A Gentleman’s Game (13 page)

“Have we seen them?” Alec rolled his eyes. “They’re practically part of the household already. Chandler befriended Papa in the stable, and then his grooms befriended Papa, and Papa befriended the horses, and by now I think they’re all half drunk.”

“Not the horses,” added quiet Wilfred.

“Not Chandler either,” added Severn. “But Papa’s pretty well lit. Never seen him laugh so much, and he hasn’t even seen you again. Say, Rosie, is Chandler your—”

“Employer’s son? Yes. That’s what I said.”

The brothers exchanged glances.

“All right, if you say so,” Severn said in a tone of frank disbelief. “Now that you’re awake, I suppose everyone can come in and eat dinner.”

“Of course. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t apologize.” Alec waved a hand. “You’ll be needing to apologize to your Mr. Nathaniel Chandler after he survives dinner with this family.” Screwing up his mouth, he added, “I suppose he
will
survive? Maybe I shouldn’t presume too much.”

“Did I say it was good to see you?” Rosalind mock-frowned. “I must have been addled.”

“There’s our Rosie.” Severn rubbed a hand over her head, rumpling the plaited coils of her hair. “Every hug followed by a kick to the—”

“Why don’t I go ahead,” she interrupted, “and serve out the dinner?”

“If you like.” Alec’s grin was all mischief. “Only save room for roasted Chandler. I’ve a feeling your
employer’s son
isn’t prepared for the Agate family welcome.”

“So, Mr. Nathaniel. You’re the son of our Rosie’s baronet, is that right?”

Nathaniel grinned. Mrs. Agate’s question was the third time he had been asked the same thing.

The first time he had answered for himself; since then, Rosalind had been chiming in with her tone increasingly dry. “Yes, he is the son of Sir William, or so he has told me. But Sir William is not
my
baronet, Mama.”

“I did. And Sir William told you so too. I hold many scandalous secrets, but my birth isn’t one of them.”

As he moved from kitchen to the family’s sitting room with his second plate of mutton stew, various family members trailed after and around him like spectators at a menagerie watching some strange new beast.

“Is your last name really Chandler? Because a chandler’s a job,” Elder informed him.

“True, and an Agate’s a stone,” Nathaniel replied. “If you don’t have to be a stone, I don’t have to make candles for a living. How’s that?”

The boy squinted, then nodded his agreement. “That sounds fair.”

So far Elder was the only one of Rosalind’s brothers Nathaniel had sorted out. How could one not remember when the family’s youngest bore such a name? “It’s for the sort of tree,” the youth had explained to him when they were introduced in the stable earlier. “Mama and Papa said I was made under an elder, and—”

“Any more of that and you’ll have our guest poking his ears out,” the brother with the reddest hair had scolded.

“He’s not the only one who’s going to poke out his ears,” a quieter brother had muttered. “No one wants to hear about that.”

The exchange had made Nathaniel smile. He and Hannah teased one another like that, but Jonah—well, Nathaniel couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen his older brother joke or laugh. And he couldn’t remember when he had last seen his sister Abigail, widowed young in Ireland, at all.

Balancing his plate of stew, he seated himself on one of the long sofas. The family’s private sitting room was worn and comfortable, with dark paper in a busy pattern and horsehair furniture that might once have been fine. The sofa been sat upon so often that the sleek fabric and hard-tufted stuffing were molded to the human body. A large hearth backed onto the kitchen wall with the stove. In summer the heat must be unbearable, but on a chilly spring evening, the shared warmth was pleasant.

Small tables dotted the room, each with a lamp and someone’s plate and cup on it. The family would number eleven when everyone was at home, so Nathaniel guessed they were used to never eating all at once or in the same place. A few of the brothers sat on the floor, stretching out their legs across a carpet from which much of the nap was worn away.

Even so, it was a carpet. More pleasant underfoot than the costliest marble.

The food was plain and hearty—mutton stewed with vegetables, well spiced and warm. The brothers and Rosalind’s sister, Carys, kept popping up to serve another plateful from the large pot in the adjacent kitchen. The door between kitchen and sitting room was never closed.

Nathaniel swallowed another bite of stew, then looked around. Every pair of eyes was fixed upon him. All—he did a quick count—eight pairs. Well, seven. As soon as Rosalind saw him looking, she ducked her head. With a slab of bread, she chased stew around her dish.

Setting aside his dish, Nathaniel settled against the back of the sofa, which was more unforgiving than it looked. “What else can I tell you all about myself? I can see you’re curious about the sort of person who would turn up with your daughter in such a travel-worn state.”

He had wiped off his face and washed his hands, but without a change of clothing, he still felt rumpled and rough.

“Are you married?” Rosalind’s only sister, Carys, was a bold-eyed brunette. Had Nathaniel been a decade younger, he would have thought her fetching.

“No. Are you?”

She laughed, then drew forth a workbasket from beneath a table. “Not yet. I haven’t met the right gentleman.”

“I’d say not.” The oldest of the brothers at home—Steven? Seven?—spoke up from his spot on the floor next to Elder. “You’ve met too many of the wrong ones. Every time you serve the customers, I have to keep an eye on the men to make sure they don’t pinch you.”

“Also, you’re only sixteen,” chided Mrs. Agate. Holding her hands out, she neatly caught a ball of knitting Carys tossed her way, then pulled forth the needles and set them to clicking through what looked like a long sock. “Plenty of time for you to find someone.”

“Weren’t you sixteen when you got married?” Carys pressed. She had set an embroidery hoop on her lap, then promptly ignored it. Nathaniel doubted whether any progress would be made on the…whatever it was. Some colorful blob.

“Sixteen is as sixteen does,” said Mr. Agate, squinting across the room. He shared his wife’s graying red-brown hair, though his was thin on top. Much taller than his plump little wife, and sturdy of form, he had enjoyed poking around the stable and chatting with the Chandler servants while Nathaniel finished seeing to the horses. From a manger, Mr. Agate had unearthed a bottle of something dark and spirituous. This had been shared with most of Nathaniel’s company—though not by the first two men to keep watch, he had made sure. Mr. Agate himself had also enjoyed a drink or two or three, and he held his liquor with sleepy good humor.

“What does that mean, Papa?” Carys asked, still not picking up her needle.

“It means that not every opportunity is a good one,” spoke up Rosalind from the other end of Nathaniel’s sofa. “So mind you think about them carefully.”

“I really don’t think that’s what he meant,” said Carys.

“Look,” shot the redheaded brother, “Chandler has all but told us to ask him questions. Are we really going to waste the evening by talking about how old Carys is?”

“Yes,” said Rosalind.

“No,” chorused everyone else.

Nathaniel hid a grin as he set his plate aside. “I’m the son of a baronet. I’m either half flash or half foolish, depending on who you ask. And I’m on my way to Epsom, at least once my carriage’s wheel is repaired.” He turned to Rosalind. “Have I forgot anything important?”

She took a bite of bread, chewed slowly, and swallowed. “You know how to physic a horse that has colic.”

“True. I know how to do that.”

“You know how to organize a party of travelers and to make sure everyone is safe and well-fed.”

Her tone made him feel unsettled—in a good way. “All right. Thank you, Miss Agate. If we’re to list everything I know, either your family will be bored by how long the list is, or I’ll be ashamed of how short it is. Probably the latter.”

“
Whisht.
” Mrs. Agate’s needles clicked. “I don’t think a modest young man has ever entered this room before.”

“Nor has one yet,” Nathaniel said. “The five things I know how to do, I’m the best in the world at.”

“Only five?” This from Rosalind. She cut her eyes sideways at him—and licked her lip.

God
. It was a good thing he was sitting, because otherwise his knees might have unpinned. Was she thinking of their kiss? She had to be, to lick her lip like that—or no, maybe she was still eating dinner and it was perfectly innocent. Maybe he was the only one thinking about how he had kissed her, and how that sunny spring morning with her had been one of the five best things, definitely, that had ever happened to him.

She was still watching him. And for that matter, so were most of the other Agates.

He hitched one leg over the other. “Five.” He tried for nonchalance. “More or less.”

“Carys, dear.” Mrs. Agate’s needles clicked. “Will you pop into the kitchen and put on a kettle?”

“All right.” The dark girl tossed her embroidery back into the workbasket, then shot her mother a suspicious look. “But don’t talk about anything interesting while I’m gone.”

“I’ve got a boring question all prepared for him, so don’t you worry a bit.”

Once Carys had swanned away, Mrs. Agate peered over her knitting at Nathaniel. “You’re headed to Epsom, you said. Is that where you live?”

He was still trying not to think about Rosalind kissing him; Rosalind, smiling under a crown of flowers; Rosalind, only an arm’s length from him.

Rosalind,
in a room with seven of her relatives
.

Wrenching his mind away, he flailed for an answer. “No, I don’t live in Epsom. I’m merely traveling there for the Derby.”

“Where do you live, then? In Newmarket with our Rosie’s baronet?”

Surely everyone had heard Rosalind’s muttered
not my baronet
protest, but no one paid it any heed. Nathaniel found the question more difficult to answer than it ought to be. Where
did
he live? He kept possessions in Chandler Hall and the London town house, but he found no more comfort laying his head in one than in the other. They were roofs and walls—that was all. Neither was a home.

So he dodged the question. “I travel England most of the time and go from Newmarket to London at least once a month. On family business. Horsey things.”

“Do you have a town house or stay at an inn?” This from Elder.

“My father owns a town house in Queen Anne Street. When my carriage stays intact and gets me to my destination, that’s where I stay in London.”

“Coo-ee! You must be rich.”

Mr. Agate laughed, while Mrs. Agate admonished her youngest for using such a low-class exclamation.

When both parents had quieted, Nathaniel added, “The money isn’t mine, but my father’s. And the house is not on an especially tonnish street. Why, the neighbors have been known to take their dinner when they feel hungry for it, even if the sun is still up.”

“But you
are
the son of a baronet.” Mrs. Agate looked not at Nathaniel but at Rosalind.

“Don’t talk about anything interesting!” came the girlish call from the kitchen.

This gave the group the excuse to laugh, but Nathaniel wondered—what was Rosalind’s mother on about? Was she trying to matchmake?

He wasn’t against the idea. Though he would rather it had been Rosalind’s.

But why should it be? He must remember that she was here for the promise of discharging her debt. She had not wanted to leave Newmarket; she would never have spent a moment with him if she didn’t have to.

Though she
had
liked his kiss—or so she said.

And she
had
changed the ribbon on her bonnet.

“I am the son of a baronet,” he repeated. This sentence made as little sense today, here, now, as the lessons in Latin he had once parroted from a tutor.
Romani ite domum
.

He tried again. “My father’s a horse breeder. And trainer. He just happens to have been made a baronet too.”

“And what is your part in the family business of—what’d you say? Horsey things?” Rising from his seat, Mr. Agate retrieved a decanter and glasses from another of the innumerable small tables about the room. “Are you a trainer?”

Another question that was more difficult to answer than it ought to be. Nathaniel didn’t care what was in that decanter; he just wanted to upend the thing over his mouth. “Not exactly, no.” He drummed his fingers on the seat of the sofa, the horsehair sleek and coarse beneath his fingertips. “I do whatever is needed away from Newmarket, since my father isn’t able to travel.”

“Your father must trust you,” said the eldest. Of these brothers, that was. Nathaniel had to remind himself that Rosalind had an additional supply of brothers outside the household. “Mine would never allow me to buy and sell horses.”

Mr. Agate looked up from pouring a garnet-dark liquid—port, it must be—into small glasses. “Severn, why should I want that when we’ve good beasts in our stable? You do well enough speaking with lodgers and diners, making sure they have what they need and behave as they ought. Though if you’re keen for another post, only say so.”

“He wouldn’t be nearly so
keen
for another post, because then he couldn’t be
friendly
with any
ladies
that visited,” said the puckish redheaded brother. His elder sibling whipped a cushion at him, which, judging from the alarming embroidery upon it, was Carys’s creation.

“You wouldn’t understand, Alec, because ladies don’t want anything to do with you.” Severn, seated on the floor, stretched out his legs with a thump of boot heels.

“And the women who have anything to do with
you
aren’t ladies.” The redhead—Alec, apparently—whapped his brother on the head with the same cushion.

“Boys!” barked Mr. and Mrs. Agate at once. Though neither of them paused what they were doing—he measuring out tiny jewellike glasses of port, she now turning the heel of her sock—their admonition served to quiet their almost-grown sons.

Nathaniel hid a smile.

And then came the next question. “Do you know how to get a woman to like you, Mr. Nathaniel? Or a lady?” This from the quietest brother, a boy of about fifteen or sixteen who had begun to collect plates into a tall stack.

“Um.” Nathaniel could feel the nearness of Rosalind at his side, almost within reach. Carefully, he did not look at her. “I have managed that feat on some occasions in the past, yes.”

“What about now?”

Nathaniel coughed into his fist, hoping the question would go away. Of course it didn’t; the gangly teen only stared at him hopefully.

Nathaniel would
not
look at Rosalind. “I have no idea. I suppose that depends on the lady, and the question would be better asked of her.”

“What do you think, Rosie? You’re a lady.”

Oh, good. The brother’s gimlet gaze turned to her. The boy shifted the stack of crockery in his hand and waited.

Rosalind set aside her own dish. “I think you need some help with the dishes, Wilfred.”

Wilfred! That was his name. All right. Nathaniel had these four brothers sorted now.

“Rosie, Alec can do that. He’s not doing anything useful. As usual,” spoke up Severn. Naturally, he accompanied this with another cushion attack.

“Then I’ll just…help Carys with the tea things.” Rosalind hopped to her feet, then wove through the clutter of furniture.