Lord Perfect

by Loretta Chase

  A small tree branch drifted past them. It spun to the edge of the cascade and over.

  Fighting to keep his balance, Benedict pulled Peregrine away from the steep tumble of water and rocks. The water tried to pull them back, but Thomas never budged, though Benedict felt the footman’s arm tremble with the effort.

  It seemed to take an eternity. In reality, only a few minutes passed before Benedict had pulled his nephew to shallow water. Then he would have carried Peregrine out, but the boy let go as they neared the water’s edge, and stumbled out on his own power. He clambered up onto the muddy pathway and collapsed.

  Benedict dragged himself out of the water and up to the pathway. “I’d better carry you,” he said.

  “I’ll carry him, sir,” said Thomas.

  “I can walk,” Peregrine gasped. “I only need a minute. To catch my breath.”

  “A minute, no more,” Benedict said. “I left Miss Wingate in a shivering heap upstream. Let us hope she does not take a fatal chill.”

  Peregrine sat up shakily. His teeth chattered. He set his jaw and rubbed his face. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said.

  “You will be sorrier than you can imagine,” Benedict said. “But later. For now, I must see to your partner in crime.”

  THEY FOUND OLIVIA waiting where Benedict had left her, and still shivering. Ignoring her incoherent protests, Benedict scooped her up in his arms and started along the pathway. She was completely sodden. Here and there, rotting—and reeking—vegetation clung to her. Peregrine was in much the same condition.

  Benedict knew he didn’t look or smell any better.

  “S-someone sh-should carry him,” she said, looking over Benedict’s shoulder at the boy, stumbling behind them.

  “I don’t need to be carried,” Peregrine said indignantly.

  “N-neither do I,” she said, teeth chattering, limbs shaking. She turned back to Benedict. “I w-want you t-to p-put m-me d-down.” She looked up at him with her mother’s great blue eyes. They filled. “I w-want m-my m-mother,” she said. Her lips trembled.

  “Oh, never mind being pitiful,” Peregrine said. “Don’t waste your energy getting the waterworks going. Uncle isn’t taken in by such tricks. He isn’t like everyone else, you know.”

  Apparently Uncle was, for the little witch had got her hooks onto his heartstrings and might have played him like a fiddle had Peregrine not intervened.

  “I don’t doubt you want your mother,” Benedict said with all the cool indifference he could manufacture. “The question is whether she wants you.”

  THE LAST THING Bathsheba wanted to do was stay and wait.

  But a moment after Thomas had left, her skirts tripped her up again, and would have sent her sailing headlong down the hill, if she hadn’t managed to regain her balance. She did not want to add to Rathbourne’s problems.

  And so she waited as patiently as she could, and when the first group of men arrived—Peter DeLucey at the head of them—she pointed the way Rathbourne and Thomas had gone.

  Shortly after that contingent vanished into the tall shrubbery, Lord Northwick came running down the hillside.

  “That way,” she said, gesturing.

  As he turned to follow her direction, his foot slid off to one side. He lurched that way, then the other, trying to regain his balance. Then she watched in horror as he went down in a tangle of arms and legs, and rolled, over rocks and broken branches and into a large rhododendron some twenty yards down the hill.

  Bathsheba picked up her skirts and hurried down to him.

  He lay very still, on his side.

  She knelt in front of him. His hat was gone and there was a red mark on his face, but he did not appear to be bleeding.

  “My lord.” Gently she touched his shoulder.

  “Damnation,” he said. He opened his eyes. He started to pull himself up and winced.

  “I’ll call for help,” she said, starting to rise.

  “Don’t be absurd.” He dragged himself up to a sitting position, obviously in pain. “I haven’t broken anything.” He tried to stand, and his face creased into taut lines.

  “You’d better stay for a moment,” she said. “Let me make sure nothing is broken. If you have fractured any ribs, you must be taken back to the house immediately. The wet will do you no good. I had better call—”

  “I’ll do,” he said. “I doubt I’ve fractured anything more vital than my pride. I must have looked a complete clown.”

  “You are a very bad clown,” she said. “I saw it happen, and I was not even mildly amused.”

  “In your secret heart, you enjoyed it,” he said. “Your hard-hearted relative brought low.”

  “I do not enjoy that sort of thing,” she said. “You are not hard-hearted, and we are related only very distantly. How could I enjoy your discomfort, when you have been so kind? Let me check your ribs.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  A shout interrupted the argument.

  Peter DeLucey clambered up the hill. “We’ve got them,” he said breathlessly. “They are being wrapped up in blankets. Lord Rathbourne told me to come ahead and set your mind at rest, Mrs. Wingate. The lake narrows into a stream at the southern end, and the children seem to have tumbled into the stream.”

  “Great Zeus!” said Lord Northwick. “They were not dragged over the cascade, I hope.”

  “No, no, Father, they did not get so far. Lord Rathbourne and his servant fished them out. Everyone is wet and cold, but no one is injured, apart from some scrapes and bruises.” He paused then, belatedly comprehending the sight before him. “Father, what’s happened?”

  “I fell,” said his lordship. “One of my legs is not cooperating. Kindly help me up. Mrs. Wingate is threatening to check my ribs.”

  “Fractures can be insidious,” she said. “That is how my husband died. You are being unreasonable. You must let me—”

  “Peter, help me up,” Northwick said. “And you, Mrs. Wingate, will do better to spend your anxieties on your child.”

  “Mr. DeLucey says she is not hurt,” she said. “In any case, children do not break as easily as adults. Young bones are more flexible.”

  “I assure you, neither of the children is broken,” Peter DeLucey said. “They are very wet, though.”

  “Deuce take it, Peter—your hand!” his father snapped.

  Peter gave his hand, and Lord Northwick got up, with a painful effort he couldn’t quite conceal.

  “There, that is better,” said his lordship. “I shall do.”

  She gave up. Men were so obstinate. “Very well, but you must take great care when you walk,” she said. “If you notice a sharp pain—”

  “Looking for fractured ribs again, Mrs. Wingate?”

  She looked toward the voice, deep and so familiar.

  Rathbourne pushed through the greenery. Rain beat on his hatless head and poured down his neck, sending streams of mud downward. He had Olivia in his arms, tucked inside his greatcoat.

  “Mama,” she said in the most piteous manner.

  For once in her life, the brat looked guilty.

  Bathsheba decided not to forgive her too quickly.

  “Olivia,” she said briskly. “You are filthy.”

  She returned her attention to Rathbourne, who gave her a faint smile of understanding. “Lord Northwick took a dreadful fall,” she told him. “He will not admit he is hurt.”

  “I took a ridiculous one,” said Northwick. “But never mind that. Let us get these children to the house.”

  Though he moved less gracefully than usual, he did not seem to have endured any serious injury.

  So she thought, at any rate, until they reached the pathway leading up to the New Lodge. Instead of going up the path he took its branch, which led in the other direction.

  “I knew it!” Bathsheba cried. “You have a concussion. I knew you hurt yourself badly.”

  Northwick turned and looked at her.

  “The New Lodge is up the hill,” she said. “To the west,
not the east.”

  “I said ‘the house,’ ” he answered. “Meaning Throgmorton House. It is this way, Mrs. Wingate, and it is the way you are to come.”

  Chapter 18

  IGNORING BENEDICT’S AND BATHSHEBA’S protests, Lord Northwick sent his son ahead to prepare the earl and enlighten him regarding certain of their guests’ identities.

  Then, limping, Lord Northwick led the drenched and shivering party to the ancestral home.

  There Lord Mandeville and the ladies stoically watched as the group passed through the hall, leaving muddy footprints and a far from pretty fragrance in their wake.

  While the earl would have happily tossed Bathsheba and her offspring out on their ears, he wouldn’t dream of offering the same treatment to Lord Rathbourne and his nephew, Benedict knew. It didn’t matter how disgusting they looked and smelled.

  Lord Mandeville understood his duty, and would do it, though he might gnash his teeth the whole while.

  A gentleman considers his duty first and his own comfort last.

  Accordingly, the visitors found hot baths quickly readied for them, and freshly made up rooms in the guest wing. Servants swarmed in to attend to them. A physician arrived to examine Olivia and Peregrine—then Northwick, at Bathsheba’s insistence. Naturally, his lordship objected. But his wife and mother took Bathsheba’s side, and he was obliged to submit, though he did not do so meekly.

  In a few hours, all were clean, dry, warm, and fed.

  Benedict told himself he had nothing to complain of.

  Though he could not make love to Bathsheba this night, he told himself he was not disappointed, because he had not expected to make love to her ever again. Meanwhile, all else had proceeded far more happily than he could have hoped. Olivia did not appear to be ill, and both she and her mama were treated kindly and respectfully.

  He told himself they were no longer his responsibility.

  He made himself focus on Peregrine, who was.

  Bathsheba and her daughter shared a room in another part of the guest wing. Lord Lisle, though only a boy, had been given a large chamber next to Benedict’s. Before going to bed, Benedict went to look in on him, to make sure he had not turned feverish.

  He found his nephew broad awake, sitting on the rug before the hearth, watching the flames. When Benedict entered, the boy rose hastily, his face red.

  “You ought to be asleep,” Benedict said. He sat in one of the chairs Peregrine had ignored.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Peregrine said. “It was impossible to sleep until I apologized for causing you so much trouble. I couldn’t say it properly before, with so many people about. But if I am to tell the whole truth, as I have resolved to do, the truth is, that’s all I’m sorry for.”

  He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. “If I had it to do over, I should probably do the same thing. I couldn’t let Olivia go with Nat Diggerby. He was an idiot and a bully and I didn’t trust him. I couldn’t let her go alone, either. She would have done, you know, because she didn’t care what I said or how I said it. I try to speak to people exactly as you do, but the effect is not the same. No one heeds me. I could scarcely manage her at all—not that I am blaming her, merely explaining the facts as I saw them.”

  He stood so stiff, it was obvious he was steeling himself.

  Against hurt. Rejection.

  He was prepared for the usual reaction, in other words.

  He had never been a submissive, obedient child. His elders found him annoying at best and infuriating at worst.

  Benedict wondered what it was like to be Peregrine. Adults either swatted him out of the way or tried to crush him. What was it like, to grow up being made to feel like an insect?

  “Tell me what happened,” Benedict said. “From the beginning.”

  The lad told him, stiffly at first, then, as he realized his uncle was listening, not judging, he relaxed, and grew more animated.

  When he was done, Benedict was silent for a long time. He was not trying to keep the boy in suspense. He simply couldn’t speak. He knew, too well, what these last few days had been like for Peregrine, and why he had kept on, even today, when he was surrounded and had no hope at all.

  But the lad was looking anxious. It was unkind to make him worry.

  Benedict spoke past the constriction in his throat. “I shall send an express letter to your parents,” he said, “though I suspect they will have taken alarm by now and may already be on their way to London. It is impossible to say what will happen. Matters are . . . complicated.”

  They were a good deal more than that.

  But scenes were for the stage. Grand passions and the heartbreak that went with them were the stuff of melodrama. They had no part in the life of a gentleman.

  Benedict refused to brood about the state of his heart. He would endure it, as he’d endured his depressing marriage. None of this affected Peregrine. What did affect him was the scandal about to break.

  One could not predict precisely how Atherton and his lady would react. Benedict doubted they’d drop him on account of a scandal. After all, half their friends figured in society gossip.

  Still, they might prefer not to have Peregrine spend time with his uncle while the uncle was the darling of the scandal sheets and his caricature appeared in print sellers’ windows and umbrellas. Perhaps, after all the excitement died down, Benedict might regain a little of the ground he’d lost. Perhaps he might yet have a say in the boy’s future. It was a most uncertain “perhaps.”

  Benedict rose. “Clear thinking and optimism are difficult when one is fatigued. Go to bed, Lisle, and we’ll look at the matter fresh tomorrow.”

  The taut expression on the young face eased. “Yes, sir,” Peregrine said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Mind you, I am not at all pleased about the clandestine correspondence,” Benedict said as he watched the boy climb into bed. “It is ridiculous at your age. It is absurd at any age. Prying servants are forever finding illicit letters and demanding large sums not to publish them. It is the sort of thing that belongs in a stage farce.”

  Peregrine winced. “I know that, sir. I knew I ought to resist them, but I simply couldn’t.”

  There was a pause while Benedict beat down emotion and reassembled his sangfroid.

  “Other than that, your behavior was. . . acceptable,” Benedict said.

  “Was it, really?” The boy’s countenance brightened further. “I have not disappointed you?”

  “You are thirteen years old,” Benedict said. “One makes allowances. I do, at any rate. What my father will say to you, on the other hand, when we return to London . . .”

  Peregrine’s eyes widened.

  “On second thought, you need not be anxious about Lord Hargate,” Benedict said. “He will be too much occupied saying things to me to have breath to spare for you.” He patted the boy’s shoulder. “Go to sleep, and be glad you are not quite grown up yet.”

  “LORD FOSBURY HAS never seen his granddaughter?” said Lady Northwick. “How foolish that seems. She is the very image of Jack Wingate.”

  “But for the eyes,” said Lady Mandeville. “She has the DeLucey eyes.”

  Bathsheba had been greatly surprised when the servant had come with a message from the ladies, asking if they might visit this morning.

  Now they were here, she was not so surprised. They were curious about Olivia.

  And Olivia, the little beast, sat, all limpid innocence, while the maid brushed out her hair. The maid would enjoy that, naturally, because Olivia had beautiful hair like her father’s. The soft red curls did not tangle into nasty knots, as her mother’s did.

  “Perhaps it is for the best,” Lady Northwick told Bathsheba. “If Fosbury had seen her, he might have taken her away from you.”

  “But then she would grow up with every advantage,” said Lady Mandeville. “A mother ought to consider her child’s future above all things.”

  “I believe I have,” Bathsheba said tightly.

  “I am
sure you have,” said Lady Northwick soothingly. “Perhaps, Mama-in-law, you have forgotten that Mrs. Wingate has only the one child. Those of us who have larger broods could perhaps spare one more easily.”

  “Atherton has given his only son to Rathbourne,” said Lady Mandeville. “One makes such sacrifices for the good of the child. Lisle will have a superior upbringing among the Carsingtons.”

  “I do not believe he has given him up, precisely,” said Lady Northwick.

  “If he has not, he ought to,” said Lady Mandeville. “The Dalmays are famously undisciplined. Atherton would be utterly hopeless had he not spent the better part of his youth with Rathbourne’s family.”

  The elderly countess regarded Bathsheba for a long while, her expression completely inscrutable. Then she said, “It was Lord Hargate’s mama who sponsored me in my first Season. When I found myself in the fortunate position of choosing among several acceptable suitors, she recommended Lord Mandeville. I have always considered myself under the greatest obligation to her ladyship.”

  Lady Northwick gave a little sigh. Then, like the tide drawn to the moon, she left her place beside her mother-in-law and went to Olivia.

  “I do not wish to distress Lord Hargate’s family or place yours in an awkward position regarding them,” Bathsheba said in a low voice to the older lady. “If not for Lord Northwick’s fears for Olivia’s health, we should have been gone from here yesterday.”

  “Where do you mean to go?” said Lady Mandeville.

  “The Continent.” It was harder than Bathsheba would have thought to keep her voice steady.

  “Heavens, I can hear your stomach growling, Miss Wingate,” said Lady Northwick. “Mama-in-law, we must not keep them from their breakfast.”

  “Oh, I am in no hurry,” Olivia said, so softly and diffidently. “A maid brought me chocolate before. On a silver tray. With a flower. It was beautiful.”

  “What a sweet child,” said Lady Northwick, lightly stroking Olivia’s hair.

  “No, she is not,” Bathsheba said. “Pray do not be taken in.”

  “Mama!” The blue eyes flashed indignantly.

  “We are not staying here, Olivia,” Bathsheba said. “You may bat your eyes all you like and pretend to be shy and sweet and innocent, but you are wasting your talents. We are leaving directly.”