The Wicked Wyckerly

by Rice, Patricia

  To Abby’s immense gratitude, Mrs. Worth appeared with a basin of water. When Fitz’s adversary seized the back of Fitz’s shirt, seeking to take advantage of the earl’s momentary shock, Abby snatched the basin and flung the water in their guest’s pretty face. She continued to yell simply because it felt good to be in control for a change.

  The gentlemen were no longer laughing but covering their ears. Lord Quentin shouted, “Enough!” in that peremptory tone of his, but smugly, Abby realized she didn’t have to listen to him. She might be rustic and unprepossessing, but she had the good English privilege of rank.

  Fitz rolled out of reach of the water just in time. Laughter lit his eyes at the sight of her. Abby wished she had more water with which to soak him. How could he laugh when moments ago he’d been ready to kill his heir? She was too furious to be coherent.

  Rather than listen to any more screeching, Fitz’s friends finally stepped up to grab the arms of the golden-haired man with the battered face, giving Abby some reassurance that the massacre had ended, and she might take a breath of relief and rest her voice.

  “My countess, Geoff,” Fitz said laughingly from the floor, where he lounged as if he were a king on his throne. “The General of Danecroft. Make your bows, Cuz, and I will call her off, but endanger her family with more assassins, and she will no doubt shoot you more accurately than the nodcocks you hired.”

  “Or bash his brains out and drown him,” Atherton said, eyeing Abby warily while he and the others hung on to their struggling captive.

  “I didn’t hire any damned assassins!” the golden-haired man shouted. Or tried to shout. He winced and shook off his captors to test his jaw. Glancing over at Abby, he attempted a modest bow and almost toppled. “Good day, my lady. I did not mean to disrupt your party, but your husband has a short fuse and a few wits to let.”

  “Montague, stuff him in a cellar before I take his head off again.” Fitz scrambled to his feet and came to stand in front of Abby. “My apologies, my dear. I will deal with the beast, if you will reassure the children that we have not been invaded by barbarian hordes.”

  “The only barbarian here seems to be you, but I will assume you have your reasons.” She studied him critically, noticing a bruise forming on his jaw but seeing no blood. “I think our guests must breakfast before we subject them to any further entertainment.”

  He grinned and planted a kiss on her cheek. “I am too accustomed to living a bachelor life, my love. Civilize me as you will.”

  He turned and gestured toward the dining room as if he’d always had a host of rooms and servants at his beck and call. “Breakfast, gentlemen, as my lady commands. I assume it must be loaves and fishes.”

  36

  After breakfast, still looking sorely battered and still furious, Geoff sat with his back to the library window and his dirty boots upon a footstool. Someone had brought him a glass of brandy, and Fitz wondered where Bibley had hidden the bottle. His scoundrel of a butler was the next man he’d question.

  He had to play this conversation like a hand of cards, not revealing what he held until the bets were down. “I hear you went shopping for crests for your carriage, Cuz,” Fitz said genially. He took a chair and propped his boots on an empty bookshelf.

  Geoffrey looked ferocious enough to chew the glass he held. “I thought you were dead. You can’t blame me for wondering if being a bankrupt earl held some advantage.”

  “A crest?” Fitz scoffed. “That’s not the first thing that came to my mind when George popped off.” A strong drink had been. Fitz almost sympathized at the shock his cousin must have suffered.

  “Unlike you, I have blunt of my own,” Geoff countered. “And George didn’t deliberately pop off and leave you his mess as I thought you’d done. Given our family history, I was convinced you’d faked your death, hoping this sinkhole would suck me dry.”

  Which he might have done if it hadn’t been for his daughter, Fitz was forced to admit. Geoff had a right to believe a Wyckerly would be a dishonest dunghole, so he did not protest the insult. “Carriage crests?” he repeated in disbelief. “We have tenants starving, and you would prettify your carriage?”

  Geoff swung his hand to indicate the house, then winced and shrugged his shoulder to work the ache out of it. “A barrel of monkeys couldn’t right this place.”

  A monkey being five hundred pounds, Fitz thought that repairing the house might take a jungle full of them. Had his guts not been in turmoil, he would have laughed at his heir’s terminology. He and Geoff had seldom occupied the same circles. Despite the bitterness that had developed between the two families—over money, if he was any judge—he’d never had any personal reason to dislike the man. Until now. “I remember feeling like that when I learned about George,” he grudgingly admitted. “I thought he’d died to spite me.”

  Geoff glowered. “Then you know I would have to be insane to want this mausoleum and a debt deeper than Prinny’s. Without a royal fortune or the aid of Parliament, there’s no digging out of it. My father used to live here when our grandfather was alive, and he told me to run for the hills should it ever look as if I’d inherit the family tomb.”

  “So you did,” Fitz said with a snort. “The lawyer said you headed for Yorkshire.”

  “Believe it or not, I own a pottery up there, and I had a load of woolens that needed transporting. It seemed wisest to see to them personally before your creditors came after me. Once I heard you were back from the dead, I celebrated.”

  “By applying to White’s and courting Lady Anne,” Fitz said accusingly. He might have a hard time believing his cousin would be nocked in the noggin enough to want a worthless title, but who else would want him dead?

  “Why not?” Geoff retaliated. “I can’t win without trying.”

  “And it’s no coincidence that since George’s death, I’ve been attacked by bricks and stones, and had arrows nearly take off my head? Some bounder wanted me to desert my wedding night to meet him at the fountain. Who besides you would have reason to want me dead?”

  Fitz had already ascertained from Montague that after staking out the mermaid fountain at midnight, Blake had seen a horseman arrive, but the man had fled the garden after realizing Blake wasn’t Fitz.

  “The only idiot Wyckerlys are on your side of the family tree,” Geoff grumbled. “I came here because I’d had some hope that you might be different.”

  Family history and decades of mistrust had led to this impasse. Fitz didn’t want to spend the rest of his life waiting for an arrow in his back.

  He dropped his feet to the floor and searched through the piles of paper on the writing desk. Finding a rumpled sheet, he produced a quill, spit into a pot of dried ink until he had enough to coat the nib, and handed them to Geoff. “Write fountain for me.”

  Geoff shot him a look but accepted the pen and rapidly scrawled the word across the paper, then handed it back.

  Fountain. Spelled properly, in graceful backward script, because Geoff was left-handed. And far better educated than Fitz’s own father and brother. Fitz supposed Geoff could have disguised his handwriting to some degree, but surely that wouldn’t account for the extreme differences between crude and elegant, right-and left-handed.

  “At least you’re not as ignorant as whoever is writing those notes.” Disgruntled, Fitz paced the now cobweb-free library floor. While he was quizzing this man, who didn’t seem insane enough to want a penniless title, solicitors and barristers were waiting in his office, hoping to pry Abby and the children from him. They, rather than this unsolved puzzle, had to come first.

  “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” Geoff said with Wyckerly arrogance. “In truth, I’d willingly hire bodyguards to keep you from being dead. I hastened down here the instant I heard of your nuptials. I wanted to congratulate you and rejoice that new heirs might be on the way and that I might someday be off the hook.” He waited, no doubt expecting an apology.

  But Fitz had Abby, not apologies, on his mind. “You
don’t know of any other Wyckerlys who might be insane enough to kill me, do you?” he asked, but he was already heading for the door. His family had always been too arrogant to consider keeping secrets and too brash to hide them.

  Cautiously, Geoff stood. “Relations more shatter-witted than you? No. We’re the last of a bad line. The lawyers would have to go back to the second or third earl in hopes of finding a line that hasn’t drunk its way to perdition. Shall I hire bodyguards?”

  “Wait and let’s see what the solicitors have to say. If they take Abby’s children away, I may have to shoot someone. You can be there to testify on my behalf, unless you want to inherit this pile after I hang.”

  Geoff snorted. “I knew there was a reason I stayed away from you.”

  “No, you stayed away because you were too civilized to attend Jackson’s sports academy and feared my fists. I’d advise you to give boxing a try. It comes in useful when you’re a Wyckerly.”

  Fitz rocked back in his desk chair to study the solemn men seated in front of him. The lawyers sat on wooden chairs, with spines straight, hands crossed over their paunches, while Quent sprawled on a cracked leather couch, observing with proprietary interest. Still mistrustful, Geoff watched over the proceedings from a wing chair in a dark corner.

  Greyson, the children’s executor, cleared his throat. “After this latest exhibition, my lord, I am more convinced than ever that you would be an unsuitable guardian for young children. I must decline your petition and that of your countess. I will be returning the children to the Weatherstons.”

  Fitz had learned that cautious, conservative Greyson disapproved of gambling. Of course the man would also disapprove of Fitz’s beating his heir into the ground. He looked toward Pearson, the distinguished barrister Quentin had hired to defend him.

  Wearing his formal court wig, Pearson harrumphed. “You are a disgrace to your profession, sir. We will take you to court for this insult! You cannot call the Earl of Danecroft unsuitable for no more reason than a fistfight.”

  But he probably could for owing a king’s ransom. And a drawn-out court battle would see the children coming of age before it was settled. Fitz gritted his teeth. Unimaginative lawyers knew only one method of fighting.

  Summerby, Lady Bell’s solicitor, leaned forward. “The clause in Miss Merriweather’s—Lady Danecroft’s—inheritance stipulates that Lady Belden must approve of her protégée’s spouse.”

  Damn. Fitz had had those documents in his hands when he’d examined Abby’s expenditures, but he’d been too busy showing off his mathematical prowess to read them. Why must all his sins come home to roost at once?

  Summerby continued. “Lady Belden can withhold the funds and leave them for the future use of the lady’s children. You cannot automatically appropriate the inheritance. Lady Belden disapproves of your gambling.”

  As if all England wasn’t gambling mad. Fitz had promised to repay Quent with the dowry. Without that, he’d have to sell Abby’s farm. Or default and leave Quent with the stud. He saw Quent stiffen and frown.

  He’d pushed Abby into this marriage by telling her he could get her siblings back, and he damned well wouldn’t fail her. The children came first.

  Fitz scowled at the roomful of conniving catch-farts. “The Weatherstons don’t want those children,” he said coldly. “They haven’t the slightest clue how to raise them or any interest in learning. They handed them over to servants and let them run away to a train yard. Now, tell me whether they’d be better off neglected by lackwits or in the loving care of the sister they adore. You have seen my lady. Do you really think Weatherston could raise those children better than she can just because he wears trousers?”

  “The fact remains, my lord,” Greyson said stiffly, wiping perspiration from his balding pate, “you are not a suitable influence on young children. And given the state of your finances, the lady will no longer be able to afford to raise them. It is my duty to keep them and their father’s inheritance secure, and you can make no such promise.”

  Pearson began to argue volubly in impressive legal terms. Fitz ground his molars in frustration. He knew what was right, but he had no good way of proving that he was the father the children needed.

  Instead of saving the children for Abby, he’d ruined her chances. He fought with despair and his damnable temper while calculating the odds that would stack the outcome in his favor. Or Abby’s. Keeping his card-playing calm, he decided this argument was more about money and control than it was about children.

  Fitz interrupted his barrister’s dazzling monologue to address Greyson directly. “If I sign away my rights to Abby’s farm,” he said, raising the stakes, “will you admit that she is the best possible person to raise the children?”

  “You are still not a suitable influence in their lives,” Greyson objected, although not as vociferously after being battered by the learned barrister. He eyed Fitz with suspicion, looking for the catch.

  One hand down. Play the high card next. “What if Abby returned with them to her farm without me?”

  “Then we are back to where we started. A single female cannot raise young boys,” the executor insisted.

  Refrain from punching a lawyer. Maintaining his gambler’s insouciance, Fitz twirled a quill between his fingers and turned to Lady Bell’s solicitor. “Will you ask Lady Belden to release some portion of my wife’s inheritance for the use of a tutor for the children? A male tutor for the boys, if necessary?”

  “If you will agree to sign away any claim to her inheritance, my lord, I believe the lady would be agreeable to releasing her funds. She simply wants her young relation to be happy and does not believe you are capable of protecting her future.”

  Fitz sensed Quentin stiffening, aware that if this term was accepted, Fitz would lose any chance of repaying his debt.

  He must not reveal the depth of his despair. He was a damned noble and wanted to act like one. He took a deep breath and prepared to sign away his future for Abby’s sake.

  “Tell Lady Bell I disagree strongly with her notion of what will make my wife happy. But given your terms, I will agree to give up all of her inheritance except the sum necessary to repay my debt to Lord Quentin. Will that suit?”

  Lady Belden’s solicitor hesitated, considered Fitz’s determined expression, and asked how much was owed. Fitz showed him his note to Quentin, and the solicitor reluctantly nodded his agreement.

  One obligation down. The biggest one to go. Fitz turned to the children’s executor. “Miss Merriweather is now a countess and an heiress with all the power such wealth and title entail. She can hire tutors or send the children to any school in the country. Will you allow her to keep her half-siblings?”

  “Not if they are to live under the influence of a gambler such as yourself,” Greyson said stubbornly.

  “If they return to Abby’s farm without me, until such time as you agree that I am no longer a bad influence?” Fitz thought he might choke on the words, but they had to be said.

  Greyson narrowed his eyes and studied the issue before reluctantly voicing his approval. Fitz hid his relief. Not only had he won Abby her siblings, but he’d found a way to pay Quentin. At the cost of his beloved wife’s company. He would deal with the crushing blow later, out of the public eye, when he could rage and storm and throw himself off a high cliff.

  Quent glared at him in disapproval. Geoff crossed his arms and leaned his chair back against the wall. In all their eyes, by giving up Abby’s dowry, he’d married for naught.

  Only Abby could decide that. Only the children had to return to the farm. Fitz knew that meant Abby would go, too, but he needn’t deal with that catastrophe just yet. The creditors nipping at his heels would probably hang him, if Abby didn’t kill him first.

  Fitz shot his heir a grim look, glanced spitefully at the wall of guns, then set his lips in a caricature of a smile. “Work up the documents, gentlemen. If it’s the last thing I do, I will see my wife has her siblings home where they belong.”
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  He took pleasure in watching Geoff squirm. Not long ago Geoff had been contemplating carriage crests after thinking Fitz had used those guns to shoot himself. Let the bastard agonize some more over the possibility of inheriting a mountain of debt.

  Carrying a tray of coffee and cakes, Abby blatantly eavesdropped from the other side of the office door and gasped at the demands the lawyers were making. They would still take away the children? And not one soul in that room considered Fitz a fit parent? How dare they?

  She was about to shove open the door and intrude when Fitz agreed with them and consented to send her home. Back to Oxfordshire—over fifty miles away. Without him.

  Standing there, devastated, she wondered if he really hadn’t wanted her siblings after all. Did she know him as well as she’d thought?

  Setting aside the tray, tears streaming down her cheeks, she listened to her new husband casually dealing their futures like a deck of cards. How could she possibly believe that she or the children mattered to him when he blithely gave them up without argument? Perhaps the marriage was a sham, a gamble that only he understood. Did she mean so little to him that he could cast her off without even consulting her wishes?

  She didn’t think taking a broom to Fitz or the entire roomful of arrogant men would help. What good was being a countess if she was still female? She’d made enough of a fool of herself already. Shaking with fury and grief, she stayed quiet until the final agreement was reached and Fitz began signing away his life. Their life. He was sending her away.

  She could have the children, but she couldn’t have him.

  She’d fulfilled her wish of so many weeks ago. She could take the children and go home. She should be ecstatic. Instead, she was miserable.

  Weeping too hard to hide it, she let herself out the French doors into the side yard and raced into the maze of overgrown yews, where she flung herself on the grass and cried and pounded her frustration into the earth. She’d tried so hard . . . and wanted too much.