A Season in London

The morning sun shone weakly on the colonnaded facades of the elegant houses in St. James’s Square. In perhaps the most elegant of these houses, his Grace the Duke of Thayle was cutting into a veal cutlet of a rather fine rose-pink texture when he noticed a slight disturbance at his elbow. His footman, Smalridge, was hovering.

“My good man,” said his Grace in an easy, conversational tone that nevertheless struck dread into all of his servants, “I prefer to eat without a gadfly at my shoulder, if it’s all the same to you.”

Smalridge cleared his throat. “Your grace, I am very sorry to say…”

Thayle put down his fork and looked at Smalridge curiously. The man was red in the face. Thayle began to feel a faint prickle of interest.

“Sorry or not, pray continue. The suspense will likely give me indigestion.”

“There is, I am afraid, a Young Person at the door who demands to see you. A—a female Young Person.”

Thayle smiled and shook his head. “Is that all? You know very well that I do not entertain female Young Persons in my house.”

He turned back to his veal, but the footman did not retreat. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “She appears to be a Lady of Quality, your Grace.”

Thayle was not altogether convinced that his footman was so discerning as to be able to separate ladies of quality from ladies of dubious reputation, but all at once he had a fancy to see what sort of Young Person had pulled the wool over Smalridge’s eyes so convincingly.

“Very well, show her in.”

Smalridge was spinning on his heel to do exactly that when a small commotion broke out at the door, followed by the abrupt entrance of a diminutive young woman clad entirely in black. Behind her came another footman, hands fluttering in the vicinity of the young woman’s shoulders, as if he was trying to decide whether to seize her bodily and evict her.

The young woman batted at the fluttering hands and looked around the room with undisguised interest. “Ah,” she said, her eye falling on the Duke, “you must be Thayle?”

His Grace, having arisen, gave a slight bow of acknowledgment, not showing even a flicker of surprise at having his identity questioned in his own dining room. “I do not believe I have had the pleasure--?”

“I am Mrs. Harrow.” The footmen gasped at the visitor’s gall in interrupting his lordship, and Smalridge cracked his knuckles as a preamble to seizing the visitor and escorting her off the premises. His Grace, noting the body language of his footmen, raised a restraining hand.

“Mrs. Harrow?” he asked, his voice quite pleasant.

“I do not expect that you have heard of me,” she said, not in the least daunted. “My... my husband and I used to live very retired in the country. Now that he has passed away, however,” and here she raised a handkerchief to her nose and gave a theatrical sniff, “I am constrained to come to town to attend to some matters of business.”

“My deepest condolences. You are young indeed for a widow. But--pardon me if I am obtuse--I do not entirely understand how your business has brought you into my dining room?”

Mrs. Harrow’s attention appeared to have wandered. She stepped closer to the table, a small frown forming between her rather well shaped brows. “Can it be that you are eating breakfast?”

“I was indeed endeavoring to partake of that meal. The fact distresses you?”

Smalridge and the younger footman exchanged alarmed looks. The Duke’s tone did not bode well.

“Oh no, why should it?” Mrs. Harrow seemed oblivious to the Duke’s icy politeness. “It is just that I begin to understand why your man was so very reluctant to admit me. Apologies, but how was I to suspect? I have never known anybody to eat breakfast at such an hour--although of course, town hours are very likely quite different to what we are used to in the country.”

A strange expression crossed over the Duke’s face—and Smalridge the footman’s feeling of unease deepened.

“And the aim of your call was…to familiarize yourself with town hours?” his Grace asked.

“Well, of course not,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “The thing is, I would like to speak to you,” here she darted a look at the Duke’s manservants, “in private.”

Thayle’s eyebrows shot up a good deal faster than Smalridge had ever noticed them move before.

“I assure you, anything you wish to say to me may be said before my footmen.”

“You trust them entirely?”

By now Smalridge was feeling a curiosity so keen that it was difficult for him to keep his face expressionless. His eyes rested on Mrs. Harrow. She seemed exceedingly young and cheerful to be a widow.

“Naturally, I trust them,” said the Duke. “However, if you insist--”

He jerked his head at Smalridge who was quick to take the hint, although he could not suppress the disappointment he felt at being thrust out of the room just at this moment. Brown, the younger footman, obviously felt a similar reluctance to leave. Smalridge was obliged to nudge him slightly to get him to move from the spot on the Oriental rug where he appeared to have taken root.

The moment the door closed behind the pair of them, Mrs. Harrow fixed her eyes on the Duke’s face. They were, he noted, a rather unusual shade of green.

“The thing is,” she said in a low, conspiratorial voice, “I have a horse.”

“My felicitations.” Thayle took care to keep his voice neutral. He had an inkling of what she might be getting at, but he very much doubted her horse would be of interest to him.

She twinkled at him with an enthusiasm that was very hard to stomach at this hour, on only four or five hours of sleep.

“Everybody knows about Lord Stappleton’s challenge,” she said, lowering her voice as if people might be listening at the door.

“Do they, indeed? How tiresome.”

“They say you agreed to a privately run race over one mile in Hyde Park.”

“You are remarkably well-informed. What else do they say?”

“They say there is no love lost between you and Stappleton--something to do with a woman--and that you haven’t a horse in your stables to beat his new colt. They say he has bought Zingaree.”

“I am flattered to be providing so much fodder for gossip.”

“Zingaree won the Gold Cup at Ascot.”

“Yes, I am aware of that.”

Mrs. Harrow took a deep breath then raised her chin in a rather challenging way. “I came to London to tell you that my stallion is faster than Zingaree.”

Thayle felt a quickened interest but damped it down at once. “My dear Mrs.--Harrow, is it? I fear you are too partial. There is not the slightest possibility your horse is faster than Zingaree. I have scoured the country--no such animal exists.”

Mrs. Harrow dimpled at him in what he could only described as a conspiratorial way.

“Ah, but no one knows about Poseidon. We have kept him very quietly in the country and only one lad has ever ridden him. He’s a two-year-old but has come on very fast, you understand. He runs like the wind.”

“What’s his breeding?”

“By Ulysses out of Camilla.”

“Ulysses who won the Derby twice and the Gold Cup and the Wokingham Handicap?”

“And don’t forget the Albany Stakes and the Duke of York’s Stakes.”

“My dear madam, you begin to interest me extremely. You really believe your horse could outrun Zingaree?”

“I know it.”