victoria hinshaw

Ask Jane

      Cedric Williamson forced a hearty laugh before he drained his tankard and slapped it on the rough table in the noisy taproom.

      "Yer awful cheerful fer a man whose new horse came in last in 'er first race." Charlie's voice slurred with drink.

      Tom guffawed. "'Specially when ye lost yer skirt . . .ah, shirt."

      Charlie almost choked on his cackle. "An' 'is breeches besides!"

      Cedric gave an elaborate shrug, hoping his fa�ade of careless indifference convinced the innkeeper as well as his companions. He pushed his chair back and stood, pretending to stagger like a drunkard. "Goin' to the privy . . ."

      He stumbled once or twice on the way to the far door, then pushed out of the hot, smoky gloom into the spring chill. As quickly as his skin cooled, he shook off the effects of the meager amount of ale he had actually consumed. The ostlers and stable boys tossed dice at the lighted doorstep of the distant kitchen. Now well past midnight, the yard was silent. No one else seemed to be about.

      Trying to keep to the shadows, Cedric crept across the empty yard and cracked open the stable door. He winced at its rusty creak, and held his breath for a moment. No one called out. All he could hear was the rustle of horses from inside.

      Inhaling deeply, he edged through the opening and pulled the door shut. Now accustomed to the darkness, he had no trouble finding his saddle horse, Atlas. He let himself into the stall and grabbed his bridle from a peg, whispering softly, hoping the animal would cooperate. Atlas shook his head and backed up, holding his head high and out of reach. Cedric took a piece of sugar from his pocket and held it out.

      In a well-practiced move, as the horse reached for the sugar, Cedric slipped the bit between Atlas's teeth and lifted the bridle over his ears. "Ha," he murmured. "Your greed will always win out, old boy."

      Cedric tossed his saddle over the horse's back, cinched up the girth, and fastened his saddlebags over Atlas's rump. He swung the stall door open and led the immense black horse down the aisle. The back door opened with another creak, but again no one stirred.

      Once into the lane behind the inn, he checked the cinch, then swung up on Atlas, heading him toward a stable near the track that housed that damnable filly. If he were not so cursedly angry, he would never consider breaking in to steal his own property. He had been thoroughly gulled, cheated like a green youth still wet behind the ears. He, Cedric Williamson, a Corinthian of considerable sporting abilities, a London man about town, admired for his skill in the ring and at swordplay, winner of innumerable curricle races with his pair of prize chestnuts.

      Yes, he, Cedric Williamson, had been fleeced like the most gullible gapeseed ever to hit the Newmarket racecourse. Swindled out of his last shilling. Left with a stack of debts worth his total quarterly allowances for the next five years.

      His only course of action was flight, and the least he could do was take Atlas and that wretched nag with him. Take them to the only place he knew where he could lick his wounds in seclusion. Uphaven, Aunt Amelia's estate, was only a dozen miles away - or was it twenty? Lord, it had been years since he visited, but the place was vast and sure to be signposted from the main road to St. Edmundsbury.

      It would carry a considerable cost to his self-regard. No matter what kind of story he concocted for her, his sharp-

      witted aunt would know the truth before the week was out. As one of the leading inhabitants of Suffolk, she had an indefatigable circle of contacts and correspondents around the county. Nothing happened here that did not come to her eager ears.

      He could only take refuge in the truth, however lowering it was. He had nowhere else to go. He was already way behind in paying his shot at that inn, owed half his friends, and had not even a coin or two to toss to a groom if he waited until morning to fetch his pitiful racehorse.

      Devil take it, he had been a fool to fall for that swindler's palaver, though the filly had been a beauty, long-legged and deep in the chest, bright of eye and frisky. He had always prided himself on his ability to pick a fine piece of horseflesh and she looked like a sure thing. Like a chuckleheaded stripling, he had fallen for the pitch that fast-talking Josiah Trentworthy delivered. "She is prime. Best bloodlines. Fast breaker. Heavy on endurance."

      Why, Cedric recalled with disgust, he had hardly bargained with the rum cove. Hardly even tried to bring down the price. He had fallen for the story that some London dandy had just gone to find his friends before closing the deal. Cedric had been so anxious he practically jammed his money into Trentworthy's waistcoat.

      What a greenhead he was. What a bacon-brained puppy. What a simple-minded pigeon. How Trentworthy must have laughed as he substituted another broken down animal.

      Or dosed the filly with some potion. Something that changed her from an eager runner to a pitiful scrag. On the track she faded by the halfway point and barely cantered home, dead last by many lengths.

      Now, after hours as the butt of innumerable jokes, as recipient of manifold insults and abundant abuse delivered with back-slapping laughter, Cedric let his anger bubble forth in a string of invectives hissed into the dark of the night. His jaw ached from gritting his teeth while the abuse raged, his stomach rumbled from lack of food and only two mugs of ale, and his entire body burned with the urge to exact revenge from that devil of a muckworm who had sold him the horse and almost guaranteed she would win.

      At the barn near the track where he had left the filly, Cedric tied Atlas and went inside for the young horse. No one stirred in the darkness, but he would not have cared if he had been challenged. After all, he had a bill of sale in his pocket.

      The bay stood in the far corner of the stall, head hung low. She looked nothing like the lively head-tossing specimen he had seen before the race, purchased and put all his money on, along with a considerable number of wagers on credit, bets backed by no cash but the guineas he expected to collect after she won.

      The more he looked at her, the more he felt certain she had been switched for a ringer. Either that or nobbled. Drugged.

      He had no way to prove either a switch or a drugging. On the bill of sale, the report of a bay filly of sixteen hands could have described hundreds of horses right here in Newmarket, perhaps thousands in Suffolk alone.

      He scowled at the listless animal, half asleep and breathing shallowly. Maybe it was not worth taking her. But he might as well. Perhaps Aunt Amelia had a little cart that needed pulling.

      He found a line to fasten to her halter and pulled her from her stall, slowly, as he would a cantankerous donkey. She plodded out the door behind him with no more spirit than Cedric felt himself. Atlas snorted his disapproval of the sorry nag as Cedric mounted again, but they moved off and found the empty road by the light of a pale half moon.

      Now, if she didn't break down completely getting away from Newmarket and to Uphaven, at least he had salvaged something after losing his last farthing. Better than nothing. But only barely.

      In the middle of the night, his head was not quite up to totaling his debts. Paying his shot at that inn was the least of his worries except for the fact that a constable would be quickly on his case if he did not make good on that particular obligation. But by heading out of town without anyone finding out, he would at least escape the immediate shame of being unable to meet his betting obligations on top of being gulled, hoaxed, and thoroughly swindled!

      * * *

      Jane Gabriel dipped her pen in ink and wrote the date, 6 April, 1816, at the top of the page. She bent to her task of summarizing the letter before she was called for breakfast. While Jane had a penchant for rising early, her mother and Lady Stockdale preferred to sleep most of the morning away. Which gave her a few extra hours to work each day.

      Her account of the contents took almost an entire page. She quickly looked over the letter to see that she had covered the essentials, replaced it in the velvet box of papers from the last century, and put it in a drawer. If she started working on the next letter, her absorption in its contents might cause her to miss breakfast again, setting Lady Stockdale and her mother to fretting.

      She stood and smoothed her dark blue skirt, then glanced in a mirror to straighten her cap and tuck up a few strands of her long gold hair. She wrinkled her nose at her pink lips and clear blue eyes. No matter how she tried to pull back her hair into a tight bun, a few tendrils always escaped to curl around her apple cheeks and give her the baby-faced countenance of a country milkmaid instead of the scholarly and sober look she wished for. She certainly did not look her four and twenty years. Perhaps a pair of spectacles would give her an air of studious intensity.

      Why would anyone wish to hire a young chit to pursue a serious study of family history? Jane knew she had the ability to write the story Lady Stockdale wanted, but her mother's dear friend wanted a man for the project. Jane's contribution would be limited to organization, construction of a chronology and notes on the biographies of the artists represented in the Uphaven collection, all material to be turned over to some man to form into a narrative account.

      She was perfectly well qualified to write the book. She had been studying for years, though she owed this employment to her mother's friendship with Lady Stockdale, not to her abilities. Nevertheless, she was determined to convince Lady Stockdale that she could accomplish more than any latecomer to the material.

      Her hope was that eventually the excellence of her book would bring her new projects. She would sign her name "J. D. Gabriel" and conduct negotiations by post to protect her identity as a female.

      Fortunately, from what she was learning about Lady Stockdale's late husband, the sixth Lord Stockdale, and his forebears, the story would be interesting enough to capture the attention of many a potential client looking for a family biographer. Jane knew she was capable of giving the story of the Barons Stockdale of Uphaven and their art collection a life that would resonate with a large audience.

      Giving her reflection another frown in the mirror, Jane left Lord Stockdale's library and went outside, taking the time for a quick turn around the early spring garden before she joined her mother and Lady Stockdale in the breakfast room.

      At the end of the smoothly trimmed hedges, there was a double perspective. In one direction, the Jacobean house of mellow pink-toned brick was perfectly framed between all�es of conical yews. In the opposite direction, an opening cut into the hedge acted as a window to the broad expanse of flat heath stretching to the horizon.

      Peering outward, she saw the fields dotted with hundreds, perhaps thousands of sheep, ewes hardly moving, lambs playing hide and seek among their fat mamas cropping at the rich turf. Tall billowing clouds skimmed across the wide span of bright blue sky, heading west away from the sea. The scene was the perfect image of bucolic English beauty, prosperity, and serenity.

      The Suffolk landscape fascinated Jane, so different from the steep wooded hills and narrow valleys of Somersetshire near their home in Bath. She heard an occasional bleat, and sniffed the slightly salty fresh breeze gusting from the distant sea. Beyond was the place she yearned to visit someday, the canals and fields of Holland, subject of so much of the seventeenth century Dutch art she had studied. Not until she saw the sweep of the Suffolk plain had she realized how much the landscape resembled that of the Low Countries.

      The view across the heath told the whole story of the Uphaven art collection. The fortune based on the wool trade, the business conducted in Bruges and Amsterdam, the familial affection for the seventeenth century Dutch masters. It all added up. No wonder Lord Stockdale, his father, and his grandfather before him had been drawn to the art of van Ruisdael, Cuyp, even Judith Leyster. Discovering the art of a female was her most exciting surprise of her work so far. Jane chastised herself for the unfortunate habit of gazing over the fields and letting her mind wander. She hurried back, the breeze blowing her cap from her head and requiring her to rearrange her hair again before joining the others in the breakfast room.

      Amelia, Lady Stockdale, looked up at the opening of the door with a sweet smile. Her pale face was crisscrossed with webs of little wrinkles, making her skin look as though it had been wadded up like thin tissue paper and never successfully smoothed out again. She was comfortably plump and dressed in the same dark colors Jane's mother always wore. Despite her handsome fortune, Lady Stockdale was no haughty termagant. She had been a good friend to Jane's mother for as long as Jane could remember.Jane's mama, Mrs. Gabriel, was thin and angular where Lady Stockdale was plump and rounded. As soon as she received her stipend from Lady Stockdale, Jane intended to have a gown made for her mama to replace the worn hand-me-downs that Lady Stockdale had re-cut for her best friend. Mrs. Gabriel refused to take charity from anyone, but from time to time, Lady Stockdale managed to make her insistence stick.

      Jane dropped a little curtsy to Lady Stockdale and patted her mother's shoulder as she passed behind her to take a seat at the table. "I have been reading the fourth baron's letters from Paris in the 1740s. It was just after the war and he was eager to reestablish his French contacts."

      "My, my." Lady Stockdale took a slice of ham from the footman's platter.

      "He attended a salon in the studio of an artist and wrote of his regret that he had not purchased a canvas he saw there."

      "I do not think there is a single painting of French origin in the house," Lady Stockdale said.

      Jane spooned a bit of jam onto her plate. "It makes him seem more real, does it not? To see that he sometimes wondered if he did the right thing to confine his purchases to Dutch art. But that was what he knew . . ."

      "Doubts?" Mrs. Gabriel sounded shocked.

      Lady Stockdale nodded. "Very human to have doubts. I am not at all surprised."

      Jane's mother spoke softly, almost in a whisper. "Perhaps doubts are the luxury of those who have means . . ."

      Lady Stockdale nodded again, her chins waggling. "I have doubts from time to time. Especially doubts about the future. I had planned to leave this estate to my nephew but he has never shown much interest. And he gambles more than he can afford."

      Jane gave a little sigh. She had hoped to direct the conversation to her ideas for an introductory chapter.

      Lady Stockdale, however, had put down her cup and stared out the window. "I hate to think of him selling some of the land or even this house to finance his bad habits. I still have hope he will eventually outgrow his youthful nonsense."

      Jane's mother swallowed a bite of ham. "Is there no entail involved?"

      "The Uphaven barony became extinct when Lord Stockdale died. Not a single sprout remained on his family tree. He was the last Baron Stockdale of Uphaven. That is one of the primary reasons I want to make the family story known to the world."

      Jane quickly finished chewing her toast, eager to exhibit her knowledge of the material.

      But Lady Stockdale was too fast for her. "I remember when I came to Uphaven as a bride. We had a lovely ceremony in London. Do you remember the day, Winnie? It was almost thirty-five years ago . . ."

      Jane listened with only half an ear as the two reminisced. There was something infinitely sad about Lord Stockdale and Lady Stockdale living here for so many years, wishing to have the house filled with the childish voices of a large brood of little ones. Lady Stockdale had never mentioned her sadness at having no children but Jane's mother had occasionally reflected upon the unfairness of the childless state of her friend's life. Jane knew that her Mama and Papa had almost given up when she had appeared, like the answer to all their prayers, when Mama was two and forty.

      Lady Stockdale had not been fortunate enough, Mama said, to have one child, even a daughter, to carry on her line. And now her chosen heir for the estate was proving a disappointment.

      She supposed Lady Stockdale referred to Cedric Williamson. Jane remembered him from a visit several years ago in Bath. A young man too charming by half. Too handsome for his own good. Too concerned with cutting a dash to pay much attention to their quiet circle in Bath. He had taken her for a ride in his curricle, a spin, as he called it.

      Her best hat had blown off. She could still remember how her hands ached from clutching the seat when his vehicle skidded around corners and nearly collided with other vehicles more than once.

      Back at her door, he had laughed and kissed her gloved hand after he helped her down and felt her trembling. Jane felt a twinge of distaste when she remembered how her heart had skipped a beat. Certainly it had come from the perils of the ride and not her reaction to his well-practiced techniques of flattery.

      Cedric was one of the fellows who had turned her against the idea of marriage. Not that she had a passel of eager suitors anyway. Pretty young females of gentle birth and no financial means were both numerous and distinctly inconsequential. Men of fortune looked to alliances that enhanced their wealth, not to penniless gels with equally needy mamas. Further, Jane had never had the opportunity to know an eligible gentleman well enough to assess his character. Only a man of strong morals and even temperament would appeal to her.

      Because Jane knew she was unlikely ever to meet such a man, she considered herself quite firmly on the shelf. And as a spinster, it was even more important that she develop an ability to earn a living sufficient to support her mother as well as herself. She simply must convince Lady Stockdale to let her write the book about the barons.

      Lady Stockdale continued her homage to Lord Stockdale's early years. "He made sure that Joshua Reynolds painted my portrait. No one else would do . . ."

      Jane knew the work well, for a copy of it hung in the Bath residence where Jane and Mrs. Gabriel made their home nowadays. Several years ago, when their money seemed to go less and less far, dear Lady Stockdale insisted they make use of the house as she rarely visited it anymore. Most of the formal rooms remained in dustcovers, but they had a pleasant apartment on the second floor and their maid, Nell, got on well with the servant couple who cared for the place.

      The work from Reynold's brush, and not that of his assistants who made the copies, hung above the fireplace in the Green Drawing Room here at Uphaven. Jane loved the way in which Lady Stockdale's creamy skin and delicately tinted rosy cheeks contrasted with her upswept, lightly powdered hair. She wore a filmy white fichu and had a thoughtful, almost pensive look on her lovely face. Jane wondered whether, so early in their marriage, Lady Stockdale already knew her attempts to have a family would bring only distress and heartbreak.

      The thought that her nephew did not have the sense to live up to her expectations made Jane angry and she stabbed at her eggs with unaccustomed vigor, dropping her fork with clatter.

      Her mother twisted toward her. "Jane, are you unwell?"

      Jane shook her head. "Pardon me, Lady Stockdale, Mama. I fear I was day-dreaming. Thinking about that Reynolds portrait. I shall be more careful."

      Lady Stockdale reached over to pat her hand. "Think nothing of it, my dear. I remember the preparation for the sitting. I wanted to wear something much more grand, with a large brimmed hat and ostrich feathers. But Lord Stockdale would have none of it. He wanted me as I was each day. Quite a romantic fellow he was, don't you know?"

      Jane smiled at the dreamy expression on Lady Stockdale's face. Jane's case for writing the book herself could wait for another time. And now she had a new idea for a chapter, centering on an anecdote about how a baron who owned a magnificent art collection would allow no one but the realm's finest portraitist to paint his lovely young wife.