Matthew Read online

  To unwed mothers

  “Matthew—The Jaded Gentlemen Book II” Copyright © 2015 by Grace Burrowes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations or excerpts for the purpose of critical reviews or articles—without permission in writing from Grace Burrowes, author and publisher of the work.

  Published by Grace Burrowes Publishing, 21 Summit Avenue, Hagerstown, MD 21740.

  ISBN for Matthew—The Jaded Gentlemen Book II: 978-1-941419-17-5

  Cover by Wax Creative, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter One

  In Matthew Belmont’s world, a damsel in distress took precedence over an early morning inspection of the pear orchard, particularly when the damsel weighed close to a ton and had a foal at her side.

  “I wouldn’t ask it of you this early in the day,” Beckman Haddonfield said, as one of Matthew’s stable lads took Beck’s sweaty gelding to be walked out. “But if we lose the dam, we could well lose the foal, and neither Jamie nor I can figure out what ails the mare.”

  “Best saddle Minerva,” Matthew called to the groom. “You, Beckman, will wait a few moments before joining me at Linden. Your horse needs to catch his wind, as do you.”

  A father of three learned to speak in imperatives, though unlike Matthew’s sons, Beckman would probably heed the proffered direction.

  Minerva heeded Matthew’s direction—most of the time. She was a game grey mare, approaching twenty, but spry and flighty. On a brisk autumn morning, she made short work of the trip to Linden, negotiating cross-country terrain like the seasoned campaigner she was, though she over-jumped a rivulet for form’s sake.

  Matthew was soon handing her reins over to old Jamie, the Linden head stable lad. “Who is our patient?”

  “It’s Penny,” Jamie replied, loosening Minerva’s girth. “The autumn grass must be too rich, or maybe the filly’s upsetting her. Damned wee beast is at her mama all the time.”

  The proper office of children was to upset their parents, something Jamie couldn’t know.

  “The nights are getting cold, Jamie. The filly’s bound to nurse a lot.”

  Jamie hobbled beside Matthew into the barn, Minerva clip-clopping along behind them.

  “I know racehorses,” Jamie said, “and I manage with the hunters, hacks, and carriage horses, but a colicky brood mare flummoxes me.”

  Females of any species flummoxed Matthew, and he thanked the Almighty regularly that his children were all boys.

  “I’m none too fond of colic myself,” Matthew said. “Is Penny in the foaling stall?”

  “She is, and the filly is in the next stall over. Miss Theresa Jennings is keeping an eye on ’em both.”

  Miss Jennings would be a sister to Linden’s owner, Thomas Jennings, Baron Sutcliffe. In the excitement of the baron’s recent wedding, Matthew had not troubled his host for an introduction to Miss Jennings. Sutcliffe and his bride were off on their wedding journey, and thus nobody was on hand in the stables to make the introductions.

  Needs must when valuable livestock was imperiled. Matthew moved down the barn aisle to the foaling stalls, where a tall brunette stood outside a half door.

  “Miss Jennings, Matthew Belmont, at your service.”

  She brushed a glance over him, her blue eyes full of anxiety. “Mr. Belmont, my thanks for coming. I know little of doctoring horses, but Penny is special to my brother, and Jamie said—”

  The mare switched her tail, as if to say the idle chat could wait until later.

  “Jamie was right,” Matthew replied. “Sutcliffe would happily look in on a mare at Belmont House in my absence. I’m pleased to do the same for my neighbors.” Often at a less convenient hour than this, and to a less pulchritudinous reception.

  Miss Jennings was long out of the schoolroom and into the years when a woman’s true beauty shone forth.

  The massive copper-colored equine known as Penny had pricked her ears at the sound of Matthew’s voice, while the “little” filly—easily three hundred pounds of baby horse—in the next stall over danced in circles.

  “Are you comfortable with horses, Miss Jennings?”

  “Reasonably. I know which end does what.”

  The same starting point from which Matthew had embarked on his parental challenges.

  “I’d like to bring the filly into her mama’s stall, though somebody should hold her while I look Penny over. I can wait for Jamie to finish with Minerva if you’d rather.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ve held horses on many occasions.”

  “The little one’s name is Treasure,” Matthew said, opening the door to the smaller stall. “The Linden stable master halter-trained the filly before he left for London.”

  Matthew slipped the headstall over the filly’s ears, scratching at her fuzzy neck as he did. He kept up a patter of nonsense talk, telling the foal how fetching she looked in her halter, and how cozy she’d be in her woolly winter coat.

  Matthew passed Miss Jennings the lead rope and preceded her from the stall.

  “And now,” he said in the same conversational tones, “we’ll step over to Mama’s stall, so we might—”

  The instant Matthew slid the half door back, the filly shot forward, yanking Miss Jennings with her. The lady wisely dropped the lead rope as she stumbled, and Matthew found himself smack up against a lithe, warm human female, one whose lemony scent blended with the earthier aromas of horse and hay.

  In the next instant, Matthew tramped on Treasure’s lead rope, though the filly had slipped through the narrow opening to her mama’s stall and was nuzzling the mare with obvious relief.

  The instant after that became both awkward and… interesting. As Miss Jennings struggled to find her balance, and Matthew struggled to know where to put his hands.“I beg your pardon, Miss Jennings.” Matthew’s grip closed on the lady’s upper arms. “Are you all right?”

  Stupid question, when the lady was gasping for breath. She’d been flung at Matthew with enough force to knock the wind out of her.

  “Relax, madam.” Matthew probably ought not to have ordered her to relax. “You’ll get your breath back if you give yourself a moment. The fault was entirely mine. I should have known the filly would be frantic. I should have kept hold of that lead rope, and I do apologize—”

  Miss Jennings held up a hand, then gestured at the mare and filly. “If the mother’s ill, should the filly be doing that?”

  The foal was nursing, her little tail whisking gleefully about her quarters.

  Matthew removed his hands from Miss Jennings’s person. “I expect she’s hungry. I tend to forget my manners when I’m peckish. Then too, a determined female of any species should be not underestimated.”

  For the foal, who’d never been separated from her mama to speak of, nursing would be both physical and emotional sustenance. Matthew did not share that indelicate observation as he approached the mare. He talked nonsense again, a patter of flattery and small talk intended to
let the mare know exactly where he was at all times.

  “Now sweetheart,” Matthew crooned, “you won’t give me trouble if I merely want to admire your smile, will you?” He gently pried up the big mare’s lips and pressed on her gums. “There’s a love, now let’s have a listen, shall we?”

  He ran a hand down the horse’s shoulder and pressed an ear to her side, all the while letting the filly nurse.

  “You must tell me, Penny, if something is amiss.” He switched sides and listened again to her gut, though that required maneuvering the filly about. “I expect you miss your Wee Nick, don’t you, hmm? You have the look of a female pining for her favorite.”

  Miss Jennings flicked a wisp of hay from her sleeve. “Penny seems calmer with you in her stall. When Jamie tried to get close to her, she pawed and circled in the straw.”

  “Making the proverbial mare’s nest.” Matthew moved to the horse’s shoulder. “Let me have a look at your legs, my girl.” He ran his hands up and down each sturdy front limb, Penny having been bred to the plough. “No heat, no swelling, no bumps, no sore joints… You’re being coy, Penny, my love.”

  The mare turned a limpid eye on him, as if to confirm his accusation.

  “Is she eating?” he asked as he started on the back legs.

  “Like the proverbial horse. The stable master wrote out the rations for each horse, and Penny gets as much as any other two horses put together.”

  A parent’s lot was arduous, regardless of the species, particularly a lactating parent.

  “Have you those written instructions on hand?” Matthew asked as he pressed on the mare’s spine, vertebra by vertebra. “She’s may have a bit of indigestion, but it isn’t colic. Her limbs are sound. Eyes, ears, teeth, and mouth are all in fine shape. She’s producing milk, she’s not noticeably dehydrated, and mastitis doesn’t seem to be the issue.”

  “Mastitis?”

  “Inflammation of the…” Well, hell. Matthew waved a hand in the general direction of his chest. “Of the… udder. If the mare is sore, she won’t let the filly nurse, so she gets impacted in addition to the underlying inflammation—it’s quite painful for the horse. Happens more often in cows,” he went on, wishing his idiot country squire mouth would shut itself.

  “Cows, Mr. Belmont?”

  Had the lady taken a step back?

  “I beg your pardon.” Matthew avoided the consternation in Miss Jennings’s gaze by scratching Penny’s hairy withers. “A rustic life familiarizes one with animal husbandry.”

  Rural surrounds did not, however, require that one bleat on in the presence of a lady as if one were a sheep stuck halfway over a style.

  “I’ll find the stable master’s instructions.” Miss Jennings passed Matthew the foal’s lead rope and nearly ran down the barn aisle.

  Matthew leaned his forehead against the horse’s neck.

  “God help me.” At thirty-five years of age, he was turning into that pathetic caricature, a bumpkin who cared for naught but his hounds and horses, a man without conversation or sophistication of any sort. An embarrassment.

  At least he was an embarrassment who took the care of his land and livestock seriously. Matthew toed through the straw, and his boot came in contact with the inevitable horse droppings.

  Miss Jennings reappeared at the door to the stall, a piece of foolscap in her hand. “I have Nick’s list.”

  “What proclamations did Wee Nick make for his Penny?” Matthew crossed the stall to peer down at the paper. “This is quite detailed. I would need my spectacles to decipher the handwriting. Would you mind reading it for me?”

  The damned dim light was the trouble, and too many late nights attempting to make sense of legal tomes or his sons’ handwriting.

  “That’s no bother at all, Mr. Belmont.”

  Miss Jennings stood right next to Matthew and scanned the written instructions. This gave him his first opportunity to focus on Miss Jennings, to inventory her features and assess her attire.

  Matthew enjoyed most of his job as magistrate because the post involved solving the little mysteries that passed for criminal mischief in the wilds of Sussex. Who let Mrs. Golightly’s heifer out, and who might have stolen three of Mr. Dimwitty’s handkerchiefs from Mrs. Dimwitty’s clothesline?

  Theresa Jennings struck Matthew as a puzzle with missing pieces. Something about the woman was off, like a column of even numbers adding to an odd total. She was tall, brunette, blue-eyed, and wearing a dress nondescript enough to be appropriate in the stable, but still something….

  “The stable master is a man given to detail, isn’t he?” she concluded after rattling off a list portions and a schedule of activities.

  “Nicholas loves this mare,” Matthew replied. “Risked his life for her when the old stable burned, and suffered injury himself while rescuing her.” But then, Nicholas Haddonfield was partial to females on general principles. “Does he write anything more?”

  Matthew told himself to move, to leave the mare and foal in peace, but here he was, lounging shamelessly against the stall door, appearing to read over Miss Jennings’s shoulder when in fact he was imbibing the lemony scent of her hair and admiring the swell of her bosom against her modest brown walking dress.

  Matthew’s yearning for closeness with Miss Jennings wasn’t even sexual—not very sexual, anyway—which was vaguely alarming. He simply longed for the softness and sweetness of a woman.

  “Nicholas says Penny isn’t keen on ice in her bucket, particularly when the first hard frosts come through.” Miss Jennings squinted at the paper, which gratified Matthew exceedingly. “She prefers carrots to apples.”

  “Fussy old thing.” Matthew stepped over to the horse and scratched her great ears before the temptation to smooth his palm over Miss Jennings’s shoulder overcame his manners.

  “That’s probably what’s troubling you, isn’t it?” Matthew asked the horse. “You don’t have your personal body servant on hand to see to your every whim and pleasure, and your morning tea isn’t brewed exactly to your liking.”

  The horse reciprocated Matthew’s sympathy by wiggling her lips against his hair, a gesture he tolerated from one fussy old thing to another. He and Minerva had the same sort of relationship, and it was not eccentric.

  Despite what his sons might think.

  “I’ll have a word with Jamie and with Beckman,” Matthew said as he closed the stall door. “The mare needs the chill taken off her water in the morning. She’ll drink more, and her belly will ease as a result.”

  “Of course.”

  Miss Jennings eyed Matthew assessingly, looking something like her brother. She and the baron shared a particular curve of the lips, a quirk of the mouth when thinking. While Matthew tried again to figure out what about Miss Jennings didn’t quite sit right, she ran her fingers over his hair.

  “The mare destroyed your coiffure, and I don’t suppose a cowlick”—she repeated the gesture several times—“would comport with your manly dignity. There.”

  Matthew’s own wife had never… his own children… if he’d permitted a valet to dress him, he wouldn’t have allowed… He blinked down at Miss Jennings, resisting mightily the urge to investigate the state of his hair with his fingers.

  “I’m sorry.” She took a step back. “I didn’t mean to presume, but Thomas has always been particular about his turn-out, and men can take their appearance quite…”

  Matthew offered Miss Jennings the smile his sons referred to as the harmless old squire smile, which served nicely for inspiring confessions from miscreants under the age of ten.

  “No matter, Miss Jennings. I haven’t been properly fussed over by anybody in a very long time. You’re… sweet to trouble over me.”

  Odd—exceedingly odd—but sweet. Matthew left Miss Jennings by the brood mare’s stall and went off to find Jamie, intent on lecturing the head groom about the proper preparation of her ladyship’s morning tea.

  * * *

  Squire Belmont sauntered away, moving li
ke a man at ease in a stable, at ease in his life. The look in the big mare’s eye when she’d spied him had been nothing short of adoring.

  If a horse could have said, “Thank God you’ve come,” the mare would have been that horse. She’d wiggled her big lips across Mr. Belmont’s blond hair as if he were her favorite fellow of any species.

  And the squire hadn’t taken the least umbrage.

  He’d easily sorted out Penny’s problem, suggesting he was a man of discernment, but what man of discernment would have called Theresa Jennings sweet?

  Jamie came bustling out of the saddle room. “You’ll feed the lad, won’t ye?”

  “Feed whom?”

  Jamie jerked his chin in Mr. Belmont’s direction. “Yon squire. He’s notorious good at appreciating his victuals, and his cook done took off for Brighton again. Least you can do, being neighbors and all. So what’s ailing our Penny?”

  Thomas had the most impertinent help—a divine irony, considering how prickly Thomas could be—though every person at Linden worked hard.

  “I believe Mr. Belmont is searching you out to discuss what ails the mare,” Theresa said. “He suggested she was missing the stable master.”

  “Never thought of that. Might could be. Mares are particular. Squire!”

  Jamie trotted off, amazingly spry when he wanted to be, and flagged down Mr. Belmont, who stood in the stable yard conferring with Beckman.

  When Theresa joined them a few moments later, she had the sense she was interrupting a religious service.

  Jamie pushed something Theresa did not examine too closely about in the dirt with the toe of a dusty boot.

  “You say she’s not drinking enough, Squire?”

  “Exactly, which means she isn’t producing a lot at one time for Treasure,” Mr. Belmont went on, “so the filly is at her, and the mare is cranky and out of sorts, and probably getting a tad corked up as a result.”

  Theresa was not an equestrienne, but she knew enough not to ask what corked—what that term—meant.

  Beckman cleared his throat and cast a desperate glance at the squire.

  “Beg pardon, Miss Jennings.” Mr. Belmont nodded at her, though Theresa had the sense the squire barely noticed her. “So what the mare needs is a little more attention to the temperature of her morning water bucket, and she should come right in a day or two.” He swung his attention to Beckman. “Some extra coddling from you wouldn’t go amiss either, because you most closely resemble Wee Nick.”