Emily and the Dark Angel by Jo Beverley Read Free Book Online Page B

everyone in the club this evening.
    He suffered the adoring attention of the three young men with good humor, encouraging Chart Ashby to ask, “Is it true, sir, that Napoleon gave you a medal?”
    Assheton-Smith laughed. “Don’t put that around, young man. You’ll have me under lock and key! No, no. It was during the Peace of Amiens, you know, back in eighteen-oh-two. We all thought the war was over then, and a lot of us went over. I was scarce older than yourself, but I’d been hunting a few years and had some good luck. Got myself a bit of a name, which had spread even to Paris. He sought me out to talk of the great sport.”
    “And called you ‘Le Grand Chasseur Smit,’ did he not, Tom?” asked Lord Robert.
    Assheton-Smith modestly agreed that to be so and turned back to Chart. “Will I be seeing you out with the Quorn, young man?”
    Chart’s eyes shone. “Oh yes, sir. I wouldn’t miss it.”
    “Good, good. You have the look of a fine rider and your bloodline’s good. Your cousin’s a fine man over fences, though he fails to take my advice to the full.”
    Verderan saw Chart’s frank disbelief at this heresy. “I think Tom refers to Randal’s disinclination to take a fall unless absolutely necessary,” he explained dryly.
    “A failing you have too, Ver,” said Assheton-Smith. “You know my dictum, ‘There is no place you cannot get over with a fall.’ It is only by throwing his heart over every fence that a man can keep up with my hounds.”
    “Have you often found me lagging behind, Tom?” queried Verderan.
    The great man laughed. “You have me there! But I still maintain that the only way to ride a hunt well is to stop for nothing.”
    “I’m with you there,” said a small-statured man with a high voice and a pointed face. “Never mind prime blood. Courage is what a man rides in the field.”
    Verderan felt his jaw tighten, for the comment was directed at him. He and George Osbaldeston had cordially hated each other since their first days at Eton, but had luckily rarely encountered each other since. Osbaldeston had been hunting-mad even back then, and ever since leaving Oxford he’d devoted himself to the sport, first in Yorkshire, then as Master of the Burton Hunt. Now he was Master of the Nottinghamshire Hunt, moving ever closer to his target, the Quorn. He’d even taken to calling himself “Squire” Osbaldeston.
    When Osbaldeston managed to get the Mastership of the Quorn, Verderan rather thought his own hunting days in the Shires would be over. The place would become uninhabitable.
    “Courage won’t take a cart horse over an oxer,” he pointed out, “and being brave while lying in the mud is not a game I want to play.” It was well known that the “Squire” couldn’t afford horses fine enough for his ambitions.
    “Of course being able to afford fine horses can help anyone to make a show,” retorted Osbaldeston, looking at no one in particular. “Irish horses. Or Irish money.”
    An uncomfortable silence fell over the company at the insinuation, and Verderan was weighing the sheer pleasure of picking a fight with Osbaldeston against the amount of effort involved—and the small matter of bringing his family skeletons to center stage—when he discovered he had a champion.
    “A good rider on a bad horse can make a show,” Harry Crisp said calmly, though he looked tense. “A poor rider merely ruins a good horse, Irish or not.”
    Champions, in fact. Chart Ashby turned to Assheton-Smith. “I understand you rarely pay more than fifty guineas for a hunter, sir. You must be a wonderful judge of horseflesh.”
    “Why, thank you,” said Assheton-Smith, quite kindly. He didn’t much care for Osbaldeston himself. “But it’s amazing,” he added with a twinkle of humor, “how many wonderful horses of mine turn back into slugs when I’ve sold ’em. It’s the right kind of horse, a rider who’ll work with a horse, and the courage to take risks. All that together makes