Neither had improved during the interim. The green of Lady Helen’s eyes stood out in stark relief against the dark circles beneath them, and although she was swathed in a thick pelisse, he rather thought she had lost weight; certainly, the face framed by its fashionable poke bonnet appeared somewhat thinner than he remembered. But far more striking than his wife’s changed appearance was the deterioration in his son. Master William Brundy, familiarly known as Willie, sat on his mother’s lap, where he had obviously been sleeping, at least until the cessation of the carriage’s movement had awakened him. At age three, he had not yet lost his baby fat, but his plump cheeks were flushed an unnatural red, and his brown eyes, usually bright with mischief, were now dull.
“Willie?” Sir Ethan called softly to him.
“Papa,” Willie moaned miserably, holding out his arms to his father.
Sir Ethan received him willingly, and tucked him within the folds of his greatcoat before holding out his free hand to his wife.
“Oh, Ethan, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” she said, sighing with the relief of a woman whose heart has come home. “Yes, I shall be only too happy to leave the carriage, but don’t you think you should move aside so Matthew may lower the step? Take Willie into the house, and I shall be there directly.”
Sir Ethan was much inclined to linger at her side, but Willie’s appearance was enough to convince him that she was probably right. He gave Matthew a nod that was half instruction and half apology, then carried his son into the house, crooning assurances to the boy that Papa was here, and would very soon set everything to rights.
He only wished he could believe it.
Lady Helen entered the house a moment later, sheltering beneath Matthew’s umbrella and clinging to his arm; alas, Willie’s weight on her right leg had all but cut off the circulation of blood, and that usually reliable limb could no longer support her weight. Once inside, she removed her pelisse, and Sir Ethan’s suspicions that she had lost weight were confirmed.
“You’re looking well, Ethan,” she observed with mingled envy and resentment. How very like a man to go haring off to London, leaving the women of his household to cope with the illness of one child and the clinginess of the three healthy ones, all of whom felt their sibling was claiming more than his fair share of maternal attention. Even as her brain formed the thought, she recognized the unfairness of the charge, and dismissed it without regret. “Yes, Willie, I know you want to stay with Papa, but at least allow him to remove his wet coat!”
With some reluctance, Willie abandoned the shelter of his father’s arms for the mother with whom he had been shut up in a carriage for the better part of two days. Once this garment, along with Lady Helen’s pelisse and bonnet, had been surrendered to Matthew and whisked away to dry before the fire, Sir Ethan addressed himself to his wife. “So you think I look well, do you? I wish I could say the same for you! You look worn to the bone, love.”
“I am. But how very unhandsome of you to say so!”
Sir Ethan offered no answer to this charge, but shifted Willie to one arm so that he might enfold his wife in the other. “But I thought you were going to stay in Lancashire until he was better.”
“I was,” she said, fighting an uncharacteristic urge to burst into tears on her husband’s shoulder. “But he didn’t seem to be getting any better, and finally I thought it might be best to bring him with me, so a doctor might see him.”
“There are doctors in Lancashire,” he pointed out.
These rural practitioners of the medical arts, however, found no favor with Lady Helen, who made a noise which, in a less elegant female, might have been called a snort. “Yes! Old Dr. Forrest, who would no doubt wish to bleed him and dose him with laudanum!” In a more moderate tone, she added, “Perhaps I should have waited, but I had no idea we would be arriving in the worst possible weather for an invalid; it was perfectly fine when we left Lancashire! Then, too, I thought perhaps removing Willie from their sphere might at least keep the other children from falling ill. And I wanted to see you again. I’ve missed you, Ethan.”
There was only one possible response to this confession. He tightened his arm about her and kissed her lingeringly, chuckling a little when Willie’s plump arm released his neck in order to wrap itself around hers, uniting them in a circle of three.
“Oh, it is good to be here,” Lady Helen said with another sigh, this time one of contentment. “I confess, just as the children look to me to make everything right, even when there is nothing I can do, I look to you.”
“Even when there’s nothing I can do?” he murmured against the honey-colored hair tickling his nose.
“Even when,” she agreed, and reluctantly detached herself from his embrace. “But I must go upstairs to the nursery and get Willie into bed. Will you come with me?”
“You just try and stop me,” he said, and together they climbed the two flights of stairs to the nursery.
The children spent most of their time in Lancashire, but one of the rooms below the eaves had been fitted out as a nursery for those occasions when their parents chose to bring them to Town. The girl who had been pressed into service as a temporary nursery maid had done her job well, for a fire already burned in the grate, and a lump beneath the sheets of Willie’s narrow bed suggested the presence of a hot brick. Nor had Matthew, the footman, been idle since their arrival, for Willie’s bag had been brought up to the nursery, and the maid had unpacked his clothes and spread his nightshirt across the back of a chair positioned before the fire.
“I know I should have laid it out on the bed, your ladyship,” the nursery maid offered apologetically, seeing her mistress’s gaze falling upon this last. “But I thought as how it might best be warmed, it being so cold and wet outside, and Matthew telling us all downstairs as how sick the poor mite was.”
“No, you did very well,” Lady Helen assured her warmly. “It was clever of you to think of it.”
The girl, fairly beaming at this praise, was all eagerness to earn more. “Shall I fetch up some broth? There’ll be some in the kitchen, I know, for Cook was boiling a chicken for a fricassee.”
Lady Helen glanced at her son. Willie’s head now drooped upon his father’s shoulder, and he knuckled his eyes with one small fist. “Not yet,” she said. “He must sleep for now, but he will certainly want broth when he awakens. You need not stay; I shall put him to bed myself.”
“Yes ma’am,” said the maid, bobbing a curtsey before betaking herself from the room.
Lady Helen sat on the edge of the bed and soon had young Master William stripped, gowned, and tucked between warm sheets. “Sleep well, my pet,” she whispered, and bent to kiss the dark curls that were so like his father’s.
Once they had left the nursery and closed the door softly behind them, Sir Ethan bent a critical eye on his wife. “And now, love, I think it’s your turn.”
“My turn for what?”
“Your turn to be coddled. It’s plain as a pikestaff you’ve worn yourself out caring for Willie—and don’t tell me the others ’aven’t demanded their share of your attention, for I won’t believe you.”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “I won’t.”
“So now it’s time someone took care of you,” he continued. “I’m going to put you to bed and see that you sleep ’til next Tuesday.”
She gave a half-hearted laugh. “Don’t tempt me! But it was to help with your Parliamentary bid that I promised to join you in London. I daresay we shall be obliged to attend a great many dinners, and I have no objection to hosting a few, but if you expect me to offer kisses in exchange for votes, as the Duchess of Devonshire did—”
“If that’s what it takes to win, I’d just as soon lose,” put in Sir Ethan, steering her into the bedchamber.
“Then too, I should like to look in on Teddy,” she continued. “I daresay he is going on well enough—at least, I haven’t heard anything to the contrary—but I should rest a great deal easier after seeing for myself.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, er, as to that,” Sir Ethan hedged, seeing the hour of reckoning was at hand, “ ’e’s—’e’s not in Town anymore.”
“Has he taken up residence at Reddington Hall?” she asked in some surprise. “I trust nothing is wrong there?”
He hastened to reassure her. “Oh, no! Everything is fine”—the slightest pause—“there.”
Alas, she was far too quick for his peace of mind. “And by that cryptic utterance, am I to understand that everything is not fine here?”
“It’s not as bad as all that,” was his not very reassuring reply. “ ’e’s just gone to Lancashire for awhile.”
“To—oh, and I missed him! I daresay we must have passed one another upon the road. Still, I suppose the housekeeper will know what bedroom to give him, and I shall write with instructions for—”
“ ’old up, ’elen,” he said, raising a hand to forestall her. “There’s no need for you to write the ’ousekeeper, for ’e’ll not be staying at our ’ouse.”
“Not—then where, pray, is he staying? He has no other acquaintances in the area, at least not to my knowledge.”
“ ’e’ll ’ave plenty of acquaintances by now,” he predicted grimly.
“Ethan,” she said, regarding her spouse with a kindling eye, “what have you done?”
“Me?” He gave her a look of wounded innocence. “What makes you think I’ve done anything?”
“If you haven’t done anything, you certainly know something,” she said with all the certainty of four years of marriage. “What, pray, is Teddy doing in Lancashire?”
“If you must know, ’e’s working at the mill.”
“He’s what?”
“Shhh!” He put a finger to his lips. “We don’t want to wake Willie.”
“At the moment, Willie is the least of my concerns! Ethan, what has been happening here, and what have you done to my brother?”
“I just told you—”
Lady Helen took a deep breath. “Tell me the whole story from the beginning! Why is my brother working at the mill?”
“That’s not the beginning. It’s what you might call the middle.”
Lady Helen strove with herself. “I have a feeling that is the very last of all the things I might call it! From the beginning, if you will be so kind!”
Now it was Sir Ethan’s turn to take a deep breath. “Well, by the time your father’s solicitor, and steward, and everyone else was done telling ’im what ’e’d ’ave to do as Duke, and ’ow unsuited to it ’e was—” He broke off abruptly and gestured toward the delicate Sheraton chair before her rosewood writing desk. “Per’aps you’d better sit down.”
“I shall do very well standing,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Aye, well—as I said, by the time they were all done with ’im, your brother was in a regular pucker, thinking as ’ow ’e wasn’t fit to fetch ’is father’s shoes, much less fill ’em. ’e lost ’is way for a time. Oh, ’e’ll be all right, but in the meantime, ’e managed to spend, or lose, more money than ’e can pay until probate is granted.”
Lady Helen’s eyes widened in dawning comprehension. “Ethan! Is that what it was all about—La Fantasia, and all the rest?”
“Aye, love, that’s what. La Fantasia was after ’im to marry ’er, and ’e felt played for a fool.”
“Thank God he saw past her wiles! Papa would be spinning in his grave—as would every Duke of Reddington who’d come before him!”
“Your brother ’as more sense than that, and more recognition of what’s due ’is name. Although,” he added, “it’s a wonder, what with your father treating ’im like a simpleton and you acting like ’e’s still in leading strings.”
“I never—!” Her husband regarded her with raised eyebrows, and she was obliged to amend her instinctive denial. “I suppose it’s true that I’ve always been a little protective of Teddy, especially after Mama died. Papa’s tongue-lashings can be brutal, you know.”
“Can they?” Sir Ethan asked with interest, having been on the receiving end of his grace’s temper on more than one occasion. “I’d never noticed.”
“No, for they always rolled off you like water off a duck’s back,” she recalled with a trace of envy. “But then, you were never dependent upon him. I can assure you, for his children it was quite different! It would have been better for Teddy if he’d stood up to Papa.”
He regarded her skeptically. “Would it really?”
“Yes,” she insisted. “Oh, it wouldn’t have changed anything—Papa would never have given in! But instead of defending himself, Teddy just—just withdrew.”
“There’s nothing wrong with walking away from a fight, ’elen,” Sir Ethan pointed out reasonably. “Especially when you know you can’t win. Sometimes the one ’oo walks away is the stronger man.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” she conceded, considering her young brother in this new light. “But Papa always took his passivity as a sign of weakness. When we were young, he used to say that it was a great pity I was not a boy.”
“I’ll ’ave to disagree with ’im there,” put in Sir Ethan.
Lady Helen gave him a speaking look, but refused to take the bait. “I own, I felt flattered at the time, although I never had the slightest desire to inherit the title. Looking back, though, I can’t even imagine how it must have made Teddy feel.”
“I can,” Sir Ethan said darkly.
“Well, yes, I suppose I can, at that. But you say he ran up debts. You paid them, I gather.”
“Aye, but only as a loan.”
“Which, I take it, he’ll pay back as soon as the will is probated,” she surmised.
“No. ’e’ll pay it back by working at the mill.”
“Oh yes, this is where we started, isn’t it? Ethan, you can’t put a duke to work in a cotton mill!”
“I don’t like to brangle with you, love, but I just did.”
“What can you possibly hope to accomplish, besides utterly humiliating him?” She raised a hand to forestall his answer. “And don’t speak to me of loans, for I know very well that no mill worker would earn the kind of money that Teddy could lose at White’s in an evening, not if he were to work in the mill for a hundred years!”
“Per’aps ’e’ll learn just that,” Sir Ethan said. “Per’aps ’e’ll value ’is in’eritance more once ’e sees for ’imself ’ow other men live. And while ’e’s about it, per’aps ’e’ll discover that ’e can do things ’e never thought ’e could, and that ’e’s not quite the fool ’is father always took ’im for.”
She considered this for a long moment. “Perhaps,” she conceded, although her tone did not sound optimistic. “I only hope you know what you’re doing. For my part, I still think he needs a wife.”
“Aye, well, maybe ’e’ll find one of them, too. Now,” he said in a very different voice, “are you going to ’ave a lie-down and rest before dinner, or am I going to ’ave to strip you and put you to bed myself?”
She turned away as if to rebuff this suggestion, but cast a coy glance at him over her shoulder. “I should like to see you try!”
Sir Ethan, nothing loth, accepted this challenge with alacrity.
NOT UNTIL AFTER DINNER did Sir Ethan turn his attention from family concerns to the business that had brought him to London in the first place.
“I’ve promised to meet Sir Lawrence Latham at Brooks’s tonight,” he informed his wife with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “I didn’t know at the time that you’d be ’ere, love. I can cancel, if you like.”
“You need not do so on my account,” she assured him, looking up from the note that had been brought to the table along with the sweet course. “The doctor’s wife says he has been called out to attend what may well be a deathbed, and cannot see William until tomorrow morning at the earliest. I confess, I am not entirely sorry. Now that the poor lamb is sleeping soundly, I should be extremely reluctant to wake him, even for the doctor to examine him. So you may leave him with a clear conscience.”
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“It wasn’t Willie I was thinking of.”
She laid aside her serviette and rose from the table. “You may leave me with a clear conscience, too. I intend to go to bed early and sleep until noon.”
“And so you shall,” he promised her. “If the doctor should ’appen to call while you’re still abed, I’ll take ’im up to Willie meself. You need not get up at all.”
She gave a wistful sigh. “It’s tempting, but he would think me a very unnatural parent. Go to your meeting, darling. I shall catch up on lost sleep, and see you after you return.”
With this Sir Ethan was forced to be content, and yet he could not be entirely easy in his mind. He knew what he wanted—and wanted very badly, at that—but he also knew what he must do. And so it was that, upon his reaching Brooks’s and being shown into the small private room where waited those bastions of the Whig party, Sir Lawrence Latham and Lord Grey, he bided his time only long enough for handshakes to be exchanged all around before declaring, “Gentlemen, I think I’d best drop out of the race.”
His audience stared at him slack-jawed for a long moment before Sir Lawrence protested, “Drop out of the—damn it, man, you can’t do this!”
“We’ve been laying the groundwork for your Parliamentary bid for months,” pointed out Lord Grey. “Why would you choose to drop out now?”
“It’s not a good time,” Sir Ethan said. “Things ’ave changed since you first approached me. Me father-in-law ’as died, so me wife is in mourning, and I’m the executor of ’is will, so young Tisdale—the new Duke of Reddington, I should say—needs me. Then, too, me boy Willie is ill.”
“I’m sorry for it, Brundy, truly I am,” Lord Grey said in conciliatory tones. He sank into an upholstered armchair before the fire and gestured for the other men to do likewise. “But you must see—”
“Who would we find on such short notice to take your place?” demanded Sir Lawrence, all but bouncing on the edge of his seat in vexation. “Tell me that, if you can!”
The Desperate Duke Page 10