Eugenia held out the missive. “From Rus. It was delivered with the post after lunch. When he couldn’t find you, Bradley gave it to me rather than leave it on the salver in the hall.”

Where their father might see it. Bradley was their butler; like most of the house hold, his sympathies lay with Rus.

Rising, Pris took the letter. Returning to the desk, she broke her brother’s seal, then, sinking onto the chair, unfolded the sheets, smoothed them, and read.

The only sounds in the room were the repetitive clack of Eugenia’s needles, counterpointed by the tick of the mantelpiece clock.

“Oh, no! What is it? What’s happened?”

Adelaide’s agitated questions snapped Pris back to the present. Glancing at Adelaide, then at Eugenia, taking in their worried expressions, she realized her own must reflect her mounting horror.

“Rus has gone to England-to Newmarket-with the Cromarty racing string.” She licked her suddenly dry lips and looked again at the pages in her hand. “He says…” She paused to steady her voice. “He says he thinks Harkness, the head stableman, is planning to run some racket that somehow revolves about horse breeding while in Newmarket. He overheard Harkness explaining to the head lad-Rus says he’s a villainous sort-about how the illicit undertaking worked, and that it involves some register. He, Rus, didn’t hear enough to understand the scheme, but he thinks the register Harkness was referring to is the register of all horses entitled by their breeding to race on English tracks.”

She flipped over a page, scanned, then reported, “Rus says he knows nothing of the details in the register, but if he’s ever going to become a breeder of race horses, he should obviously learn more about it regardless, and he’ll be able to follow it up as that register is kept at the Jockey Club in Newmarket.”

She turned the last page, then made a disgusted sound. “The rest is full of platitudes assuring me he’ll be safe, that it’ll all be perfectly fine, that even if there is anything wrong, all he has to do is tell Lord Cromarty, and it’ll all be right as rain, don’t worry…and then he signs himself ‘your loving brother off on an adventure’!”

Tossing the letter on the desk, she faced Eugenia and Adelaide. “I’ll have to go to Newmarket.”

Adelaide’s chin firmed. “We’ll go to Newmarket-you can’t go alone.”

Pris sent her a fleeting smile, then looked at Eugenia.

Her aunt studied her, then nodded, and calmly folded her tatting. “Indeed, dear. I see no alternative. Much as I love Rus, we cannot leave him to deal with what ever this is alone, and if there is some illicit scheme being hatched, you cannot, to my mind, risk even a letter to warn him, in case it falls into the wrong hands. You will need to speak with him. So!”

Folding her hands on the pile of tatting in her lap, Eugenia looked inquiringly at Pris. “What tale are we going to tell your father to explain our sudden need for a sojourn in England?”

1

September 1831

Newmarket, Suffolk

I had hoped we’d have longer in reasonable privacy.” Letting the door of the Twig & Bough coffee shop on Newmarket High Street swing shut behind him, Dillon Caxton stepped down to the pavement beside Barnaby Adair. “Unfortunately, the sunshine has brought the ladies and their daughters out in force.”

Scanning the conveyances thronging the High Street, Dillon was forced to smile and acknowledge two matrons, each with beaming daughters. Tapping Barnaby’s arm, he started strolling. “If we stand still, we’ll invite attack.”

Chuckling, Barnaby fell in beside him. “You sound even more disenchanted with the sweet young things than Gerrard was.”

“Living in London, you’re doubtless accustomed to far worse, but spare a thought for us who value our bucolic existence. To us, even the Little Season is an unwanted reminder of that which we fervently wish to avoid.”

“At least with this latest mystery you have something to distract you. An excellent excuse to be elsewhere, doing other things.”

Seeing a matron instructing her coachman to draw her landau to the curb ten paces farther on, Dillon swore beneath his breath. “Unfortunately, as our mystery must remain a strict secret, I fear Lady Kershaw is going to draw first blood.”

Her ladyship, a local high stickler, beckoned imperiously. There was no help for it; Dillon strolled on to her now-stationary carriage. He exchanged greetings with her ladyship and her daughter, Margot, then introduced Barnaby. They stood chatting for five minutes. From the corner of his eye, Dillon noted how many arrested glances they drew, how many other matrons were now jockeying for position farther along the curb.

Glancing at Barnaby, doing his best to live up to Miss Kershaw’s expectations, Dillon inwardly grimaced. He could imagine the picture they made, he with his dark, dramatic looks most commonly described as Byronic, with Barnaby, a golden Adonis with curly hair and bright blue eyes, by his side, the perfect foil. They were both tall, well set up, and elegantly and fashionably turned out. In the restricted society of Newmarket, it was no wonder the ladies were lining up to accost them. Unfortunately, their destination-the Jockey Club-lay some hundred yards distant; they had to run the gauntlet.

They proceeded to do so with the glib assurance that came from untold hours spent in ton ballrooms. Despite his preference for the bucolic, courtesy of his cousin Flick-Felicity Cynster-over the last decade Dillon had spent his fair share of time in the whirl of the ton, in London and elsewhere, as Flick put it, keeping in practice.

In practice for what was a question to which he was no longer sure he knew the answer. Before his fall from grace and the scandal that had shaken his life, he’d always assumed he would marry, have a family, and all the rest. Yet while spending the last decade putting his life to rights, repaying his debts of social and moral obligation, and reestablishing himself, his honor, in the eyes of all those who mattered to him, he’d grown accustomed to his solitary existence, to the life of an unencumbered gentleman.

Smiling at Lady Kennedy, the third matron to detain them, he extricated himself and Barnaby and strolled on, casting his eye along the line of waiting carriages and their fair burdens. Not one stirred the remotest interest in him. Not one sweet face even moved him to curiosity.

Unfortunately, becoming known as a gentleman with a hardened heart, one unsusceptible to feminine enticements, had piled additional fuel on the bonfire of the ladies’ aspirations. Too many now viewed him as a challenge, a recalcitrant male they were determined to bring to heel. As for their mothers, with every year that passed he was forced to exercise greater care, to keep his eyes ever open for social snares, those traps certain matrons set for the unwary.

Even those select ladies with whom he occasionally dallied discreetly in the capital weren’t above hatching schemes. His last inamorata had tried to convince him of the manifold benefits that would accrue to him should he marry her niece. Said benefits had, of course, included her fair self.

He was beyond being outraged, beyond even being surprised; he was close to turning his back on the entire subject of marriage.

“Mrs. Cartwell, a plea sure to see you, ma’am.” Taking the hand the haughty matron extended, he shook it, bowed to the vision of loveliness sitting beside Mrs. Cartwell, then stepped back and introduced Barnaby. Always interested in people, Barnaby exchanged platitudes with the lovely Miss Cartwell; cravenly grateful, Dillon stood back and let him have the stage.

Mrs. Cartwell was monitoring the exchange between her daughter and Barnaby, the third son of an earl and every bit as eligible as Dillon himself, with absolute concentration. Reduced to the redundant, Dillon’s mind returned to the matter he and Barnaby had retreated to the Twig & Bough to discuss, until they’d been ousted by the invading ladies. They’d chosen the quieter shop catering to the genteel element rather than the club coffee house favored by the racing fraternity for the simple reason that the subject of their discussion would set ears flapping and tongues wagging among the racing set.

Another racing scandal was precisely what he was working to avoid.

This time, he wasn’t engaged on the wrong side of the ledger; this time, he’d been recruited by the angels, to wit the all-powerful Committee of the Jockey Club, to investigate the rumors of race fixing that had started to circulate after the recent spring racing season.

That request was a deliberate and meaningful vote of confidence-a declaration that the Committee viewed his youthful indiscretion as fully paid for, the slate wiped clean. More, it was a clear statement that the Committee had complete faith in his integrity, in his discretion, and in his devotion to the breeding and racing industry that the Committee oversaw, and that he and his father before him had for so long served.

His father, General Caxton, was long retired, and Dillon was now the Keeper of the Breeding Register and the Stud Book, the two official tomes that together ruled the breeding and racing of horses in England. It was in that capacity that he’d been asked to look into the rumors.

Rumors being rumors, and in this case issuing from London, he’d recruited the Honorable Barnaby Adair, a good friend of Gerrard Debbington, to help. Dillon knew Gerrard well, had for years, through their connections to the powerful Cynster family; Barnaby had recently assisted Gerrard in solving a troublesome matter of murder. When Dillon had mentioned the possibility of a racing swindle, Barnaby’s eyes had lit.

That had been in late July. Barnaby had duly investigated, and in August had reported that while the rumors were there, all were vague, very much of the strain that horses people had expected to win had instead lost. Hardly a novel happening in the racing game. There’d seemed little substance, and no real fact behind the rumors. Nothing to warrant further action.

Now, however, with the first races of the autumn season behind them, something rather odd had occurred. Odd enough for Dillon to summon Barnaby back.

In the peace of the Twig & Bough, he’d related the details of three separate attempts to break into the Jockey Club, along with reports of some man asking about “the register” in local ale houses, rough taverns catering to the dregs of the town.

They’d just finished discussing what was known of the inquisitive man-an Irishman by his accent-when the influx of ladies had rousted them. Dillon’s office in the Jockey Club was their current goal, the only place they might conclude their sensitive discussion in some degree of privacy.

But it was slow going. Escaping Mrs. Cartwell, they fell victim to Lady Hemmings. As they left her ladyship, Dillon seized the chance created by two groups of ladies becoming distracted by their own gossip to quickly steer Barnaby between two carriages and across the street. They lengthened their strides; by the time the ladies noticed they’d slipped sideways and escaped, they were turning into the long avenue flanked by tall trees that led to the front door of the Jockey Club.

“Phew!” Barnaby shot him a glance. “I see what you mean. It’s worse than in London-there are few others about to draw their fire.”

Dillon nodded. “Luckily, we’re now safe. The only females ever glimpsed within these hallowed precincts are of the horse-mad sorority, not the husband-hunting packs.”

There were no others, male or female, presently on the path leading to the front door; easing his pace, he returned to their interrupted discussion. “These break-ins-if someone’s asking about ‘a register,’ odds are they mean the Breeding Register, presumably the target of our would-be thief. Nothing else within the Jockey Club has any real value.”

Slowing to an amble, Barnaby looked at the red brick building standing squarely at the end of the shady avenue. “Surely there are cups, plates, medallions-things that would be worth something if melted down? Isn’t it more likely a thief would be after those?”

“Most of the trophies are plated. Their value lies more in what they represent, not in their commercial worth. And this thief’s not a professional, but he is determined. Besides, it’s too coincidental-someone asking about ‘the register,’ and shortly after, someone tries to break into the club where the one item referred to in Newmarket as ‘the register’ resides.”

“True,” Barnaby conceded. “So how is the Breeding Register valuable? Ransom?”

Dillon raised his brows. “I hadn’t thought of that, but such a tack would be dangerous. Loss of the Breeding Register would stop all racing, so using it in such a way, essentially holding the entire racing fraternity to ransom, would very likely prove an unhealthy experiment. If the Breeding Register disappeared, I would expect to see it magically reappear within three days.” He glanced at Barnaby. “This industry isn’t short of those prepared to take the law into their own hands, especially over a matter like that.”