The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman

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Blue strips of sky between bleak clouds this chill day before Christmas as winter entrenched across the remote midlands of Ireland. With darkness descending at tea time in the north east bedroom of a grey cut stone manor, an ample horsey woman who had the day before been riding to the hounds, groaned giving birth. The news was whispered from servant to servant down through the house and more loudly into the kitchens and louder still out across the lantern lit stable yards.

The husband of this woman, a man as well known for his gambling as he was for his generosity among cronies, had married for money and was, as he was mostly, away in England for the racing. And upon that birth day he had waged one hundred pounds on a rank outsider at one hundred to one, which had come waltzing in by eight lengths, a winner. And upon hearing the news of a boy sent a cable

NAME HIM DANCER

And with this among other names a child was christened in the small chapel at the top of the stairs. Reginald Darcy Thormond Dancer Kildare.

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