The Rake of Hearts by Emily Windsor
Were thee born in a barn?
Achoked gasp woke Hebe – a constriction in her throat, heart pummelling.
Where was she? Was he coming for her once more? Don’t cry out.
Her eyes focused, fingers clutching the sheets as a faint yell shattered the deep silence.
A glow flickered from the mantelpiece opposite – a lantern which her husband would never have allowed to burn all night. Above it hung an elaborate gold-framed painting of an armoured warrior dressed for battle, face thin and wise. Flock paperhangings surrounded him and beyond those were sumptuous curtains, their burgundy hue sombre in the shadows.
Wychmere Castle.
Hebe gazed to the four-poster bed’s tester overhead – those carved cherubs promised peace, and indeed they’d succeeded because for once she’d awoken before the culmination of her nightmare.
Sighing, she snuggled deeper into the fresh rose-scented sheets and allowed her breathing to ease.
The dreams had become less frequent over the four years since Tobias had died, but a new bed, the snap of a fob watch case, a husky laugh – they resurrected the man, the hurt, and although by day she’d found ways to banish such memories, at night her body burned with the trepidation of sleep.
Another shout sounded, carried on the night wind, followed by a horse’s whinny of distress. It would be impossible to sleep now, and she sat up in the colossal bed of mahogany to grab the travel clock from her bedside table.
Three o’something or other.
Eugh.
But her eyes were now wide, thoughts racing to the possibilities of the day – of sketching the duke’s hunter, of studying how the fine legs of stallions moved, of outlining foals and their dams.
She pushed back the coverlet, a richly embroidered work of art which might conceivably have covered Henry VIII, and seized her robe from the far end of the bed. One would expect a castle to be chilly, even in August, but her chamber faced both south and east, and according to the butler, the solid limestone walls gathered the rays of the sun and warmed those inside like an oven.
That whinnying continued and Hebe frowned, ambling to the turret windows that overlooked the front and side. There, she drew back the voluminous velvet curtains.
Despite Mr Grampy Tom’s prediction of rain, the leaden clouds had been chased away, the gardens, moat and land now moon-splashed – mystical, beautiful and not haunted at all – and floating upon that moat water like curled shells were sleeping swans, beaks tucked safe within their wings.
It felt like some magical dream, a castle upon silver clouds, a place of reflection and harmony, and again that sense of contentment welled.
All was at peace, at stillness, except…she pressed her nose to the leaded glass…except the immense double doors leading to the stable courtyard were open, a light shining from within.
It shimmered, swayed, beckoning to Hebe like a spectral monk set to lure…
Yet Hebe smiled. Despite her delight in Gothic novels, she no longer believed in hideous phantasma or ugly creatures of the dark, for she’d met malevolence.
And its face had been beautiful and real.
The silhouette of a lad ran across the doorway with a bucket. Silence. And then he returned anon, presumably with a full one.
Another stark whinny filled the night, its distress calling to her.
So, without further ado, Hebe grabbed an old pelisse from amongst the five opulent ballgowns Aunt had packed for her, shoved bare feet into her boots, seized the lantern and hastened her way to the door.
The Long Gallery outside her chamber lay in dreary gloom – shadowed and empty – and for a moment her nightmares became wakefulness, the anguish of the past became the present, so she turned, sought the calm of art, and drew her lantern to a canvas at eye level.
A cavalier in silk posed in the yellow glow, a magnificent grey horse bending to his command, and Hebe softly breathed out… Then gaped as she realised it was a famed Van Dyck.
Which rather put her in her place.
She crept past Aunt’s bedchamber and down the Long Gallery which stretched the full length of the castle rear, its vast windows overlooking the moat and pastureland. The oak staircase ahead was a newer addition according to Mrs Pettifer and it creaked as she laid foot to tread. On the landing, Hebe paused at a leaded window to the front – and still that light shone from the stables.
Down the second flight, she trailed. Not a sound but for the groan of wood.
She hurried past the second library and into the attached Great Hall – ancient and majestic.
Open to the roof, it demanded you tip your head to admire the arched beams but by night, Hebe’s feeble lantern solely lit that which surrounded her, the walls and vast tapestries of the Rothwell dukes defending their castle, and above them the weapons used, longbows and mace.
One tapestry displayed an armoured knight upon a fine horse and she lifted her lantern to illuminate a falcon upon his hand, a faithful hound trotting to his side. She peered yet closer, and a handsome fellow the spit of Lord Ernest ogled back with cotton-blue eyes and gold-threaded hair.
Scowling, she swished away, supposed this vast hall had once been filled by medieval banquets, knights and their ladies, servants dashing with pewter trays of roast boar and the floor strewn with straw.
Now its use was purely a memory.
So she scampered on for the small arched door in the corner, ignoring the vacant eyes of a suit of armour that she swore had followed her movement.
The enclosed walkway to the stables was not dusty or filled with webs as in her Gothic novels, but clean with freshly plastered walls and intact stone floor tiles, and she wouldn’t dare think on the upkeep of a place such as this.
At the end, an oak door halted her and she tentatively put ear to wood.
Naught.
So she gently twisted the drop handle to lift the latch and squint in.
The harness room was silent, yet a single lit lantern hung in the corner – evidence that someone was awake. Rows of shiny saddles sat in readied order on rounded trunks and bridles hung from hooks on the wall.
That whinny came again and she chased the sound along a cobbled corridor until at the far end, light shone in a wide arc from an open doorway, the murmur of voices and harsh pants of a horse drawing her on.
Placing her light to the ground, she crept forward, remaining to the shadows before concealing herself behind a substantial water barrel.
Six or seven lanterns illuminated a sizeable box stable – straw strewn about the floor, two lads sitting upon bales propped against the stone walls, that white goat snoozing beside them. Upon the straw bed, a beautiful bay mare lay on her side, panting and sweating, surrounded by three men.
One was the stable master Redmond O’Conner, but at this hour he wore solely a begrimed shirt and breeches, brow lined, stubble masking his stern mouth. A fellow in a low cloth cap sat at the hindquarters of the animal while another man in leather jerkin with sweat-streaked hair kneeled, his slender back to her, a tanned calloused hand caressing the horse’s shoulder, a tender croon sliding from his throat.
“What d’ya think, Mr Croft?” queried the stable master softly. “It’s been too long, so it has. Her waters broke a good half-hour ago. We left her be, to try and right it, but…”
“Aye, foal’s twisted,” the cloth-capped Mr Croft replied. “Head is bent between its front legs. Best move fast or we’ll lose them. Keep her steady and calm by the head. I’ll help her.”
The third man nodded and shifted, his voice a purr, creased shirt sleeves pulling to display rippled arms with a nasty burn scar puckering the left. His palm stroked the mare’s muzzle, then the bridge of her nose, scratched her ears, soothing and controlled.
Such utter gentleness brought a moistness to Hebe’s eye, a shiver to her skin, more so as the horse snickered and nuzzled to this man’s palm, attempted to expel the foal again as though to please him.
“Calm, girl. I know you don’t want us here,” he whispered low, holding her firm about the mane and crest as the gentleman at the hindquarters prepared to do his job.
Hebe’s eyes refused to stray from the man at the front – his caressing fingers, hair matted with labour, shirt daubed and dirtied with stable muck, breeches crumpled, boots that’d never seen polish.
The mare bucked, a stable lad coughed and this man twisted in profile.
Hebe stilled, chill then torrid.
For a pair of battered and tarnished silver spectacles glinted in the lanternlight, a clefted chin stiffened and sculptured lips thinned in concentration.
Lord Ernest Brook strengthened his grip on the mare and dug a second knee in the straw.
For all the tea in China, Hebe could not take her eyes from the scene before her. Solely hold her breath as the most polished rake of all London dragged a lock of hair from his forehead, not caring that his skin was besmirched with filth. His lone intent to soothe the distressed mare with a hand that bore roughened knuckles and dirtied fingers.
She’d only ever seen him in gloves.
Only ever thought him pale and glossy.
Shallow and foolish.
Then the mare bellowed, the cloth-capped man grunted, and after an absurdly brief moment of noise and mess, a stable lad cheered as Redmond O’Conner reached for a bundle of straw to brush down a bloodied flailing foal.
New life commencing.
Hebe held trembling fingers to mouth. Watched as Lord Ernest splayed a tender palm across the mare’s quivering withers, crooned his congratulations and then…smiled.
She and the mare both ceased their tremble.
And Hebe turned tail and ran.
Ernest peeredup at a low clatter from the cobbled corridor.
“What was that?” he said to no one in particular.
Grampy Tom’s stool creaked as he stretched out a leg from the shadowed recess. “A wary creature, my lad.”
Ernest frowned. “Does it need me?” For some reason, many a forest creature found their way to the stables, and since he’d been a child, left alone here for months on end, he’d patched more broken limbs and salved more wounds than a battlefield surgeon.
“Not yet.”
Ernest nodded. Some took a while, approaching and retreating. Watching, learning to trust.
Redmond, his stable master of three months, grinned. “And what will ya be naming this one, my lord?”
“I hadn’t thought… You can choose a name this time for…” Ernest tipped his head to the hindquarters of the new foal. “Her?”
“Aye, ’tis a filly. But I wouldn’t want to break with ya tradition.”
“I’ll have a gander then, Redmond, at my exceedingly long list.”
This night’s arrival had been born of one of his new mares named Lady Lucy, whom Ernest had purchased already large with foal, the start of his stud breeding venture.
A surge of exhilaration filled him – to one day buy these horses from his brother for his own stables and have the most select breeding establishment in all England.
He longed to shout it from the castle parapets and share it with…
Well, no one in actual fact.
Back in London, friends thought his endeavours dull. Lady Conway had wrinkled her nose and half a dozen others had peered at him oddly.
So he’d ceased sharing this side of his life…
Gentleness and compassion got stomped on in the City for there was no time, and he was quite sure that should any of his London friends see him here, kneeling in manure at this hour of the night and coated with sweat, they’d think him brainsick and cart him off to the nearest quack.
Yet, as he stared around the stable box, the broad grins at the birth of this new life and the nip of local liquor doing the rounds, he realised this was the most contented he’d felt for a long time.
This was where he’d always felt contented, until his brother had ordered him to London.
“Get thine besom out,” Grampy Tom commanded the groom. “Tha straw’s too fousty for a new foal.”
Ernest smirked as Daniel rolled his eyes but dutifully grabbed a broom to shift the perfectly clean straw. Most grooms, like Daniel, were hired at the yearly mop fairs, but some like Grampy Tom – who’d been Grampy as long as anyone could remember – were hewn from the Wychmere stone, moulded from the boggy pasture soil and then baked in the Cotswold summer sun.
“Lor, a mortal fine night,” Grampy Tom declared, standing with a creak of knee. “But we’d best leave the girl to it now.” And then seemed to remember he was no longer in charge as of twenty years past. “If thas agreeable with thee, Redmond?”
The Irishman – blithe as only an Irishman could be – grinned. “As ya say, Tom. As ya say.”
Thanking Mr Croft, a farmer and neighbour who’d birthed many a difficult new-born, including a fair few from Mrs Croft, the three of them wandered from the stables, a sense of camaraderie, belonging and satisfaction coursing through Ernest’s veins.
In this place, he wasn’t just a duke’s idle brother but a useful part of the stables. At first, some had gawped to see an aristocrat work thus, but the advantage to being a duke’s brother was that there was no need to explain one’s actions.
“Tha artist lass o’thine…” Grampy began.
“Er, we’re not in any way–”
“Can her cook crowdy?”
Ernest scrunched his eyes, fairly sure the local dish of pig’s head broth might not be within Mrs Locke’s repertoire. “Well…”
“Not that it matters overmuch. She be a fine woman.”
“Ach, and how long are they here for?” grumbled Redmond. “I don’t want that black-haired Cassell woman in my stables. She upsets the horses.”
“Upsets Redmond O’Conner, thee mean,” cackled Grampy Tom.
“Do you know Mrs Cassell then?”
For a good moment or two, unintelligible Gaelic mumbles, mutters and curses spewed forth, then…
“Aye,” he finally bit out.
Before he buttoned his lips.
Grampy Tom clapped a hand to the stable master’s shoulder, and as the two of them ambled off, Ernest gazed to the heavens to assess the coming day’s weather. Dawn tinged the east with an oyster grey, devoid, for once, of any streaks of cloud.
Clear skies at last.
A faint awareness prickled his nape, surely the fresh dawn breeze, but he glanced through the open courtyard doors and to the castle, caught a hint of candlelight glimmering from the corner turret bedchamber and wondered what had roused Mrs Locke from her sleep.
Come rain or shine, this summer would be like no other.