The Wicked Wyckerly

by Rice, Patricia

  Finding her guest waiting at the front door, looking more distinguished than her father had looked while wearing that tweed coat, Abigail handed Mr. Wyckerly a shilling for the thread and another letter addressed to her father’s distant, aristocratic relation. Perhaps the first two letters had gone astray.

  Perhaps a marquess could convince Mr. Greyson, the executor, that the children would be far better off in the home they knew than with distant cousins. Although she was none too certain a marquess would listen either. Her father really should have overseen the writing of his will himself instead of allowing a stiff-necked solicitor to do it, but admittedly, her father had not counted on dying so soon after his wife. He’d been too grief-stricken to consider the effect his death would have on a motherless household.

  So, as usual, the consequences of her father’s carelessness were now in her inadequate hands.

  Mr. Wyckerly had rakishly tilted his borrowed leather cap, which added boyish appeal to match the twinkle in his eye. But the crinkles at the corners of those same eyes belied the boyishness, and he carried himself with the superiority of someone years older and more sophisticated than herself. At supper, she would have to question him more thoroughly.

  “Do not forget that supper is at six,” she said abruptly, then bit her tongue. She had no right to treat him with the familiarity of a family member.

  He looked amused and a dash condescending—until he noted the address on her letter and his eyebrows disappeared under his hat. “The Marquess of Belden?”

  She drew herself up as tall as she was able. “My father’s second cousin on his grandmother’s side.” She owed him no explanation, but she did not like to give herself airs, pretending she frequented exalted circles.

  When she did not say more, he looked dubious. “You realize the new marquess lives in Scotland, don’t you?”

  “The new marquess?” Her voice faltered.

  “Old Chucklebottom died a few months back. Apoplexy, I heard. He had no immediate heir, so some distant branch inherited.” He offered the letter back to her. “The dowager is still in London, if you would care to redirect it?”

  “Chucklebottom?” she asked faintly. With plummeting hope and growing despair, she accepted the return of the epistle.

  “Forgive the shallow humor. He was a dour old man. Shall I wait?”

  Mr. Wyckerly knew London aristocrats well enough to use their nicknames! Somehow, that was not very reassuring.

  Abigail crumpled the precious letter in her grip and shook her head. A woman, dowager marchioness or not, would not have the influence with Mr. Greyson to convince him to remove the children from their new guardian and return them to her. Whatever would she do now? “No, please, go on. I must compose a letter of consolation for his widow.”

  “I doubt the dowager mourns his passing. He left her in charge of his fortune, a source of much amazement at the time.” He was laughing at her again, although he tried to hide it.

  It must be exceedingly pleasant to be left a fortune. Perhaps the new widow had been too busy or grief-stricken to answer her earlier letters. Abigail was immensely grateful that the farm had been part of her mother’s dowry so that she would always have a home, but the estate of a marquess would be a great burden.

  “London gossip is far more entertaining than that of my small village,” she said quietly. “Thank you for bringing me up to date.”

  He tipped his cap, winked audaciously, and sauntered down the drive, a self-confident man in command of his corner of the world. Abigail wished she possessed that kind of assurance.

  She carried the crumpled letter back to the study. She refused to let her lack of boldness hold her back. Closing the door, she rubbed fiercely at the tears in her eyes, while scanning the shelves for her father’s family genealogy. She didn’t know the name of his cousin’s heir, but if she could find it, perhaps the new marquess would help her.

  Did it matter that he lived in Scotland? Surely a marquess wielded influence no matter where he lived. Although—would he even know of her tiny branch of the family? At least her father had personally known his London cousin.

  For the first time since the older couple the executor had appointed as guardians had arrived to take the children away, Abigail faced the possibility that her siblings might never return. Tears poured down her cheeks as she found the book she sought.

  She would never give up trying to bring them home. Unfolding Tommy’s last unhappy letter as incentive, she sat down with the list of family connections.

  Hurrying into the village, Fitz brushed off the image of Rhubarb Girl’s sad countenance. He was scarcely in a position to help himself, much less anyone else.

  That he actually desired to help the prickly lady was incredible. Perhaps a tankard of ale would squelch that inclination.

  But he was a man of his word, and he owed the lady labor in her field, even if he had no intention of doing it himself. Flipping the shilling she’d given him, he entered the rural tavern and perused the inhabitants, looking for a likely mark. The golden-haired young farmer with brawny shoulders should do.

  Picking up his ale at the counter, Fitz took a seat not far from the young man and spread his small array of coins across the table. Parlor tricks were child’s play. He reserved his true genius for relieving the rich of their heavy pockets, but the wealthy were few and far between out here. His rural opponents would merely pay the price of entertainment.

  He slid the coins about, rearranging the coppers and frowning as if in hopes that a different pattern would produce a greater sum. When he knew he had the farmer’s attention, Fitz palmed a ha’penny and replaced it with the shilling in a sleight of hand he’d practiced since childhood. Chortling at his new wealth, he signaled the barkeep for more ale.

  Looking around as if noticing his surroundings for the first time, Fitz smiled congenially and pointed at the farmer’s empty mug. “And fill a round for the lad here. I’m feeling lucky today.”

  The barkeep shrugged and filled both mugs. “You didn’t come in on the mail coach.”

  “We’re visiting with Miss Merriweather,” he said with a careless wave, as if he had a sister or wife accompanying him. “She has some need of assistance.” Her idea to pass him off as a gardener wasn’t credible, but if she had a marquess in the family, he could be a distant relation. He scattered the coppers across the table again and began rearranging them.

  “Now that the young’uns are gone, she ought to marry up. Right fine land she has out there.” The barkeep threw a knowing look at the blond farmer.

  A crude giant and dainty Miss Rhubarb Girl? Had these people no eyes in their heads? Fitz hid his disapproval and pondered the reference to “young’uns.” There was a mystery there. Had she been married and lost her children? No wonder she looked so sad!

  “She’s a tartar, that one,” one of the older patrons commented, coming to stand beside the table to observe the moving coins. “She’d have a body working sunup to sundown.”

  “You’ll remember you speak of my hostess,” Fitz admonished genially, while shuddering at the thought of physical labor. “Anyone willing to wager I can turn copper to silver?”

  “Don’t take him up on it,” the young farmer warned. “I just saw him do it.”

  The older man cuffed the younger. “Ain’t possible to turn copper to silver, no more than you can turn wood to stone.”

  Fitz had arranged his coins in a circle with a large penny in the center. “Petrified wood becomes stone. Anything is possible.” He gestured at the circle. “You just have to find the right combination of ingredients.”

  As his sleeve swept back to his tankard, the penny became a shilling again. The older man leaned over and tested the coin against the table, frowning.

  “Betcha can’t turn two of them,” the farmer said cynically.

  Fitz raised his eyebrows. He usually judged his marks well, but rural charm held hidden depths. “A challenge, excellent! That might take a few more coins, but we’ll
see what happens. Care to throw some in to speed the process?”

  The lad added two ha’pennies, and the older man added three. An audience began to gather.

  Fitz wanted to inquire more about his hostess, but if he meant to pass himself off as part of the family, he had to be more circumspect. “What’s our wager, gentlemen? Miss Merry could use some help in her strawberry field. An hour of your time if I produce two silver coins? And a shilling to each of you if I don’t?”

  “Aye, that’s fair,” both men agreed.

  Fitz calculated the minutes he’d have to spend playing games in return for the hours he could avoid spending in the fields and deemed the odds very fair, indeed.

  “Papa forgot me,” Penelope said, carrying her doll to the kitchen table, where Abigail helped her into a chair.

  Abby feared Mr. Wyckerly might have more than forgotten the child. She feared he had absconded altogether. It took half an hour to walk into town, and it was now after six. He’d been gone half the afternoon.

  “No, he forgot supper,” she told the child, tying a towel around Penelope’s neck to protect the pretty frock. “He will be very sorry when he goes to bed hungry.”

  The child regarded her through eyes far older than her years. “Papa forgot me forever. It is what papas do, Trudy says.”

  Oh, dear. Oh, double dear. She wanted to beat Mr. Wyckerly about the ears for his criminal neglect, but she was not naive. Gentleman of the ton expected armies of servants to care for their children, so perhaps instead of being a tradesman, he aspired to the fringes of the aristocracy. She’d met a few of the penniless young men at Oxford who had learned to pass themselves off as their betters.

  She gulped and hoped her half-siblings’ new guardians did not aspire to the ton. The children required the attention of more than servants. She had only Mr. Greyson’s promises and one stilted meeting with the Weatherstons to reassure her that they would be respectable parents.

  Perhaps if the strawberry crop was very good, she could earn a sufficient sum to take a coach to Surrey and visit. Tommy’s letters of woe with Jennifer’s scrawled addenda had been plaintive, but that did not mean they were being mistreated so much as they were homesick. She hoped.

  “Fathers are often busy earning money to buy their daughters pretty frocks and sweets,” Abigail replied matter-of-factly, scooping fresh spring peas onto the child’s plate. “And sometimes it costs a great deal for the roof over our heads and good nannies.”

  “Not my papa.” Penelope looked askance at the peas. “Mrs. Jones says I’m a bloody bastard and my papa is ’shamed of me.”

  Behind them, Cook and the scullery maid froze. Abigail removed the bowl of mashed potatoes from the maid and added a spoonful to the child’s plate. “I believe you may have misunderstood. I’m sure she said he was ashamed of himself. Have you ever made a ship of your potatoes and populated it with little green people?”

  “Green people?” Easily distracted, Penelope turned to her food.

  Throughout supper Abigail alternated among wanting to box Mr. Wyckerly’s ears, hoping to teach him to appreciate his daughter’s worth, and fearing he would take Penelope away if she did either. The child obviously needed love and attention, and her dashing guest equally obviously did not know how to provide it.

  She had worked herself into a state of high dudgeon by the time she tucked Penelope into bed, still with no sign of the miserable scoundrel’s return.

  5

  “What are these letters in this drawer, Maynard?” Isabell Hoyt, the youthful Dowager Marchioness of Belden, ran her hand over stacks of yellowing correspondence, some neatly tied with disintegrating ribbon, others lying loose and unopened.

  “That’s the Poor Relations drawer, my lady,” her late husband’s assistant said with a sniff, showing no evidence of irony. A scarecrow of a man who’d worked with the marquess for years, he’d no doubt been hired for his lack of both imagination and humor.

  “Yes, I daresay he had poor relations with anyone whose correspondence was left unopened for years,” she mused, choosing to unfold a sheet that was less yellowed than the others.

  “One cannot indulge all those who believe they are owed funds for no better reason than their name,” Maynard intoned. “The estate would be bankrupt in days.”

  “Yes, Edward having such a large and prolific family,” the dowager said with a hint of the irony that Maynard lacked. She glanced up from the heartfelt plea in her hand. “This one does not request funds. Did anyone even read this correspondence, Maynard?”

  He tugged on his neckcloth. “Only if his lordship requested.”

  Which, of course, her gouty, miserable clutch-fist of a spouse had not. Really, she hoped Edward was having a good long talk with his Maker about now. The man may have been a charmer in his time, but age and illness—and possibly his infertile wife—had turned him into a bitter relic well before his death.

  She glanced up at a polite scratch on the office door and sighed. “Yes, Butler?” She lived surrounded by irony. Her butler’s name was Butler.

  “The Honorable Lord Quentin Hoyt has arrived to offer his family’s condolences.”

  “Dashitall.” She stood and shook out her mourning gown. Dust blended nicely with the dove gray. “It took his family three months to send a representative down from Scotland?”

  Maynard cleared his throat. When she glanced at him with annoyance, he lifted his invisible chin high so that his scrawny chicken wattles stretched above his collar. “I believe the Scots relations were the reason for the refusal to parcel out funds, my lady.”

  “Yes, of course, because they were poor and had many children and actually had reason to need funds, while Edward only needed his port. Yes, indeed, I understand that logic perfectly. I do hope the new marquess’s heir is not carrying a dirk and broadsword.”

  “Younger son, my lady,” Butler offered. “The new marquess and his heir are both still in Scotland. Lord Quentin is the fourth eldest of the ten children and does business in London.”

  She knew that. But she was feeling peevish, and she had every right to be as querulous as a dowager, since she was one, with all the privileges and honors that rank disposed—like having no man in her bed and no social life.

  At the ripe old age of thirty-three, she hardly considered that fair, so she found her amusement where she could, though she supposed tormenting her servants wasn’t a good habit to develop.

  Her heels click-clacked down hollow halls, following Butler to the front of her town residence. She owned all this now. She was possibly the wealthiest lady in all London to be fully in charge of her own fortune and future. After years of living under Edward’s thumb, she found it a strange situation.

  Edward had never allowed any of his distant relations inside his home. Perhaps she ought to learn if there was any reason for that, other than snobbery.

  Lord Quentin stood hat in hand, his broad shoulders and height diminishing the narrow entrance. He appeared elegantly handsome and perfectly at ease inside the town house that would have belonged to his father had the Hoyt wealth been entailed. Which it was not. The title was merely attached to worthless hills in the north and the new marquess and his Scots family had inherited next to nothing.

  The new marquess had waited a long time for the title. His younger son was older than Isabell and far more darkly handsome than Edward had ever been, but she was not enamored of ambitious men these days.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” she said crisply, leading the way into the formal parlor, the only room in the house that Edward had allowed her to decorate. She was fond of the gold damask draperies. The Persian rug with hints of gold and blue among the ivories and crimsons thoroughly satisfied her. The cost had nearly given dear Edward an apoplexy ten years before his time—perhaps the reason he’d never allowed her to decorate another room.

  Lord Quentin possessed a full head of dark, wind-blown curls and a healthy bronze color that spoke of a life spent outdoors. Given the extreme poverty of
his large Scots family, he’d had to work for a living, unlike his peers who preferred to exist like vampires, rising only when it was dark to frequent their clubs and stagger home at dawn. For his efforts, he’d been scorned by the ton and was seldom accepted in the best homes.

  She had heard that he’d done extremely well at trade—shipping and mining and things in which she held no interest. Now that his family held the title, and Lord Quentin provided the coin, they would want to partake of the society that had scorned them.

  Edward would roll over in his grave if she encouraged his poor relations, she decided with relish.

  “I have come to offer my family’s condolences, my lady,” Lord Quentin said formally, following her into the feminine room and overpowering it with his size and masculinity.

  “Very good.” She tugged her skirt into place and settled on the crimson velvet settee. “I appreciate your vanquishing your grief for the sake of propriety, but please do not carry the hypocrisy too far. I am suffering a strong sense of irony today and cannot vouch for my behavior.”

  He didn’t smile. She had hoped at least one Hoyt possessed a sense of humor. Oh well, tedious family traits would win out. She’d learned her lesson about admiring dashing men with no humor. They turned into controlling old misers who prized money more than people.

  “I apologize for my tardiness in paying my respects,” Lord Quentin said. “I have been away and have just come home to run afoul of mortality twice over. Edward was a decade younger than my father. His demise was unexpected. And I have also lost a good friend years younger than myself. It is a cruel reminder that life is short.”

  “Wasn’t it Samuel Johnson who said ‘Life is hell, and then we die’? If he didn’t, he should have.” Isabell gestured at her hovering servant. “I believe Lord Quentin requires something stronger than tea, and I would not mind a brandy myself. And perhaps something a little more filling than pastry to go with it, please.”

  She’d hoped to shock her husband’s relation with her tart tongue, but he was still squeezing his hat brim and looking into the distance as if he truly was affected by morbid sentiments. She’d heard he was a serious gentleman. One had to be as a younger son in a barefoot horde. Even choosing between the military or the priesthood, as most younger sons did, had to have been impossible, since he’d had no funds with which to build a career. That he’d dared to scorn tradition and take up trade had been a bold, and perhaps foolish, decision. Society frowned on men who actually worked for a living. So common, after all.