Winged Victory Read online

  His voice rose louder as he yelled,

  “Blast them! I will get my own back. You mark my words, I will get all my own back!”

  For the last three days he had talked in the same strain over and over again and Cledra felt, although she knew that she dared not say so, that he was growing madder and madder.

  At times he would be shrewd and penny-pinching if it concerned spending money on something that he was not interested in.

  She had found out since coming to live with him that, while he paid his grooms well, he was miserly over the wages of the older indoor servants who if he dismissed them would be unable to find other employment.

  Those who were pensioned off, including the jockeys who had brought him in hundreds of pounds in racing prizes during their day, were almost starving, in the cottages where the roofs leaked and the floorboards were rotting away unrepaired.

  When Cledra was alone at Newmarket, she would go and call on the old people.

  They told her that they were often hungry, but if they complained in any way were told they could get out and find somewhere else to live.

  She knew how horrified her father would have been at his brother’s behaviour and how deeply it would distress her mother, but there was nothing she could do except take them fruit from the garden when the gardeners were not looking and hope that her prayers would be answered and something would be done for them.

  Sometimes at night she talked aloud to her father and told him how unhappy she was.

  “Help me, Papa, help me not only by preventing Uncle Walter from beating me but also by showing me what I can do for the poor old people whom he neglects so viciously.”

  It was when she learnt of her uncle’s plans for Star that she had cried to her father in distress, feeling that he must hear her and somehow by a miracle he would save the horse he had loved as she did,

  “Star will never understand why I abandoned him or why he is beaten instead of being loved, Papa. Oh, Papa, tell me what to do! You must help me – you must.”

  She felt as if her whole being reached out towards her father.

  Then, almost like an answer coming from beyond the grave, she knew what she must do.

  It was as if her father had said to her,

  ‚Go to the Earl of Poynton. He will buy Star from you and then the money can go to Martha and Jackson.’

  It had seemed such a simple solution that Cledra wondered why she had not thought of it herself and, walking back to her uncle’s house by the light of the stars, she was saying over and over again in her heart,

  ‘Thank You, God – for letting me hear Papa – and for giving me – the answer. Thank You! Thank You!’

  Chapter Two

  When Cledra had left him to go to the stables, the Earl walked back into the dining room and, as he took his place at the head of the table, one of his guests remarked,

  “She must have been pretty, Poynton, to have kept you so long!”

  The Earl did not reply and Eddie Lowther was aware that his lips tightened slightly.

  It was one of his unbreakable rules that he never at any time discussed the women in his life nor allowed anybody else to do so.

  There had been actually a great many of them and Eddie often thought wryly that they were magnetised not only by his position, his wealth and his attractions, which were considerable, but also by the fact that the Earl was elusive and, when it concerned a love affair, extremely unpredictable.

  “Has there ever been a woman who did not feel that she could climb the highest mountain when everyone else has failed?” someone had asked once.

  It was certainly true where the Earl was concerned.

  Unfortunately from the gossips’ point of view, his affaires de cœur, because he was as fastidious over his women as he was over everything else, were always with ladies who were discreet, reserved and, it went without saying, exceedingly beautiful.

  Only Eddie because he was so close to the Earl was aware of how many broken hearts he left behind him.

  The loveliest women in the Beau Monde wept helplessly into their pillows when they realised that he was now bored with them and they would never see him again except in a crowded ballroom or at a large dinner party.

  At the moment the Earl was just coming to the end of what had been an amusing, tempestuous and rather intriguing affair with an ambitious Politician’s wife.

  She was very lovely, half-Hungarian by extraction and had all the fire in her temperament and in her lovemaking that was denoted by the colour of her hair.

  As her husband was kept continually at the House of Commons, the Earl had been able to spend more time with her than was usual.

  It was only when he was leaving London for Newmarket that he thought it had been a mistake that they had seen each other so frequently.

  He was beginning to know beforehand, which was fatal, exactly what she would say and there had undoubtedly been moments when they were together when he found his thoughts wandering.

  What was more, if he was honest, he found now that her continual efforts to arouse his desire was becoming a bore.

  While driving down to Newcastle his famous team of perfectly matched chestnuts, which reminded him of her hair, he decided that the affair was at an end. He would send her an expensive present and ring down the curtain on what had been a pleasant interlude, but no more.

  With the present would be enclosed a note telling her that it was ‘a keepsake’, which he hoped would remind her of the many happy hours that they had spent together.

  This was almost a routine phrase in his farewell letters, but to the women who received one it was the sound of doom, for they that knew no tears or pleading would have any effect on him.

  The strange thing about the Earl was that, unlike most men, he never had to endure recriminations or suffer from women who wished to be revenged because he had left them.

  Invariably the recipients of his favours were so grateful that they just cried despairingly.

  They also felt that, although he had now closed the gates of Paradise, the ecstasy that they had enjoyed was worth the suffering they now endured.

  As he sat down in his high-backed chair, the Earl lifted his glass of port to his lips, ignoring the remark of his guest, which he thought in poor taste.

  “Do you wish to play écarté after dinner, Lionel,” he asked the man gentle next to him. “Or would you prefer faro?”

  This immediately started an argument as to which was the most enjoyable game of chance and, when the Earl rose to take his guests into the drawing room, there was no other questions regarding his reason for leaving them during the meal.

  It was not until several hours later when he was alone in the large comfortable bed with the Poynton Coat of Arms embroidered above the headboard that the Earl found himself thinking of Cledra and the strange story that she had told him about Sir Walter Melford.

  He had thought it over for some time before he fell asleep and in the morning when his valet was dressing him he said,

  “While I am at the sale today, Yates, find out anything you can about a man named Bowbrank who keeps an inn in Newmarket. I think it is called The Crown and Anchor.

  “That’s right, my Lord.”

  “You know it?”

  “Yes, my Lord, and he be a nasty piece of work. There’s tales about him your Lordship wouldn’t care to hear.”

  “Which means, I suppose,” the Earl said slowly, “that he is cruel to his horses that he hires out.”

  “His horses and the lads what looks after them, my Lord.”

  This confirmed what Cledra had told him for the Earl knew that any information that Yates gave him was always reliable.

  A thin, wiry little man, only two years older than the Earl himself, Yates had been his first valet when he left his Public School and went up to Oxford University.

  All the ‘Top Bloods’, which meant the rich undergraduates, had their own valets and their own grooms and it went without saying that Viscount Po
yle, as he was then, had the swiftest horses and his phaeton was the smartest in the City.

  Yates acquired much reflected glory amongst the other servants because of his Master’s outstanding athletic achievements and the way he rode his horses to victory in every Steeplechase that took place at the University.

  After Oxford he had gone into the Army and took Yates with him and here again the Viscount distinguished himself.

  When fourteen years ago the French Revolution and four years later the Terror, astounded the whole civilised world, Viscount Poyle and his valet were successful in organising the escape of a number of aristocrats from France to the safe shores of England.

  The Earl had never talked about these exploits and nor had Yates, but those whom he saved spoke so gratefully and movingly of his brilliance in saving them from the guillotine that the Viscount added another laurel wreath to the many he had accumulated already.

  When his father died and he inherited the Earldom, he bought himself out of the Army and settled down to run his estates and concentrate on his horses.

  He was well aware that Yates, who had an adventurous nature, often sighed for the excitement and danger of war and he was not surprised when his valet offered eagerly,

  “I’ll have a sniff around, my Lord, and see what else I can find out about this man, Bowbrank.”

  “You do that, Yates, and also if the opportunity arises talk to Lord Ludlow’s grooms. He is certain to be running a horse at this Meeting. See if they have anything to tell you about the death at the last meeting of Jessop.”

  The Earl knew by the expression on Yates’s face that he not only absorbed everything he said to him but was eager for the excitement of what he called ‘spying out the land’.

  The Earl had never embarked on any of their daring attempts to rescue aristocrats from France without first making sure that he knew every inch of their hiding place or prison before he went into action.

  “Carelessness accounts for more dead men than bullets do,” the Earl often commented.

  Yates, who had worked so closely with him, knew that this was true.

  When the Earl went downstairs for breakfast and afterwards climbed into his phaeton that was waiting outside, he had dismissed from his mind everything that Cledra had told him and was concentrating on the horses that he would like to buy at the sale.

  Travelling with him, Eddie Lowther thought that nothing could be smarter or more impressive than the Earl’s turnout.

  His groom sitting up behind wore a cockaded tall hat and his horses’ harnesses was embellished with silver and engraved with the Poynton crest.

  The other guests followed in their own vehicles or those provided by the Earl and it was only a short distance to Sir Walter Melford’s stables.

  These lay behind a gaunt-looking grey stone house that he had purchased some fifteen years earlier when he had first started to race at Newmarket.

  There was a faint smile on the Earl’s rather hard mouth when he and Eddie were not only greeted effusively by their host but were also pressed to partake of champagne, brandy or any other drink before they had a chance to inspect the horses in the sale.

  There were also tables laden with delicacies of every sort including oysters, pâtés and a boar’s head and a suckling pig.

  The Earl, to Sir Walter’s consternation, refused any refreshment and Eddie sipped his glass of champagne slowly, remembering how he had been warned the previous evening to keep a clear head.

  It was the first time that the Earl and most of his friends had ever been inside Sir Walter’s house and they looked somewhat sceptically at the luxury that it was furnished with and the fine pictures that hung on the walls.

  When they had been joined by almost every racehorse owner who was at Newmarket, the Earl found himself wondering if he would see Cledra.

  He was well aware that if he did so he must pretend not to have met her before, but there being no other ladies present and he guessed that she had been told to keep out of sight.

  So he would not see her large eyes, which he remembered looking at him at first pleadingly and then with a gratitude that was rather moving.

  When it was getting on for noon and quite a considerable amount of food and wine had been consumed, Sir Walter led the way to the yard at the back of the house where seats had been arranged around a roughly constructed ring.

  An auctioneer, whom the Earl knew well from previous sales that he had attended, took over the rostrum and the bidding was brisk from the moment the first horse was led in.

  The Earl’s guests did not have it all their own way for there was a large number of bidders who had come from all over the country since the sale had been well advertised.

  The bids began to go higher and higher and the Earl thought cynically that the money which Sir Walter had expended on refreshments was certainly proving its worth.

  There was also a bar erected at the side of the yard where more champagne was provided for anybody who felt the need of it and there was no doubt that, such generous hospitality being unusual, it was fully appreciated by quite a number of those present.

  Eddie, who was sitting beside the Earl, said,

  “If the bidding for this horse goes over one thousand guineas, it is beyond my purse!”

  “I should leave it alone,” the Earl suggested, “and, if you want Raskal or Mandrake, they are yours.”

  “You are not going to bid for them?”

  The Earl shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “I have no wish for my good guineas to go into that man’s pocket.”

  Eddie looked at the Earl in astonishment, but he had no intention of elaborating further.

  Instead he rose to his feet to walk across the yard and into the stable from which the horses had not yet been taken into the ring.

  Sir Walter’s horses were stabled on both sides of the yard and the auction had started with the horses in the stalls on the left hand side.

  There was now a pause before the grooms began to bring into the ring those from the right hand side.

  Before the sale started the stables had been so crowded that the Earl had made no effort to inspect the horses.

  Now the prospective buyers had apparently seen all that they wanted to see and were engaged in bidding or drinking, which left the stables comparatively empty.

  The Earl inspected the horses one by one and found that they were well-bred and most of them in the peak of condition.

  But remembering what Cledra had told him, he had the feeling that a number of them seemed restless and timid.

  It was hard to believe that Sir Walter could be so foolish as to ill-treat his own horses and yet, if a man would deliberately starve a horse, he would also, the Earl reflected, treat them unnecessarily harshly.

  He walked from stall to stall and knew as he did so that the bidding had started again and now the horses he had already inspected were being taken out into the ring.

  The stable was a long one, built in much the same manner as his own with wooden partitions between each stall and iron bars above them.

  He did not attempt to open the doors of any of the stalls, but looked through the bars at the horses seeing all he wished to see, knowing that he had decided to add none of them to his own stable.

  He came to the end and saw that the last stall of about thirty had its iron bars covered with horse blankets, which were tied down so securely that it was impossible to see inside.

  He vaguely wondered the reason for this and was just about to turn away when he saw painted on the door of the stall, as all the others, was the horse’s name.

  It was almost covered by horse-cloths, but he could read the one word, ‘Star’.

  The Earl stared at it and as he did so a respectful voice behind him came,

  “This stall’s empty, my Lord, but perhaps your Lordship’d like to see some of the other horses afore they goes into the ring?”

  “No,” the Earl replied. “I am not interested.”
r />   He walked away and the groom hurried to ask the same question of another visitor, obviously hoping for a tip for his pains.

  The Earl was silent on the drive home, while Eddie talked about the sale and the astronomical sums that Sir Walter had obtained for his horses.

  “He certainly made sure that the bidders were in the right mood,” he commented, “and the food was better than we could have found in White’s or any other Club in London.”

  The Earl did not reply and Eddie went on,

  “Now I think of it, you drank nothing and ate nothing, Lennox. Why?”

  “You may think it old-fashioned of me,” the Earl replied, “but I do not take his salt or accept the hospitality of any man if I dislike him.”

  “Why have you suddenly such an aversion to Sir Walter?” Eddie enquired.

  He realised that the Earl’s voice had been more positive than his usual indifference in speaking of anybody who he had no wish to be acquainted with.

  The Earl did not reply and Eddie asked mockingly,

  “Are you using your instinct again, Lennox?”

  He often teased the Earl because, when they had been in the Army together and spent three years in India fighting under Colonel Arthur Wellesley, his friend’s instinct had been respected not only by the troops he commanded but also by his brother Officers.

  On more than one occasion he had saved them from walking into an ambush and on another he had sensed that they might be murdered by marauding tribesmen.

  Because the Viscount, as he was then, had smelt danger and warned them, they were prepared for the onslaught.

  “Perhaps that is the answer,” the Earl responded evasively, “but for the moment I don’t know.”

  “I think we have seen the last of Melford,” Eddie suggested.

  “He has put paid to his aspirations to shine on the Turf as an owner and, when he retires to Sussex, we shall not hear of him again.”

  “I hope you are right.”

  Eddie glanced at the Earl and had the feeling that he was hiding something from him.

  “What do you know about Melford that you did not know when we were talking about him at dinner last night?” he asked.