Thirty-Four

An Act of Retribution

Newmarket, April 1751

Arriving at the starting post, Shakespeare danced in edgy irritation. His rider struggled to hold him back, but the stallion snorted his impatience, touting his eagerness to put down the pretentious usurper.

Shakespeare’s owner, Philip, Earl of Hastings, cast an appreciative gaze over his sleek and elegant chestnut that embodied the quintessential English thoroughbred. This race would be nothing short of a mockery. However, given his financial straits, how could he have passed up such a wager?

Most of his acquaintance, the most avid turf men in the kingdom, would have accepted the challenge purely for the sport, but his reasons were far more pecuniary. Twenty thousand pounds could change everything. He might at last reclaim his estate from the moneylenders, as well as salvaging his self-respect.

In his efforts to redeem his place in aristocratic society and relieve his ancestral home from decades of neglect, Philip Drake had dug himself into a financial pit from which, he had begun to fear, there was no escape. That was, until the rash colonial Daniel Roberts had proposed this outrageous racing wager.

His contender, from the colony of Virginia, stood barely fourteen-and-a-half hands. With hindquarters half-again as densely muscled as the lean chestnut, he more closely resembled a cart pony than a reputed racing champion.

Yes. This victory would allow him to repay the thousands in loans he had needed to repair the roofs of his tenants and fertilize thousands of acres of fallow fields. His estate was worthless until it could once more provide grazing lands for cattle and grow something besides the turnips upon which his near-starving tenant-farmers subsisted. The starter’s signal abruptly ended Lord Hastings’s introspection.

Upon the signal, the two horses exploded from the post like water from a bursting dam. Shakespeare surged forth, his long legs slicing the air, but the English champion hadn’t a prayer against the explosive breaking force of his adversary, who had launched as though from a catapult in a blur of kinetic power. Setting a lightning stride in his own frenetic style, the roan, aptly named Retribution, dropped his nose, dug in, and tore up the track. By the first furlong, he had already gained three lengths.

The Earl of Hastings rose from his seat in unbridled horror. “His jockey’s a fool! The horse cannot possibly sustain that pace. He’ll be used up by the first mile.” He spoke as if to convince himself, his heart already pounding so hard in his throat it threatened to choke him.

Shakespeare feverishly scrambled, his rider flattened to the withers, urgently cajoling, wildly spurring, and flailing the whip as stride by stride Retribution ate up yards of turf.

Lord Hastings’s jockey pushed, drove, and pleaded. The game chestnut gave his all in response, but in the end it just wasn’t… enough.

The Earl of Hastings stood frozen on the dais and vainly blinked, as if to dispel the vision before his disbelieving eyes. It was impossible. Shakespeare had lost the bloody race! The champion of the Hastings’s racing stud was completely annihilated on his own turf by an unknown, half-breed pony from Virginia.

In his supreme confidence, or better-said extreme arrogance, Philip had broken every rule that he’d lived by in all his years of gaming. He had recklessly wagered twenty thousand pounds without even the first thought of defeat.

Now, in a single day Philip, the fourth Earl of Hastings, had accomplished what no prior supercilious and self-indulgent ancestor had ever achieved in a lifetime: the total and complete ruination of an earldom.

The surrounding voices roared in his ears, yet he was deaf to the words. He nodded dumbly to those around him. Smile, Philip. They are all watching you. The result was more a grimace. Outwardly, he struggled to concede defeat with grace, but inside he reeled.

Regaining a modicum of control over his impaired faculties, Philip employed all of his strength to compel his body away from the throng. He wove mechanically through the crowd until, reaching the relative privacy of his own stable block, he entered the first empty stall, clutched the wall, and heaved.

***

After his agonizing defeat, Lord Hastings had spent the evening and well into the morning hours wallowing in self-disgust and drinking himself senseless. At age two-and-thirty, he had already put behind him a ten-year military career, brilliantly begun but ingloriously ended. His estates were heavily leveraged, his prospects of recovery dismal. In sum, he had not a bloody thing to show for his life but the racing stables—Charlotte’s racing stables.

He had long ago begun drinking to excess, simply to obliterate the reality that he was half a man living half a life. He had a title without the fortune, a wife that was no lover, and a lover, the only light in his darkened existence, who could never be his wife; thus, he drank.

He had been an arrogant sot when he’d accepted the racing challenge from a man and horse he’d known nothing about, but drink and despair had made him reckless and rash. Sunk in self-denigration, the cycle began anew.

The truth rankled beyond endurance. Outside of his military career, now forever marred by the infamy of Culloden, he had achieved little. When he had sold his commission to take up the mantle of an earldom, he had forsworn the cards and dice that had sustained him during his troubled youth and early military career.

Over the ensuing half dozen years, he had busted his arse to right his estate and gain the respect of his peers, but to his lasting chagrin the racing stables were Lord Hastings’s only profitable venture. The truth of the matter was almost too painful to admit. Lady Hastings was the reason for its success; and her achievements, not his, had paid the interest on the loans that kept them afloat—a fact that damnably stung his pride. Now he’d gambled all, and he’d lost.

Beyond his wife’s hysterical tirade and a smashed bottle of his finest brandy, he had little recollection. At least the harridan had then left him in peace. Regardless of her entreaties, he had no choice but to sell what he could. If she weren’t so bloody high-minded and obstinate, he would long have been cock of the dung heap, sitting on a fortune of fifty thousand with no reason to take such a gamble.

If only he could access the bloody trust! The untouchable fortune was his only means of meeting his obligations, and though the money was rightfully his, his father’s will barred him from drawing a single groat until he produced an heir. This now brought the matter of the wager and the stud full circle.

If the stud were now lost, it was her own bloody doing, he reflected in mounting resentment. He would liquidate it all without compunction to save his name and his estate, but even complete dispersal would not be enough! Not only was he indebted to Roberts for the sum of twenty thousand, once word of his racing debacle reached his other creditors’ ears they would descend upon him like a pack of ravaging hyenas.

He was once more gripped by the full repercussions of his recklessness. In a sodden stupor, he had accepted the wager that had broken every cardinal rule he’d endeavored to live by. Now, in one fell swoop, his entire future was gone, every blessed farthing, and all he had hoped for.

Though reaching for oblivion, he had only achieved piss-faced when Lady Hastings had arrived after the race. The inevitable row had ensued, and then the world had retracted into blessed blackness.

***

Midafternoon saw a summons to Palace House, a speedy reply to Lord Hastings’s earlier missive to the Duke of Cumberland.

“Hastings!” the duke exclaimed upon Philip’s arrival, his face already aflush with port.

“Your Grace.” Lord Hastings sketched his bow to the Duke of Cumberland.

“What do I hear of you losing this wager with the colonial?”

Careful to maintain a dispassionate demeanor, Philip answered in measure tones, “’Twas a most unanticipated and equally unfortunate outcome.”

“Unfortunate! Understated indeed! Your jockey should be whipped at the cart’s tail! I dare say you’ve already sacked him for the disgrace. But then again, I perceive from your dispatch that your loss on the Rowley Mile might very well be my gain. Madeira or claret?” the duke asked. An almost imperceptible wave of his fingers brought a footman scurrying to the earl’s side with both bottles.

“Claret will serve,” Hastings answered with little enthusiasm at the thought of drink.

“Now what is this about the mares?” Cumberland inquired succinctly, his eyes gleaming with unconcealed avarice.

“You waste no time, your grace,” Philip remarked, knowing he would fare far better by offering a private treaty to the duke than suffering the indignity of a public auction. His Grace, the Duke of Cumberland, would jump at the chance to add the entire lot of mares to his burgeoning stud and without begrudging a farthing of the premium.

“As you know, Hastings, I am not a man to shilly-shally,” the duke said. “Many a golden opportunity is lost in vacillation. Thus, I come directly to the point. What do you want for the mares? Name your price.”

Philip considered his answer carefully. Cumberland had long coveted the Hastings’s broodmares, all descended from the three kings of the desert, or from the royal mares of Charles II. He knew they were arguably the finest equine harem in the land.

“Two thousand guineas.”

“Two thousand?” the duke echoed flatly. “Indeed a princely sum.”

“For twenty blood mares by the finest sires that ever ran, and who have never failed to produce a runner amongst them? I would call it a veritable bargain.”

Philip waited. The duke knew full well their worth, and as he customarily ventured thousands of guineas on the races, he would have arrived at Newmarket with the full purchase price already lining his pockets.

Cumberland thoughtfully swirled the ruby liquid, then raised his glass to plump, wine-stained lips. He emptied the remainder in one draught, and then set his glass down decisively.

“Done.”