Grace Burrowes - [Lonely Lords 05]

by Gabriel

  “Here.” Aaron gestured with his elbow. “With a nice sprinkling of toast crumbs in it already.”

  Gabriel took a seat on his brother’s right. “Marjorie doesn’t have you trained yet?”

  “She takes a tray in the morning. Saves a lot of bother first thing in the day. I trust you slept well?”

  “Well enough.” Gabriel tucked into his eggs. No cheese, not even a hint of salt or cream or chives greeted his palate. “You?”

  “Not that well,” Aaron said, eyeing his brother fleetingly. “Your reappearance has sparked a few old nightmares, but they’ll fade. They always do.”

  “I’m sorry.” Why hadn’t it occurred to Gabriel that a veteran cavalry officer would have nightmares? Aaron had participated in nearly the entire Peninsular Campaign, for God’s sake. “Is a wife an antidote to troubled slumber?”

  Aaron paused, a forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth. “Little you know. Have you seen that wife’s millinery bills?”

  “Not yet.” Gabriel took another dutiful bite of the most boring eggs he’d attempted in years. “Has she an allowance?”

  “Nominally.” Aaron poured himself the last of the chocolate. “But she has a she-dragon mother telling her that being marchioness means always dressing to the teeth, never uttering an unkind word, and generally behaving like a beautiful saint with a number of useless flirtatious devils always at her side.”

  “I was under the impression mothers were prone to such nonsense. The good ones, in any case. Haven’t we any jam?”

  “I don’t care for it. Shall we send a footman?”

  “I’ll manage,” Gabriel replied, though having servants about while he ate was one of the things he’d not missed in the past two years. “I did look at your estate book, however briefly. You’ve our father’s handwriting.”

  “As long as it’s legible,” Aaron said, cramming a piece of bacon into his mouth. “Any questions?”

  “If you’re game, I’d like to have a look at the mow where the hay went bad.” The ham was too salty—suggesting it hadn’t been allowed to soak—which was probably why there wasn’t any salt in the eggs. Gabriel managed by taking half a bite of each simultaneously.

  “I haven’t looked at it yet,” Aaron said. “George claims rain gets in under the eaves when we get the right type of Channel storm.”

  “You dispute the theory?”

  “We’ve had storms all summer and fall, from every direction. That’s the only load of hay gone bad, and we have three hay barns, Gabriel. George’s theory simply doesn’t fit with the facts, but far be it from me to argue sense when he has tradition and stubbornness on his side.”

  “He said you two butted heads from time to time.” Gabriel pushed his plate aside, deciding the meal was not worth the effort. His hunger was appeased, but the fare was pedestrian, at best. “Father went rounds with George, and with George’s predecessor all the time.”

  “One forgets this, but it’s probably a good reason to have family in the steward position. You won’t get quite as much deference as you would from some lackey.”

  “Valid point.” Gabriel settled for another dainty cup of tea, though he missed the sturdy, plain mugs Polly’s kitchen had boasted. “I’ll look over your estate book more carefully when I’ve more time. For today, I wanted to ride out, if you can join me?”

  “I can.” Aaron smiled, the first such offering of the day. “You’re sure your delicate backside is up to it?”

  “The worst thing for my delicate backside is inactivity,” Gabriel said, rising. “I’ll fetch my horse—”

  Aaron gave him a vaguely concerned look.

  “You don’t fetch your horse, Gabriel. You send word to the stables you want the beast, and he appears, groomed and under saddle, shortly thereafter. You can’t have forgotten that much.”

  Gabriel sat back down. Yes, he could forget that much. Easily. A pang of homesickness went through him for the many fine discussions he’d had with his horse as they’d prepared for their morning ride.

  “You were a cavalry officer,” Gabriel said. “How can you bear to let someone else groom your mount?”

  “Now that you ask, it’s damned difficult, but it gets easier when I recall the uproar it caused when I first sold out and didn’t let the lads do their jobs. Then things went absolutely to hell when I learned you wouldn’t be following me home from Spain, and Papa refused to let me go investigate. I was too busy after that to even manage grooming and saddling a horse, much less idling around the property on one’s back.”

  “So we won’t idle.” Gabriel pushed to his feet. “We’ll get our own damned horses because we please to, and then we’ll inspect the property.”

  Aaron rose as well. “The harvest is in. What is there to inspect?”

  “The livestock, the ditches and ponds, the lanes, the pastures, turnip fields and winter gardens, the sheep pens… there’s everything to inspect,” Gabriel said as they left the parlor. “I picked up some ideas you might be interested in.”

  “I might,” Aaron allowed, “if I were the marquess, but as that’s not the case, why should I be filling my head with such things?”

  “Because you’re legally the marquess for now and this is your home and you’re my heir should the title ever befall me again and because it’s a pretty day for a ride with one’s brother, perhaps the last of same for weeks.”

  “You have a point.” Then Aaron stopped short and muttered, “Enemy approaching dead ahead.”

  Lady Hartle, looking tall, handsome, and hell-bent on a mission, swept into the foyer, a nervous footman taking her bonnet from her hand.

  “So it’s true.” She advanced toward Gabriel, smiling brilliantly, both hands extended. “The Lord has granted us a miracle, and you are returned to us hale and sound.” She kept on coming, so Gabriel took her hands and tried not to roll his eyes at his brother while the woman kissed the air on both sides of Gabriel’s face. “This is splendid, just splendid.” Lady Hartle retreated to arm’s length, but didn’t let go of Gabriel’s hands. “We must plan a celebration.”

  “Greetings, Lady Hartle, and my thanks for your felicitations, but a celebration would be premature.” Also damned inconvenient. “Protocol requires we consult with the solicitors first and follow their direction regarding the title, the vote, succession, and so forth.”

  “But what direction can they offer?” She smiled that smile again, conveying a world of tension. “You are Hesketh now. You must take your place accordingly.”

  “We will parse through that soon enough. For now, may we offer you tea?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to pass,” Aaron said. “Press of business, you know. George was expecting me at the stables.”

  Lady Hartle tolerated him bowing over her hand then waved him away.

  “Perhaps you’d like us to summon your daughter, my lady?” Gabriel posed the question as he offered his arm, though he shot Aaron an I’ll-deal-with-you-later glower as well.

  “Good heavens, no. She needs her beauty sleep, but with regard to this other, have no fear. She’ll do as I say, or I’ll know why.”

  Gabriel heard the sound of a cannonball whistling over the bow of his figurative ship. “I own I am puzzled. I was under the impression you were instrumental in assuring Marjorie married my brother with great dispatch and no little ceremony. One would think she’d take her direction from her husband now.”

  “Of course, of course. But in matters domestic, she receives guidance from her trusted mama. And this is quite the domestic matter, my lord.”

  “This?”

  “Why, your miraculous return,” she said. “I’m sure it will take some time, because you must take your seat, and we must figure out something for your brother, but Marjorie will honor her obligations under the betrothal contracts without a murmur of protest. You may depend upon it.”

  Gabriel’s homesickness spread to encompass the nightly sessions philosophizing with the fair Hildegard as she and her piglets went at their sc
raps. “You expect your daughter to switch husbands, my lady?”

  Lady Hartle… tittered. God spare him, the woman was better than a decade his senior, and she was tittering. “Not switch husbands. Rather, become wife to the man she has long been promised to. Surely, you don’t intend to deny your obligation under the contracts drafted all those years ago, my lord?”

  “Surely,” Gabriel countered, “what God has joined together should not be put asunder for the sake of mere legalities, but this is not the time or place for such a discussion, my lady.” Lest he himself be reduced to tittering. “Tell me how your property fares, and please accept my condolences on the passing of your late husband.”

  She drew herself up, no doubt to insist that this was the time and the place, but Gabriel kept his expression somewhere between frigid and forbidding, and she apparently rethought her strategy.

  “It’s been nearly two years,” she replied, and as if she were falling into a dramatic role, Lady Hartle’s visage went from Doting Mama-In-Law to Tragically Bereaved Widow Still Bearing Up Heroically.

  Hildegard knew a thing or two about bearing up. She’d had litters spring and fall, and never once complained or tried to shirk her maternal duty—or tittered.

  Gabriel bore up for a polite half hour of neighborhood gossip over the teapot, then saw his guest to the door and breathed a sigh of relief as he lit out for the stables. If his worthless deserter of a brother had ridden off without him, he’d…

  Not do a damned thing.

  “You’re going to berate me because I scarpered?” Aaron led out a big black gelding with a white star on its forehead, while a groom held Soldier over by the mounting block.

  “I scarpered for two years.” Gabriel swung up into the saddle. “I left you with a great deal besides the mother of the bride to contend with. Let’s have a look at the hay barn.”

  Aaron gave him a measuring look, then mounted and fell in at the trot beside Gabriel’s horse. “He’s a little unprepossessing, isn’t he?”

  “Soldier?” Gabriel petted what was likely going to serve as his best friend for the duration. “He’s got sense and bottom and he was left for dead much as I was.”

  “What did Lady Hartle want?”

  “To ensure her daughter will continue to be the Marchioness of Hesketh, regardless of which insignificant fribble holds the title or beds down with her.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That protocol will have to be observed, and solicitors consulted, but I’m telling you I’ll be damned if I’ll let the girl be passed from one of us to the other like some doxy.” The woman. Marjorie was a grown woman.

  “What if she wants to be passed?”

  The world would run mad before Gabriel could accommodate that foolishness. “Talk her out of it, Aaron. She’s been your wife for two years. I can’t think she’d prefer me over you.”

  “Can’t you?” Aaron fell silent, as if choosing his words while his black gelding picked its way around a muddy patch of the lane. “I can think she’ll choose the title over me. Her mother has raised Marjorie to believe she has no value without it.”

  “Marjorie didn’t want me to go to Spain,” Gabriel recalled. “Nobody did, but his lordship wasn’t going to forbid it, either.”

  “I want to say I’m glad you came for me.” Aaron drew his horse down to the walk as they approached the big building housing some of their stored hay. “The situation isn’t so simple anymore.”

  “It isn’t so complicated, either. If you want the title, Aaron, I won’t fight you for it.”

  “I most assuredly do not want it. I will fight you to get out from under it, but not if it leaves Marjorie as the butt of gossip. She did only what she was told was her duty.”

  “In all likelihood, your marriage is valid, I have the title, and Marjorie is going to have to tell her mother to take a tisane.” Or whatever a lady did instead of getting half seas over.

  “You and I are going to have to tell Lady Hartle to take a tisane,” Aaron said, swinging to the ground. “And we’re going to have to tell her solicitors to take a tisane as well, probably all over the newspapers.”

  “A good scandal or two will liven things up.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Gabriel swung off his horse. He couldn’t reproduce the lithe maneuver Aaron executed, but he got himself safely to the ground.

  “So we have a little scandal,” Gabriel said. “That won’t affect how I go through my day one bit, nor likely you or Marjorie. As long as the woman is married to someone, she’ll be received. Was it only the one mow?”

  “Beg pardon? Oh, yes, only the hay on the west end of the barn was affected, thank God.”

  They climbed up onto the huge beams separating one mow from the next, and peered at the eaves, soffit, supports, and the walls as the morning sun rose higher.

  “The one wall shows signs of damp,” Gabriel said, “while nothing else does. What do you make of it?”

  “The water sure as hell didn’t sneak in under the eaves,” Aaron muttered. “Somebody dumped a barrel or two right down the wall and let it do its magic. The worst of the summer sun hits that wall on the outside, creating heat on the dampness.”

  “Ergo, mold. It wouldn’t be too hard to use the pulley on the crossbeam to get a barrel of water up over the hay. Do you suppose we’re going to have to guard the damned hay?”

  “You put it to George,” Aaron said, beginning his descent from the mow. “Seems to me it would be easier to put a lock on the barn.”

  “Suppose it would. Would a lock be an invitation to fire the entire lot?”

  “The entire lot could have been fired already. What else would you like to see?”

  Sound reasoning, and delivered without a lot of dancing about. “Everything, though not all at once. What do you want to show me?”

  Aaron led him off over the countryside, down bridle paths, through the home wood, over some of the tenant farms, and into the village. They stopped for a pint, where Gabriel was gaped at and slapped on the back at length and stood to a few rounds of ale. Aaron took it all in with surprisingly good grace.

  “One would think I was the one who survived the entire Peninsular Campaign,” Gabriel groused. “Did they at least fuss over you when you came home?”

  “Some.” Aaron tightened his gelding’s girth as they prepared to leave the pub for home. “You were still in Spain, and Father taken shortly thereafter, so it was a restrained greeting all around.”

  “From one war to another.” Gabriel grimaced as he hoisted himself to the saddle. “Do you ever miss it?”

  “The war? God in heaven, how could you ask such a thing? I saw more good men of many nations cut down, and for what? So the Russian winter and the Corsican’s own hubris could do in a few months what we barely accomplished in a decade.”

  “The Russians might expect honorable mention in that story too. If it isn’t the excitement and violence you crave, how does one explain all the duels, Aaron?”

  Aaron’s boot barely touched the stirrup as he mounted his horse. “You heard about those?”

  “The betting books hold wagers regarding how many duels you can survive before your marchioness is widowed and the title forfeit. This disturbs me, Brother.”

  Aaron kept his eyes front as they trotted away from the village green. “You tell me where you’ve been for the past two years, and I’ll tell you what compels me to the field of honor.”

  A silence went by, broken only by the rhythm of hooves on cold, hard earth.

  “Give me a week,” Gabriel said. “I want to set up our meeting with Kettering and give you time to make Marjorie see reason.”

  “Our meeting?”

  “How many times must I say it? You are legally the marquess; you, not me. A succession is delicate. I’m sure there are formalities involved with shifting that burden onto my shoulders.”

  “We’ll do this your way,” Aaron said, “though as for talking to Marjorie, I’ve already told
her I’d abide by her wishes.”

  Gabriel shot his brother a puzzled look. “After two years of bedding the woman, seeing her across the breakfast table, paying her bills, and leading her out? I can’t believe you resent her so much you don’t have any affection for her.”

  “You talk to her,” Aaron said. “I have feelings for her, of course, more protective than I’d guessed, but the rest is private, Gabriel. You’ll have to hear it from her, and if you don’t change the subject now, my fourth duel will soon be scheduled.”

  “Right. I go to all the trouble to provide a perfect imitation of Lazarus, and all you can do is call me out.”

  “Treat Marjorie with anything less than perfect consideration,” Aaron replied evenly, “and I’ll do just that.”

  “Of course you will, putting an end to all this academic discussion about the succession. Now, is that fidgety bag of bones you’re sporting about on capable of some speed and stamina, or is he merely for show?”

  “To the bottom of the lane.” Aaron grinned and stood in his stirrups, bending low over the gelding’s neck. “Go!”

  Four

  “Did I leave you to break your fast alone?” Marjorie, Lady Hesketh, looked truly distressed to have discommoded her guest.

  “I like the occasional solitary meal,” Polly said, rising from the sofa in her makeshift studio. “Though you’re going to have to say something to your kitchen.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Let’s sit you here, by the window,” Polly suggested, indicating a bench upholstered in blue velvet. Morning sun streamed in the window, giving way to a view of the extensive back gardens.

  “Your kitchen has stopped trying,” Polly said, “at least for breakfast. They know you don’t come down, and hungry men will eat most anything. Turn your shoulders two inches.” Polly demonstrated, turning her own shoulders to the left. “Chin up one inch.”

  “What should I tell my cook?”

  “You should probably take a meal or two in the breakfast parlor.” Polly pulled up a stool and opened her sketch pad. “Then they’ll know you check on them and be motivated to please you accordingly. Otherwise, they’ll think his lordship, or perhaps his brother, peached on them.”