Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)(93)

“For God’s sake, you stood up for me at my wedding,” Ashworth said. “We’re friends, Bellamy. And you’re stuck with us, whatever fool plan you’ve cooked up.”

“But at least give us some explanation first,” Morland said. “Why the devil does someone want so badly to kill you?”

Julian hesitated, unsure whether to tell them. Were they friends, truly? He looked from the stern, aristocratic duke to the formidable, battle-scarred warrior. Well, he supposed, these were two men he would rather have as friends than enemies.

“I know things,” he said. “Things I was never meant to know. I overheard secrets as a youth, working at a coffeehouse. I was an errand boy. My mother worked in the kitchen.”

“And your father …?” Ashworth prompted.

“Not in the picture,” he said tightly. Julian couldn’t imagine that news would come as a shock to either man.

It didn’t.

Morland frowned. “What do you mean, ‘you know things’? Such as …?”

“Such as that horse you’re so fond of? Osiris? You know, the reason for this whole club?” At Morland’s nod, Julian continued, “I happen to know the first race he ever won was fixed.”

Morland’s chin jerked in surprise. “His first win? That would have been …”

“At Doncaster. He was a three-year-old colt. His jockey had been purposely holding him back all year. The gaming lords kept increasing the odds. By Doncaster, they were twelve-to-one, and all bets were on—”

“Mariner,” Ashworth finished. “He’d been running strong all year. I remember it well, the general shock when he ran third.”

“Not everyone was shocked. There were ten members of the Jockey Club in on the plan. I heard them discussing it myself, at the coffeehouse where my mother worked. I didn’t know their names at the time, but I remembered their voices. Repeated them over and over to myself, so I wouldn’t forget. Over the next few years, I learned their identities, and then … And then I blackmailed them, each and every one.”

There was an awed silence in response to this. Julian found himself enjoying it a bit. Even he could hardly believe he’d possessed the stones to do it.

Once he’d learned the identities of each conspirator, he’d posed as—well, as himself, as those men knew him. A deaf-mute ruffian. Through gestures and written cards, he’d demanded a private audience with each man in turn. In each interview, he’d handed over a block-lettered note. It was the first missive he’d ever penned, each word collected separately over a span of weeks; the whole copied and recopied with painstaking care.

Give one hundred guineas to the deaf-mute, and send him back forthwith. If both guineas and boy do not arrive by sunset, tomorrow’s papers will blaze the truth of Doncaster.

They might have shot him where he stood, and no one would ever have been the wiser. There would be no one left to tell the newspapers the truth. Even if Julian had gone to the scandal sheets himself, it was unlikely they would have believed his tale.

But with his mother gone, he’d had nothing to lose. So he played this bluff ten times in all, and in each instance it worked. Almost sad, how none of the men even thought to suspect him. They saw that deaf errand boy from the coffeehouse, and they assumed him to be a simpleton. Ten times, he’d walked away with his heart pounding in his throat and a hundred guineas testing the seams of his pockets. He could have asked for more money; he knew that now. As a youth, he simply hadn’t been able to conceive of a greater sum. A thousand guineas, all told. From it, he’d purchased new shoes and a proper suit of clothes. And then he’d gone about building a fortune.

Years later, when Osiris was retired to stud and Leo started the Stud Club … ah, the irony had been too sweet. At last, he was one of the ten. Not the boy scraping mud from their boots.

“Blackmail.” Ashworth whistled low through his teeth. “And you think someone’s recognized you?”

Julian nodded. “I’m sure of it.”

“But I don’t follow,” Ashworth said. “It was just a horse race, and years ago now. Why would they kill to protect that secret?”

“It wasn’t just a horse race,” the duke said. “Fortunes were gambled and lost. Men were ruined. If the plot were ever known, the conspirators would be permanently barred from not only the Jockey Club, but most of polite society.”

“So they’d commission a murder just to save face?” Ashworth shrugged. “I suppose men have killed for less.”

“It could be something else,” Julian said. “This coffeehouse where I learned of this race-fixing scheme … gentlemen came there every day to discuss their secrets. Political secrets, business secrets, affaires of the heart. If someone has recognized me, who knows what else he thinks I might have overheard. That’s why it’s impossible for me to identify my attacker. I need Stone and Macleod.”

“That’s assuming Stone and Macleod are actually the men who killed Leo. Shouldn’t we at least have Faraday identify them first?”

Julian leveled his pistol toward the riverbank, checking the sight. “We leave Faraday out of this. I’m not sure he can be trusted.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“Today,” Claudia vowed, “victory will be mine.”