Wicked Wyckerly (14 page)

16

Emotionally exhausted, Abby donned the gown that had been purchased for the theater, and let the maid arrange her hair. She thought the result of tousled orange curls caught in a pink ribbon looked as if she’d just risen from her pillow, but she didn’t care. She’d kissed an earl today. And enjoyed it entirely too much. And liked even better that the earl had stood up to her hostess in her defense.

But she couldn’t deal with aristocrats any longer. She didn’t know why she’d thought she could. They confused her entirely too much. She would simply spend her inheritance hiring a solicitor and visiting the children.

She was desperately planning her speech asking Lady Belden for her funds when she met the marchioness in the foyer. The lady looked her over with a sharp eye and strode out without a word. So much for Abby’s determination to speak. Etiquette required that she not do so unless the lady spoke first.

Silence commanded the carriage interior as the horses broke into a trot. Abby hated being given the silent treatment as if she were a misbehaving adolescent. Taking a lesson from Danecroft, she refused to be intimidated any longer. She took a deep breath, clenched her fingers, and voiced her concern. “I ran a household on my own for three years,” she stated, starting on firm ground. “I ran my father’s farm for years before that. I can converse with stewards and bishops. I am not a child nor do I wish to be treated like one.” She didn’t know if she was trying to convince herself or her hostess.

“You are a foolish young woman who doesn’t know the way of the
ton.
” Lady Belden clasped the head of her beribboned walking stick and jabbed it against the opposite seat. “Your reputation can be ruined by simply speaking to the wrong man.”

“On the farm, I speak to all sorts of men. Perhaps that is not done by sheltered misses, but I am trying to tell you that I am no such thing. You cannot pass me off as one.”

The lady pounded the stick idly a few more times, creating a dull clatter. “I never had children. Never particularly wanted them, but Edward was disappointed.”

Abigail blinked. She didn’t relax her rigid stance, yet the lady’s offhand remark had jostled her from her high horse, and she didn’t know whether to get back on again. She’d never thought much about the marchioness or her life. Lady Belden was simply a powerful stranger with the world at her fingertips.

But she was also a woman.

“You are still young and beautiful,” Abby said cautiously. “Perhaps another man . . . ?”

“No, I’ve had enough of men and their managing ways. I have no desire to surrender my independence or my fortune. I doubt that I have any affinity for screaming brats, so that’s not a concern.” She pulled the stick across her lap and glanced out the window. “But I have always thought I have much to teach young women that I wish someone had taught me.”

“I see.” Abigail relaxed slightly. If she thought of the dowager as a woman not much older than herself, instead of a stranger with the power to turn her life upside down, it was easier to converse. “I realize there is much I need to learn if I wish to see beyond my own small world, and I thank you for giving me that opportunity. But you must understand that my family has always been my life, and I cannot simply discard them because circumstances have changed. They are the only reason I am here.”

The marchioness sniffed haughtily. “Are you satisfied that they are well cared for?”

The carriage halted in a long line of gleaming black vehicles, sparkling with moisture in the foggy light of carriage lamps. Abby let anticipation for the evening build now that the barrier was toppling between her and her hostess.

“They are looked after by servants,” she said quietly, not wishing to argue over child rearing at a time like this. “It is not the same as a loving family.”

“I wouldn’t know,” the lady admitted with condescension. Then her demeanor changed, and she rapped lightly on the carriage window. “There is Quentin. Let us depart here. I wish him to see what a
sensible
young woman you are.”

Once descended from the carriage, Abby made her curtsy and studied the gentleman that a duke’s daughter had called a matchmaker, but she could see no more than a large, forbidding gentleman who didn’t smile much, although he gallantly held an umbrella over their heads.

She preferred all the vast variations of Lord Danecroft’s smiles and charm to this older gentleman’s stoic elegance, but she knew the earl wouldn’t attend the theater unless he had been invited to someone’s box.

What did a penniless lord do to entertain himself in the evening?

A penniless lord stomped cockroaches in the wee hours, pouring vinegar in cracks and spreading smelly herbs across the floors to prevent insects from encroaching on his new bedroom. Fitz thought it a fitting occupation on this damp evening when his body lusted for a woman whose innocent kisses had turned his head around—a woman he could never have.

God had a cruel sense of humor. As the bloody Earl of Danecroft, he could behave like every other damned Wicked Wyckerly, play the pirate, and take what he wanted and say to hell with the consequences.

Or he could do what was right and live a life of misery to pay for the sins of his father.

At the moment, he almost sympathized with his father’s blithe ignorance of what was right and wrong. Fitz wanted Abby, but he was painfully aware that it was wrong to have her.

Over these last few days, he’d sent the nanny out to purchase decent bed linens because he knew that’s what Abby would have done. He’d hired laborers to carry the contents of his old rooms to the town house and tote beds out of the attics of friends. He’d paid a seamstress to sew up fresh bedding and stuff it with cotton—because Abby wouldn’t have let servants or children sleep on floors.

He’d even started calling her
Abby
in his head, as if they were intimate enough for him to do so.

Except all he’d accomplished with his lustful thoughts and efforts was to lead his creditors to his town house door. He’d been ignoring their pounding intrusions since he’d returned today, as he ignored the knocker now. And the damned fresh mattresses did little good in a house crawling with fleas and other lice left by whatever animals had taken residence in the years of vacancy.

He’d done well to study bugs so he knew the enemy. He’d cleaned out debris, mopped with lye, and perfumed with herbs the upper rooms where his daughter and the nanny slept. And now he was working on his own room. He had a distaste for insects chomping on his expensive attire. And he would rather not use his prized Bug Book to crush spiders.

He still had an entire estate in the country disintegrating to dust, and tenants probably deserting by the dozens, but he saw no resolution to his problems until he’d found a wealthy wife. And the selection was far greater here in the city than in rural Berkshire.

At least the creditors seemed to have gone home for the night. The knocking had stopped.

As he stomped and swept, Fitz pondered the type of woman he ought to be seeking—should he have a spare moment from bug crushing to look for one. He might not have a proper education, but he’d spent years learning which gentlemen he could take into high-stakes games and which ones were good for only occasional entertainment, so he had an idea which daughters had the richest dowries. He didn’t know the
daughters
so well. Since they provided him no income and he couldn’t bed them, he hadn’t bothered to know them. But he knew Lady Anne had a fortune at her disposal.

Lady Anne was an attractive woman who would probably bite the head off her mate after intercourse. Lady Anne was definitely a praying mantis—slender, elegant, and independent. As she’d bluntly said, she didn’t need a husband.

So, did he want a woman who needed him? Probably not. Any woman who needed a scoundrel like him would be weak, and she would undoubtedly faint if presented with his mad household.

Still, he couldn’t imagine the duke’s daughter in his bed. If he had to submit to golden chains in tender parts, he wanted them tugged by someone gentle and loving.

Fine, then he’d hunt for a
gentle
wealthy woman. He was sure they abounded among the fairer sex. He hoped there were some who didn’t twitter like Nick’s sisters. A
quiet
, gentle, wealthy woman, that’s what he needed.

He’d start looking at the Athertons’ ball tomorrow night. Once he found the right woman, it shouldn’t take long to sweep her off her feet. He was an earl now. Everyone wanted an earl.

Only one without a brain in her head would want a penniless earl, but brainless should be easy to find as well.

And once he had a biddable, rich female in his bed, all thoughts of prickly Rhubarb Girl would melt away.

As he leaned over to sweep a pile of dust into his dustpan, the window above him imploded, scattering glass all over his newly swept floor and knocking over his last candle. Even in the dark, he could see the shape of a brick amid the debris.

Escalating in a split second from mild discontent to utter fury, Fitz threw down his broom and raced down the stairs to the kitchen garden. How had anyone noticed his one candle in a back room that looked onto a walled garden?

He hadn’t used the back door since arriving. He had to slam the rusted lock with his bootheel to jar it free. Soon, he wouldn’t have a damned door left standing.

His fists itched to maim the monster who was endangering his household. With his coat off, his white shirtsleeves ought to be a prime target. Let them come after him. He stalked into the rubbish that was his back-yard, fists raised, ready to strike. “Where are you, you festering guttersnipe? I’ll beat you into a piss puddle!”

A tomcat howled from the broken brick wall that rose between him and the dark alley.

He really, really needed to beat someone into a pulp.

Vaulting over a caved-in section of wall, he scanned the darkness, but an encroaching fog prevented him from seeing beyond the nose on his face. He halted, listening. Either whoever was out there had fled, or he was standing as still as Fitz. He heard only the rustle of vermin in the trash.

He slammed the side of his fist against the wall in frustration, and the rotten mortar gave way, tumbling more bricks into the yard.
Damnation!

Sucking on his scraped hand, Fitz stalked back into the house and wedged the back door shut with a decrepit chair taken from his old rooms before he went upstairs to check on Penny in the front. She and her nurse had slept soundly through the whole incident. He’d have to move her bed away from the window in the morning.

Fitz felt his way back down the dark hallway to the room he’d claimed for his own. Damp air entered through the broken pane, but the windows were so leaky that there had been little difference in the temperature inside or out even before the brick smashing through his window had disturbed his serenity.

He groped among the glass shards until he’d located the candlestick, and struck a flint from his pocket to light the wick. Still simmering with rage, Fitz cut the twine holding a piece of paper around the brick.

FED WUTZ YERS OR OIL TEK EM BAK,
read the painstakingly printed scrawl on the back of a poster from Tattersall’s.

Oh, that explained a lot.

Oil?
What the devil did that mean? Fitz read the note aloud and decided he sounded like a demented Irishman.
Feed what’s yours or I’ll take him back?
Or
them
back?

Maybe next time someone knocked on his door, he’d meet him with a punch to the jaw, if this was how the dastard meant to get his attention.

Had he driven his creditors to insanity? Had a crazed tenant followed him to town? The estate was all he owned, so he couldn’t imagine what else he needed to “feed.” Or was there some chance that his cousin Geoff was as ill educated as most of the brainless Wyckerlys? Who else would be angry enough to heave bricks at him and tell him to feed his tenants?

For the sake of caution, hunting down his cousin moved to the top of Fitz’s agenda. For all he knew, the man was a lunatic.

“What do you mean, he isn’t in town? He was in town just last week.” Swinging his ebony walking stick, Fitz paced the narrow untidy office of the estate solicitors the next morning. Decades of pipe and cigar smoke had seeped into the wood of the floor and bookcases, creating a disgustingly unhealthy stench. He was glad his empty pockets hadn’t allowed him to take up the tobacco habit. He wanted to fling open the windows, but he doubted they’d been breached since jolly Charlie sat the throne. “Leeches like him need warm bodies to bleed,” he insisted. “Geoff’s warehouses are in town.”

His balding solicitor polished his spectacles, ignoring Fitz’s rage.

“Mr. Geoffrey stopped in and inquired into the status of the estate as was his right when you were thought dead. Once you returned to London and he could see that you were alive, he had to leave on business in Yorkshire.”

Fitz realized he might persuade himself that Geoff had slung a stone at him in a rage at not inheriting, but he couldn’t have heaved a brick if he was in Yorkshire. Then who else would send a note saying
Feed what’s yours or I’ll take them back?
He wasn’t starving Penny, so it must be the estate tenants that needed
feeding
, although he couldn’t fathom how even creditors could
take them back
. Geoff’s side of the family might have some bee in their bonnet about the title, though. He had no clear idea of what the argument was that had parted the different branches a couple of generations ago. Could his heir have hired assassins and left town to cover his tracks?

Geoff owned warehouses and mills. Ruffians worked for him every day.

“I want Geoff notified that I must speak with him,” Fitz said sternly. The solicitor nodded and made a note. “And then I need a will.” Unable to strangle his cousin or beat a villain into the ground, Fitz was left with no choice but to be practical.

The solicitor peered over the top of his spectacles. “The estate is entirely entailed.”