Free A Gentleman’s Game by Theresa Romain Page B

herself, she smiled. “Why, what are your poems like?”
    For some reason, he blushed. “Never you mind.”
    A thought struck her. “If you just spoke to your father outside the study, why were you originally coming this way?”
    “To tell you. And gloat.”
    “Try again.”
    “For the pleasure of your company?”
    She swallowed. “Try again.”
    “Because I wanted to hunt through my father’s papers for anything that would tell me more about you.”
    A why almost escaped her lips; then she brazened it out. “Try again again .”
    Nathaniel sighed and slid from the table. “I can see that I am never going to get it right. Why don’t you tell me the answer instead? I’ll be over here flipping through the Stud Book , ready to consult the pedigree of any horse you mention.”
    She turned in her chair to follow his progress across the room. “When does Sir William want us to leave? He did no more than poke his head in and tell me I was to join the traveling party.”
    “That’s odd even for the name of a racehorse. Hold for a moment while I look that up.” Balancing the book on his knee, he turned pages.
    Rosalind hid a smile. When Nathaniel looked up, she managed to narrow her eyes.
    He slammed the book shut. “All right, all right. You are so serious.”
    “Yes, well. Hypotenuse. Iron gall ink. Naiad. I am at work, you know.”
    All buoyant energy, he paced from bookshelf to bookshelf and back. “We’re to leave the day after tomorrow. Whit Monday. Sir William’s plan of keeping to pairs and groups seems to be working, for no other horses have developed colic. But that means—”
    “It was no accident.” Her fingers felt cold.
    “Exactly.” He drummed his fingers on a shelf, then kept pacing. “I was so certain it wasn’t an intentional act. However, I guess it doesn’t much matter since the tampering hasn’t happened again.”
    “It still matters.” How faint her voice sounded.
    “Sir William agrees with me—can you imagine?—that we ought to get away from the stables as soon as possible. Whit Monday is earlier than I would usually wish to depart, but Epigram and Pale Marauder aren’t at their full strength and will benefit from a slow pace.”
    “Slow paces don’t win races.”
    “I was wrong: You are a better poet than I am. And you are also quite correct. I’ve no idea how they’ll do on the journey, but I do know they’ve no chance to win the Derby unless they are in Epsom. Once we arrive, I will send an express updating Sir Jubal and my father on their horses’ conditions.”
    “You said you’re wrong,” she repeated, “and I’m right.” He said it with such confidence, as though another rightness would come along any moment.
    “This time, yes.” He stopped his pacing. “So. What sort of work has you in such a mental flurry? Maybe I can help, so you can run off to Epsom with a clear conscience.”
    Conscience was exactly the right word to hit upon, though she couldn’t let him know that. “Maybe you can help at that.” She fumbled to frame a reason. “I need to find a…a sale record. For a horse Sir William bought in 1805. Where would papers from 1805 be kept?”
    “For 1805?” He tilted his head, gaze searching the ceiling as though clues were hidden in the plaster. “He was hardly in England that year. Any horses he bought were probably on behalf of the military, so the papers would be held by the government. Why would he need that now?”
    The best way to deal with a question one did not want to answer, Rosalind had found, was to ignore it. “Where would Sir William’s other correspondence be stored?” If her understanding of the family chronology was correct, Chandler Hall had not yet been built in 1805. Yet surely they would not have destroyed papers when moving households.
    “Other correspondence?” Now Nathaniel’s searching gaze was turned to Rosalind. “I’ve no idea if there is any. His secretarial difficulties have been of long standing—with