Wicked Wyckerly (26 page)

28

“Pudding, pudding!” Jeremy chanted, pounding his little fist into Fitz’s back after their country supper. It was time to find beds, but the children were too wound up to be herded. Fitz held his free arm out to Cissy, who had climbed up on the kitchen table, reaching out with chubby hands in hopes of being flung over his other shoulder. Jennifer was in the process of making a pet of the kitchen mouser, and even Tommy looked stuffed and satisfied.

The servants apparently ate well off the fat of the land while he was gone. Interesting.

All in all, Fitz counted his first dinner at home a rousing success, even if it had been conducted in the kitchen with Cook scowling in disapproval. Abby had disarmed the battle-ax by exchanging recipes with her, although even Bibley had protested when she’d attempted to help clean up after her noisy, and rather messy, brood.

“We can make up our own rooms,” Abby said somewhat shyly when Bibley did his doddering best to usher them out of the servants’ quarters. “If you would simply show us where to find the linens.”

A stammering, scrawny maid immediately raced from the shadows, running ahead of them at Bibley’s imperious gesture. Fitz assumed that the stout housekeeper of his youth had taken a paying position elsewhere, but if she’d trained the servants she’d left behind, they’d suit him fine.

“You’ll not escape my wrath by pretending you run a tight ship, old boy,” Fitz murmured as he passed his rail-thin but well-fed butler in the hall. “You’ll win an audience only if my guests are made happy.”

“As you say, my lord,” Bibley said, exuding skepticism with every palsied tremor.

Reaching the rotunda, Fitz returned the twins to their feet and let them scamper for the stairs, which their older siblings were trying to ascend with dignity—unsuccessfully, since their heads were swiveling like weather vanes in a thunderstorm.

“Do we need to bring cats with us?” Abigail called down as the twins raced to the next floor. “I’m not fond of mice.”

Fitz grinned as Bibley’s scrawny shoulders stiffened at the insult.

“Mice are not allowed in an earl’s residence, my lady.”

“Oh, earls can issue edicts to rodents? Well, you learn something new every day.” With a wink, she ran up the stairs after the children.

“If you are very, very good, old man, she will consent to be my countess, and you will start receiving a salary again—if I don’t push you off a cliff for pretending I killed myself.” Fitz lingered at the bottom of the stairs to glare sternly at his insubordinate butler.

“Your cousin was uncommonly stubborn about loaning funds to pay the help,” Bibley informed him with the same stoic tone that announced guests at dinner. “He needed to be reminded that all this might someday be his.”

“And you thought faking my death would terrify him into paying you off? How well did that work?” Fitz inquired with interest.

“Your cousin is not the gentleman I hoped,” Bibley replied with just the right degree of regret. “He wished to see your carcass first.”

That sounded like a true Wyckerly. But if Geoff had been out here to consult with Bibley, could it have reminded his cuz of how much he stood to gain if Fitz stuck his spoon in the wall? Enough to hire scrawny ruffians in hopes Fitz would run off as Bibley wished?

“Disobey my express orders again, old man, and I will hunt down everything you ever stole and hand it over to the bankers,” Fitz warned, knowing that it would do little good in a household that had run itself for decades. He had his work cut out for him.

Which included finding out if his cousin had returned from Yorkshire and coming to an understanding with his heir, just in case Geoff held out some hope that Fitz would conveniently be run over by a dray while chasing stone-slinging midgets.

But for tonight, he had seductive persuasion on his mind. To hell with heirs and titles. He’d made up his mind—he wouldn’t be happy until Miss Merry agreed to marry him, and unless he was happy, restoring the earldom wouldn’t be worth the effort.

Four more rowdy youngsters like Penny weren’t a deterrent when he had a palace to lose them in. This could work. He would make it work.

His cock eagerly roused in approval at just the image of Abby’s sunset curls and lush curves adorning his bed.

Wherever his damned bed might be. He set Bibley in search of a good one.

The children unerringly located the nursery and schoolroom on the third floor next to additional guest bedchambers. Abby did not expect a skeleton staff of servants to keep unused rooms dusted and swept, but at least the rooms contained beds, and the maid found clean linens, which was better than they’d had in the inn’s parlor the prior night.

While Abby and the maid shook feather mattresses out the windows, the children prowled among the shelves and chests, exclaiming over rusty toy soldiers and beheaded dolls. Seeming somewhat dazed, Fitz turned in circles, hands behind his back, observing the abode of his youth.

Even though he’d spent the last two days in riding boots and mud, and his fashionably short-waisted coat had been rumpled and used as a blanket, he managed to look tall, square-shouldered, and breathtakingly masculine as he perused the nursery. Just the authority with which he held himself screamed of privileged aristocracy, with the power to sway men to his will. Abby had to beware that he did not use his personal magnetism to sway
her
.

“There are no books,” he finally announced.

Making up a bed, Abby followed his gaze around the room. “How odd. How could your tutors teach you without books?”

“They didn’t,” he said absently. “Mostly, they chased us through the upper halls and grounds. After a while, they quit bothering to chase us. And after that, we had no tutors.”

She returned one mattress and went on to the next bed, watching the children out of the corner of her eye but focused mostly on Fitz, who seemed to be having difficulty reconciling his past to his future. “Your tutors took their books with them?”

“I suppose they must have. I’ve only the one text left, and I purloined it from the vicar, before the church roof collapsed, and he moved on.”

“Perhaps there are books in your library.”

Fitz raised a quizzical eyebrow at the timid maid. “Do we still have a library?”

The maid quivered and pulled a sheet across her face.

“You look much too intimidatingly noble, my lord,” Abby said with a laugh. “You must accept that you are an earl now, and that you do not speak to any but the upper servants.”

He drew his dark eyebrows down in a scowl, which made him even more terrifying to look upon. “Tommy, ask this witless creature if we have a library.”

Looking startled, Tommy glanced at Abby, who shrugged her permission.

“Miss, does Lord Danecroft have a library?”

The maid nodded, wide-eyed, keeping the length of the nursery between her and the earl. Tommy looked to Fitz for direction, but at the maid’s nod, Fitz took up another mattress and proceeded to beat it against the end of a bed. At least he found constructive uses for his frustration, even if he raised more dust than he cleared.

Abby had a feeling Fitz wasn’t very familiar with affection, which was frightening in itself. Having never known love, could he learn to love? For her faint, prayerful hopes, she trusted so, but she’d best not count on it. One more thing she must consider while she decided the future.

They found wearable nightshirts in the chests to clothe the children. Abby happily tucked them in and reveled in the opportunity to kiss them all. They were whispering among themselves as she closed the door and looked for a room close by so she would hear their cries if they woke during the night.

“Show us the library,” Fitz commanded as the maid opened the door of the next chamber for inspection. Instead of investigating the governess’s room, he caught Abby’s arm and nearly dragged her toward the stairs, apparently possessing some notion of the library’s direction.

She ran to catch up, observing him with curiosity. He was tense and unsmiling, his green eyes shuttered, but he was still Fitz. She had no reason to fear him, other than that he was a man and far stronger than she. And an aristocrat accustomed to commanding others. She’d not seen him in this humor before, but he was entitled to strange humors under the circumstances. It wasn’t often that a man returned to a home he hadn’t lived in since he was a child. She’d like to know more of the memories he harbored.

The maid scampered ahead of them so quickly that they almost lost her in the shadows.

“Bibley lied,” Fitz muttered, hastening down to the ground floor after the maid. “We have mice. We’ve just put uniforms on them.”

Abby bit back a smile at this display of the Fitz she knew. “Talk to your estate manager in the morning and find out if there are any sturdy, loud females in the vicinity available for hiring, if mousy ones are not to your liking.”

“If they’re smart, they won’t take the position,” he growled. “I’m doomed to mice. I thought I could manage all this, but I’m prone to foolish impulse.”

“And a smidgen of arrogance,” she pointed out.

“You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?” he growled as the maid hesitated outside a scarcely noticeable door at the end of a long, dark corridor.

“Maybe a little,” Abby admitted. “You’re an earl. You own a home far grander than many a duke’s. You have servants. And no cockroaches,” she reminded him. “And you’re growling because you terrify a maid.”

“I’m growling because I can’t
pay
a maid.” He turned up the light on the lantern he carried so he could examine the door. Shyly, the maid offered a key hung high on the frame.

Abby thought Fitz had forgotten she was there when he unlocked the door and stared in as if he’d never seen it before, until his fingers dug into her arm, and he tugged her in with him.

Beneath veils of cobwebs, the library was magnificent. Paneled in rich mahogany from carpeted floor to two-story ceiling, it boasted a balcony above the main chamber. Leather chairs flanked a fireplace with inlaid panels and what she assumed was the Danecroft crest carved above. Tables thick with dust invited stacks of books and sprawling atlases.

Almost every shelf was empty.

“Bibley!” Fitz roared so loudly and unexpectedly that Abby nearly fell out of her shoes. “Bibley, come in here now!”

As if conjured by magic, the shrunken butler tottered into the library upon command. “Yes, my lord,” he intoned.

“Bibley, where are the books?”

The old man looked around as if just now discovering they possessed a library. “I’m sure I don’t know, my lord.”

“And I’m equally sure that you do. If nothing else, my spendthrift ancestors would have bought books by the yard for decoration. If you sold off the library, Bibley, I’ll own you.” He swung his lantern over the shelves, but the dust was too thick to discern any evidence of previous habitation. “I remember this room as being kept locked, but I thought it was to prevent us from reading inappropriate material. I should think my ancestors would have at least kept their pornography in here, even if they never read a single book.”

“The earls couldn’t read, my lord,” Bibley stated with seeming indifference.

Fitz swung around and stared at him. Abby sank into a library chair, aware that she was watching a family drama but not totally understanding what it meant.

“What do you mean, they couldn’t read?” the current Earl of Danecroft thundered. “I’m an earl. I can read. How could my father sign papers if he couldn’t read them?”

“His men of business read them for him, my lord.” Bibley crossed his gnarled hands in front of him. “Is that all, my lord?”

“No, that is damned well not all! My father was not a stupid man, Bibley. He was a lazy sot, but he was not stupid! And neither was George. Don’t tell me George couldn’t read either. He had more tutors than I ever did.”

“He needed more tutors than you ever did,” Bibley corrected. Adjusting his wire spectacles, he removed an invisible mote from his threadbare sleeve as if the conversation were of no consequence whatsoever. “He was afflicted in the same way as your father and grandfather.”

“Afflicted?”

Fitz’s voice was more dangerously menacing than Abby had ever heard it. Had she been the butler, she would have been quailing in her shoes. But the old man simply stared at the wall past Fitz’s shoulders, trembling only with palsy. Or was that a hint of resignation behind the stoic facade?

“Your father used to say the letters leapt about and jumbled up worse than spillikins,” Bibley explained without inflection. “He tired of picking them out to make words. When his heir suffered the same affliction, he did not demand that Viscount Wyckerly apply himself to books.”

“Instead, he taught George estate management from the back of a horse,” Fitz said wearily, reaching for one of the few books on the shelves. “And no one cared whether or not I was capable of learning.”

“You were more interested in following your brother about,” Bibley suggested with unconcern.

“Because younger children always imitate the eldest,” Abby said softly, yearning to hug Fitz while he struggled with his memories. “You would have wanted to do everything your brother did, so you avoided tutors as he did, and no one saw reason to teach you otherwise.”

“Bibley, you may go now,” the earl said, flipping the pages of a text.

The butler nodded and doddered off, closing the door behind him.

“I’m not stupid,” Fitz stated calmly. “I have no education, but I can read. I taught myself.”

“You have an education. It just isn’t the type most men of your rank possess. That makes you unique, not ignorant.”

He set the book on the shelf, took her hands, and raised her from the seat. Abby forgot the butler and books when Fitz’s gaze fastened on her face. His lips were just inches away, and she desperately desired to feel them again. The mere heat of his palms caused a tingle of anticipation.

“I’m not an insect,” he declared with a triumphant grin instead of kissing her as she wanted.

Her lips turned up of their own accord at his excitement. “No, I can’t think that you would be,” she agreed. “A wild stallion, perhaps. A bored Corinthian, certainly. Never an insect.”