Chapter 2
Two
Thirty miles away and thirty-seven hours earlier, Thomas Drake bent over and whispered in the ear of his stallion Octavius, “Come on, boy, let’s rampage.”
With those words, the horse, as if he hadn’t been ridden hard by his master for the last hour, broke into a long-legged gallop across the meadow of wet wildflowers and sweet grass. The sun was now fully up.
Thomas kept his forward lean and held the reins loosely even as he raised himself inches above the saddle, giving Octavius the freedom to fly.
A visitor to these parts might have seen a tall rider with powerful shoulders and a shock of dark hair galloping full out on a chestnut stallion and thought the rider must be carrying word of an imminent invasion, so great was his reckless urgency.
Any villager or farmer would have known it was just the Earl Drake, out for his morning ride.
Thomas had saddled and led Octavius out of the stables before dawn, hoping to escape without notice.
One of the very young grooms, really a glorified stable boy, showed up in the dark stable yard, rubbing his eyes.
He politely insisted on checking the buckling of the girth on the saddle and giving Thomas a hand up.
Thomas did not make a fuss. He had drunk heavily the night before, and he had not slept since then. He was no longer drunk, but he was heartsick. And heartsick, sleep-deprived men make fatal errors.
“If anyone asks, I’ll be back for breakfast,” Thomas told the groom once he was in the saddle.
“Yes, Lord Drake.”
And he had ridden out.
Riding was the great solace of his life.
He was a man who sought many pleasures but had few comforts.
He lived as dissolute a life as he could afford, but women and alcohol only briefly distracted him and stayed his restlessness.
However, he could ride Octavius for hours on end, roaming over the lands owned by his family for hundreds of years, until he had memorized each inch of every forest and lea, the shape of every tenant farmer’s chimney, every footpath, every meandering stream.
He could lose himself in the countryside surrounding Sommerleigh and in the effort of his horse and in his own sweat and pounding pulse.
And then he could sleep. It was the only time he could sleep more than an hour or two without the benefit of drink or a whore.
His best friend James Cavendish, Marquess of Daventry and son and heir of the Duke of Middlewich, thought Thomas’ love for Octavius was unnatural.
“You just haven’t been pleasured by the right woman, Tom. If you would bed the new redheaded doxy at Madame Flora’s, you would give up that stallion for good,” James had said last night when he had arrived at Sommerleigh and found Thomas currying Octavius in the stable.
Thomas had, of course, already bedded the redheaded doxy.
Many times. He had reveled in her abundant breasts and in her lovely, firm backside as he lifted up her hips to thrust between her legs.
The release, as always, was sweet but fleeting, gone from his mind almost as soon as the woman had rolled away and he had buttoned the fall of his trousers.
No, the pleasure he found in riding Octavius was of an entirely different sort. It was physical, yes, but it was also a pleasure of the soul. He felt an unstinting glory in being alive as he rode until he and his horse were both exhausted.
And he always felt a particular thrill in riding after a violent storm, when the air had a new, sharp cleanness to it and the grasses were wet and heavy.
Last night, Thomas had sat in his library for hours, James long gone to bed.
He had stared out the window at the raging storm that matched the violence of his feelings.
As the storm died, the tumult in his head quieted and was replaced by a kind of grief.
In the predawn stillness, he went to the stables to find Octavius.
He now slowed the stallion to a trot and turned him towards the grounds of the house.
Thomas’ dark hair and shirt were drenched with sweat, and he felt he had finally perspired the very last traces of the previous night’s whisky out of his system.
He straightened his shoulders and rubbed the stubble on his chin. His mind was clear on one thing.
Today, he would ask James what to do.
He had invited James down from town for this very conversation. Thomas was not the sort to unburden himself for the sake of unburdening, but he hoped his friend would be able to give him advice that might miraculously change his fortunes.
James was the best sort of friend, Thomas thought.
Long and lean with sandy-brown hair that curled mischievously, his gray eyes that crinkled at the corners when he laughed—James was a man of joy.
He was not completely without judgment, but he could always find a rose in a manure pile when there was a rose to be found.
He drank a little too much at times, lost a little too often at cards, but had no demons Thomas knew of.
James had often come to Sommerleigh, even while Thomas’ father still lived.
James would say he needed a country respite, which meant he had overspent his allowance and had to wait until his father disbursed the next set of funds before he could resume his life as a rake-about-town.
James could have always gone home to the duchy of Middlewich, but he said his parents were too disapproving and his dear sisters were too overwhelming in number.
Thomas’ father had been a melancholic man as long as Thomas could remember, but James’ quips and clever conversation could make the old earl smile and even laugh. Looking back now, Thomas was glad that by bringing James to Sommerleigh, he had done something to ease the older man’s worry.
And now he had inherited his father’s burden.
After a day of procrastination on the part of Thomas, accompanied by hunting and a dinner of wild hare they had shot themselves, James and Thomas ensconced themselves in the library.
James told a long, ribald tale he had heard from another rake about a racehorse jockey.
Thomas laughed in the right places, he thought, but as the fire burned down, James quieted.
He drew off his boots and thrust his stockinged feet towards the dying flames.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
Thomas put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
“It’s all right, Tom. I can guess. It’s money, isn’t it?”
Thomas looked up, startled. James smiled.
“Well, I knew you wouldn’t be out of sorts because of love, unless it’s love for that old stallion, so that left illness or money.
And you seem fit, so that left money. And I noticed you didn’t have a gamekeeper come with us today for the shooting, and I thought it a little odd. You didn’t sack old Ransome, did you?”
Thomas sighed. “Mr. Dunbar—you know, the merchant who bought the next estate—asked if I knew where he might find a good gamekeeper. I spoke to Ransome and, after tiptoeing around the subject, I came to find he was very amenable to becoming Mr. Dunbar’s gamekeeper, especially since it meant a hefty increase in pay.
In fact, Mr. Dunbar had already offered Ransome the job behind my back, but Ransome felt he couldn’t leave since he and his father and his father’s father had been with the family for so many years.
So it was a small saving grace because it meant I could lose one servant’s salary without sacking anyone. ”
“I would think having no gamekeeper would increase expenses,” James said thoughtfully. “Seems penny wise and pound foolish. You’ll lose all your pheasants to poachers.”
Thomas groaned and put his head in his hands again and pulled on his dark hair in frustration. “I must retrench, but I suspect the situation is so far gone that I could never retrench successfully.”
James raised his glass of claret up in front of the fire so the crystal sparkled with reflected embers and the wine glowed like liquid rubies. “Now, now, Tom, have another glass of this fine claret from your own cellars and tell Uncle Jamie all about it.”
And so Thomas did.
He was facing a devastating, humiliating bankruptcy.
The expense of running the Sommerleigh estate far outstripped the rents coming in from his farmers.
And there were debts, enormous ones, which his father and his grandfather had accrued.
As a young man, his father had made some unwise investments in the Americas that had become worthless after the War of Independence.
Thousands had been lost. Thousands had been borrowed and spent.
The old earl’s way of dealing with the problem had been to spend at the same rate as always and to keep borrowing.
And then he had died, and Thomas had blindly continued this pattern.
And now Thomas might very well be the last Lord Drake to be able to afford to own these lands and this house. He was near ruin.
James listened and drank and listened some more. He asked questions, pointed ones, and although he didn’t gasp at the figures mentioned, his eyes widened once or twice when he realized the amount of money involved.
Thomas finished, and there was a long spell of silence.
“I’d give you the money if I had it, you know that,” James said.
“I know you would, but I wouldn’t take it because there is no way I could ever pay you back.”
“You could marry my frightful sister Charlotte and remove her from my father’s household. That would compensate me.” James laughed.
Despite his anguish, Thomas also laughed until tears came. Charlotte was James’ fourteen-year-old sister who delighted in finding toads in the garden and putting them in visitors’ beds. Thomas had been the victim of this when he had visited the duchy of Middlewich last year.
He wiped his eyes. “Well, I can’t wait for her to come of age. I need the money now.”