The Bargain Bride (29 page)

Now she had eleven presents, with only a tobacconist and an apothecary in view. The maid had no suggestions, so they went home. Lady Bainbridge proposed handkerchiefs, of which West had a drawerful, or slippers, which he never wore.

Penny's grandfather had the perfect gift idea, though, and Penny needed only an hour to unearth it from the crates of unopened paintings from Littleton's earlier years, at the height of his talent and popularity. It was a small portrait of Penny as she'd appeared at sixteen or so. He'd painted her in pink, laughing, with her hair blowing in the breeze, and barefoot. She hadn't liked to see it, to be reminded of Grandpapa's failing eyesight and her own naïveté, so the canvas had been in storage for a decade. In the painting she was a carefree young girl, thinking her life was still ahead of her, before the years of disappointment. She'd give it to West, because he was giving her back her joy.

She needed one more gift. She thought about tying a bow around her middle and wearing that and a smile when he came home, but he'd already opened that present. So she decided on the next-best thing, hoping he wouldn't think it the very best thing. She would buy him a horse. With Nicky playing least in sight, she asked Mr. Cottsworth to help her select a suitable addition to West's stables.

“Do you want to purchase a breeding mare? A town hack? A hunter?” Cottsworth asked. “A horse for his business or for his own pleasure?”

“For himself.” She was positive about that, but a stallion could be both ridden and used for stud, so that seemed the best choice. Price was no limit. She wanted the best London had to offer.

She could not go to Tattersall's, where the horses often had longer pedigrees and better manners than the men who attended the auctions there. By luck, Cottsworth knew a gentleman under the hatches who had not yet put his stable on the market. He could take her, with Lady Bainbridge for propriety's sake and by his own preference, to the man's private residence first, before the public got to see the horses.

The solitary stallion was a huge brute of a horse, far too dangerous as a gift for someone she loved, Penny decided. She might give him to an enemy, but not to West. Why, she might as well let the arsonist have him, as let him on that beast. No matter if Cottsworth almost drooled at the sight of the creature and assured her West could handle any horse on earth. She would not permit the former officer to try out the stallion's paces, to show her the animal was manageable. Cottsworth could barely walk, and she would not be party to seeing West's good friend killed. Not even the groom who led the stallion out seemed inclined to get on Diablo's back.

One horse in Butterfield's stable did appeal to her, a sweet mare in foal, who was not up to West's weight, but whose eyes spoke to Penny. She'd be on the auction block next week, going to who knew what kind of owner, instead of coming to the stall's door for pats and carrots.

“This one.” Penny stroked the mare's velvet nose.

“A good pick, ma'am,” Butterfield's head groom told her.“She's been bred to last year's derby winner.The foal might turn out to be worth more than any other horse here. A'course it'll take a few years to tell if you'll get your investment back. But she's a real lady, is Jezebel.”

“West can have the baby. I'll keep the mare. And I'll call her Lady, not some tart's name.”

But the foal was not due for another month, so Penny still needed one more gift.

She could tell that Mr. Cottsworth was growing weary from walking through mews and riding rings, leaning more heavily on his cane. Lady Bainbridge looked bored and kept wrinkling her nose at the smells. “I'll find another gift for my husband,” Penny offered.

There was one more horse Cottsworth wanted her to see, not too far away. “The poor chap's blind in one eye,” he told her, “after a hunting accident.”

It seemed the cow-handed owner shot the stallion himself, then put him up for sale, out of guilt or embarrassment. “Or else he simply does not want to be seen on a mount that is less than perfect,” Cottsworth added in bitter tones, from his own experience. “The
ton
is like that, you know. They hide away their old and infirm, preferring to look at beauty, no matter how superficial. Sungod goes on the block tomorrow. If no one takes him, he'll be sold to a hackney driver, or the knackers.”

“How awful!” Penny said.

“I thought you'd feel that way.” He led her to where a handsome palomino, with lighter gold mane and tail, was being led out by a groom. A scar ran down one side of Sungod's face; otherwise he was a well-built, well-conditioned animal.

“But if he is half-blind, can he be ridden safely?”

Cottsworth took the reins from the groom. “There is only one way to find out.”

Lady Bainbridge gasped. Penny asked, “Are you sure?”

The former officer's lips were drawn in a thin line. “Madam, I might not walk as well as I used to, but I assure you, I can still ride.”

Penny held his cane. Lady Bainbridge held her breath.

Cottsworth put the horse through his paces in the sand-covered ring, until the two of them were like a centaur, a bronze horse, tail and mane flowing, a strong, confident man with no hint of injury in either of them. The stallion responded to the slightest touch of Cottsworth's knee, so perfectly that Penny could hardly tell when the rider gave a command. Cottsworth appeared happier than he'd ever looked.

Lady Bainbridge sighed at the sight. “Isn't he mag snificent?”

“Gorgeous. I'll take him!”

“But you're already married,” Penny's companion cried.

Penny patted her hand. “I meant the horse.”

—By Arrangement,
a chronicle of arranged marriages, by G. E. Felber

 

 

 

N
icky stayed away for two more days. “Just like a Westmoreland,” Penny complained to Lady Bainbridge, “not caring who is waiting, or worrying, or counting on him to act as escort. Not caring about his given word.”

Actually, she did not care tuppence about Nicky. West had still not returned, either. The ball was a handful of days away, and he had not sent another message, the wretch. Penny did not know if he'd caught the arsonist or been burned to a crisp, rebuilt the stable or had it collapse around his ears, started home—or was never coming back. Curse him, and his bothersome debauched baby brother, too.

Nicky staggered home the next morning, just as Penny was leaving the house. Mr. Parker had gone to send a footman for the carriage for her when Nicky almost fell through the front door at Penny's feet. He was bedraggled, his clothes in disorder, and he smelled like the Thames at low tide, with dead fish and sewage. She stepped back as he used the door to pull himself upright.

“You should come in through the service entrance when you are so foxed. Or sleep it off in the stables,” she said in disgust, “where decent people do not have to look at you, or smell you. You are not fit for a dog kennel, much less a drawing room.”

“ 'M sick,” Nicky mumbled, leaning against the wall after almost knocking over a large Oriental vase used to hold umbrellas.

Penny righted the urn, tempted to take out a walking stick and beat the dunce over the head with it. “That's what you get for staying out for days and nights, drinking and carousing.”

Nicky shook his head, then groaned. “No, I'm sick.”

Penny looked closer, under her brother-in-law's bent head and tangled hair. He had a black eye, a purple bruise on his cheek, a grayish cast to his complexion, and beads of sweat on his forehead. She pushed him onto a cushioned bench near the door, where callers could wait. “Good grief, what happened to you?”

“Don't remember.”

Which put an end to any sympathy Penny might have felt for the nodcock, and her patience, too. She pulled on her gloves, ready to leave Nicky to the butler as soon as her coach was out front. “Most likely you were boxing the Watch, like some schoolboy on holiday.”

Halfway out the door, she turned back. “You weren't arrested, were you?” West would be dismayed. Penny knew he'd left Nicky to look after her, but she was older and hopefully wiser—no one could be more foolish— and she supposed she should have been looking after him. Although how a woman could supervise a grown man she had no idea, other than locking him in the attic.

“Were you in prison? I will hit you with one of those canes, I swear, if you've come down with jail fever. I'll hit you twice if you've stirred up the scandal broth just before my ball.”

“I don't think so. Don't remember.”

“Well, what
does
your addlepated intelligence remember?”

“I 'member drinking with Bertie Beecham at his lodgings, after the waltz party. Bertie was at the nursery party, too, very respectable, don't you know. Bertie's mother holds the purse strings, so he had to escort his sisters, but he left earlier than I did. Bribed some green lad to dance with the Beecham gals. I should have done the same.”

“No, you should have stayed with me and my stepsisters. You would not have ended up looking like you've been run over by a hay wagon. But that was days ago. What happened afterward?”

“I know we went to a club, looking for Gary Culpepper for you. Said I would, didn't I?”

“Oh no, my boy. You are not blaming your binge on me. You know I would not want to invite any reprobate who frequents disreputable gaming dens to the ball, not even if he is a poet, and Amelia's idol to boot.”

“You're wrong. Culpepper ain't no 'probate, and the Red and the Black is all the kick this Season. Not for young ladies, of course, but run honestly. You can ask Cottsworth. The owner of the club was a former officer, too. A friend of his and m'brother's.”

“I take it Culpepper wasn't there?”

“No, so we went to another place. And another and another. Never did find Culpepper, but someone said there was a new place he might be, so we tried that one. Not as genteel as the Red and the Black, but a few ladies of the
ton
were playing. We played a couple of rounds of cards, drank a bit.”

More than a bit, from the stench of sour wine and smoke mixed with worse odors. “Go on.”

“I did not feel so well, so stopped drinking, waiting for Bertie to finish his hand. I think I fell asleep, because when I woke up, a fight was going on. We weren't involved, but you know how these things go.”

“No, somehow I have missed the experience of a bar-room brawl.”

Nicky missed the sarcasm and tried to explain: “Two fellows have an argument, but a bystander gets shoved, so he shoves back, and his friends join in. Then everyone is throwing punches and chairs and bottles.”

“Is that what happened to your face?”

“S'pose so. I can't remember. I told you, I didn't feel at all the thing, way before the fight. I only recall the chairs being smashed, and getting dragged to a carriage when someone shouted that the Watch was coming. I woke up in a strange house.”

“Not Bertie's?”

“I don't know what happened to Bertie. His mother would have had catfits to see him, or me, like this. Bertie wasn't the one who carried me to Ma Johnstone's.”

“Ma Johnstone's?” she echoed, fearing the worst.

He confirmed it. “I woke up in a . . . a house of ill repute.”

“What were your friends thinking, to bring you to a bordello?”

They were thinking of having a woman, he'd wager, but Nicky could not say that, not in front of West's wife. “I guess they thought I'd be embarrassed for you to see me in such a state. They must have figured I could sleep it off there. And they must have known Ma Johnstone herself to ask the favor. Only it wasn't any favor.”

“Oh, it was so awful you just stayed there?”

He shook his head, then grabbed at his skull with trembling hands. “I don't know. The thing is, I woke up, cast up my accounts, and started to leave. Some ugly bul lyboy as big as a house, with a flat, crooked nose, tells me I can't go, that I owe the madam fifty pounds.”

“For one or two nights' rest?”

“He said I'd been there longer. And that the others who brought me caused damage, never paid for the girls, and ran off with Ma's best moneymaker. Then he said I'd played cards and signed vouchers.”

“Did you?”

He moaned again. “One of them looked like it could have been my initials.”

Penny felt like groaning, too. Only an idiot let himself land in bad company, in bed with prostitutes and card-sharps. “How much?”

“I think the total is nearly a thousand pounds. He had a bill from that dive, too, for breakage during the fight. I was the only one they named, it seems.”

Penny turned as ashen as Nicky. “A thousand pounds? That's a fortune to most people!”

It was to Nicky, too. “I don't have it.”

Now, that was no surprise. “Well, I am not going to pay any jackass's gambling, wenching, brawling debts.”

He sat up straighter, or tried to. “I never expected you to cover my bets. Gentlemen's debts, don't you know, nothing to do with a woman. I'll get the blunt somewhere.”

“Nonsense, no gentleman plays with a drunken boy and takes IOUs for more than his victim possesses. You should go to the magistrate's office. Most likely you were drugged anyway. The card games were certainly rigged if you cannot remember playing.”