Free Spearfield's Daughter by Jon Cleary Page A

very straight.
    Her face was also damned attractive, he thought, taking another look at her. Not beautiful; but some of the most beautiful women he had known had been the dullest company and the worst lovers. Those eyes, those cheekbones, that almost-black hair cut in a bob with thick bangs: he always thought of it as the French look, because French apache dancers in his silent films always looked like that. But he doubted that this one would allow herself to be tossed about the floor as the women had been in the apache dances. She had a magnificent figure and she wasn’t dressed like a rebel teenager. Her legs were excellent, though she wasn’t advertising them; her skirt came down to her knees, leaving you hoping she might lift it to show you more. Under his driving-apron things began to stir, an old stallion sighting another filly.
    â€œYou look very smart, too.”
    â€œI always dress for the occasion, my Lord.” She glanced around at the crowd at this horse and carriage show. “I’ve got the right legs for mini-skirts, but I don’t think the Queen would like them. Mini skirts, I mean, not my legs. The Duke might, but not the Queen.”
    He wished she would not keep calling him my Lord. “Besides good legs, you also have a good opinion of yourself.”
    â€œIt’s the old Australian inferiority complex, my Lord. We always tend to over-compensate.”
    She looked the last person in the world to have an inferiority complex, Australian or not. But then his two grooms appeared and told him his number was about to be called. He got up on to the front seat of the four-wheeled carriage and was handed the reins of the four-horse team. Then the two grooms clambered up into the rear seat, took their places and waited while he adjusted the reins in his left hand.
    â€œGood luck, my Lord. This is the dressage, isn’t it?” There was no sign of any tongue in her cheek, but he knew she was laughing at him.
    â€œYes.” Then he could have applied the long carriage-whip to himself when he heard himself say, “It shows how much control I have over those who work for me.”
    â€œThe horses, you mean?”
    â€œOf course.” Damn it, why was he letting her upset him so?
    When he had got his peerage five years ago he had looked around for a recreation that would give him more respectability in the eyes of those who still thought he was a nouveau riche upstart, yet another of the postwar Goths who were trying to take over Britain. He had power, through his newspapers, and he was accepted by those who thought power had its own respectability: politicians, financiers, union officials and the bosses of the London gangs. But he had not been accepted by the real Establishment, the old money that had had its own power long before the press barons, Northcliffe, Rothermere and Beaverbrook, created their fiefdoms. So he had studied his own newspapers and magazines; amongst the latter, the social journals had pointed the way. Horses: at certain times of the year the real Establishment was surrounded by horses, up to their hocks in breeding and manure. He could not ride well enough to hunt or play polo; if he was going to get involved with horses, he had to find some way to avoid throwing his leg over them. He bought two carriages, a phaeton and a four-wheeled dog-cart, and had them sent to his country estate. He engaged a coachman to instruct him and had been pleased to find that he was a natural driver—“One should drive a horse like one handles a woman, m’Lord. You have the right sort of hands for it.” Some of his women, he thought, would have been amused to hear that.
    He had practised for a year, learning everything there was to know about driving show horses, and then had entered his first show. Typically, he had started at the top, at the Royal Windsor. Also typically, he had won, beating the Duke of Edinburgh into second place. He had not been invited to