by Edith Layton
Table of Contents
Copyright
Also by Edith Layton and Untreed Reads Publishing
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Frost Fair
By Edith Layton
Copyright 2018 by Estate of Edith Felber
Cover Copyright 2018 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.
Also available in paperback and hardcover.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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
Red Jack’s Daughter
Lord of Dishonor
Peaches and the Queen
False Angel
The Indian Maiden
Lady of Spirit
The Wedding
A True Lady
Bound by Love
The Fire Flower
www.untreedreads.com
Prologue
The gentleman was blue with cold. And small wonder. It was the coldest night of the coldest winter in the recorded history of London town, and he was entirely naked. His face was literally blue, but so was his ample stomach; frost drew a scarcely decent veil of icy rime over the scant hair on his narrow chest and the graying bits on his privy parts. But he didn’t mind. He was much too dead to care. And probably a great deal warmer where he’d gone—or at least, where he deserved to go.
Chapter One
“Uncle’s gone missing,” the young gentleman said as he came into the dining room in the butler’s wake.
“Indeed?” the gentleman at breakfast said, after a sip of coffee. “Have you looked under a book?”
“I’m not joking, Maldon, he’s gone missing.”
“You’re not joking, no,” the man he’d called Maldon said with a slight frown. “What else but a family matter would have brought you out so early, and in such weather? Unless you were only just going home now, and stopped by on the way?”
“Aren’t you going to invite me to breakfast?” the young man asked, ignoring the outrageous comment, since the sun was well up and it was almost noon. He eyed the several silver serving dishes filled with eggs, kippers, bacon, beefsteak and porridge that stood on the great polished mahogany sideboard.
“Bring a plate for my brother,” Lucian Peregrine Gregory Maldon, fifth Viscount Maldon, told a footman, with a wave of one slender hand.
There was no way to guess they were brothers. They both wore casual but correct morning dress for gentlemen—tightly fitted jackets over gleaming white linen, carefully tied neckcloths to keep their shirtpoints high, waistcoats, snug knit breeches, highly polished half boots. But the young man who had just been announced was in his early twenties, though he looked more like a schoolboy. He was slight, of average height, his boyish face was ruddy from the cold. He had warm brown eyes and a winning smile.
Even seated, the man at the table could be seen to be taller by several inches and older by several years, and the smile he wore was faint, and mocking. He was pale, lean to the point of gaunt, his face all planes and cheekbones, his nose long and high bridged, his winged brows arched over long gray eyes. Fans of dark eyelashes over those knowing eyes were the only things to soften that angular, clever face. There was no spare flesh anywhere else on the man, but tensile strength was apparent in his long frame. He kept fit, and dressed to show it. His light brown hair was brushed back, smooth, elegant and precise as the rest of him. The only thing the two brothers had in common was the color of their hair.
“Uncle, is it? Did you think to find him here?” Lucian asked.
“Last place he would be, true,” the younger man answered with a quick smile. “When did you last see him?”
“I tend to forget unpleasant things.”
“Coming it too strong, even for you!” his brother chided, busying himself filling his plate. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s staid, true, but there are worse bores—in our family, at least.”
“Doubtless. Which is why you don’t see them here either. Have another side of beef, why don’t you, and then kindly tell me why you’re really here?”
The younger man sat, and flashed his brother another grin. “Afraid I’ll eat you out of house and home? I don’t think I could. I doubt anyone could.” He glanced around the room as though seeing it for the first time, letting his eyes pointedly linger on the painted pagan gods cavorting on the high ceiling, the intricately carved wooden panels of fruits and pheasants that hung at each side of the fireplace, the long windows overlooking the garden at the back of the elegant townhouse. “This house, two others in the country,” he mused, “a hunting box, and now another new house in town for your…private needs? Not counting the family seat.”
“Mama has been talking to you, hasn’t she?” Lucian said, amused. “Yes, the new townhouse. An extravagance, true. My fortune is not limitless though alas, my appetites seem to be. But it wouldn’t do to entertain an unmarried female in my bed here, much less a married one. After all, think of the Name. This house isn’t soley mine, it’s been in the family since it was built and went from our father to me, and will go to my son on that unhappy day I leave you. Not at all the thing for such liasions, and though I hate to sully such innocent ears as yours, I confess I have been known to indulge. But not here, of course.
“So, needs must, when the devil drives, and one’s appetites are the very devil. Exactly as the vicar always told us,” he pointed his knife at his brother. “Mark my words, Arthur, no man’s immune to them, even such a spotless youth as yourself. Be that as it may—the new house has a discreet address, and is well suited to my vile purposes.” He gave his brother a grin. It was a face that didn’t often show a genuine smile, and so the effect was curiously charming. “But the rest?” he asked, tilting his head to the side, “the properties and possessions? Simply the privilege of being born a decade before you. Unfair, I grant, but fortunate, for me. Keeps me from the gutter. I have no other virtues, you know. Don’t begrudge me, dear brother, eat hearty—I don’t stint at my table.”
“You don’t have to,” Arthur said over a mouthful of biscuit.
“Is that it? You’re in the suds again?” Lucian sighed. “What was it?
A horse that ran too slow or a female who would only slow down for a glimpse at your wallet? No, don’t look at me like that, I don’t care. I’ll advance you the blunt; you didn’t have to enact a tragedy for me.” His tone was light, but he gave his brother a keen assessing glance. Arthur might smile and smile, but he was not in the habit of dropping in for a visit of a morning. Theirs was not that kind of relationship.
“Nothing like that,” Arthur said. “I’m solvent. I did come about Uncle, it’s just that I’m half-frozen, and hungry. It’s cold as Death out there, and I haven’t had breakfast. You may have just got up but I’ve been out and about for hours. Louisa sent word to her mother, who fired off a note to ours, and here I am—looking for Uncle everywhere.” He put down his fork, his face earnest and a little worried. “He’s gone, without a trace, Maldon, it’s no joke.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Since Friday night. His valet says he never came home.”
“Is that all?” Lucian groaned. “Not even two full days? I’ve stayed longer at a gaming table.”
“Yes, you have. So have I. But Uncle’s regular as a clock and has been for years. He has his regular pattern, his books and his club and his cronies…”
“And now the fair Louisa too,” Lucian commented wryly. “The prospect of marriage has unhinged many men. Perhaps he’s changed his mind, set sail, and is in the tropics even now, with a dusky maiden or two fanning his fevered brow.”
Arthur’s pleasant face grew a frown. “You don’t have to like it; Lord knows you made your point clear enough to Uncle himself. But the thing is he wants to be married, and eagerly looks forward to the day. Whatever happened, he did not run away. Aside from the fact that a man like him would never go back on his word. The wedding’s set for next week. No, he didn’t run, I’d bet my life on it.”
“Very high on our dear Uncle, aren’t you?” Lucian said thoughtfully. “The thought of a man of fifty-odd marrying—no—rather say, buying a spinster of thirty so he might breed on the way to the graveyard doesn’t repel you?”
Arthur’s face grew as stiff as such a pleasant one could. “A man wants heirs, Maldon. You have yours, it doesn’t occur to you. When I’m fifty, I’d think I’d want to know I was leaving my fortune to my own blood too.”
Lucian didn’t seem to hear. “Very thick with Nuncle, aren’t we?” he mused. “I detect Mama’s hand in that too. Why should the undeserving prodigal son get all the inherited wealth? Why indeed? And why shouldn’t you feather your nest? But still…Uncle? She’s being a bit previous, don’t you think? He’s only five and fifty. He’s got years to go on prosing people to death, and now there’s sweet Louisa in the picture too. You’d be far better off cozying up with that ancient pinchpenny, Aunt Ethel—no, I forgot, she hates males.”
Arthur put down his napkin and stood up, his mouth tight. “I’ll just be leaving then, no use talking to you, is there?”
“Oh, stay,” Lucian said wearily, with a negligant wave of his hand. “Never mind me, I haven’t a particle of family feeling, Mama’s quite right about that. You’re right too, I don’t understand Uncle’s passion for the holy state of matrimony. I was once a good child, you see. I can scarcely expect you to remember, you were only ten, and I had a full twenty years—and two days—in my cup on my wedding day, as I recall. As if I could forget. But I marched up the aisle like a good little soldier because Mama and Papa expected it of me. It was agreed long before I was born, after all. Matching estates, old friends and good neighbors, and a charming daughter, well, to tell the truth it wasn’t that hard for me. Still, I wouldn’t have married at all, had I a choice. But my only choice was to either be a good son or a disappointment to the Name. I did my duty, dutifully produced an heir, and would be married still if Fate hadn’t intervened.”
“But you have Nicholas to carry on that Name!”
Lucian’s hard expression eased. “Yes,” he said softly, “so I do. But then, how many such lads are there in this poor old world, do you think? And,” he added in his usual bantering tones, “can you see Uncle producing such a boy? Oh, sit down, sit down, you’re giving me a stiff neck! And forgive me. There, you’ve heard something few men ever have, an apology from me.”
Arthur sat again, and picked up his cup of coffee. His brother leaned back, looked at him, and drummed his long fingers on the table. “Now, cut line. Why have you come to me?”
“Why do you so dislike Louisa?” Arthur asked.
“I don’t. I pity her, actually. Not unintelligent, but plain as a pikestaff, and with no funds, so forced to wed an old bore for his money. It can’t be easy.”
“You’re not married, you might have offered.”
“Me? Lucian laughed, richly. “Were I to offer for all the sad spinsters in London, I’d have to be an Arabian! Polygamy is frowned upon in our circles. No, I’ll take my women, serially—and out of wedlock from now on, thank you. I tried it once, and don’t have to again. And again, why have you come to me?”
“Someone has to go to Bow Street, to ask after Uncle,” Arthur answered seriously, his eyes grave. “Yes, it’s come to that. No one knows where he is, Maldon, and now we all fear the worst. Well, here’s a fellow who never takes a step he hasn’t taken at exactly the same time the day before—except for his engagement to Louisa, yes, don’t say it. But where is he? His valet, butler, man at law, his fiancée—no one in the family and no one at his club seem to know.
“I was, in fact, the last to see him—so far as I know,” Arthur said with a frown. “He dined with me Friday night. And you know, thinking back—he was strangely excited, almost agitated, couldn’t wait to be gone that night. Not like him at all.”
“Probably only anxious to get back to a book,” Lucian drawled, as bored now as he usually was on the subject of his mother’s brother. “But if you have to go to Bow Street—and the mind recoils at the thought—though I’ll allow they’ve the resources to ask questions in more places than you—why are you here now?”
“Someone has to go to Bow Street, I said. And all agree you’re the one who ought. No—hear me out. You’re the head of the family, you have the Name. Who wouldn’t hasten to help the Viscount Maldon?”
“Head? In name only—try the other direction. I’m the bad end the family’s come to, just as Mama always says,” Lucian said. “And you’re an ‘Honorable,’ I remind you, and ten years younger than I am. It’s cold out, you just said so. And it’s snowing now too. You go. You’re young, you can stand the exertion.”
Arthur shut his eyes, summoning patience. His brother was only five and thirty, he belonged to the prestigious Four in Hand Club because he was such a skillful whip, and drove his coaches to an inch. He was also a brilliant fencer, expert with pistols, and everyone knew he sparred with the best of the bloods at Gentleman Jackson’s boxing salon on a weekly basis. But in the family he was equally well known for his reluctance to involve himself in anything he didn’t enjoy.
“But you’re ten thousand times richer, and so you can put up the reward,” Arthur persisted. “And if you do, they’ll believe it.”
“Reward?”
“Bow Street works harder if a reward is offered. Even though we know it’s unusual for Uncle to be unaccounted for, I’m sure there are murders and thefts they consider more important than the matter of a gentleman gone missing a few days. A reward would make the matter more urgent. The Viscount Maldon would make it more urgent still.”
“My dear boy…” Lucian said, and paused, and tapped his spoon on the table, and sighed. “I suppose you’ll come along?”
“I have to talk to more of his cronies, and then there’s Louisa to tell. Thank you, brother!” Arthur said, grinning like a boy. “You’re a great gun!’
“A great fool,” Lucian grumbled. After Arthur left him, he sat frowning at his plate. He put down his napkin, stood, and called for his phaeton to be made ready. He went to the outer hall, still frowning. A footman helped him with his many-caped driving coat a
nd handed him his high beaver hat. He strode outside.
It was like being slapped across the face with a cold washcloth. He could feel the ice in his nostrils with every inhalation as he waited for his high-perched carriage to be brought around. He wondered if he should take the closed carriage instead, sit inside in comfort and let his coachman drive. But at least the fog had lifted—to reveal snow.
Weeks of wretched dank dismal fogs and still no sunlight. It was a murderous winter, begun with fogs so dense that coaches on the roads crashed into each other almost as often as the ships in the Thames did. Pedestrians had been no better off groping their way through London because even linkboys’ torches couldn’t illuminate streets that looked like curdled milk. Now the new year had come, and fog gave way to snow. But Lucian saw it was intermittent, and the street sweepers had been busy, and he hadn’t been able to go out driving for weeks. He’d drive himself.
His curricle came out of the stables. Lucian climbed up to the high driver’s seat and took the reins from his groom. The man clambered down, and the boy who acted as his lordship’s tiger saluted him from where he stood on the back of the elegant, light carriage in order to add weight and balance it. Lucian was still frowning as he threaded the reins through his gloved hands. Bow Street. On such a day. On such a fool’s errand. He sighed. He didn’t see his brother often, he didn’t want to see his uncle, and he didn’t much care if he pleased his mother, because he knew he never could.
His mother didn’t know him very well, and seemed to like him even less. She’d had four daughters before him; his birth had been a boon to her only because then her husband had left her alone. She’d left her son alone too, to be raised by nurses and governesses and then sent off to school in the manner of a man who would someday inherit titles and property. Ten years later, his brother Arthur had been born, a surprise and a mischance, the product of a strange night at their country estate when her husband had been away from his mistress too long.
Lucian had come home from school one term to find his recently widowed mother madly in love, at last, for the first time in her life. With his baby brother. Arthur had been well timed, and so, well loved. Born after his father died, after his sisters had married, and while his only brother Lucian was away at school. The viscountess was glad to lavish attention on the only soul who seemed to need her. And too, she found it delicious to have produced a baby at an age when her friends had only grandchildren and the grave to look forward to.