“Shall we go to bed? Can you unfasten these buttons or shall I ring for a maid?”
“But these clothes, Izzy…”
“Leave them. They will still be there in the morning.”
***
Izzy readily obtained permission to borrow a horse, and a riding habit, since she had not brought one of her own. There were one or two carefully casual questions about how long she planned to stay, but she deftly turned them aside.
“Are you planning to go to Lochmaben when you leave us?” Mrs Davenport said brightly. “Your cousins will be delighted to see you, I make no doubt, and of course your mama is there just now. We see very little of them, although the castle is only a short drive across the border from here. Why, they are almost neighbours! Since you have not your own carriage with you, we should be delighted to lend you ours to convey you there, whenever you should wish to go. It would be not the least inconvenience, I assure you, for James Coachman could be there and back in a day.”
Izzy made some non-committal remark of thanks, and went eagerly to change into the borrowed habit. A fast ride was just the thing to stir the blood and blow away whatever of her megrims still remained.
When she saw the horse made ready for her, she groaned. Her idea of a suitable lady’s mount was an elegant, high-spirited creature, dancing with impatience to be away. This docile beast looked reluctant to move at all.
“Well, she will not run away with me, that much is certain,” she said resignedly.
Barty laughed, his own horse shifting restlessly.
“Would you like to swap?” she said. “Your mount looks far more appealing.”
“I doubt he’s used to a side-saddle,” he said. His accent today was more Northumberland than Yorkshire.
“Well, this slug will have to do. Perhaps when we get out onto the moors she will be more frolicsome.”
The head groom boosted her into the saddle, and then they were away, Barty’s eager horse trotting nimbly ahead, while Izzy urged her mare into reluctant motion. And that was the story of their entire journey, as Izzy’s horse plodded along, barely reaching a trot most of the time, and Barty’s raced ahead. No matter how he tried, he could not keep his horse the approved distance behind her, as a respectful groom should.
By the time they were halfway there, his horse had settled down somewhat and fell back to walk alongside the mare.
“That thing should be pulling the governess cart,” he said, with a nod towards the mare. The accent was pure again.
“Too good a fate for her,” Izzy said grimly.
For a while they rode in silence, but since Barty’s horse seemed content to stay with her, Izzy took the opportunity to say, “Will you tell me something about yourself, Barty?”
“Best if you know nothing, milady,” he said, reverting instantly to… was it Yorkshire again?
“You could at least tell me what county you are from originally, before you went to India.”
A hesitation. “Bedfordshire.”
“And your age?”
“Twenty-four.”
“I thought you older than that. Barty, I will not pry, I promise, but your situation intrigues me. It is clear that you are a gentleman, and perhaps at the highest level of that state. I knew a gentleman in Scarborough who was known to all his friends as Bart, not because it was his name, but because he was a baronet. Perhaps that is why you call yourself Barty. I do not ask you to confirm or deny my guess, I merely wonder, that is all. And if it is so, then I should very much like to know how you come to be acting the part of a groom, because I have to say, you do not act it very well. Your accent is all over the place.”
He laughed, and when he spoke, the gentleman was back again. “You are quite right, of course. I am, in the strictest sense, a baronet, but I have never claimed the title, nor ever will, and no, I have no intention of giving you my real name. That person is long gone, lost in the past and never to be recovered. My future will be very different, I hope.”
“I am glad to hear it, because you seem to have been living hand to mouth. But you must have had a good income once. What happened? Did you gamble it all away?”
“Not me, no, and not my father, either. It was my grandfather who gambled, and so unsuccessfully that he lost everything. The estate is gone, the bank accounts were emptied and when he died, he left a mountain of debts, which could not be repaid. My father took me to India, where we scraped a living on the fringes of society under false names in case the debtors ever caught up with us. We had to live on our wits, and that was where I learntto play cards to win. Not by cheating! There are strategies that can be employed, perfectly legal methods, like staying sober, and remembering the cards.”
“And being very careful who you play against,” Izzy said. “I learnt that the hard way. Also, knowing when to stop. That is a very important strategy.”
“Yes, very true,” he said. “We managed, anyway, but when my father died, I wanted to come home. Not to claim the baronetcy, just to find honest work for once. It is surprisingly hard to do. No one wants to give a stranger a chance. I would have done better in London, or one of the ports — Newcastle, perhaps. There are people of all types in such places, but I needed to bring Olly to his sister, and so… here I am.”
“Have you no family left in England, no one you could turn to for help?”
