“No, Petrie. We’ll tell both of you everything in the morning. Everyone to bed now. Petrie, you’re with me.”
“Martha,” Hallie said, “I will tell you all about Mr. Charles Grandison, who will probably be visiting us in not more than seven hours from now.”
“What a lovely name,” Martha said. “Is he a gentleman wot—what—looks like his name like Master Jason does?”
“Indeed. Master Jason said Charles Grandison was ruthless when it came to all the scoundrels and the corruption in the racing world. So much money involved, you see.”
“We are going to be more ruthless, more feared even than Charles Grandison,” Jason said. “We will make anyone who tries to hurt our horses or cheat or threaten us, pay so great a price they’ll never try it again.”
“And our reputation will spread.” She rubbed her hands together. “My father taught me how to bring a man to the ground with very little effort.”
“Very little effort? Do I wish to know what you’re talking about?”
“Well, it involves my knee, Jason. My father said a man couldn’t bear that sort of pain, whatever that means.”
Jason and Petrie looked appalled.
Martha said, “Well, more power to a lady’s knee, I say. Now, Miss Hallie, it’s very late. Time for me to see to you and Miss Angela.”
Jason said, “I, as well, learned a lot with the Wyndhams in Baltimore. Americans can stand more pain, and they don’t whine as much, I found. Jessie asked me to exercise desperate measures on three occasions as I recall.”
Hallie said, “What kind of desperate measures?”
“A competitor bribed a stable lad to poison one of the Wyndham horses. I made him walk through downtown Baltimore—it wasn’t raining, as I recall—carrying the tub of the poisoned grain he would have fed Rialto. Every three steps he had to announce what he’d tried to do.”
Hallie nodded in approval. “I heard from my father that you once sliced a jockey’s face with your whip when he was going to stick a knife in your horse’s neck.”
“Nearly to the bone.”
“My father also said you nabbed another jockey as he was coming out of Mrs. O’Toole’s tavern and beat the stuffing out of him for trying to shoot you off your horse in a race the week before.”
Jason smiled at the memory, flexed his fingers without conscious thought. “I should have waited until he’d sobered up. It would have been more fun.”
“Just so,” Hallie said. “No one will go against us more than once.”
“Heavenly groats, Miss Hallie,” Martha was heard to whisper as she walked between her mistress and Miss Angela up the staircase, “this is so exciting. Do ye—you—think you’ll have to resort to some of these desperate measures Master Jason was talking about?”
“It’s possible,” Hallie said, as serious as a nun wielding a three-pronged whip.
“And yer—your—knee, Miss Hallie. I want to hear all about yo
ur knee.”
“That thought would make the blood move swiftly through a man’s heart, wouldn’t it?” Angela said, as she lightly patted the very feminine white lace over her bosom.
CHAPTER 27
Charles Grandison said, “I want to buy Piccola. She’s magnificent. I’ll pay you very well for her, Jason.”
“She’s not my mare to sell.”
“Ah, so Miss Carrick is her owner. A lady enjoys having lovely things—”
“I’ve noticed that gentlemen enjoy lovely things as well,” Hallie said, coming around the corner. She strode, Jason thought, like a boy with more arrogance than brains. What would Charles make of that? What would he say if he noticed her gown was really a pair of fat-legged trousers? Ah, and the shine on her boots.
Hallie patted Piccola’s forehead while she nuzzled a carrot off Hallie’s palm. “She will win me many more races before she retires, my lord. Unfortunately, we have no horses for sale at this time. We’ve not been in business all that long.”
Jason said, “James and Jessie Wyndham will be visiting in August. They’re bringing us stock they’ve selected themselves.”