The Duke, page 3
Lady Adella said, “Come, Crabbe, don’t stand there like a flabby dolt. The tea tray sets on the table as it has for the past fifty years. That’s right. Now ye may take yerself off—and tell Cook that I’ve no wish to see another tureen of lentil and rice soup this evening. I’ve had enough of that swill to burn my belly to the ground. Tell her to prepare something special—my grandson is here.”
Lady Adella turned to Percival and waved her cane in the direction of a faded green velvet settee opposite her.
“Well, my boy, it’s about time ye present yerself. Sit down, sit down. Brandy child, pour the tea. My fingers are stiff as my cane today.”
Brandy slithered self-consciously from behind her grandmother’s chair. She had reached down to clutch the silver handle of the teapot when Percy’s hand covered her wrist.
“Good day to ye, little cousin. You’re looking remarkably fit.” His hand tightened about her wrist, and she felt his fingers gently stroke the palm of her hand.
She wanted to hit him on the head with the teapot, but it was so old, so fragile, she was afraid she’d give it even more dents—that, or it would just burst apart. She jerked her hand free, managing to keep her mouth shut. She wanted no scene in front of Lady Adella. She wiped her palm on her skirt.
He laughed softly even as he said, “My dear grandmother, how do ye contrive to grow more deliciously lovely by the year?” He bowed low and planted a light kiss on her blue-veined hand.
“Ye’re a dog, Percy, my boy, but a dog of my liking. Now, why didn’t ye come when I bade ye? Three months late to offer yer condolences. Were the truth to be told, it surprises me even now that ye would forgo all yer dissipations in Edinburgh.”
“I’m not a hypocrite, lady. Ye must know that Lord Angus’s passing must bring all his saddened relations sooner or later back to this heap of damp stone to pay their respects. Some of us just take longer than others.”
“Yer tea, cousin Percy.”
“Ah, a bright light amid the dismal shadows. My thanks, little cousin. Ye grow more and more like the fair anemones waiting to be plucked.”
“Yer attempt at simile sets wrong with the child, Percy,” Lady Adella said, all sharp now because she’d realized that Percy’s experienced male eye had observed the changes in Brandy before she had.
“Grandmama, may I be excused? I promised to go for a walk with Constance and Fiona.”
“Aye, child, ye may, but mind ye not to be late. Ye know I don’t like my soup cold.”
Brandy dipped an awkward curtsy toward her cousin, picked up her skirts, and was out the door in a flash. She thought she heard a chuckle as she slipped from the room, curse him.
“Not so much a child anymore, lady,” Percy said with sufficient loudness that Brandy caught his words from the corridor.
“Don’t flirt with the girl, Percy. She’s far too young yet and inexperienced to glean yer meaning.” She locked her stiff fingers about the cup handle and took a noisy sip of the scalding tea through her remaining teeth. She saw his hooded green eyes narrow, as if in a challenge, and smiled to herself. Aye, all Robertson males were the same. Flamboyant and weak, the lot of them. Always believed themselves to be gods to women. Ha, rutting stoats who whined when they didn’t get what they wanted, which was usually another woman.
“To yer continued immortality, lady,” Percy said, raising his cup.
Lady Adella gave a parchment laugh. “Aye, indeed. I swore that I would cling to this world longer than Angus. He was exceedingly furious when the doctor told him that he was dying. If there had been any money left, I swear he would have burned it rather than leave it in my hands, poor old gouty bastard.”
“I do wonder how he feels now, roasting in Hades, knowing that you’re here and I’m here.” Percy smoothed the bitter sarcasm from his voice as he added, “At least now I can visit Penderleigh whenever I wish to.”
Lady Adella looked at her hands, at the teacup on the small table beside her, then grinned at Percy. “What would ye say, my boy, if I were to make ye legitimate?”
Percy felt his blood suddenly pounding at his temples, but there was wariness in his voice. “Ye think to make up for years upon years of slights, lady? Old Angus would rise up from his grave and strangle ye.”
“A fond thought, I can’t deny, seeing his shrouded old bones heaving out of that deep hole I buried him in. But ye can’t be blind to the advantages it would bring ye. What do ye say, Percy?”
“Advantages? Mayhap it would bring me a better chance of wedding an heiress, but it would gain me nothing of anything here. The English duke would still have claim to Penderleigh and the title, would he not?”
“Perhaps, my boy, but ye then would also have full claim to the Robertson name. I haven’t liked Davonan’s son called the Robertson bastard. It’s turned my innards. Come, Percy, don’t give me your devil’s stare. Ye know that I’ve never been one to mince matters or deny a truth. Who can know what may happen if ye become legitimized? Well, do ye want it or not?”
Percy thought of the rather squat, myopic Joanna MacDonald, daughter and heiress of a wealthy merchant in Edinburgh. Unless his instincts had grossly misled him—which they hadn’t, he was sure of that—she was much enamored of him. Her priggish father wouldn’t be able to deny him. He smiled at lady Adella, his full, sensuous lips curving into a boyish grin that had brought many an unheeding female to heel and then to his bed. “Aye, Grandmama, I should very much like to be legitimate. I suspect even my creditors would be properly impressed. I do wonder what would happen to my claim to Penderleigh if my name were secured.”
“Mayhap ye should wonder what would happen were the English duke not to produce an heir?”
“Or if the English duke were to fall ill, say, and not survive?”
Lady Adella regarded her grandson with a malicious eye. “Och, my boy, the English duke is, I believe, a young man, not above twenty-eight years old—too young to depart this world without some outside assistance. As to heirs, the duke may already be wed and have a nursery full of hopeful brats. If not, there’s always the hopeful uncle or cousin. There’s always an heir somewhere in the woodwork.”
“Acquit me of murderous designs, lady. I have raised a question of speculative interest, nothing more. It’s but a game we’re playing. A game you started.”
Lady Adella snorted in disgust. “Aye, and a question our dear Claude’s son, Bertrand, would ask were he not so lily-livered. One illegitimate grandson and one disinherited grand nephew. Angus be damned. He was always a fool and stubborn as a donkey leashed to a hay cart. I will tell ye, Percy, if I make ye legitimate and reinherit Claude and Bertrand, the English duke might very well find his soup poisoned even if he doesn’t budge from London.”
He still felt the shock of surprise to hear this old woman speak so ruthlessly, with such spite, and the good lord knew he should be used to it by now. “Ye speak nonsense, Grandmama. Angus would never have reinherited Claude and Bertrand. Ye make me legitimate, and I will be the one to have claim after the English duke.”
“It brings bile to your throat to think about Claude and Bertrand, eh, lad? It’s nothing more than dust in the wind yer claim would be were I to reinherit Douglass’s son.” She shrugged her thin shoulders, all the while watching him closely. “Time will tell, Percy, about yer claim—time and me, of course.”
For a moment Percy gazed at Lady Adella in dumb surprise. Why, the old woman is like a great bloated spider, he thought, weaving her web and taunting me to come into it. Does she want all of us at each other’s throats? Rather, he quickly corrected himself, does she want me at their throats? He consciously pulled himself away. For the moment, he hoped that she would make him legitimate.
He rose and clasped Lady Adella’s hand.
“I will stay, if ye don’t mind, until all this business is straightened out. When I return to Edinburgh, I have a fancy to carry my legitimate name with me.”
“As ye will, Percy,” Lady Adella said. “Tell Crabbe to have MacPherson fetch here on the morrow, and I shall tell the old buzzard what to do.”
“Aye, Grandmama,” Percy said, and turned to take his leave.
“Percy.”
He turned.
“Brandy will have nothing to do with ye. She’s much too much the child yet and doesn’t know what use to make of men.”
She saw the suppressed gleam in his eyes as she nodded dismissal, and wondered if he knew how much he was like the grandfather he hated so much.
Alone, Lady Adella parted her lips in a smug grin that showed most of her upper teeth. She knew something of the law, and now that Angus had finally left the world to take up residence with the devil, she fully intended to stir the legal pot to boiling.
Old MacPherson would do her bidding, no fear about that, and the courts would fall in line. The Robertson name still wielded power. She would legitimize Percy and, aye, perhaps even reinherit Claude and Bertrand. As to what the English duke would think about her machinations, she shrugged her meager shoulders. He was, after all, safely stored away in faraway London. She was certain he would stay there.
She gazed down at the small square pillow at her feet, Brandy’s pillow. Her granddaughter, with the curves and hollows of a woman’s body. Lady Adella thwacked her cane in annoyance. Three granddaughters, none of them with any prospects of marriage and even less dowry. Absurd to believe that the unknown English duke, although now the girls’ nominal guardian, would freely part with some of his guineas for some unknown Scottish relatives. Even though she admitted to herself that it was an outlandish idea, she did not relinquish it. Time would tell, and she would be there to help in the telling.
At least Percy would be able to fend for himself once she had seen to legitimizing him. Handsome and carefree he was—exactly as she had been once, many a long year ago. Drat Davonan anyway for not at least giving Percy’s mother his name. But then Davonan had always been odd. She remembered how delighted she’d been to hear that Davonan had even lain with a woman. But it hadn’t lasted, of course. Not a year later, he’d gone off with a brawny Irishman, leaving her to care for his small, helpless son. She wondered idly, with no pain now, if Davonan had really gone willingly to the guillotine with his French lover, a dissolute comte who had deserved to have his worthless head severed from his decadent body. At least Percy had not inherited that tendency from his father.
Lady Adella slewed her head about toward the clock. Time to call Old Marta to assist her to dress for dinner. She gave a sudden cackle of laughter. Old Marta indeed. A saucy slut that one had been.
Thank the Lord Angus had never gotten her with child.
4
Bertrand Robertson was chewing thoughtfully on the end of his quill as he sat hunched over a thick ledger. His only servant, the sharp-eared Fraser, had just told him that Percy had returned. Damned blighter. What the hell did he want this time? Stupid question. Money, of course. Well, there was no money for him, not a bloody sou, so let him flatter Lady Adella’s beautiful eyebrows and sharp wit. It made no difference. Of course, he wouldn’t be surprised if the old woman lied to him and made him all sorts of promises. He wouldn’t put anything past her.
He forced himself back to the column of numbers, neatly entered row upon row in the account book. Stark numbers. Very bad numbers, their sums leaving his belly cramping.
Penderleigh had lost ground this year, what with Angus dying bringing his creditors demanding payment, and the black-faced sheep’s wool bringing much less than expected at Sterling market. The English duke wasn’t going to like it one bit.
He ran ink-stained fingers through the shock of dark red hair that fell habitually over his forehead. A disinherited grand nephew he might be, but old Angus had known his worth and trusted him to eke out every possible groat from the estate. His eyes burned as he gazed down at the scraggly numbers, little useless numbers, and he felt again a stab of real fear. Angus was dead and now he might very well find both himself and his gouty father tossed unceremoniously off Penderleigh land. How would he be able to convince the man of business the English duke would send that he had tried to force economics, indeed, that the castle and dower house were in a fair way of crumbling about their ears because he’d not allowed funds to make repairs? That was in a fair way to being a good jest. What funds? It hadn’t been all that difficult.
He glanced up as Fraser, his step soundless despite his stout body, poked his round face into the small, sunny room and coughed discreetly. Bertrand looked up and nodded.
“Master Bertrand, yer father’s just heard tell of Master Percival’s a-comin’ to the castle. He be in a tither, if ye ken me meanin’.”
“Aye, Fraser, I ken all too well. Tell him I shall join him presently. Tell him not to worry about Percy. Tell him that Percy is the least of our problems. Wait, I’ll tell him all that. Don’t you worry, Fraser.”
“Och, no matter what ye say, it’s still a bad time, wi’ Master Percival bein’ aboot.” Fraser shook his grizzled head, his enduring smile fading a bit.
“Don’t worry, Fraser,” Bertrand said again. “Percival is naught but a buzzing, bothersome fly. It’s the English duke, our new master, who will tighten the collars about our necks. It just might be the killing blow. Then all of us will be looking about for a way to feed ourselves. Do you know how to fish, Fraser?”
“A bit. I love abalone, but I can’t catch it. Ye’re right, Master Bertrand, we would be in a bad way if what ye say comes true. Ye really believe that the dook be like the Black Cumberland?”
Bertrand laughed humorlessly as he rose from his chair. “This isn’t seventeen forty-six, Fraser, and the English duke wasn’t born yet. Doubtless, though, he’s a proud man and, like all the English, disdainful of the Scots. Ye know, of course, that it’s likely he’ll dispatch one of his London men here to grub about and accuse us of stealing from him.”
Fraser’s intelligent, close-set brown eyes, as round as his face, narrowed, but he remained silent. He said finally, “Not a blithering thing we can do aboot it now, master. Ye’d best go on to yer father’s room. I canna be sure, but my ears tell me he’s a-pokin’ his stick on the floor. I’ll hae some tea brewin’ fer ye an’ bring it.”
Bertrand left the book room with a lagging step. As he mounted the decrepit stairs to the upper floor of the dower house and his father’s stuffy bedchamber, he continued to ponder his problems, and with each step he became more depressed.
“Well, don’t just stand there, Bertie, come in, come in. By the time it takes Fraser to fetch ye, I am near to forgetting what I wanted. Come in, boy, come in. So what can ye tell me? Have we more money now than we did in the morning?”
“How are ye feeling, Father? Ye’re looking well. No, we haven’t a groat more. This afternoon looks just as bad as this morning did.” Bertrand crossed the bare floor to where his father, Claude, sat wrapped from head to toe in a heavy tartan blanket next to a roaring peat fire. The room was surely hotter than the fires of Hades. Bertrand wiped his brow. In another ten minutes he’d want to dip his head in a bowl of cold water. In another twenty minutes he’d have a headache that would send him to the cliffs to stare over the sea and gather himself back together again in the stiff cool breezes. His father was a trial. He couldn’t seem to remember when his father hadn’t been a trial.
“Ye have eyes in yer head, Bertie. Look ye. My foot’s the size of a bloated, rotting dung heap, no thanks to ye. And it’s cold in this bloody room. Ye’re to speak to Fraser, tell him that the cold pains me something terrible. We need more peat. Have him fetch more peat.”
“I’ll speak to Fraser, Father.” Bertrand sat back in the chair, which smelled of long ago clothes and pipes, and waited patiently for his father to get to the point. He prayed what his father wanted would be said before his headache arrived in full force.
“Move yer head a bit to the left, Bertie, ye’re blocking out my sunlight. Not that I like sunlight all that much, but it warms my bones, and the good Lord knows that bones need to be kept warm or they’ll buckle and that’s the end to a man.”
Bertrand shifted himself in the cracked leather wing chair across from his father. He ran his hand over his forehead, for the blast of heat from the fireplace was already making him sweat. The headache was coming soon. A man shouldn’t have headaches, but what could he do? He hated this bloody room that was like a furnace.
Claude said, “Ye know, of course, that Percy is come back. The vulture swooping to gnaw the bones afore old Angus is worm-picked in his grave.”
Bertrand sighed. “Father, it makes no difference what Percy does. There’s naught but bones for him to gnaw, so much the worse for us. Ye may believe me that Percy is the least of our worries.”
Claude yelled, “Don’t ye treat me like a dim-witted chirper, my fine young man. Did ye know that Adella plans to legitimize yer fine bastard cousin?”
“That’s ridiculous, Father. I’ll thank ye not to weave tales like that. Whoever told ye such a buffoonish story? It’s bloody nonsense, nothing more, just nonsense. Forget about it.” Bertrand realized that his hands were fisted around the arms of the chair. Damn, he forced himself to relax. He flexed his hands.
His father hunched himself forward. A momentary spasm of pain deepened the myriad wrinkles in his cheeks.
“Crabbe told me, Master Prim an’ Prissy.” He enjoyed the whitening of his son’s face. “Crabbe is a good man—minds others’ business and keeps his ears to the ground. He’s owed me for years, but that’s another story. Ye know what that means, don’t ye, lad?”
He’d kill the old woman, he’d kill her. Bertrand shrugged and managed a show of indifference. “It simply means that my esteemed great aunt is growing more eccentric.”
“Ha! She’s as mean as that pug she used to shove in all our faces.”
“You mean the one that pissed on your feet, Father?”
“That’s the one, the little bitch. Lady Adella is that crazy and she gets crazier as each day passes. She’s mean-spirited and petty and a bloody witch. Have I covered it all?”
