The Rightful Heir

Hyde Park at six in the morning belongs to grooms, dogs and young men who haven't been to bed.

Mist lies along the Serpentine like spilled milk. Rotten Row is a long brown ribbon of tan between the trees, and the sound of hooves on it is the first sound in London that has made sense to you. Pilgrim feels it too. He came up from Hampshire behind the carriage, and he has been sulking in the Ormond mews for a week, and now he dances under you, blowing, ears pricked, wanting to go.

"Not yet," you tell him.

Evadne rides beside you on a neat black mare, in a dark green habit and a hat with a curling feather that she keeps blowing out of her face. Molly trails behind on a cob, yawning.

"You don't have to do this," Evadne says.

"You said I should be seen."

"I said seen. I didn't say raced." She glances up the Row, where a knot of riders is waiting under the elms. The Duke of Stratherne sits a tall bay, flanked by four young men in coats that cost more than Kingsmere's hay bill. "He'll have chosen the best horse in London."

"Then it'll be a good race."

She looks at you sideways. "You're enjoying this."

"A little."

"Insufferable," she says, and you'd swear she sounds pleased.

The wager was made at White's last night, you've been told, by people you've never met. Ten thousand pounds have changed hands on the question of whether Mr. Pilgrim of Northumberland can ride as well as he refused the duke a dance. Lord Algernon has bet a hundred on you that he doesn't have.

The duke nods to you as you come up. "Mr. Pilgrim. Lady Evadne. How charming to see you abroad so early." He runs his gloved hand down the bay's neck. "Corsair. Four years old. I paid two thousand guineas for him at Newmarket. Your gray is very pretty."

"He's been called worse, Your Grace."

"From the oak to the gate at Kensington. It isn't the done thing, racing on the Row, but it's early and nobody's looking." He smiles at Evadne. "Except everybody."

You line them up. One of the young men drops a handkerchief.

Pilgrim goes.

He goes like he's been waiting his whole life for this, and maybe he has. The bay is fast, a fine horse, long and clean, and for the first furlong he's at your knee, and you can hear the duke's breath and the crack of his whip. Pilgrim flattens his ears at the sound. You let him have his head and lean down along his neck and say his name, once, and the gray finds something nobody in London knew he had.

Two lengths. Four. The trees go by in a streak of green. The mist tears around you. By the gate you're six lengths clear and there are people on the grass, grooms and gentlemen and a milkmaid with her pails set down, cheering for no reason except that it's beautiful.

You pull up. Pilgrim snorts and shakes his head and looks immensely pleased with himself.

The duke comes up behind, Corsair blowing hard. He doesn't say anything. He looks at Pilgrim for a long moment, and then at you, and you see him filing it away.

Evadne arrives at a gallop she has no business riding sidesaddle. Her hat's gone. Her hair's half down. Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are blazing, and she pulls up next to you so close your knees bump.

"You," she says, breathless. "You absolute..."

"Careful, my lady. People are listening."

"I want them to listen." She turns in the saddle and waves at the crowd on the grass, laughing, the real laugh again, and a dozen young men take off their hats to her. Then, low, just for you: "Six lengths, Ethan. They'll be talking about it till August."

They are talking about it by noon. By three, cards have arrived at Ormond House from people Evadne says haven't called on the family in a decade. By five, Aunt Hermione has been invited to four dinners and accepted all of them.

At six, a footman in the Stratherne livery delivers a note.

Mr. Pilgrim. A man who rides like that should see my Arabian. Tomorrow, eleven o'clock, Stratherne House. I promise not to race you. S.

"Don't go," Evadne says.

"He'll call me a coward if I don't."

"Let him."

"Then everyone will wonder why." You fold the note. "I'll look at his horse, Evie. That's all. I know horses."

She stares at you, and you realize what you've called her. It was Evie when she was fourteen. It hasn't been Evie since.

"Fine," she says finally, and turns away too fast. "Look at his horse. And come straight back."

Stratherne House takes up half a block of Park Lane: white stone, tall windows, a portico like a temple. The mews behind it are better than most men's houses. Forty stalls, brass fittings, the cobbles scrubbed clean.

The duke meets you in the yard himself, in shirtsleeves and a green waistcoat. He sends the grooms away with a word. They go fast, like men who know what happens to grooms who linger.

The Arabian is real, at least. A gray mare, small and perfect, with a dished face and eyes like a deer's. You run a hand down her legs because you can't help it.

"Lovely," you say. "Bad off hind, though. She's been shod short."

"Has she? I'll have the farrier whipped." He leans on the half door, watching you. "You know horses, Mr. Pilgrim."

"I grew up with them."

"In Northumberland."

"Yes."

"No," says the duke gently. "You grew up at Kingsmere Park, in Hampshire, in the stable yard. You were the head groom's boy. You became stable master two years ago. Your wages are thirty pounds a year." He smiles. "I told you I never forget a face. It took me a night to remember. I'd seen it on the end of my own riding whip."

The mare shifts. You keep your hand on her neck, because if you take it off you'll put it somewhere else.

"I could ruin her with that by dinnertime," the duke says. "Lady Evadne Ormond, betrothed to her groom. She'd never be received again. But I'm not a vulgar man, and that would be vulgar. Besides." He reaches into his waistcoat and takes out a folded paper. "That isn't the interesting part."

He holds it out. You don't take it. He unfolds it himself and holds it up to the light from the door.

It's a copy of a parish entry. Neat clerk's hand.

Baptisms, St. Swithun's, Hamble Cross, in the County of Southampton. 1790. March 14th. Ethan, son of Aubrey Haverell, Viscount Tunstall, and Annis his wife.

"My man Snell is very thorough," the duke says. "He went to Kingsmere for the groom. He found an old woman in the village who remembered your mother, and a name she used to whisper. He went to Hamble Cross. The church register for 1789 is missing a page, did you know? Torn out. But the bishop of Winchester gets a copy of every parish register each year. Nobody ever thinks of the bishop."

You can't feel your hands.

"Aubrey Haverell," the duke says, "was heir to the Earl of Ravelstoke. He died in a fall from his horse in the summer of 1790. His younger brother Godfrey inherited everything two years later. Nobody ever knew Aubrey had married. Nobody ever knew he had a son." He folds the paper with great care. "You're not a groom, Mr. Pilgrim. You're the rightful Earl of Ravelstoke."

The locket is in your waistcoat pocket. A.H. to A.T. You can feel it against your ribs like a coal.

"Only I know it," says the Duke of Stratherne, and slips the paper back into his waistcoat. "And I intend to use it against you both."