The Willful Widow
The Willful Widow
by Evelyn Richardson
Belgrave House
Copyright ©1994 by Cynthia Johnson
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CONTENTS
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Evelyn Richardson
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A brilliant ray of sunlight poured through a long narrow gap in the curtains and illuminated the tumbled bedclothes at the foot of the bed. Lord Justin St. Clair awoke and shook himself groggily. Lord, he didn't think he'd been that foxed when he had stumbled home in the early hours of the morning, but his head was simply pounding. No it wasn't!
Someone else was pounding, and fortunately, they had stopped, let in no doubt by the inestimable Preston, his servant whose soothing accents appeared to be having a calming effect on the importunate visitor. For importunate he was to be calling at this hour of the morning. Justin rolled over and peered at the clock on the mantel. Nine o'clock. Boney must have invaded or the king had died—or something equally earthshaking. No one would think of calling at such an hour for any lesser reason.
"It's your brother, sir," a quiet voice announced from the doorway.
Justin groaned. No one, that is, except his brother Alfred, he thought to himself. It was outside of enough that the Earl of Winterbourne insisted on keeping country hours in town, but that he should inflict them on others was, well, it was just like his brother. Alfred, Earl of Winterbourne, had been born convinced of the rightness of his views on every possible subject and with the assumption that the rest of the world naturally agreed with him. For how could it not look to someone of his social stature and rectitude for its guidance. 6
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Unfortunately, nothing and no one, not even his reckless, obstinate, and clever younger brother Justin, try though he would, had been able to change his mind during the past forty years. Having started out as a stolid, humorless child, Alfred had progressed into a pompous and overbearing adult who had stepped perfectly and easily into his equally pompous father's shoes, managing at the same time, in his usual overbearing way to tread upon everyone else's toes. Justin sighed and gazed longingly out the window. More than once he had wished for a handy tree or vine to escape onto—usually from a jealous husband—but now with his brother in the next room wishing to talk about something uncomfortable, such a convenience would truly have stood him in good stead. The last person on earth he wished to speak to at this hour of the morning and in this disordered state of mind was Alfred.
Still, to give the earl his due, Alfred never bothered his younger brother except in the most dire of situations and, for his part, Justin could never be grateful enough for Alfred's having been the firstborn, thereby sparing him a lifetime of responsibility and sobriety, as befitted the one inheriting such a revered and ancient title. He and Alfred had recognized early on—after a few of Justin's amorous forays with village maidens and several exuberant pranks at university—that the two of them were bound to disagree on every point. They had long accepted their differences and had gone their separate ways. Alfred had become Earl of Winterbourne, married a girl with a portion handsome enough to cause everyone to forget her lack of a truly illustrious lineage and less than 7
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prepossessing countenance. He had fathered a son whose soberness of mind and conservative spirit made him the perfect heir to the Earls of Winterbourne who had always been more noted for their ability to remain unchanged by the tides of fashion and history than for anything else. Justin, on the other hand, fulfilling the promise of his rackety youth, had embarked on an erratic but brilliant career at university, where he was at the same time the despair and the pride of his tutors. To a man, they could never understand how one who studied so little and played so much could excel in all his studies, much less hold his own among scholars of considerable stature and renown. After a time on the town, during which he had cut a swathe among each Season's new offerings—as well as among its more dashing matrons—Justin became intolerably bored with the
ton.
He had begun casting about for something that would serve as an outlet for his pent-up energy, and a challenge for the intellect that was chafing at the mindless rounds of society.
The military life certainly offered enough excitement to gratify his adventurous spirit, what with Bonaparte laying waste to all of Europe. Various friends had done their best to entice him with stirring tales of glorious charges and deeds of valor. However, Justin, though fond of Captain Wrotham and Lieutenant Danforth, remembered them from days of yore. They appeared to have remained unchanged from the brash schoolboys who were always up for a lark despite the worldshaking nature of the events in which they were participating. Not that there was anything in the least wrong in that, Justin 8
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enjoyed a bit of fun as much, if not more than the next fellow, but even the most exuberant spirits could soon appear tedious if they did nothing but fall from one scrape to the next. Their hearty enthusiasm, which remained unaffected by even the most serious reverses, their own or the army's, soon began to pall on their more thoughtful comrade. Having refused to accompany them back to the Peninsula when they returned to their regiments, Justin found that life now seemed even more empty after their departure, and in an attempt to keep himself from dying of boredom, had embarked on a course of excess that, while it kept him tolerably amused for the moment, was not likely to do so for long. One could only enrich oneself so much at faro and hazard, break the record for driving to Brighton in a curricle, and dally with so many beautiful women before it all began to seem almost as monotonous as his brother's staid existence. Fortunately, before he had been forced to seek even more dangerous sport, Justin had crossed paths with Sir Charles Stewart, another choice spirit. Forced to leave the turmoil of the Peninsula, Stewart had been suffering from the boredom of his own enforced inaction and had been charmed to discover that someone else who demonstrated his own reckless disregard for life and limb still remained in London. In the course of their budding friendship, it slowly dawned on the dashing peer that his new acquaintance was possessed of a clever mind that was going to waste in the social round of the
ton.
Though not particularly bright himself, Sir Charles had spent enough time in the company of his half brother Castlereagh to recognize brilliance in others and to appreciate 9
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its value. Thus, he invited Justin to accompany him when he was posted as adviser to the allied sovereigns in Berlin. From there Justin had followed him to Vienna, where in the heady atmosphere of the Congress, he had found his true metier. The women were beautiful, clever, and willing, and some of the finest minds in all of Europe were competing for stakes that made even as veteran a gamester as St. Clair nervous. He had worked unobtrusively as Stewart's envoy, gathering and dispensing information, and smoothing feathers that his mentor was all too inclined to ruffle.
But at long last the Congress had finished its business, too soon for Justin's tastes and the tastes of several illustrious ladies. Having discovered his flair for things diplomatic and political, he had sought out Castlereagh upon his return to London and had soon made himself as indispensable to the foreign minister as he had to his half brother. In addition to this budding career, he found himself heir to his Great-Uncle Theobald, who had scandalized the entire family by amassing a fortune in trade and speculation and had left it all to the only St. Clair who had had anything to do with him. To honor his benefactor, Justin attempted to manage his inheritance with the same skill by which it had been made. He had found himself highly intrigued by the world of finance, and had plunged into this new area of endeavor with his usual energy. It was not long before he was as well-known around the
'Change as he was in the ballrooms of the Upper Ten Thousand.
"Enough, enough, I'm coming," Justin muttered testily as he splashed some water on his face and allowed Preston to 10
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help him into a fantastically embroidered dressing gown. "I suppose I must see him, but do arrange for some breakfast if you will, Preston. A man can't take someone like my brother on an empty stomach."
"Yes, sir, very good, sir." Preston's face remained impassive, but he was very much in agreement with his master. Facing the Earl of Winterbourne did require some fortification, self-important fool that he was. It seemed the greatest shame that Mr. Justin hadn't been born to the title. Now
he
would have brought the right sort of air to it, but Mr. Alfred ... Preston shook his head. Becoming the Earl of Winterbourne had only increased Master Alfred's selfconsequence and had made him more self-centered and overbearing than he had been.
Years of looking after the two boys had given the old retainer a unique perspective and, unlike the rest of the household who had lavished all the attention on the heir, Preston had never had the least use for him. He had preferred the exhausting task of keeping up with the escapades of the younger brother to ministering to the older. While it was true that Alfred had never caused anyone an anxious moment while Justin proceeded from one life-threatening adventure to the next, the younger boy had at least acknowledged his caretaker as a human being. No matter how much trouble the lad might embroil Preston in, he was always aware of its effect on the older man. "I'm most dreadfully sorry, Preston. I didn't mean to put you in a tight spot," he would apologize with his charming grin when he had been doing something he shouldn't—riding his father's favorite hunter, playing with the 11
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gypsies camped nearby, or dallying with a local barmaid. And Preston, well aware that his charge's reckless ways sprang more from a wish to enliven a very constrained existence, would forgive him as he accounted yet again for his charge's whereabouts to some disapproving superior. More and more, the lad, ignored by the rest of the household, had come to rely on Preston for companionship, and thus it was natural that Justin should take him with him when he set up his own establishment, a move Alfred could never comprehend. The earl knew what was owing to his family's consequence, and felt it keenly that his younger brother employed only a manservant instead of a proper butler or, at the very least, an imposing valet. In fact, Alfred was ushered in with yet another complaint about Preston on his lips. "Really, Justin, I do not know why you do not get yourself a proper butler. Preston is getting quite above his station. Why, he kept me cooling my heels as though I were some common caller."
"No, no, Alfred," his brother soothed, "
I
kept you waiting."
"You?" Lord Winterbourne's already beefy countenance flushed with annoyance.
"Yes. I really can't in good conscience encourage you to call at such an hour. It's dreadfully bad
ton,
you know. Besides, I was a moment waking up. Rousing time last night, you know." Justin grinned reminiscently. The earl's face was apoplectic. "You mean you were in bed? At this hour?"
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