A Gentleman Far From Home, page 25
part #1 of Book Eleven Series
That was my cue to invite him up to the Hall for a toddy. Luckily for me, we approached the lane that led to the Hall’s home farm. “If you’ll excuse me, Sir Clive—”
“Won’t keep you,” he said, “but I did want to mention to your lordship a bit of a small contretemps that has me slightly flummoxed. Was on my way to look in on you at the Hall, as a matter of act. Her Grace said I must, and I have been remiss. It occurred to me: Lord Julian is the very man with whom I can discuss a situation requiring a touch of discretion.”
As a former reconnaissance officer in Wellington’s army, one with a talent for overhearing what I wasn’t meant to overhear in languages I wasn’t meant to understand, I noted two aspects of Sir Clive’s salvo. First, my mother had put him up to looking in on me. Whatever was afoot there? Second, Sir Clive was normally forthright to a fault.
He’d resorted to a bit, small, slightly, and a touch by way of verbal camouflage, which all but shouted that his situation was serious.
“Might you come by the Hall one day next week?” I asked, rather than court maternal ire by avoiding the old boy altogether. “I’m on my way to the home farm and running a bit late.”
“I’ll accompany you, if you don’t mind. The matter vexing me grows both delicate and a trifle urgent.”
A trifle. I did not care for matters that were a trifle urgent, especially when my every instinct was to go up to my cozy apartment, shut and lock the door, and indulge in several weeks of staring grumpily into the fire.
In which case, my horse would lose condition, the housekeeper would report me to Her Grace, and Hyperia would decide I was a poor candidate for a husband’s honors.
“Say on, Sir Clive. What troubles you, and how can I be of assistance?” I regretted those words even as I spoke them.
“Well, you see, it’s about the earl. Lord Dantry. Appears I’ve misplaced him, and there’s Parliament about to start sittin’, and his lordship generally votes his seat, and he should have gone on up to Town, but he hasn’t, and he’s not at the ancestral pile in Kent, and he’s not at the Knot. Damned fool man has disappeared, but he disappeared on my watch so I am expected to locate him, and he is my cousin. One worries. A bit.”
Good soul that he was, Sir Clive was honestly concerned for his titled cousin, who had probably dodged down to Brighton for some brisk sea air with his light o’ love, or jaunted over to Paris for a change of scene.
My mother had insisted that Sir Clive look in on me. Could that possibly have been for my sake?
Atlas jigged two steps, ready for another canter if I was game.
“I’ll stop by the home farm another time,” I said. “Let’s have a run past the orchard, and you can explain the rest of the situation to me up at the Hall. Mrs. Gwinnett makes a toddy that will tempt you to compose poetry.”
Sir Clive tugged down his hat. “First past the orchard wins.”
We thundered off, and because I was trying to be polite, and respectful of my elders, and a good sport, I kept Atlas shoulder to shoulder with the bay. We came upon the orchard and galloped along its length. I was considering when to let Atlas have his head just as the bay sprinted forward with a blazing burst of speed, and then the orchard was behind us.
Sir Clive saluted with his crop as his mount slowed to the canter, and I was put in mind of the old soldier’s maxim about age and treachery besting youth and ability. Perhaps the better aphorism would be that experience will always outwit arrogance.
I patted Atlas, though he was cavorting in protest of his loss. I had left the winning move too late, and the old boy had bested me fair and square. I’d likely never hear the end of my defeat, and neither would the entire village.
The reasons to hibernate in my apartment were growing, and the temperature, dauntingly cold at best, was dropping apace. If Lord Dantry had slipped down some ancient, disobliging mine shaft, or twisted an ankle and been stranded out of doors, the weather had likely finished him off by now.
Such thoughts were hardly cheering, but I well knew the sorrow endured when a loved one was presumed dead, despite a lack of direct evidence of his demise. One grieved and wondered and grieved some more, the wound healing slowly, if at all.
When Sir Clive and I were ensconced before a roaring fire, toddies at the ready, I began the necessary questioning.
“When did you last see Lord Dantry, and have you any reason to suspect foul play?”
Order your copy of A Gentleman of Modest Ambitions. and read one for an excerpt from An Heir of Distinction!
An Heir of Distinction—Excerpt
Chapter One
“Lady Barclay is Scottish.” Bernard Huxley paced the understated elegance of St. Didier’s library as he flung that accusation. “His Grace did not bother to warn me that her ladyship is a Scottish, red-haired, Amazonian, and unfashionably devoted to her children.”
“The last strikes me as a maternal virtue.” St. Didier poured two brandies. “Do Lady Barclay’s height, hair color, and antecedents truly matter?”
Bernard hesitated before accepting his drink. Strong spirits for other than medicinal purposes struck him as tending toward hedonism, but to refuse would be rude.
“My thanks. To your health.” He sipped, not sure what to expect.
“I picked up a case of this vintage on my last jaunt to France.” St. Didier settled into a wingchair that might have been related to a throne a few generations back. Commodious, deeply cushioned, generously proportioned, and beautifully upholstered in green brocade.
Not quite extravagant but powerfully inviting.
“Thank the celestial intercessors,” St. Didier went on, “Napoleon didn’t wreck the wineries, distilleries, and vineyards. He is said to be quite an appreciator of champagne.”
Bernard took the proffered seat because manners required that as well. Then too, he was tired and the chair was exquisitely comfortable.
“We wish l’empereur the joy of his epicurean tastes,” Bernard replied, “as he endures his flea-infested purgatory in the south Atlantic. What am I do to about Lady Barclay?”
“You’ve met her?”
“That pleasure yet awaits me. I have observed her cavorting in the park with her offspring.” Laughing loudly enough to turn heads, for pity’s sake. Flying a kite. A bright, red kite with a fantastical white creature in the middle—a winged unicorn or a dragon or some such. “One child each, male and female. Ages seven and six, respectively. Jordan and Bridget. His Grace of Chanderton claimed they are both quite bright, but then, he’s their uncle. He would say that.”
“You are their cousin. What do you say?”
“Chanderton is my uncle too, else I should tell him that this little bit of family business is not my business. I have far too much else to contend with to be guardian of Lady Barclay’s progeny.”
“Bit of a shock, I’d guess, learning that your grandfather was the late Duke of Chanderton, and your biological papa was a courtesy lord.”
St. Didier had a gift for understatement. Tallish, quiet, soft-spoken and dark-haired, he also had a sense of self-possession that Bernard envied. Bernard had learned during his years in the church to exercise self-restraint, but St. Didier had self-possession.
A different and more precious quality entirely.
“The real shock was learning that my mother was a fraud,” Bernard said, taking another small sip of his drink. He knew next to nothing about brandy, but the libation in his glass was smooth, redolent of apples, and even boasted a touch of nutmeg in the finish.
Very pleasant, in moderation.
“Your mama,” St. Didier said, “daughter of an earl, disported with a ducal scion, got with child, and then had to be hastily wed to the mere brother of a baron. Not that unusual a tale in polite society, but you only recently learned of your own antecedents. That cannot have been easy. Have you been told how much your papa’s family added to her settlements?”
St. Didier also had an ability to discuss the most distressing subjects as if they counted for less than the weather. A vicar aspired to the same talent, and in that regard, Bernard had considered himself modestly successful.
When is the baby due? Do you know who the father is? Have you any relatives in Scotland or the Home Counties? Nothing on the scholarly road to ordination prepared a vicar for those conversations, and yet, they were necessary in even the most devout parishes—rather frequently.
“I am embarrassingly solvent,” Bernard said. “My father apparently insisted that half the sum contributed to Mama’s settlements be set aside for me, and that annual contributions be added to it from his funds and from his estate. I was entitled to claim the whole when I turned five-and-twenty, but had no notion the money was mine.”
Had had no notion the funds existed, even as they kept racking up interest year by year.
“That had to hurt,” St. Didier said, getting up to retrieve the decanter. “Your mother, leading light of the congregation, self-aggrandizing saint of the parish, and general meddlesome busybody, lied to you, tried to steal from you, and was more of a sinner than the whole rest of your flock put together. The Antipodes are welcome to her. How are you getting on with the present duke?”
“To be honest…” Bernard avoided honesty on most occasions. He was careful, kindly in the conservative fashion of an earnest churchman, and he tried to keep the Commandments. One could avoid bleating unhappy truths about without telling falsehoods. “Chanderton looks like me.”
Tall, blond, and beaky. On the aging duke, those qualities were distinguished.
“How lucky for him, though you’re too skinny and academic for most of Mayfair’s matchmakers.”
“I beg you, St. Didier, do not say that word. Do not whisper it. I have been in London a mere six months, and it’s as if nobody thinks of anything else save matrimony and its preliminaries. Settlements, courting, understandings, vouchers, waltzes, and scandals. I am in Town to learn about and manage my cousin’s commercial enterprises, not to appease the curiosity of Mayfair’s numerous gossips. Where did you say you found this brandy?”
“Thought you’d like it. A little family operation in the Charente Department, quite near the coast. I can give you their direction. As far as I know, they lack a British distributor.”
Bernard nearly told him I could not possibly impose to that extent, the polite version of I could not possibly deal in the wickedness that is expensive, French, spirits.
No bishop was on hand, though, and brandy was merely a drink, no more wicked than ale or hard cider. Wickedness did not come aged in oak barrels, but rather, usually pranced around on two human feet. Every bishop in the realm kept some brandy his cellars.
“That would be appreciated,” Bernard took another sip. “What can you tell me about Lady Barclay?”
St. Didier had invited Bernard to join him for supper at his club, where conversation had been mostly political, and surprisingly Whiggish. Bernard, as befit a loyal churchman, was more familiar with the Tory presentation of most issues. Seeing the realities of London life in all their squalid glory had invited a broadening of his perspective.
This nightcap, which St. Didier had suggested as an apparent afterthought, now struck Bernard as the point of the evening. Bernard’s cousin Camden, who held the Lorne baronial title, had asked St. Didier to look in on the nursery, as it were.
Camden’s businesses were prospering. Bernard was not sure the same could be said for Bernard himself as he learned to manage those businesses.
London stank, never slept, and was never quiet. London teemed with an unfathomable abundance of people from an unfathomably broad sampling of the world’s locations and professions. Disease, prostitution, commerce, and gossip thrived in London.
Bernard had failed to divine how any sane soul could likewise prosper in the capital, and yet, hordes and scads and hundreds of thousands of people did.
Case in point: Lady Barclay, laughing like a dairy maid and flying her red kite in the yellowish-gray skies over Hyde Park.
St. Didier set his drink aside. “I can tell you that Lady Barclay, like you, is only partly Scottish. Her grandmother was English, as your grandmother was Scottish. Her ladyship was well dowered, married quite young, and Lord Barclay left her well set up. She will not purloin her children’s means or fritter away her own. Barclay courted her in the usual fashion, the usual negotiations ensued, and the first child came along a decorous year after the wedding. The second followed a year later, and then Barclay’s health began failing.”
“How will her ladyship take to having a guardian appointed for her children?”
“A successor guardian,” St. Didier said. “The old duke was the guardian appointed in Lord Barclay’s will, and he and her ladyship got on well. His Grace left her alone, and she’s been raising the children quite without interference from her ducal in-laws. Your uncle now has the title, and he’s petitioning to have you appointed as successor guardian to the old duke.”
Bernard spoke aloud the question that had been haunting him since last week’s summons from Chanderton. “Why me? I am a legitimate by-blow, a family secret, evidence of scandal, albeit scandal from years ago. I have no qualifications for the post of guardian. I have no children and I was a poor excuse for a child. I was neither bright, nor charming, nor adorable.”
“Perhaps,” St. Didier said, “you were normal, and the present duke knows how rare and precious that experience can be for children raised under the penumbra of a title.”
Penumbra. Shadow. Bernard’s entire life had progressed under the penumbra of his mother’s perfidy and meddling. Bernard sent up a short prayer, one of many, for the unfortunates soon to endure Mama’s company in the Antipodes.
“Might you provide me an introduction to Lady Barclay?” Chanderton had not bestirred himself to see to that detail, and yet even a red-haired, kite-flying, Scottish Amazon deserved the courtesies when meeting the proposed guardian of her children for the first time.
“I’d be happy to. Her ladyship hacks out in Hyde Park on the occasional fine morning, and I enjoy the odd horseback outing myself. Meet me by Tattersall’s tomorrow at dawn.”
Dawn. Dawn for one who communed with ledgers far into the night was inhumanly early. Needs must.
“Until tomorrow then,” Bernard said, finishing his drink, and rising. “My thanks for a very pleasant evening.”
“The pleasure was entirely mine, Huxley. Shall I send a footman with you, or would you prefer to take my coach?”
That question, like so much of Bernard’s London experience, baffled him. “Neither will be necessary. I know my way. I’m three streets from my own quarters, but I thank you for the offer.”
“Huxley, you are in London. At this hour, a pickpocket bides on every corner, two footpads lurk in most doorways, and an abundance of rats and stray dogs will menace the unsuspecting simply for entertainment. You will stroll along, mentally comparing Greek and Latin translations of some old prophet, and find yourself relieved of your purse, cloak, top hat and boots.”
St. Didier was genuinely concerned. Bernard could not think why.
“You would expect a footman, anywhere from six inches to a foot shorter than my skinny, scholarly self, to make his way back alone here safely, when I—sword stick in hand, knife in my boot, and fists at the ready—am somehow unsafe without supervision. You need to breathe some fresh country air. St. Didier. The coal smoke is addling your wits.”
“But you—”
Bernard held up a hand. “I know to carry little coin. The thieves are welcome to the small amount on my person, and I will not fight them over it. No honest work is available for most of them, and especially for our gallant former soldiers that leaves only crime or starvation. I am no longer a churchman, but I still hope to claim a share of basic human decency.”
A bit preachy, but St. Didier merely smiled and nodded. Like a good host, he accompanied Bernard to the door, and helped him on with his coat. Wished him a pleasant evening, and peaceful dreams…
Bernard walked out into the damp evening air feeling a little like he’d just escaped tea with the bishop and his wife. One bore up under the strain of duty, and was permitted some relief when that duty had been faithfully executed.
As he strolled along in no particular hurry, footsteps sounded behind him in the same relaxed tempo. St. Didier had sent along an escort, no doubt, or might even be himself keeping pace with Bernard.
Not surprising. St. Didier was something of a nanny for hire where the peerage was concerned, though coin was probably never overtly discussed even with him. His specialty was shepherding reluctant heirs into their new duties and into society’s good graces.
Thankless notion, though Bernard, having been handed management of Cam’s businesses and now guardianship of two half-Scottish children appreciated the show of support.
“I miss Yorkshire.” Bernard had put the sentiment in quiet Latin, a habit along with preaching that wasn’t likely to leave him any time soon.
How would one say, I am partly Scottish in Latin? Partim Scotus sum, or something of that nature. Partly Scottish, a duke for an uncle, very likely possessed of Scottish cousins.
Truly, pigs might be winging their way aloft somewhere high above London’s dark and dreary skies.
* * *
Order your copy of An Heir of Distinction!
Grace Burrowes, A Gentleman Far From Home
