know, Reeve. It sounds… dishonest.”

“I’m only trying to get control of my own money,” he pointed out. ”How can that be dishonest?”

My hair was in its usual style, a single braid down my back, and I chewed on the end of it worriedly while I looked at him, trying to make up my mind.

He picked up my bare hand in his gloved fingers. “Help me out, Deb,” he said coaxingly. “There isn’t anyone else I could ask to do this for me.”