Her sisters shifted their attention from her liveried watchdogs to her.
“I am going to London.”
S
HE DID NOT
travel to town immediately. A day visiting the tenants across the expanse of Combe became two, then three, then a sennight. The farmers’ wives served her weak tea and sugarless biscuits and warily welcomed the baskets of fruit, bread, cheese, and nuts that she brought from the great house.
She delayed her journey again, and the following week visited the same houses, carrying sweets for the children, honey, and table linens. Mrs. Pickett looked on with disapproval, claiming that farmers did not need fine lace and embroidery. But the farmers’ wives warmed to Arabella, and she no longer needed to guess at their emotions to know their thoughts; they began to tell her.
During the duchess’s long absence from Combe, they said, her brother had come in her stead. On occasion he preached in the parish church.
“You’ve never seen a finer gentleman, milady, or heard such sermons as the bishop’s,” Mrs. Lambkin said, pouring tea into cracked cups. “He talked all about giving to the Lord the best of what He gives us.” Her gaze slipped to her son sweeping the hearthstone. “In thanks, you see,” she added, “so He’ll know we’re not hard-hearted and send us famine again.” Her hands quivered on the pot. The boy’s lean jaw was tight. “We can’t hope to be given bounty when we won’t first give to the Lord, can we now, mum?” Her eyes lifted to Arabella’s briefly then slipped to the burly footman-guard standing just inside the door, then out the window to the other footman leaning against a fence. The woman’s eyes were shadowed with fear.
Arabella tracked down Combe’s land steward at the mill. She made conversation about the estate and he was proud to speak at length about it. But she found could not ask him outright the question she had foolishly never thought to ask her husband; she would not shame herself or Luc in that manner.
At the house, no one had much to say about Christos Westfall. The elder servants remembered him as a beautiful little boy overly fond of drawing and prone to periods of intense thoughtfulness. All assumed that, grown, he had left England for his mother’s country, never to return.
R
AVENNA ANNOUNCED THAT
she must be off to check on the nannies and their pets before she joined her sisters again in London for the wedding.
“I will send an invitation to your employers,” Arabella said.
“Then they will happily attend. They adore spectacles.”
“I should be leaving as well, Bella,” Eleanor said. “Papa writes that he anticipates my return daily. I will ask him if he will travel to London with me for the wedding.”
“He will no doubt be obliged to remain with his parish. And I am certain he will be unhappy to see you go again.”
“He will.” Eleanor embraced her and kissed her on both cheeks. “But wherever you are, there too I shall be.”
She stood on the drive and waved at the coach that bore her sisters away.
“Joseph,” she said to her guard as she walked into the house. He was a giant of a young man, with arms the size of tree branches and legs like the trunks. “Tell your partner Claude that we will leave for London tomorrow.”
He bowed. “Yes, yer grace.”
C
HEROOT SMOKE HUNG
thick in the air and men grunted in various stages of inebriation, frustration, and satisfaction as cards passed through hands and bills, trinkets, and vowels passed across the tables. Luc swallowed the last of his whiskey and blinked to clear his vision.
It would not clear. How a man could win a game of anything in this cloud of vice he’d no idea. And how he could bear another night of such excruciatingly dull hedonism without gaining anything for his efforts he was equally at a loss to predict.
He wanted salt air, sea breeze, and a ship deck beneath his feet. Or alternately he wanted country air, wind off the Shropshire hills, and his wife’s body beneath his own.
Actually, scratch the first. The second was all he needed.
But this must be done. Of all the clubs in London, Absalom Fletcher, the Bishop of Barris, exclusively frequented White’s. The last time Luc saw his former guardian he’d said he would cut him into little pieces with a sword and feed the bits to sharks if he could but get him aboard ship, so he thought it prudent to approach him in this subtle manner. Paying a call on him at his house near Richmond probably wouldn’t do. The old duke’s man of business, Firth, had requested a meeting of Combe’s trustees to which Fletcher had not yet responded.
The last had not come as a surprise to Luc. It seemed that the Bishop of Barris employed a one-thumbed coachman. The coincidence with the sailor Mundy’s claim that a one-thumbed man had hired him in Plymouth was too great.
Thus Luc’s current strategy. A skillfully prepared accidental meeting might accomplish what a direct assault never could.
After a fortnight, however, he was beginning to doubt.
“Probably too busy fleecing innocent churchgoers out of their bread money to come out for a game of cards,” Tony muttered, his hand on his hip. The doorman had collected his sword.
Cam strolled into the chamber and wandered over. “Care for a visit to the opera tonight, gentlemen?” he said casually.
“Good God, Charles,” Tony groaned. “All that screeching is enough to send a man back to war, no matter the temptations of the green room. If we must see a show, why not Drury Lane?”
“I have just heard that tonight’s patrons of the opera might be even more interesting than the denizens of the stage or the green room.” Cam lifted a speaking brow at Luc.
Luc threw in his hand and stood. “I am particularly fond of the production tonight. What show is it again, Bedwyr?”
“Hamlet.”
Luc cast him a glance over his shoulder.
“They don’t play
Hamlet
at the opera house.” Tony followed, weaving a bit. He peered at the doorman who gave him his sword. “Do they?”
“Only the version in which Uncle Claudius employs a coachman who is missing a thumb to murder Hamlet,” Cam said.
Tony screwed up his brow. He turned to Luc abruptly. “Hamlet murders Claudius.”
Luc shot Cam a scowl. “And dies moments later.”
Tony shook his head. “Charles, you rapscallion, there is no version of
Hamlet
that includes a coachman.”
Luc’s carriage pulled up before the club and they drove to Lycombe House, where he changed his clothes for the opera. Not black for his uncle Theodore, who had allowed the people under his protection to starve, but brilliant blue with a silver and yellow striped waistcoat. Cam’s tailor had clapped in glee when Luc selected the fabrics. He would be the most fashionable man about town in the robin’s egg blue and canary yellow.
Luc could barely look at the avian monstrosity. But if it roused the sober, severely disciplined, and righteous Fletcher’s ire, he would wear a basket over his head and trot up Bond Street braying like an ass.
In point of fact he was an ass. He should not have left Arabella so abruptly. He should have invited her to come to London with him. But he could not protect her when all he wanted to do was ravish her.
Not true
. He did want to ravish her. Often. But holding her in his arms during the Channel crossing had been nearly as satisfying. And watching her take tea with the tenant farmers’ wives and listening to her speak with their children and hearing her laugh with her sisters made his chest hurt the way it did when her chin ticked upward with courage. And when she looked at him and her eyes asked questions that made his gut ache and stole his reason, he could not think straight.
Ravishing her was infinitely easier, especially when they didn’t speak.
His hands were clumsy on the neck cloth. Miles
tsked
and gave him another. He botched that one too.
“If your grace would allow me—”
“I can tie my own damned cravat, Miles,” he growled.
“All evidence to the contrary, your grace. Perhaps a glass of brandy would soothe your grace’s nerves.”
“My grace’s nerves are just fine.” He grappled with the linen. He didn’t need more to drink. He needed a fiery-haired temptress with cornflower eyes hazy in passion, supple raspberry lips, and the softest—
He snapped himself out of fantasy. He’d had to leave her at Combe. With Absalom Fletcher and his one-thumbed coachman in town, she was safest where she could not get caught in the cross fire between him and his would-be assassins.
“This is futile,” he grumbled to his cousin as they took their seats in the box Cam had arranged at the opera house. “I’m wasting my time. Even if I do speak with Fletcher, he is unlikely to confess to hiring men to murder me in France.”
“Too true.” Tony nodded and drew a flask from his uniform pocket. “And I’ll say, these shenanigans are becoming tiresome, Luc. That hideous coat is an absolute travesty. And that little race we enacted in the park yesterday to shock the bystanders left me fifty guineas in the hole.”
“Luc will pay it back to you,” Cam said.
“I wouldn’t have it! He won it fair and square, galloping down Rotten Row like hell was after him.”
“All for show,” Cam said, producing a folded journal page. “It was in the gossip columns today, as hoped. I quote: ‘Are the sporty amusements and defiance of mourning for his uncle merely the fruit of Lord W’s frustration over his continued distance from the ducal title? Or—’ ”
“Idiocy,” Luc scowled.
Cam casually surveyed the theater’s gathering patrons. “But what tack do you propose to take instead, cousin? Break into his house to search his private documents for proof that he tried to kill you?”
“Not a bad idea, though terribly illegal of course.” Tony quaffed from the flask and carefully wiped his moustaches with a kerchief.
“Anthony, you are occasionally a perfect imbecile. It is a wonder the Royal Navy allows you a dinghy.”
“Exceptional service to the king,” Tony pointed to the ribbons and medals pinned across his chest. “Order of the Garter and whatnot.”
“God help our empire,” Cam murmured. “Any word from your brother, Lucien?”
“Nothing. But I have cause to believe he sailed from France a fortnight ago. My man in Calais—” His tongue failed.
From across the theater a slender man with a narrow face and a cloak of black velvet slung dramatically over his black coat, cravat, and knee breeches met Luc’s gaze. He scanned Luc and his eyes narrowed.
Luc’s palms were cold and slick. Streaks of silver swept across Absalom Fletcher’s temples, enhancing the portrait of severe, sophisticated sobriety. But otherwise he looked like the same pious, sanctimonious bastard Luc had last seen a dozen years earlier.
On that occasion he had gone to him demanding to know where Christos had gone. Not yet a bishop but striving diligently by making connections in Parliament and at court, the priest denied having any knowledge of the boy’s whereabouts. He recommended that if Luc found his brother he should return him to his house in Richmond, where Christos would be cared for in a manner suitable to one so prone to hysterical fits.
If Luc had had a sword on him at that moment he would have drawn. Fletcher never admitted to doing wrong, saying that he had cared for them as well as a humble man might, teaching them discipline and the inner strength that they must have to be men of character in the world. Weaponless, instead of murdering him Luc had spat on him.
Then he bought a commission in the navy.
It was the obvious choice. Christos had fled to France, beyond Luc’s protection while the war raged. So Luc had gone to the only place where as a child he had been able to escape Fletcher.
Like Luc’s wife, the Reverend Absalom Fletcher was terrified of open water. And he could not swim.
Now Luc saw nothing of the drama unfolding on the stage below, or the other patrons tittering over his defiance of mourning, or felt anything except the burning in his gut. But at the break in the show he leaned back in his chair as though merely enjoying the company of his companions, and waited.
Fletcher did not make him wait long. Within minutes he made his austere way around the theater to Luc’s box.
“Lucien, what a delightful surprise.” His voice was the same urbane purr that it had been twenty years earlier. A large elegant cross of gold rested on his chest, glittering with tiny diamonds. “Charles.” He flicked a glance at Cam, then at Tony. “Captain.” None of them bowed. Luc silently vowed that if Fletcher lifted his bishop’s purple-gemmed ring to be kissed, he would break every bone in his hand.
He perused Luc’s clothing again.
“You do not wear mourning out of respect for your uncle, I see, Lucien.” His steel gray eyes were stern with censure.
“No doubt because I did not respect him,” Luc could only say. His fists and throat were tight.
“News has come to me of your race in the park yesterday, and of your frequent gaming these past weeks.”
“Has it?”
“Do you care nothing for your aunt’s grief or the honor due your family’s name?”
“I suppose I don’t.”
“It seems you have not changed since you were eighteen, Lucien. It is with great regret that I discover this. I had hoped you would grow to be a man of character, but alas the seeds I attempted to sow in your youth fell on infertile ground.”
Luc couldn’t breathe. “It would seem so.”
“It is a pity. I shall have to counsel my sister to withdraw her support for your trusteeship of the estate during her son’s minority. A duke cannot disport himself as you, and the child must have guardians that teach him well and minister to his lands wisely until he is of age.”
“Since you purchased your way into the episcopate, Fletcher, have you now a direct conduit to God’s ear,” Luc ground out, “so that you already know that my unborn cousin is a boy?”
Not a muscle on the bishop’s face twitched. “I understand that you have wed a woman of the serving class, Lucien.” He shook his head dolefully. “You were never even as intelligent as your brother. As feeble-minded as he was, at least he knew when to behave according to his best interests.”
Luc saw red.
With a glance at Cam, Fletcher left the box.