The Valentine Legacy Read online

  Table of Contents

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  Epilogue

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE VALENTINE LEGACY

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1995 by Catherine Coulter

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1426-8

  A JOVE BOOK®

  Jove Books first published by The IMPRINT Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First edition (electronic): July 2001

  Also by Catherine Coulter

  THE COVE

  THE NIGHTINGALE LEGACY

  THE WYNDHAM LEGACY

  LORD OF FALCON RIDGE

  LORD OF RAVEN’S PEAK

  LORD OF HAWKFELL ISLAND

  THE HEIRESS BRIDE

  THE HELLION BRIDE

  THE SHERBROOKE BRIDE

  SEASON IN THE SUN

  BEYOND EDEN

  IMPULSE

  FALSE PRETENSES

  SECRET SONG

  EARTH SONG

  FIRE SONG

  ROSEHAVEN

  in hardcover from G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  To Charles Coulter, my father

  and a very talented gentleman.

  Thank you for the genes you passed

  on to me.

  And the support that never wavered.

  All my love

  1

  NEAR BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  MARCH 1822

  Slaughter County Course:

  Saturday Races, last race, one-half mile

  HE WAS GOING to lose. He didn’t want to lose, dammit, particularly to Jessie Warfield, that obnoxious brat. He could feel Rialto just behind him, hooves pounding firm and steady on the black dirt, head stretched long, muscles hard and bunched. He looked over his left shoulder. Rialto was coming on faster than a man escaping from a woman’s bedchamber before her husband came through the door, and the damned five-year-old had more endurance than an energetic man with four demanding wives.

  James stretched as far as he could and pressed his face as close as he could to Tinpin’s ear. He always talked to his horses before and during a race to gauge their moods. Good-natured Tinpin was always open to James. Tinpin, like most of his racehorses, was a fierce competitor; he had great heart. The horse wanted to win as much as James did. The only time he was distracted from victory was that time when a jockey had slammed his riding crop on his side, sending him into a rage. He’d nearly killed that damned jockey and lost the race in the process.

  James felt old Tinpin’s labored breathing beneath him. The horse was more a quarter-mile sprinter than a half-miler, so Rialto had the advantage there, in both ability and experience. This was only Tinpin’s second half-mile race. James kicked his sides, telling Tinpin over and over that he could do it, that he could keep the lead over that miserable little chestnut, that he could kick Rialto—named after a silly Venetian bridge—in the dirt. He had to make his move now or it would be too late. James promised Tinpin an extra bucket of oats, a dollop of champagne in his water. The horse gave a final burst of speed, but it wasn’t enough.

  He lost—by only a length. Tinpin’s sides were heaving. He was blowing hard, his neck lathered. James walked him around, listening to the groans and cheers of the crowd. He stroked Tinpin’s wet neck, telling him he was a brave fighter, that he would have won if James hadn’t been riding him. And he probably would have won, dammit, despite James’s reputed magic with his horses. Some claimed that James as good as carried some of his horses over the finish line himself. Well, he hadn’t carried any horse anywhere this day.

  Actually he hadn’t even come in second after Rialto. He’d placed third, behind another chestnut thoroughbred from the Warfield Stables, a four-year-old named Pearl Diver who had nosed past Tinpin at the last moment, his tail flicking over James’s leg.

  Tinpin didn’t have much bottom, but then again this hadn’t been a four-mile flat race, it had just been a half mile and bottom shouldn’t have mattered. What had mattered had been James’s extra weight. With a lighter rider on his back, Tinpin would have won. James cursed, slapping his riding crop against his boot.

  “Hey, James, you lost me ten dollars, curse you!”

  James was leading Tinpin back to his stable lad, his head down. He sloughed off his depression and smiled toward his brother-in-law, Gifford Poppleton, striding toward him like a civilized bull—short, powerful, but not an ounce of fat on him. He liked Giff and had approved of his marriage to his sister, Ursula, the year before. “You can well afford it, Giff,” he shouted back.

  “I can, but that’s not the point.” Gifford dropped into a long, lazy stride beside him. “You tried, James, but you’re just too damned big to be a jockey. Those other jockeys weigh four stone less than you do. Fifty-something extra pounds make a lot of difference.”

  “Bloody damn, Giff, you’re brilliant,” James said, striking a pose. “I wish I’d known. And here I thought only the experts knew that.”

  “Well, I know a lot of things,” Giff said, just grinning at him. “Hell, I wouldn’t have wagered on you if Ursula hadn’t nagged me into it.”

  “The brat weighs even less,” James said.

  “The brat? Oh, Jessie Warfield. That she does. Too bad about poor Redcoat breaking his leg in the second race. Now there’s a jockey. You trained him well. What does he weigh? One hundred pounds?”

  “Ninety pounds on a sunny day. Do you know how he broke his leg? Another jockey ran him into a tree.”

  “It hurt me to see it. You know, James, someone needs to make some rules about racing. All this mayhem is ridiculous. I read about a race in Virginia where the favored horse was poisoned the night before the race.”

  “It might be ridiculous,” James said, “and it might be occasionally dangerous, but it’s fun, Giff. Leave things be. Just be careful whom you bet with.”

  “As if you cared. Hey, Oslow, how are you doing?”

  Oslow Penny was the head of James’s breeding farm. On race days, though, he was the head stable lad who oversaw the handling of all the horses to race at the meet. He was a walking oral history, at least that’s what James called him. The Maryland J
ockey Club was beginning to agree. Oslow knew the direct line back, or the tail-male, of every horse that ran from South Carolina to New York. He also knew every current sire and every dam and every get from every racehorse in America and Britain.

  Oslow approached them, muttering under his breath, and gently removed Tinpin’s reins from James’s hand. He was bowlegged, scrawny-looking, and had the most powerful hands James had ever seen. His face was weathered and seamed, his brown eyes as powerful with intelligence as his hands were with strength.

  He squinted through the bright afternoon sun up at Gifford’s face. “Good afternoon, sir. I’m doing as fine as Lilly Lou did at the Virginia High Ebb races just last week. Better than Mr. James, that’s for sure. Aye, and how are you doin’, boy? Winded, are you? Well, you did your best, did better than Dour Keg, that knock-kneed creature old Wiggins still persists in racing. Hell, I don’t even remember who his sire was, that’s how bad he is.”

  “Did you bet on Mr. James, Oslow?”

  “Not I, Mr. Poppleton,” Oslow said, stroking a gnarled, veiny hand over Tinpin’s neck. “I would have if Redcoat had ridden him, poor lad, but not Mr. James. Mr. James has just growed too big, just like Little Nell, who ate her head off four years ago and couldn’t barely shuffle over the finish line at the Dickey races in North Carolina, clean in last place.”

  Gifford laughed. “You think I could have done better than Mr. James?”

  Oslow spat just beyond Tinpin’s left shoulder. “Not with that pair of hands you got, Mr. Poppleton. Sorry, sir, but you’ve got ham hands, not like Mr. James, who has magic running out the ends of his fingers into the horses.”

  “Thank you, Oslow, for something,” James said. “Now, Gifford, let’s go see Ursula. I don’t suppose you brought our mother with you?” He patted Tinpin’s neck as he moved away.

  “No, thank God. She tried to talk Ursula out of coming to this godless place.”

  James laughed. He was still grinning when he saw the Warfield brat striding toward him, looking just like a boy, still wearing a riding hat with her violent red hair shoved up under it. Her face was red from the hot sun. A line of freckles marched across her nose.

  He didn’t want to stop, but he did. It was hard. He’d just as soon ignore her for the rest of his days, but he was a gentleman, dammit.

  “Congratulations,” he said, trying to unclench his teeth. She’d beaten him often since she was a knock-kneed kid of fourteen, but he still hated it. He never got used to it.

  Jessie Warfield paid no attention to Gifford Poppleton, president of the Union Bank of Baltimore, as she came toe-to-toe with James and said, “You tried to shove me into that ditch on the second lap.”

  A dark blond eyebrow went up. “Did I now?”

  She came up onto her tiptoes, her nose an inch from his. “You know you did. Don’t even consider lying, James. It was close. If I weren’t such a bloody good rider, I would have gone over the edge. But I didn’t. I came back and beat you—beat you but good.”

  “You certainly did,” he said easily, wanting to smack her. Some sportsmanship. She was a female. If she were a male, she’d know it wasn’t right to rub the loser’s nose in his defeat. Although, he thought, when he next beat her, he was going to rub her entire face in the dirt.

  “Do you know your lips are chapped? Do you know I can count your freckles from this distance?” he said. “One, two, three—goodness, there are so damned many of them it would take me a week.”

  She backed up fast. “Don’t try it again, or I’ll take my riding crop to you.” She licked her chapped lips, shook the crop in his face, nodded to Giff, and strode off.

  Gifford said, “It looked to me like you did nudge Tinpin into her horse, James.”

  “Yes, but not hard enough. I just wanted to get her attention. It was nothing compared to what she did to me last year at the June races in Hacklesford.”

  “Well, what did she do, this fearsome girl?”

  “I was crowding her just a bit, just to teach her a lesson. She knows every dirty maneuver there is. Anyway, she pulled her horse away just enough so she could kick out at me. She got me directly on the leg and sent me sprawling.”

  Gifford laughed, thinking that James sure made the Warfield girl bristle something fierce. He asked even as he watched Jessie Warfield striding away from them, her riding crop flicking up and down, up and down, “Did she win the race?”

  “No, she came in last place. She lost her own balance when she kicked me and reeled into another horse. The two of them went off in a tangle. It would have been funny if I hadn’t been rolled into a ball on the ground, trying to protect my head from running horses. Just look at her, Giff. She’s taller than any woman I know, she looks men straight in the eye, and I wouldn’t know she was a female watching her walk.”

  Giff wasn’t so sure about that, but he could understand James’s ire. He said mildly, “She rides very well.”

  “To give the brat her due, she does, dammit.”

  “Who’s that with Ursula?”

  “It’s another Warfield daughter. There are three in all. The eldest and the youngest are neither one a thing like the brat. Both of them are beautiful, stylish, and ladies, well, perhaps not entirely, but close enough for descriptive purposes. That’s Nelda, the eldest. She’s married to Bramen Carlysle, the shipping baron. Come along, you can meet her. I guess you haven’t met her because both daughters were in Philadelphia with an aunt until just two months ago. Hell, you were in Boston until last fall, until the end of the January.”

  “Bramen Carlysle? Good God, James, Carlysle’s older than Fort McHenry. He fought in the Revolution. He was present at Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. He’s older than dust. How old is this Nelda?”

  “Maybe twenty-two.”

  Gifford just snorted.

  Ursula wasn’t happy. She sent a look toward her husband that offered substantial marital rewards if he would get rid of Nelda Carlysle.

  Gifford, with all the aplomb of a rich banker, which he was, gallantly swept his hat from his head. “Mrs. Carlysle, it’s a pleasure, ma’am, to finally meet you.”

  “And you, Mr. Poppleton. Ah, James. I’m so sorry about that last race. Jessie won but she didn’t deserve to, all the ladies around me agreed. She’s an abomination. I’m sure Father will speak to her about it. So unladylike of her, so embarrassing for the rest of us.”

  “I’m sure your father will speak to her, Nelda. He’ll probably toast her with his best champagne. Ah, don’t be embarrassed, she’s damned good. You should be singing her praises.” God, he was a perverse bastard.

  “Surely not.” Nelda sighed, looking down at the toes of her slippers. “She shouldn’t be good at such a manly pursuit. A jockey!” She actually shuddered. “I vow I can’t go to a ladies’ tea without—”

  James, who privately thought Jessie should be flogged, said even more perversely, “She’s an excellent horsewoman. Surely you can be a bit more tolerant, Nelda. She’s just different, that’s all.”

  “Perhaps,” Nelda said, lightly touching her gloved fingers to his forearm. “You did well in the race.”

  “Not as well as two of your father’s other racehorses.”

  “It’s just because you’re such a big man, James. You haven’t come to visit me. Now that I’m an old married lady, I am perhaps freer than I was when I wasn’t married.”

  Ursula cleared her throat. “Well, Nelda, do say hello to Bramen. We must return home ourselves now. My mother is staying with us until Monday.”

  His mother-in-law. Gifford would have preferred to remain out until midnight. His mother-in-law, Wilhelmina, knew no equal. James, in deference to his own sanity, had moved his mother out of his house at Marathon and into a charming red-brick town house in German Square near the center of Baltimore some two years before. She visited Ursula and Gifford at their home not a mile away in the elegant four-story terrace on St. Paul Street, claiming that her own tiny dwelling depressed her spirits from time to tim
e. However, she complained every minute she was in her daughter’s house.

  Nelda showed no signs of moving on. She edged closer to James. “Surely dear Wilhelmina can wait for just a bit longer. James, my dear husband tells me you’re going to stay in Baltimore forever now.”

  “I have no plans to return to England anytime this year,” James said. “Candlethorpe, my stud farm in Yorkshire, is in good hands. Marathon, on the other hand, needs a lot of work and attention.”

  “Marathon?”

  “I named my stud farm in honor of that ancient Greek who ran his heart out getting to Athens to tell of their victory at Marathon against the Persians. If he’d only had one of my horses, he wouldn’t have fallen down dead after he’d given his news.”

  “Oh,” Nelda said. “You should pick another name, James, perhaps something more stately, more easily recognized. Marathon sounds foreign.”

  “It is foreign,” Ursula said. “Perhaps even nasty.”

  “Oh,” Nelda said suddenly, waving, “There’re Alice and Allen Belmonde. Over here, Alice!”

  James stiffened. He looked at Giff, who winked at him, saying, “Good day, Alice. You’re looking lovely. Belmonde,” he added, nodding to the man who had married Alice for her money and was now trying to spend as much of it as Alice’s father would release, which, thankfully, wasn’t all that much a year. He wanted to make money racing, something, James knew, that was just about as tough as marrying a rich girl, which he had managed to do. He’d had one horse race today. The thoroughbred had come in sixth out of a field of ten. He looked up when Allen Belmonde said to him, “I want Sober John to cover one of my mares, Sweet Susie. Your price is stiff, Wyndham, but perhaps it’s worth it.”

  “Up to you,” James said easily, then said to Alice, “I like your bonnet. Pink becomes you.”

  She flushed, something that she managed to do as if on command. It quite amazed him. But he wanted to tell her it wasn’t all that effective, at least on him. But he liked Alice, had known her since she was born. So he just smiled when she said, “You’re so nice to me, James, and I’m sorry you lost, but I’m glad Jessie won. Isn’t she wonderful? I was just telling Nelda how very much I admire Jessie. She does exactly what she wants without being bound down by all the endless rules.”