The Pretty Horse-Breakers Read online

  “You did not find her?” he asked.

  “There is no sign of her anywhere,” Lord Manville replied and there was a note of anxiety in his voice that Adrian had never heard before. “You have to help me. Where can I look? Where can I go? Where did she come from?”

  “Her parents are dead,” Adrian responded. “That is why she went to London.”

  Lord Manville did not say anything, but looked across at him intently. There was a little pause.

  “Her father was Alexander Walcott,” Adrian continued.

  The name seemed to evoke no response.

  “Should that mean something to me?” Lord Manville asked.

  “You might have heard of him when you were at Oxford,” Adrian replied. “He translated The Iliad, which became part of every student’s curriculum.”

  Lord Manville sat upright in his chair.

  “Alexander Walcott, of course. That man! I had no idea.”

  “I think perhaps I had better tell you,” Adrian said in a defiant voice, “that Candida has been helping me. I have been writing poetry for some time and I know now that is what I wish to do in life.”

  “Why not?” Lord Manville asked indifferently and then suddenly added, “so that is what you were always talking about. You used to hide what you were doing when I came into the room. I wondered what it could be.”

  “I did not wish you to see my poems,” Adrian explained.

  “I was thinking as I was riding today looking for Candida,” Lord Manville said, “that perhaps I have been a trifle high-handed where you are concerned. You can marry your Vicar’s daughter, I will give my consent.”

  “I don’t want to marry her now,” Adrian answered.

  “You are in love with Candida?”

  The question seemed to vibrate across the room.

  Adrian shook his head.

  “I love Candida,” he replied, “I think she is the most adorable person that I have ever met in my whole life. But I don’t want to marry her or anyone else. Besides, she is in love with you.”

  Lord Manville murmured something inarticulate and Adrian went on,

  “I too have been thinking. Something had upset Candida before dinner last night. She looked as though the bottom had fallen out of her world and she was only half-conscious of what was going on around her – a very good thing as it happens. But she was miserable and depressed. It must have been something you had said to her before we went into dinner.”

  “I did not understand,” Lord Manville murmured, almost as though he was talking to himself. “I did not realise – who she was.”

  “Who she was?” Adrian echoed. “Surely you were aware that she is a lady. I may be a greenhorn in your eyes, but I realised that the moment I saw her.”

  “You don’t understand,” Lord Manville said. “I bought her, do you hear, bought her with the horse from Hooper and Cheryl Clinton – from the woman who keeps the most notorious ‘House of Introduction’ in the whole of London. How could I imagine that Candida was anything but what she appeared to be?”

  Adrian gave a hollow laugh.

  “And I have been thinking you are so clever!” he jeered. “You have always made me feel an ignorant fool, but I was not so thick-headed as to think that Candida was one of those vulgar creatures who were here yesterday.”

  “But it was Hooper who produced her,” Lord Manville said, almost as though he was in the dock facing a prosecution.

  “Hooper bought Pegasus for one hundred pounds at the Potters Bar fair,” Adrian said, “When Candida showed him the tricks she could make the horse perform, he took her to London. But he was shrewd enough to realise that she was not going to be of much value to him unless she was properly bedecked and furbelowed to attract such fastidious gentlemen as yourself. So he and that woman kept her hidden for three weeks.”

  Adrian paused, took as deep breath and continued,

  “She never saw another soul except Foxleigh, who forced his way into the house. Candida was grateful to them, don’t you understand, grateful for letting her ride Pegasus and for giving her a roof over her head. When you rose to the bait, that was just what those vultures were waiting for.”

  “My God!” Lord Manville ejaculated, putting his hand over his eyes.

  “Candida did not have the slightest idea what was going on,” Adrian said. “Her only thought was that she could stay with Pegasus. That was how they persuaded her into coming down here with you to Manville Park.”

  Lord Manville’s hand still covered his face and Adrian carried on remorselessly,

  “She confessed to me – confessed, mind you – that her conscience was worrying her because she could not do what you wished. She could not introduce me to the Argyll Rooms, to Motts and to Kate Hamilton’s because she did not know what they were. She had never even heard of such places.”

  “Then why did she not tell me so?” Lord Manville demanded.

  “Because she thought if she did, you would send her back as being unsuitable for the position you were offering her,” Adrian replied. “Unsuitable!”

  His voice should have been heavy with sarcasm, but instead it sounded pitiful, as if he were not far from tears.

  “What has happened to her?” he cried. “Where can she have gone? Surely it’s impossible for the horse to disappear, let alone Candida?”

  “That is what I have been thinking,” Lord Manville said. “And she has no money.”

  “No money?” Adrian exclaimed. “Did you not give her any?”

  “I never thought of it,” Lord Manville answered. “There seemed no necessity while she was here and besides I had the feeling she would not accept it from me.”

  He remembered Candida’s reluctance to take the guineas he had held out for her when they had left Cheryl Clinton’s and the manner in which she had contrived that he should throw the money to John. Why had he not realised then, he asked himself, that she was not the ‘Pretty Horse-Breaker’ he had thought her to be?

  “It was her first appearance in Hyde Park that put me on the wrong track,” he explained. “In that white habit, Hooper riding by her side, she caused a sensation.”

  “Candida told me how nervous and embarrassed she was,” Adrian said. “But Hooper assured her that she was doing it for Pegasus and she believed him, although she did not realise then that he was intending to sell the horse. He promised her he would not.”

  Lord Manville remembered the fear in Candida’s eyes when he had asked the Major what price he was asking. Why had he not understood from the very beginning that there was something different about this girl?

  Why had he been so blind, so incredibly stupid?

  “I have been a fool,” he confessed and there was a humility in his tone that Adrian had never heard before. “But I am determined to find her before she comes to any harm. Suppose you tell me what was in the bundle she was carrying.”

  “Her father’s poems,” Adrian replied, “and one or two treasures that were not sold when the whole of her home was broken up. Her mother died, then her father broke his neck when he was drunk. It was when he was dead that Candida learnt the full magnitude of the debts they owed to the tradesmen and to everyone else in the village. The only thing she had of any value was Pegasus and the money Major Hooper paid for him went to provide a home for their old groom.”

  “The old groom!” Lord Manville cried. “That is where she will have gone! Do you know where he lives?”

  “Yes, she told me. It is a village called Little Berkhamstead, not far from Potters Bar.”

  “I will go there first thing tomorrow,” Lord Manville promised, a new light shining in his eyes. “Thank you, Adrian. I have a feeling that tomorrow I shall bring Candida back with me.”

  “I hope you will,” Adrian answered in a low voice.

  Lord Manville rose and put his hand on his shoulder.

  “You are quite sure you don’t wish to be married?” he asked. “I was wrong to refuse my consent.”

  “Candida made m
e realise that I did not love Lucy,” Adrian said quietly. “She made me see too that a man should first do something in his life – something worthwhile. When I saw those fops Sir Tresham brought here yesterday, I realised that Candida was right. I have never wanted to be a fashionable young man about town and now I know I have to work. Not to make money – that is unnecessary – but to prove myself and if possible contribute something to other people’s lives.”

  “Is it Candida who had made you think like that?” Lord Manville asked in a wondering tone.

  “She made me understand so many things I had not appreciated before. You see, sir, Candida may have lived in the country, she may be unsophisticated and in your eyes ignorant, but she seemed to me to be exceedingly wise about the issues that really matter.”

  “I am beginning to realise that now,” Lord Manville said and left the room with his head bent.

  *

  In the morning he had already left before Adrian came down to breakfast.

  “Do you think his Lordship will find Miss Candida?” Bateson asked anxiously. “We are all worried in the house, a nicer young lady never stayed here. I can say that truthfully, sir, after being in service here for over thirty-five years.”

  “I am sure his Lordship will find her,” Adrian said consolingly.

  ‘It is obvious,’ he thought to himself, ‘that she has returned to Little Berkhamstead,’ but, as he was unable to concentrate on his poem, he went down to the stables to talk to Garton.

  “Are you quite sure, Garton, that Miss Candida gave no indication of where she was going?” Adrian asked him.

  Garton shook his head.

  “No, Mr. Adrian, ’is Lordship asks me the same thing. I wasn’t ’ere when she first appeared, but I ’eard somethin’ ’appening in the yard so I comes down and there they were a-bringin’ Pegasus from ’is stall and Miss Candida standin’ waitin’ for ’im. She were carryin’ a white bundle in ’er ’and and she looks so pale that I thought summat were the matter.

  “‘It’d be best for a groom to go with you, Miss Candida’, I says to ’er. No thank you, Garton, she answers, I wants to go by myself. And you ’ave nothin’ except Thunder that can keep up with Pegasus!’

  “It was an old joke between us and I’d ’ave laughed if I’d not realised ’ow ill she looks, just as though she were a-goin’ to collapse.”

  “‘You’re all right, miss?’ I asks.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ she answers. ‘Help me into the saddle, Garton, I ’ave ’urt one of my arms a little.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got the rheumatics, miss,’ I smiles.’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ she answers. ‘I ’ad a fall and my arm is a little stiff, but it will soon wear off.’

  “I ’elps ’er up into the saddle, light as thistledown she were. But when she looks down at me there was somethin’ in her face which seemed to strike at me very ’eart and that’s the truth, Mr. Adrian.”

  “‘Good-bye, Garton,’ she says, ‘and thank you for all your kindness.’ Then she was gone.”

  “Did you think then that perhaps she was not coming back?” Adrian asked.

  “I was afraid to think such a thing,” Garton replied. “I wouldn’t ’ave lost Miss Candida, or Pegasus for that matter, for all the money in the Bank of England.”

  “Nor would I,” Adrian agreed.

  He went back to the house and waited. He tried to reckon how long it would take Lord Manville, riding across country, to reach Little Berkhamstead.

  He was not quite certain of the mileage, but dinner was spoilt once again before Lord Manville came home.

  Adrian knew as soon as he heard his Guardian’s footsteps cross the hall that his search had been unsuccessful. Nevertheless he was unable to suppress the obvious question,

  “Have you any news of her?”

  “The old groom had not seen her or heard from her,” Lord Manville replied, “but he told me much about Candida that I should have known the very first moment I met her. I saw her parents’ grave in the churchyard and the Manor House where she had lived.”

  He sighed and looked straight at his Ward.

  “Adrian, how could I have thought for one moment that she was a ‘Pretty Horse-Breaker’? I have been asking myself that question over and over again every yard of the journey home.”

  There was so much pain in his voice that Adrian answered gently,

  “I think most people see what they expect to see! That was what misled you. Candida once told me that we don’t use our intuition enough about horses or about people.”

  “I certainly did not use it about her,” Lord Manville said bitterly.

  *

  Day after day, with monotonous regularity, Lord Manville left the house in the morning and returned in the evening.

  Each day it seemed to Adrian that he was noticeably kinder and more approachable, but quite obviously more unhappy.

  He grew so thin that his clothes seemed to sit loosely on him, but it made him better looking. He had shed the dissipation and the loose living which, even with his strong constitution, had begun to leave its mark.

  After the first week Adrian found it hard to remember that he had ever been the awe-inspiring frightening Guardian he had hated and feared.

  Now they talked as man to man – two men who had lost something they both prized, something they both loved. And sometimes it seemed that Adrian was the older and wiser of the two and that Lord Manville looked to him for help and guidance.

  “What can I do? Where can I go?” he asked not once but a dozen times when he had returned after a day of fruitless searching. “What can she be living on? She had nothing to sell.”

  Then he added in a low voice,

  “Except – Pegasus.”

  “If she sold him, surely we would find him,” Adrian answered. “A horse like that would not go unnoticed.”

  .”I thought of that,” Lord Manville said. “I have already sent a groom to London to watch Tattersalls and the other sale rooms. And Garton has instructions that either he or one of his more knowledgeable grooms will attend every horse sale within a radius of fifty miles.”

  “What about Hooper?” Adrian asked.

  “My secretary tells me that neither Hooper nor Cheryl Clinton has heard from Candida since she came here. He is convinced they are speaking the truth.”

  “She must be somewhere,” Adrian said. “Even if she had died, there would be a record of it.”

  “Don’t say such things,” Lord Manville scolded him sharply.

  Adrian, looking at him, realised that he was suffering as he had not believed it possible for anyone, let alone his Lordship, to suffer over the loss of a woman.

  *

  News was brought them a week later that Sir Tresham Foxleigh had gone abroad and The Towers was up for sale.

  Lord Manville gave the order to buy the estate, but there was no elation in his voice or manner.

  When his agent had gone Adrian said to him,

  “That is something you have always wanted, is it not?”

  “I would forfeit my chance of owning that estate and this one as well if I could find Candida,” Lord Manville answered and Adrian knew that incredibly he spoke the truth.

  “Why did Sir Tresham hate you?” he enquired. “What was the quarrel between you?”

  “It is not important,” Lord Manville replied. “I found he had crooked a friend of mine, who was forced to sell his horses to pay his debts. He was young and not very knowledgeable and Foxleigh beat him down to an absurd figure far below the value of the horses. I persuaded my friend to cancel the sale and gave him myself what was a right price for the animals. Foxleigh was furious, especially when one of them won a race at Newmarket. He behaved so badly and insultingly about it that I blackballed him from a Club he wished to join. He swore to get even with me and indeed he has succeeded.”

  “He does not have Candida,” Adrian said quickly, “that is one thing we can be sure about.”

  “Bu
t I don’t have her either,” Lord Manville muttered.

  *

  It was a fortnight later, three weeks after Candida had left, that Adrian came down to breakfast to find Lord Manville finishing his coffee.

  Adrian had taken to breakfasting early so that he could see his Guardian before he left on his daily search.

  “I am sorry I am late,” Adrian said, “but I stayed up until three o’clock writing a poem. I want you to hear it when you have time.”

  “I would like that,” Lord Manville replied quite naturally. “I thought the last one you wrote was one of your best.”

  “I am not sure about that last line,” Adrian said. “If only Candida was here, she would tell me what was wrong with it.”

  “Perhaps I will find her today,” Lord Manville suggested.

  There was little hope in his voice, only a kind of dull misery that made Adrian feel that above everything he wanted to cheer him.

  “I dreamt last night that she was back,” he said, “and we were all very happy. It was a mad dream because Pegasus was standing in the drawing room eating a vaseful of carnations.”

  Lord Manville tried to smile, but failed.

  “I must be getting off,” he said, rising to his feet. “I don’t know quite where I am going – there is practically nowhere I have not been already.”

  Bateson came into the room and there was an expression on his face that made Adrian stare at him.

  “Begging your pardon, my Lord,” he said with a note of excitement in his voice, “but young Jim from the stables wishes to speak to your Lordship.”

  “He has something to tell me?” Lord Manville asked quickly. “Tell him to come in, Bateson.”

  A rather undersized stable lad came in nervously twisting his cap.

  Lord Manville sat down again.

  “Well, Jim,” he said, “you have found something?”

  “I thinks so, my Lord,” Jim answered. “Last evenin’ I goes over to see me aunt at Cobbleworth. ’Tis about four miles away, as your Lordship knows. I thinks afore I comes back I’d’ve a mug of ale at The Woodman. While I be there two grooms comes in. The younger lad starts to chat and asks if we’d entered anythin’ for the County races next month. I says as ’ow your Lordship ’as some fine ’orses and ’e says,