The Mysterious Heir
The Mysterious Heir
By Edith Layton
Copyright 2015 by Estate of Edith Felber
Cover Copyright 2015 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print, 1983.
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This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Also by Edith Layton and Untreed Reads Publishing
The Duke's Wager
The Disdainful Marquis
The Mysterious Heir
Edith Layton
For Susie and her merry heart
1
There are those who champion a rainy day. Those who find a spring zephyr not half so delightful as a deluge, a sun-struck Sunday not nearly so fine as a steadily dripping Tuesday, and a brisk autumn breeze never as exhilarating as the prospect of windblown sheets of rain covering the town. For those select few who delighted in precipitation, it was an excellent day in London. For the majority of others, it was one of the most wretched days of the season.
But London being the sort of town it was, there were a good many miserable souls about, courting pleurisy at every step. These were men and women who had a living to see to. Merchants and food vendors, shopgirls and tradesmen, lower servants and hackney drivers, they swam through the drowning streets as though the sun were shining with all its might, though they cursed, to a man, and a woman, as they did. They were not of the select number who sighed, as they sat before a toasting fire, that there was something so romantic about a rainy day.
It was rich men's weather. They were the only ones who could enjoy the gusts of wind and shatter of rain on their windowpanes in the proper poetical spirit.
But one gentleman who was wealthy enough to order up a month of rain if he so chose, instead stood by his window and let out an involuntary muttered curse as he tried to see through the streaming pane. Then he sighed, turned, and gripping the head of his heavy molacca cane, made his difficult halting way to a high-backed chair by his fire. He sat
slowly, placing the cane at his right side, and stretched one long glossy booted leg out straight in front of him, and absently massaged his leg as he stared into the fire. Though he had wealth enough to commission a parcel of poets to extol the virtues of rain, still he cursed the day as roundly as any of the vegetable mongers who stood shuddering and sodden behind their barrows in the marketplace. For rich or poor, rain is the enemy of old wounds, since old wounds wake to recount their sad stories on rainy days.
He sat and rubbed his leg the way a man might stroke the head of a faithful dog, absently and steadily, not stopping lest he give offense to the recipient of his attentions, lost in thoughts beyond the rain until a soft knock came upon the door. He looked up swiftly to see his butler, stiffly correct, bearing cards upon his silver tray, and startled a look of fleeting sympathy on the old man's usually correct countenance.
“Visitors, your lordship,” the butler said, all traces of emotion vanished the moment his employer's eyes met his. “It is Lord Beverly and your solicitor, Mr. Tompkins. Are youâ¦will you receive them?”
“Aye, Weathering.” The tall man laughed softly from his chair. “Yes, the leg is giving me the devil of a time, but it will whether I have company or no, you old nursemaid. If sitting alone would cure it, why, I'd be ready to dance a quadrille now. No, this rain is only another installment of Bonaparte's revenge, and I'm well used to it by now, so don't send young Tom off for the sawbones, for there's nothing he can do. Unless he can conjure out the sun for me. And, yes, do show Bev and Mr. Tompkins in, but you'd best give them a towel apiece before you let them in, poor chaps.”
The tall man straightened in the chair and removed his hand from his leg. He gripped the cane tightly in his right hand, so tightly that his knuckles showed white, and had hauled himself to stand as his two guests were shown in.
“Oh, bother, Morgan, sit down, sit down,” the slight young man cried as he entered, still dashing raindrops from his light curls. “There's no need to stand on ceremony, that is, to stand at all with me.”
“Lord Beverly is quite right,” the neat middle-aged man who entered next said censoriously. “Do sit, your lordship, please do.”
“I'm not quite ready for a bath chair, gentlemen,” the taller man said with some amusement in his rich soft voice, and so saying, he came forward, limping only slightly, but leaning heavily on his cane, to shake hands with them both.
“Why, you'll do, Morgan, you'll do!” Lord Beverly said in delight. “Just look at you, fine as fivepence.”
“But please do sit, your lordship,” the other gentleman said, noting, as his younger companion did not, the white lines of stress that bracketed the taller man's mouth as he walked toward them, “for I've business to discuss, business that called me through this wretched storm to come here, and we may as well get on with it.”
A look of amused understanding passed through the tall man's deep-set eyes, and he turned to his chair again.
“All business, eh, Mr. Tompkins? Quite right, of course. But not so urgent as all that, is it? For I confess I hadn't expected you on such a day as this. Such a day would have daunted all but the sternest of men on the most desperate of errands.”
“Oh, Lord, Morgan”âLord Beverly laughed, as he unceremoniously hauled a delicately fashioned chair up close to where the taller gentleman was stiffly lowering himself into his high wing-backed chairâ“it's only a bit of rain, after all. We're not cripples, you know.”
The tall gentleman continued to seat himself and arrange his cane near his right hand again, but Mr. Tompkins stopped abruptly in his efforts to settle himself and his briefcase of papers near a table by the fire and looked up in stunned horror at the younger gentleman's words.
Lord Beverly looked around in confusion in the silence that had settled, and said hastily, “Dash it, not what I meant to say. I meant that we're both hardy souls, Tompkins and I, no reason for us to shy at a spot of rain like milksops. That is, only a bit of rain, you know.”
The taller man waved his hand dismissively and smiled. “Get used to Lord Beverly's way with words, Tompkins,
and pay no heed. He doesn't mean half the things he says, and the half he does mean, he gets turned about.”
“Unfair,” Lord Beverly said sulkily, completing the drying of his exquisite coiffure by running his fingers through it and ruining it entirely.
“Yes it is,” the taller man said, “for he is the best of fellows and a staunch friend. However, his own tongue is no friend to him, and he's been tripping over it in his haste to get away from it for years.”
“That's true,” Lord Beverly said brightly. “Remember back at school, Morgan? When I vowed not to say a word to get myself into trouble again, and then I got sent down for explaining my silence to the headmaster?”
The tall man laughed. “Yes, especially the part where you explained how you were holding your tongue so as not to comment on his speech impediment, among other things. But, Bev, my dear, Mr. Tompkins did not emerge from his snug chambers on such a day to have you regale him with our school reminiscences. I believe you said something in your note about legal action, Mr. Tompkins, and you, Bev, wrote about an impostor. I assure you, Bev, you would have been welcome to come to Lyonshall to swap school stories with me for hours. In fact, you did come and do so not a few months past. But I only posted to London on the strength of your summons about this impostor. That alone. It sounds incredible to me.”
“Unfortunately, it is not. It is all true, your lordship,” Mr. Tompkins said briskly, looking up from the papers he had arranged to his satisfaction. “I have the notes here. A considerable sum to the proprietors of Wilson's, another due Mr. Jensen, a chit from Barrison's, and this one, only recently received, from Matlock's. And these are only the larger ones.”
“Bills from the worst gaming hells in town,” Lord Beverly said knowingly. “And that one from Jensenâwhy, I couldn't even get an appointment with the fellow. And he came out of nowhere. One moment, it's all the crack to have your hessians made by Hobley, and the next, it's Jensen or
nothing. He has a way with tassels, you see, that no one else can get the knack of.”
Mr. Tompkins interrupted Lord Beverly's musings, leaving him to study his boots, brooding at them through his quizzing glass as he turned his feet this way and that, by saying portentously, “And all the bills run up by one James Everett Courtney, by all accounts a well-set-up-looking gentleman, fair-haired and light-eyed, and most importantly: heir presumptive of the seventh Earl of Auden, who is yourself, of course, your lordship.”
“At your service.” The tall man smiled, and went on, “And of course, I have no heir presumptiveâor none that I know of. And looking through the family Bible, I find there is no James Everett Courtney, and never was.”
“Just so,” Mr. Tompkins said, quietly triumphant, and sat back.
“Your lordship,” the butler said softly, entering with a laden tray, “I took the liberty of bringing some refreshments, against the chill of the weather.”
“How uncivil I've become. Quite right, Weathering,” the Earl said, watching the butler place the tray upon a table. “Bev, you pour something fortifying for Mr. Tompkins and yourself.”
“Of course,” Lord Beverly said, leaping up to find some occupation and promptly pouring three large measures of brandy. Then he noted what else there was on the tray and gave a crow of joy. “Gingersnaps!” he cried with delight to the butler's retreating back, “Tell Mrs. Turner thank you, Weathering. Only fancy,” he said to the Earl, handing him his glass, “she remembered after all these years. From when we were both boys, Morgan.”
“And therein lies the problem, your lordship,” Mr. Tompkins said, ignoring the glass Lord Beverly was urging on him.
Lord Beverly paused to look inquiringly at the solicitor.
“There's no problem with you, Bev,” the Earl said softly. “Mr. Tompkins was still talking about the bogus heir presumptive I seem to have acquired.”
“Just so,” Mr. Tompkins said, accepting the glass from a relieved Lord Beverly.
“Heir presumptuous, more like, Morgan. Imagine the crust of the fellow, purporting to be your successor and getting all that credit all over townâin the best places, too.”
“Not the best of places, your lordship.” Mr. Tompkins frowned. “For there he would have to have some entree. He would have to be accompanied by someone known to you. But he frequents the more raffish sorts of gaming hells, and the less respectable sort of establishments, and there, his knowledge of you and his familiarity with your life-style, combined with his affect of a gentleman, have been sufficient to carry it off. And then, of course, the fellow doesn't pay up and the bills are beginning to find their way to me, as your man of business. It is in the capacity of your man of law that I urge you to remain here in London for a space. Whilst you are here, there can be no question of anyone pretending to be your relative. It is yourâ¦ah, propensity for remaining at Lyonshall, far from London, or traveling on the Continent, which allows him free rein in London. You haven't shown your face here, your lordship,” Mr. Tompkins said, leaning forward with a serious intent, “in years. Years. That is what the fellow is making his fortune on. And since, youâ¦ah, have led such a secluded life, there are certain misapprehensions about you in society. So the fellow is able to impersonate your heir with impunity. The best way to squelch him is to remain here and take your rightful place in society. That will put him to rout. Otherwise, we will eventually have to begin to pay some of these bills. We will be unable to withstand all the creditors. And their claims will reflect upon your own reputation, not only socially but also financially. But if you set up here for the season, he will have to fade away.”