He appeared a moment later, shrugging into a jacket that fit his widening shoulders to perfection. Philip was very particular about his clothes.
“I said I’m finished discussing this. It’s nothing we haven’t said before, and it’s tiring having to repeat myself. I’m going out.”
“You’re not going out. You’re supposed to be serving a punishment for your suspension from school.”
He rolled his eyes. “Mother. Please. Every lad there has tupped that maid. I just happened to be caught.”
“Philip!” She covered her hot cheeks with her hands. “That is completely unacceptable.”
He laughed and kissed the top of her head as he walked past her and out of his room, leaving her standing there, mortified and afraid of what the future held for both of them, if he didn’t change his ways.
…
Oliver was deep in thought, his mind cataloguing the cards that had been played and the combination of cards that his opponents held that could possibly beat him.
There were none.
He held the winning hand.
He kept his expression inscrutable as he puffed on an expensive cigar and waited his turn.
“My lord.” A servant leaned close, holding out a silver salver with a note on it. Oliver observed all of this out of the corner of his eye, keeping his attention on the game.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something urgent, I am told.”
“Urgent? In the middle of the night? What time is it by the way?”
The servant paused. “Three twenty-two in the morning, my lord.”
The only urgent thing that Oliver could think of would be something with his mother or sister, but they were in prime health, and the Evendale ball had been this evening—they were probably not even home yet.
With a sigh he put his hand of cards down and took the note.
“Thank you,” he said absently as the servant scooted away.
“Your turn, Armbruster.”
But Oliver was reading the note.
Urgent business. Please come right away–O’Leary
What in the hell would O’Leary want from him this late in the day—or early in the morning?
“Armbruster. Are you going to play or not?”
Oliver stood. “My apologies, gentlemen. It seems there is an urgent matter to which I must attend.”
The servant was hovering nearby. Oliver asked him to call for his carriage as he stubbed out his cigar.
All the way to Scotland Yard he tried to determine what the hell O’Leary needed. Never had the man summonsed Oliver before. Their friendship was based on drinking ale and speculating about current cases the Yard couldn’t solve.
He hopped out of his carriage before it stopped completely and was surprised to find O’Leary waiting for him at the door.
“I apologize for the lateness.” O’Leary looked Oliver up and down, noting his formal attire. “But I’m glad to see I didn’t get you out of bed.”
“It’s rare that I am in bed before the sun rises,” Oliver said.
“I hope I didn’t take you away from any…fun activities.” The hint was that Oliver might have been with a woman, which was the furthest from the truth. It’d been a few weeks since his last woman and, while he had been feeling itchy for another, that feeling had gone away after Ellen’s salon. He refused to contemplate the reason for that. It certainly had nothing to do with Ellen. Past nostalgia, nothing more.
“Just a spot of whist and a good cigar.” He missed the cigar more than he missed the women.
“Ah. Well, then I feel slightly less bad for dragging you here.”
“Why am I here, O’Leary? Certainly you don’t have a case you would like to discuss.”
“Nothing like that. Truth is, I didn’t know who else to call. It’s a bit of a delicate situation.”
Now Oliver was even more intrigued. They were winding through the convoluted halls of the Yard. He’d never been here at this hour, and it was eerily quiet, their shoes echoing off the walls.
“I have in my possession a certain Lord Fieldhurst. He’s a bit inebriated. Very inebriated.” O’Leary sighed. “He’s far gone. Can barely speak.”
For a moment Oliver’s mind went to Ellen’s husband, forgetting that the man had been dead for three years. Then he recalled that the current Lord Fieldhurst was Ellen’s son.
Ellen’s son went on a drinking binge, and O’Leary had called him?
“What am I to do about this?” Oliver asked, not thrilled that O’Leary had summonsed him for a youth’s folly. Damn it, he’d been about to win that hand.
“I didn’t want to embarrass Lady Fieldhurst by dropping her son off at her front door. Neighbors would see, and we all know what that would bring.”
Gossip.
“And I certainly didn’t want to call such a woman of means to the Yard. That would be unseemly. So I thought you might be kind enough to drop the lad off at his home.”
By now they were standing outside a door that Oliver surmised was some sort of holding room for inebriated individuals.
“Is he being charged with anything?”
O’Leary hesitated. “There was a…skirmish. Over a dice game. A window was broken and a man’s eye blackened. More than likely, if he pays for the window, this will blow over.”
Oliver had never met Ellen’s son, and he was suddenly curious. His antics this night sounded like something that any boy feeling his oats would get into. Oliver tried to remember how old the lad was. Fifteen? Sixteen?
Why wasn’t he in school? Oliver was certain that this week was not a school break.
O’Leary opened the door, and Oliver was taken aback by the stench that assailed him. Vomit, urine, and alcohol.
The boy was sitting in a chair, his arms folded on a table and his head resting on his arms. Oliver glimpsed blondish-brown hair and slim shoulders just beginning to fill out. His coat was of the finest material but bloodied and dirty.
The lad groaned and lifted his head to squint at Oliver and O’Leary.
“My lord, Lord Armbruster is here to take you home.”
The boy’s squinty eyes traveled to Oliver and seemed to take his measure. Oliver was pretty certain he had no idea how he even got there.
“Home?”
“Home,” Oliver said. “To your mother.”
The boy made a disparaging noise. “She’ll harp on me for weeks if she sees me like this.”
“As well she should.” Oliver didn’t like the boy’s tone as he was speaking about Ellen, and he was also thinking he didn’t want this odorous individual in his carriage.
Fieldhurst put his head back down. “I’ll just sleep it off here.”
With a surge of anger Oliver gripped the boy’s arm and dragged him to a half-standing position.
“Hey!” Fieldhurst blurted. “You can’t do that. I’m an earl.”
O’Leary rolled his eyes.
“I am, too, you ungrateful bastard, and I can do what I want to you right now. You don’t have the wits to do anything about it. Now I’m taking you home. We’re waking your mother, and you will feel her wrath, as you should.”
Fieldhurst seemed a bit cowed by that and closed his mouth.
Oliver marched him out of the room and down the hall. The boy could hardly stand. He was weaving back and forth and Oliver had to put Fieldhurst’s arm over his shoulder and support most of his insubstantial weight. He was almost as tall as Oliver, just a few inches shorter, but had not put on the weight that he would once he reached full manhood.
“You can take me back to your place,” the boy mumbled.
Oliver barked out a laugh. “No.”
“Aw, help a fellow out. My mother is going to be furious.”
“She should be furious.”
“She’ll complain and nag me.”
“It sounds like you need a good beating.”
The boy didn’t say anything after that. He seemed to be concentrating on dragging one foot in fr
ont of the other.
O’Leary led them back to Oliver’s carriage, but as soon as they hit the fresh air the boy started heaving. Oliver pushed him toward some bushes and he vomited in them while Oliver stood above him with his hands on his hips.
“I hoped you learned your lesson tonight,” he said as the boy wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve.
He shrugged a bony shoulder, and Oliver grabbed him up again and stuffed him into the carriage. He directed his driver where to take them, then sat opposite the lad.
“If you vomit in my carriage you will clean it up yourself. Do you understand me?”
The lad nodded, but his eyes were closed and he was resting his head against the window.
They rode back to Ellen’s house in silence. Oliver had no idea what he was going to say to her, and he hated that he had to wake her for this.
He wondered at the lad, a son of Ellen’s. The Earl of Fieldhurst, as he was quick to point out. He was certainly enamored of his title. Oliver tried to remember what it was like to be fifteen? Sixteen? He had not been an earl at that age. That had come many years later. He’d been a student at Eton, both the best and worst times of his life, when his father died. He had been devastated and would have gladly given up the title to have his father back. But that was not the way things worked, and immediately he had taken over the earldom while finishing his years at Eton.
Fieldhurst’s life was different, having come into the title at such a young age. Damn, but he wished he remembered how old the boy was. The late Fieldhurst had died about three years ago so that meant this Fieldhurst had been twelve or thirteen. So young to come into such a large title. Had the elder Fieldhurst prepared his son for the responsibility?
Oliver couldn’t fault the boy for having a little fun. There had been a few nights he’d rolled home so pissed he couldn’t stand. There had been the one time he’d vomited into his mother’s prized Chinese vase. That outcome had not been good for him. He’d suffered the wrath of his mother and father for that idiotic stunt.
And then, of course, had been the night Ellen married. Even now his memories were vague about that night—exactly how he had wanted it.
But there was something about this boy that worried Oliver, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He didn’t like how the boy spoke of Ellen or the fact that he’d taken umbrage when Oliver had grabbed him—thinking he should not be touched in such a way, since he was an earl.
Oliver grinned in the darkness. They were evenly matched in titles, although the Armbruster title was older by a few generations. But they were unevenly matched in wit and brawn. Oliver could easily take the boy down, but that was not the way to handle such a situation.
The lad would regret his rash words come morning—if he remembered them at all. Oliver would be the bigger man and would not remind him of his foolish posturing.
They reached the Fieldhurst mansion, and Oliver and his driver practically had to carry the boy out of the carriage. Oliver half dragged him to the front door and knocked, wincing at the late hour, knowing he was probably waking up the household.
The butler was wearing a robe and his sleeping cap when he answered the door, his eyes blurry with sleep, but they widened when he saw Fieldhurst.
“This way,” he said, as if this was a usual occurrence. He directed a sleepy footman to fetch the countess. “Would you like to take him into the sitting room?” he asked Oliver.
“It’s probably best to take him straight to his room.”
“Very well.” The butler hesitated, probably trying to decide it if was a good idea for Oliver to take the boy up. The man was old, and Oliver didn’t think he could manage on his own.
There was scurrying from the upper level and then Ellen was hurrying down the steps, tying a deep red robe around her waist. Her hair was in a braid that draped over one shoulder. She did not look as sleepy as the butler, and Oliver wondered if she had been waiting up for her son.
She stopped at the bottom of the steps and put a hand to her mouth, her dark eyes wide.
“Oliver?”
Oliver hadn’t thought of a reason to give her that he was the one bringing her son home. He certainly couldn’t say they had spent the evening together carousing. That would be strange, and not the truth.
“I have a mate at Scotland Yard who asked me to bring him home.”
She looked at her son, whose head was hanging down, his chin nearly touching his chest. His knees were giving out, and Oliver was supporting his entire body weight.
“Scotland Yard?”
Oliver hesitated and looked at the butler. Sensing that this was a discussion he should not overhear, he instructed the footman to prepare his lordship’s bed, and they both hurried off.
“I think I should get him to bed,” Oliver said, bypassing her question about Scotland Yard.
“Yes, of course. I could get a footman…”
“Probably best that fewer people see him like this.”
She nodded. “You’re right, of course. This way.”
Young Fieldhurst was useless at this point, not even able to put one foot in front of the other. Oliver hoisted him up over his shoulders and carried him up the steps. The boy was light, but not that light, and Oliver was winded by the time he made it to the top of the stairs and the gallery above.
“Not much farther,” Ellen said.
Oliver would admit to sometimes being a vain man, and he did not want Ellen to think that he couldn’t carry her son to his room, so he hid his breathlessness and gamely carried on, much relieved when they finally reached the boy’s chambers.
His valet was waiting for him, and Oliver dumped the lad on the bed. He moaned and rolled onto his stomach then went still.
“My apologies,” Ellen said to the valet. “Can you…”
“Certainly, my lady. He’ll be suffering a bit come morning, but he’s none the worse for wear.”
Ellen backed out of the room, worried eyes on her son. Oliver followed and closed the door behind him.
Ellen put a hand over her eyes and another on her stomach and stood in the middle of the hallway, not moving, not speaking.
“He’s a boy,” Oliver said. “Boys will do these things. He’ll feel sick for a few hours and hopefully that will dissuade him from going on another binge like that.”
Ellen dropped her hand from her eyes and looked at a spot on the wall a distance down the hall.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, but her words sounded hollow and defeated.
“Is there anything wrong?” He waved his hand toward the closed door. “Besides that?”
She took a deep breath and Oliver thought that she was going to say something, but instead she shook her head. “No. Other than my disappointment in Philip at the moment.”
Philip. How had Oliver not known the lad’s name was Philip?
She looked at him and seemed to note his attire. “You were called away from something important. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Ellen. I was happy to do it.” He sensed that there was more to this than she was saying, and he was curious. At the same time, he didn’t want to be curious. It’d taken a long time to get Ellen out of his system, to stop thinking about her constantly, to stop wondering why and what had gone wrong. He’d moved on years ago and didn’t want to be sucked back into her vortex.
Somewhere in the house a clock struck five.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked. “I can have the cook start a pot.”
“No, thank you. I’ll take my leave.”
Oliver hesitated, wanting to say something but not knowing what he wanted to say.
“Thank you again,” she said.
Oliver nodded and made his way back downstairs and into his waiting carriage, more unsettled than he wanted to be.
Chapter Four
When Oliver awoke that afternoon, he lay in bed and thought a long time about Ellen, Philip, the incident with Philip, Bertrand, and even the surgeon who seemed t
o be a special person in Ellen’s life.
But mostly, he thought about Ellen. He’d wondered about her through the years, as anyone would. They’d had something special a long time ago. Something that Oliver had thought came along only once in a lifetime. He’d been madly, breathlessly, deeply in love with her. He’d planned to marry her. But life or fate or whatever you wanted to call it, had other plans. It’d taken Oliver a long time to come to terms with the fact that he had lost. He’d lost the future he’d planned for himself and for Ellen, and he’d lost her affection. The how and why still haunted him to this day.
What had he done wrong? Why had she turned away from him?
Eventually he’d had to push those questions to the back of his mind, realizing he would never get an answer. Now he found them surging back, the old hurt returning. So silly. It’d been nearly twenty years since that fateful night when his world had come crashing down.
But through the years he’d wondered about her. If she was happy. What her life was like.
Tonight he’d gotten a glimpse of her life and it seemed…off.
Her reaction to her son’s drunkenness had seemed more like acceptance. There seemed to be more to the story and for some reason, and against his will, Oliver’s heart went out to her. She was alone in her parenting, trying to raise a seemingly capricious boy who didn’t take well to being told what to do.
Oliver had no children of his own, had never married. Someday he planned to have a family—he was, after all, an earl who needed an heir, as his mother was fond of telling him—but he didn’t know how to raise a child. So maybe what he’d seen was a normal part of parenting. Maybe he’d kept his mother up at all hours waiting for him to return home.
Once he was dressed, he sat at his desk, reviewing the ledgers that his steward had brought him. Off to the side were Ashland’s ledgers. As Ashland was a newly minted earl, with no training whatsoever, Oliver had offered to help his friend learn his position and teach him the financial side of running an earldom. Not an easy task in this day.
But his mind was not on the numbers.
He withdrew a blank piece of paper etched on the top with his name and his coat of arms. For a long moment the pen hovered over the creamy white page as he wondered what to write.
Deceiving an Earl Page 3