Barbara Metzger (5 page)

“Can’t say as I’d rather face the frogs again, iffen I had my druthers.”

“Yes, well, I doubt Whitehall would let me go, with this confounded weak arm of mine, although old Humbert would take the medical exam for me if he could.”

Kelly approached with the razor and lather and a sour expression. The duke thought he’d better have another sip of fortification first. “They reminded me over at Horse Guards that Prinny didn’t approve of his nobles going over as cannon fodder until they’ve ensured their successions. I don’t count Humbert, so we’re likely stuck in England anyway.”

“In a moldering heap what’s been deserted by everyone except the rats and the ghosts of them long-gone monks?”

“Only temporarily. And we’ll be warm, remember? Because the one thing the old man left intact is the home woods.”

Kelly was not impressed by his master’s pronouncement. “I thought all the land
was entailed.
That’s why an
officer and a
gentleman is living worse off than a coal heaver. Leastways that’s how you explained it.”

“And it’s true. I can’t sell off the land because it’s actually held in trust for my heirs and their heirs, ad infinitum. But what’s on it isn’t. I checked with the solicitor. He says I can go ahead with the sale. There’s I don’t know how many acres of prime timber in the home woods. I’d have to check the estate maps to be sure. And it’s never been cut, as far as I know. The lumber is bound to bring in a pretty penny, the solicitor thinks. Maybe I’ll invest in turnip seeds and become a farmer. What do you think?”

Kelly’d been a farmer’s son before he became a duke’s batman. He’d eaten better then. Spreading lather on the duke’s cheeks, he asked, “When do we leave?”

Your uncle wants to see you, miss,” the maid said when she brought Lisanne’s hot water in the morning, an hour earlier than usual. “In a huff, he is. Says he looked for you all day yesterday. Made me get up before I’d had my sleep out, he did, to make sure you didn’t leave the house without seeing him.” The maid wasn’t best pleased, either, it sounded.

Lisanne didn’t listen. Birds were singing, trees were budding. It was spring. There was no reason to stay in the house and every reason to be gone, not the least of which was that it was warmer out-of-doors than in. Uncle Alfred was another who subscribed to the notion that fires were not necessary after the first of March. His belief stemmed from parsimony rather than need, and did not, of course, extend to his own bedchamber or the parlor, where he sat of an evening.

But it was the birthing season, the planting season, a time when everything burst into new life. That was outside. Inside Neville Hall, the Findleys stagnated in the same fetid pool of their discontent, only louder than ever, like bullfrogs with the colic.

Esmé wanted to be a lady now that she was seventeen.

She demanded a social life, a London Season, and every new whim that whistled on fashion’s fickle breeze. She also wanted that stable boy, Diccon. Tears and tantrums erupted at each meal or family gathering.

Nigel saw no reason he shouldn’t have digs of his own in Town now that he was done with schooling. He was nineteen, a real man. Since Nigel found ways aplenty to overspend his allowance, overturn the carriages, and overset his mama’s notions of propriety right here in Devon, Uncle Alfred wasn’t about to loose such an expensive piece of goods on the metropolis. Nigel pouted and pounded the table and flicked peas at his sister. A real man.

Aunt Cherise still resorted to her smelling salts at every raised voice. Most mealtimes were interrupted for the burning of feathers or the waving of a vinaigrette. The family should invest in the apothecary business, Lisanne thought, but not even that windfall would be enough to satisfy her greedy, grasping relations.

Lisanne usually ate in the kitchens, where she’d come to terms with the latest cook after curing the old woman’s asthma. Curing the ailment was simple: Lisanne had merely ordered the kitchen cats outside and the room aired. Winning Cook’s trust was another matter. The woman still made the sign of the cross when Lisanne entered her precincts. Lisanne shrugged. So what if everyone thought she was a witch, a wantwit, a lunatic? She was free to come and go as she pleased, to live her life without the constant nerve-gnawing that passed for family feeling among the Findleys.

But not this morning. Of course Lisanne could disobey her uncle’s demand for her presence. She could go down the back stairs and not return till the candle in the master bedroom was snuffed at night. But years of experience had taught her that Uncle Alfred would only take his ire out on the servants. The poor maid who brought the message would be blamed. She might even lose her position, lowly as it was. Besides, Lisanne was curious to find what was so important that her uncle deigned to tell her. He never mentioned how her income was being invested—she had to find that out from the solicitor’s letters on his desk—or what plans were afoot for the farms and fields of the Neville holdings. The bailiff gave her that information, being one of the few retainers who still respected the Neville barony, if not the current bizarre baroness.

Lisanne donned the dress the maid laid out for her. It was another of Esmé’s castoffs, but since that spoiled miss was notoriously fussy and hard to please, the gowns in Lisanne’s closet were nearly new, not that she cared. Rid of all the bows and lace frills, taken up six inches in the hem, the dresses were not half bad, especially since a sash at the high waist could gather in the extra material. Besides, Nigel’s outgrown clothes were instantly burned. Those were Aunt Cherise’s orders, so Lisanne had no choice unless she wanted to shop with her cousin for fabric, ponder fashion magazines for the perfect designs, then stand for hours being pinned. Esmé’s muslins were good enough. And they’d soon have spots and stains on them, anyway, from the days Lisanne spent in the fields and forest, the garden and the stillroom.

The maid didn’t bother with a hat or gloves or reticule, for everyone knew Miss Annie would only lose them by lunchtime, poor thing. At least she wore shoes now, most times, anyway.

Lisanne twisted her long hair into a braid that hung neatly down her back. It wouldn’t stay that way, of course, so she crammed a ribbon into her pocket for later. A knife followed, and scissors, a needle and thread, a handful of handkerchiefs, that jar with the butterfly larva, the packet of seeds from the wild orchid, a book with the spiderweb from the windowsill pressed between its pages, and a small, meticulously carved flute. The maid rolled her eyes behind Lisanne’s back.

* * *

Sir Alfred cleared his throat. The footmen serving the breakfast snapped to attention, but of the family only Lisanne looked up from her muffin and chocolate. Esmé and Nigel continued their bickering over the last rasher of bacon.

“I have news,” Sir Alfred pronounced. When that gained him no more notice, he slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “Dash it, I will have your silence when I speak.”

Aunt Cherise, picking at her invalid’s fare of weak tea and dry toast, cringed. “Not so loud, Sir Alfred. My nerves, you know.”

The baronet didn’t apologize, he just forged on, now that the small group in the morning room, family and servants alike, was listening. “I want all of you to pay close heed. I heard some important news in the village yesterday. I wanted to mention it sooner.” At this point he glared at Lisanne for not being where he could issue his orders. “At any rate, the news was confirmed by Squire Pemberton last night. St. Sevrin is in residence.”

Lisanne’s cup shook in her hand, spilling a trail of chocolate down her badly altered gown. Lisanne didn’t notice. For once, neither did Aunt Cherise.

“That awful Sloane Shearingham? Why, he’s not received anywhere anymore. All the important houses have been closed to him since the duns started knocking on his door. Now, why didn’t my cousin write and tell me that knave was coming to Devon on a repairing lease? We could have been long gone on our way elsewhere.”

“What, madam, should we run away from our home?” her husband asked, amazed.

“But what if he comes to church?” Lady Findley was in a fidge of indecision. “Should we recognize him or give him the cut? He’s a rakehell, for sure, but a duke still and all. Oh, how I wish I knew what the ladies of London had decided about the dratted man. One wouldn’t want to be blamed for lending countenance to such licentious behavior, but neither should one be behind times in courtesy to our noble neighbor.”

Her husband had no patience for such niceties. “He isn’t coming to church, you can be certain of that. I doubt His Grace St. Sevrin could even recognize the inside of one. Besides, sots like him are never out of bed in time for services.”

“Can we go call on him, then, Pa?” Nigel wanted to know. “Can we? I hear he’s a regular Trojan, a real hero.”

“He’s a wastrel.” The last thing Sir Alfred needed was for his gudgeon of a son to pattern himself after a card-sharp and a basket scrambler. “He most likely plucks green pigeons like you as an appetizer before he gets down to serious wagering. Pray you stay out of his clutches.”

Esmé wasn’t listening. “
I
think it’s the most romantic thing in the world, a real live hero right on our doorstep. Perhaps the duke drinks to forget a lost love who wouldn’t wait for him to come home from the wars. Or some injury that makes their marriage impossible.”

Nigel groaned. “Just like you to make a Cheltenham tragedy out of a chap’s tossing back a few. Next you’ll be offering to bathe his fevered brow. Now, if that ain’t what every soldier dreams of, some plump little schoolgirl’s pity.”

Before Esmé could retaliate, their father pounded the table again. “The man is a libertine, I say. You will not make him out to be any kind of Minerva Press hero. Heroes are just bloody fools who don’t care about their own hides anyhow. This one is a dashed loose screw drowning on River Tick. Not even rich cits will look at him for a son-in-law, that’s how low he’s fallen. The father was a rakehell; the son’s a rakehell.”

But he was Esmé’s first rakehell and, like the first taste of champagne, irresistible. She had every intention of trotting her old mare back and forth in front of the Priory’s gates in case the duke rode out. “Do you think he’ll attend the assembly at Honiton? You said I could go. remember, Pa?”

“I think he’d attend his own funeral before doing the pretty with a hall full of provincials. But that’s no matter. You are not going to meet him, you are not going to speak to him if you do see him, and you are not going to go out of the house while he’s here. It’s just a day or two, according to the squire, while St. Sevrin transacts some business.”

Lady Findley was nodding vigorously. “A girl can’t be too careful of her reputation, Esmé. You wouldn’t want to be tarred with the same brush.”

“And that goes for you, too, missy,” Uncle Alfred told Lisanne, as usual not minding his tongue in front of the servants. “I don’t want you in his woods or on his land. I don’t want you anywhere St. Sevrin might happen to be.” He took a look at his niece’s suntanned face, the childish braid, the bunched-up and besmirched gown, whose neckline fell much lower on her than it had on the more rounded Esmé. Damn, but the chit was turning into a tempting morsel. “He’s liable to mistake you for a dairymaid and tumble you in the grass. And I’m not about to call him out over your honor. They say he hasn’t got any, when it comes to wenches.”

Aunt Cherise was near to swooning. The well-practiced footmen stood on either side of her chair ready to catch her. “Oh, my word, the scandal.”

“Precisely. And it’s the last thing we need just when we’re going to be bringing Esmé out next fall. Everything has to be perfect. I don’t want word getting back to London that my niece is fast, chasing after a rank libertine on
his own grounds.”

No, Lisanne thought, it was all right for people to think she was a lunatic, but not immoral. She wouldn’t set foot in the London marriage mart for anything, which suited her uncle’s plans to a cow’s thumb. She knew he intended to claim she was supposed to share Esmé’s Season. Actually Esmé was supposed to share Lisanne’s; that’s how Uncle Alfred could justify opening Neville House, which was much larger and more fashionably situated than the Findleys’ own leased town house. Then he’d tell everyone that his poor niece had come down with something. That’s what he wrote to her London trustee last year, explaining why she was not making her come-out with other girls her age. A sickly child, don’t you know. This year he might bruit it about that she was too emotionally unstable to handle the pressure of curtsying at a court presentation, undergoing the scrutiny of the Almack’s patronesses, or having to impress the eligible
partis.
Since those were the last things Lisanne wanted or desired, she didn’t mind not going to London with her relations.

The Findleys would all be leaving, and their servants with them. That was enough. For once Lisanne could have her home to herself. She didn’t need London when everything that mattered was here. The problem was that half of what mattered to her was on St. Sevrin property.

“Thunderation, girl, stop your air-dreaming for once and pay attention! It’s for your own safety, too. The man might go out hunting and never know you’re about.”

Nigel was muttering about the unfairness that St. Sevrin should get to hunt those well-stocked woods, when he’d never been allowed.

“They’re his woods, you nodcock,” Sir Alfred ground out before turning back to Lisanne. “I don’t want you out of the house, Annie, and I mean it. You’ve always been the most stubborn, disobedient child I’ve ever known, and I can’t imagine you’re any different now that you are eighteen. But that’s not too old to beat, I swear.”

Lisanne just looked at him with that clear blue gaze that seemed to read Alfred’s soul, and to know how much guilty pleasure he’d get from laying his hands on her. Findley flushed and looked away. They both also knew a beating wouldn’t gain him one iota of respect—or obedience. Lisanne didn’t even respect him enough to be afraid.

“I’ll lock you up,” he blustered. “I swear I’ll…I’ll…” Sir Alfred looked around for inspiration, something that might make her comply with his orders, for once. “I’ll burn the library. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll have all your precious books taken out and burned if you put one foot out of this door.”