David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) (32 page)

Interesting. Perhaps he’d been the heedless sleeper awakened by the kiss.

When he left Ellen, he was in surprisingly good spirits for a man who had found himself more capable of breaking commandments than he’d known. He was also more capable of accepting the truth than either he, his wife, or his congregation had thought. On the whole, the visit with Ellen had been time well spent, and really, she was right: one kiss did not a lecher make, and with some truth between Daniel and his wife maybe he and Olivia could reach a more appropriate accommodation.

Then he read the correspondence that had come in on the day’s post, and any hope of such a sanguine outcome fled.

***

“Mrs. Banks is protecting someone,” Douglas Allen concluded, watching Fairly prowl around the library of a town house more elegant than any property Douglas would ever own. “I paid her a call to inform her Guinevere is letting the Newcomb woman go—with a glowing reference and some severance, but good riddance to a lazy baggage.”

All of which might have been conveyed to Mrs. Banks in a note, of course. Fairly did not comment to the same effect—didn’t offer any reply—so Douglas forged on.

“Your Mrs. Banks is thin, her eyes suggest she’s not sleeping enough or very well, and she could not stop herself from inquiring after you. The lady is haunted, my friend. I at first suspected she might be carrying your child.”

Douglas had hoped that very thing, in fact.

Fairly wandered the room, looking tired, gaunt, and preoccupied. “But?” He hadn’t rung for tea, hadn’t inquired if Douglas were hungry or thirsty, though he was neither. Mrs. Banks had insisted he partake of her tea tray, and he hadn’t had the heart to refuse her.

“But Mrs. Banks promised me, and I assume she also promised you, that she wouldn’t conceal your own child from you. And as to that, her help would tell you were there signs of a blessed event in the offing.”

And yet, Douglas had had the strong suspicion the quiet, withdrawn Mrs. Banks was hiding something.

Fairly swiped a small carved elephant from an end table. “Some women have few signs early on.”

Fairly was a physician, and yet he was also a man in love. “You are hoping.” And wasn’t that
interesting
?

His hopeful lordship buffed the little elephant with his palm. “Letty and I parted only a month ago, and without such foolish hopes, I would lose my reason.”

He lowered himself to the hearth across from where Douglas was comfortably ensconced on the couch. The morning was warm, the windows open, the scent of honeysuckle wafting through the library.

Honeysuckle, which, according to Guinevere, symbolized the bonds of love.

Fairly was apparently focused not on the fragrant breeze, but on mental machinations he wasn’t about to share with even his best friend. “I am nigh certain I know whom she’s protecting, but hearing your suspicions is reassuring.”

Never had a reassured man looked so tired and dolorous. “At the very least, she’s protecting
you
,” Douglas said. “She’s protecting you from the scandal of having a former madam as your viscountess and the mother of your children.”

Fairly rose and half-tossed the elephant onto the mantel beside a small silver angel.

“I was raised the illegitimate son of an impoverished, bigamous lord, and my eyes are different colors. I have been the butt of Society’s unkind impulses since birth, which I now regard as the greatest possible blessing. If I say I am willing to take the risk of censure on behalf of our children, Letty should believe me. My sisters both married into a wealthy family whose scandals make Letty’s past a mere peccadillo, and I’m convinced that family would receive us.”

“Of course we would, which is why I am all the more convinced other interests weigh on Mrs. Banks’s decision to part from you.”

Fairly scrubbed a hand over a tired countenance. His cuffs were turned back, his cravat limp, and his hair tousled. On the sideboard, a single white rose was beginning to lose its petals.

For the first time in Douglas’s experience, David, Viscount Fairly, looked less than exquisite—also entirely human.

“A fellow in Little Weldon assumed liberties with her,” Fairly said, reciting the exact tale Guinevere had conjectured might apply. “The blighter—a damned curate, no less—then confessed their misdeeds to her father, the vicar. As an attempt to coerce Letty into marriage, that ploy failed. Nonetheless, Letty must have been viewed as the sole malefactor, because this despoiler of innocents now holds the living as vicar in Little Weldon, while Letty ended up in your brother’s bed.”

Tangled webs were tedious in the extreme, and yet Fairly was Douglas’s dear friend, of whom he was prodigiously protective, as was Guinevere, as was, for that matter, Rose.

Douglas had not consulted with Sir George or Mr. Bear on the topic, though they were decent fellows and would likely concur.

“Mrs. Banks would have married this curate if she were in love with him.”

Fairly picked up the fireplace poker and tried to balance the handle end of it against his palm, the way a callow young swain tried to balance his damsel’s parasol.

“Perhaps, had she married him amid scandal, this lusty Christian soldier might have lost his post. Or maybe he was promised to another, or maybe she refused him in a fit of pique then regretted it, too late. I do not have the details from her, but Val Windham went scouting out to Little Weldon. The vicar is esteemed by all, and no hint of scandal attaches to his name.”

The poker tilted, nearly drubbing the viscount on his noggin.

“Could the vicar be blackmailing her?”

Fairly set the poker on the mantel, where it did not belong and might roll off to rap his toes. “In what sense? She ought to be blackmailing him.”

“Maybe she has cousins or a grandmother in the country who are ignorant of her former occupation,” Douglas suggested. “The vicar could be extorting money from Mrs. Banks to keep her confidences.”

“Then the vicar would have to know not only that he himself was indiscreet with Letty several years ago, but also of Letty’s situation with your late brother, and at The Pleasure House.”

“Clergy gossip,” Douglas reminded him. “Where else does one hear the most interesting
on
dits
in a small village, if not in the churchyard? The vicar would hear anything anybody in town came across, sooner or later.”

Some of the distracted quality left Fairly’s eyes. The man was shrewd—even in love and wallowing in heartache, he was possessed of shrewdness. “Where else, indeed? This bears thinking about.”

“You do the thinking,” Douglas said, rising. “Sir Regis and I must return to Surrey. We’ve had too much pleasant weather for it to last much longer.”

“Spoken like a man of the land. I trust all is well with your family?”

Small talk,
now
? Douglas paused at the door, because before he could return to Guinevere’s side, one more salient point remained to be made.

“When I called on Mrs. Banks, she was at first reluctant to admit me to her domicile,” Douglas said. “It occurred to her, as it must with every man who even smiles at her, that I might have been interested in getting under her skirts. Guinevere was wounded like that, and it… it breaks something in a man, to see a woman he cares about unable to live fully because other men have stolen her confidence and self-respect.”

Plainer than that, he could not be when sober, so Douglas made it his exit line, though Fairly accompanied him through the house.

“Gwen lives fully now,” Fairly said, “and even abundantly. My God, she let me deliver her child, and that had to have been terrifying for her.”

She had allowed Fairly to
attend
the delivery of her child, but Mrs. Banks had provided the greater assistance.

“The child’s arrival was terrifying.” And not only for Guinevere. “But you’re right. She is recovering from difficult years, and recovering beautifully.”

“Because you love her, even when it seemed she turned from you, you loved her.”

Finally.
“And you love Letty Banks. Love like that should be tenacious as hell.
You
are tenacious as hell. Slay her demons, even if you don’t marry her. Hell, slay her demons, and then try to keep her from marrying you.”

Fairly might have offered a deft rejoinder—he excelled at the deft rejoinder. Instead, he handed Douglas his hat, gloves, and riding crop.

“I must first discover what those demons are.”

Fourteen

Douglas’s prediction about the weather turning foul proved accurate. The skies opened up, and three straight days of rain poured down in unrelenting torrents. Several days after David had made a firm decision to travel to Little Weldon, he was still waiting for the roads to dry out enough for travel on horseback.

The delay gave him time to doubt, to lose his resolve, and then regain it.

But nobody in his right mind would travel all day on muddy roads. A horse could too easily pull a shoe in the muck, slip and injure itself, or worse, injure horse and rider both. The day wasn’t even fit for navigating the streets of London, so a thumping knock on David’s front door late Wednesday afternoon came as a surprise indeed.

David’s caller had come on the butler’s half day, so rather than rouse a footman, David pushed away from his desk and wondered which of his family members had been sent to check on him—this time.

He didn’t recognize the handsome, dark-haired man who stood on his doorstep in the pouring rain, or the small child who shivered beside him, clutching the man’s hand.

“I’ve come to call on Letty Banks.” A martial light in the fellow’s eye suggested he’d purposely knocked on the front door in broad, if sopping, daylight. The child, by contrast, looked merely sodden and chilled.

“Won’t you come in?” David stepped back and opened the door more widely. “And your young friend too?”

“I’ve no need to set foot in this house. I’ve business with Mrs. Banks.” The man’s tone suggested this business would best be transacted over David’s dead body.

“Mrs. Banks is not here at the moment, and the lad is about two minutes from catching a lung fever. My guess is he’s already started coughing.”

The child obligingly coughed.

“Unless you want the boy’s ill health on your conscience,” David continued, “I suggest you avail yourself of the warmth of the house, Mr…?”

“Banks, late of Little Weldon,” Letty’s caller replied. At the sight of the boy’s discomfort, some of the starch left his spine. “We’ll wait for her.”

Which saved David the bother of summoning the footmen to ensure Banks—who could be Letty’s male relation
or
her
husband
—availed himself of David’s hospitality. “For the sake of the child, might I suggest you wait in the library, where we’ve a wood fire going and the teapot due to make an appearance.”

“My horse—” The fellow gestured to the street, where a large, muddy black gelding was having a fine time spooking himself with the water splashed up by his own undainty feet. An urchin of dubious skill kited around on the end of the horse’s reins.

“Take him to the mews,” David bellowed through the downpour, “and then take yourself ’round to the kitchen.”

The boy saluted, flashing a grin as he led the horse off in the direction of the alley.

Banks took two steps past the threshold, barely far enough for David to close the door behind him. “If Lord Fairly is about, you will please tell him I’d like a word. I insist on it, in fact.”

The truculent manner had returned, its effect spoiled by the way the fellow’s clothing dripped onto David’s polished wood floors.

“I am Fairly,” David said, bowing slightly. “And you are sopping wet, Mr. Banks. Whatever needs to be said can be discussed under warmer and dryer circumstances.”

Banks closed his eyes, and David had the sense the man was praying—honestly sending sentiment heavenward—for patience. With a hand sporting a wet glove bearing a half-inch-wide hole on the palm, he gestured for David to lead on.

The civilities were endlessly useful as a ploy to allow a man time to readjust his entire concept of the universe. Letty had said she was not married, nor had she ever been, and if Banks was her true name—Windham’s visit to the cemetery suggested it was—then this man could be her brother, cousin, or other irate relation.

She
needed
irate male relations, provided they were protective as well, and yet Letty had never mentioned a brother.

David strove for the appearance of calm while he ushered his guests into the library, rang for tea, and stoked the fire. Silence reigned until the tea tray arrived, at which time David murmured some instructions to the footman, and thanked God he’d listened when Letty had suggested he start offering half days to half the staff at a time.

“Tea, gentlemen?” David brought the tray to the low table near the hearth and noted that both the man and child were standing before the blazing fire, and the child—a dark-haired, dark-eyed copy of Banks—was still shivering.

“I’ll not break bread with you,” Mr. Banks said.

Pride was apparently a familial trait. “Suit yourself, Mr. Banks, but because your fingers are likely too cold to pour yourself a cup of tea, I will do those honors at least. And how about you, young man?”