The Lawrence Browne Affair

by Cat Sebastian

  The trouble was that Georgie’s mind had started assigning people to the wrong pigeonholes, and he had started to look on old Mrs. Packingham as a friend, and Brewster as an enemy.

  As he didn’t know how to stop that disorder from occurring again, he tried to dismiss the thought and return to Radnor’s disgusting papers. In the window casement he found a spool of twine that would serve to tie the correspondence into neat bundles, keeping them organized even if the earl threw another tantrum.

  Through the clouded window, he could see the earl and his monstrous dog in a garden that managed to look simultaneously overgrown and quite dead. The dog, predictably, was asleep. If Radnor kept that mongrel for any purpose, Georgie had yet to discover what it was, because the dog had slept straight through the two hours Georgie had worked that morning. There were rugs with more energy.

  Radnor was fiddling with a blade of some sort—an ax by the looks of things. It took Georgie a moment to fully comprehend the incongruity of the sight. The earl was preparing to chop firewood, which wasn’t by any stretch a normal task for a peer of the realm. But Georgie hadn’t come to Penkellis expecting anything resembling normal. Nor had he seen any evidence of the earl’s madness, however. If untidiness, rudeness, and fits of mild violence constituted madness, then Mayfair was filled with madmen—just ask any lord’s servants.

  As he watched, the earl began swinging the ax. The thwack of the split wood echoed off stone walls. Another thwack, and another, until he settled into a rhythm. Radnor was making fast work of it, only pausing long enough between swings to set up the next log. Well, it stood to reason that a man so large had to be strong.

  Georgie let his mind linger on those adjectives a trifle too long: large and strong. Good heavens, was he ogling the Mad Earl of Radnor? No, he reminded himself, he was leering at the Mad Earl’s brother. That settled, Georgie folded his arms and leaned against the casement, enjoying the show.

  Radnor’s hair, which had earlier been messily tied back in a hopelessly unfashionable queue, now hung loose around his shoulders in waves the color of caramel. He had several weeks’ worth of beard, which Georgie felt as a personal attack on order and cleanliness. Terrible. Simply awful. Really, he shouldn’t be wondering what it would feel like against his skin.

  And then—oh, his kingdom for a pair of field glasses. The earl dropped the ax long enough to strip down to his shirtsleeves. That couldn’t be necessary, given the chill in the November air. But on another, purely aesthetic level, it was quite, quite necessary for this man to take off his clothes whenever the spirit moved him. Perhaps he ought to go the full distance and take his shirt off too. No sense in doing things by halves.

  Georgie used his handkerchief to clean a bit of the window for a better view. It would have been a sin and a shame to let a sight like this go unseen. The earl filled out his dingy linen shirt quite nicely, and now the fabric was sweat-damp and clinging. Every swing of the ax caused the man’s muscles to ripple and shift. Strong thighs, solid chest, arms that simply beggared belief.

  The man was a beast.

  Georgie licked his lips. He had felt the solid mass of those broad shoulders under his fingertips, through layers of wool and linen, when he tried to wake the earl yesterday. When Radnor had grabbed him and pushed him against the wall, Georgie had felt that strength firsthand. Georgie had let it happen, had let himself be shoved and manhandled; a man didn’t keep the company Georgie kept without learning how to take care of himself in a fight. Lord, but being pressed into that wall had given him ideas, ideas that were crystallizing into something gratifyingly obscene now that he was seeing Radnor in action.

  This wasn’t the first time Georgie had desired a man he intended to cheat or rob. Sometimes desire even added to the thrill of the swindle, as long as one made sure to keep everybody in their proper pigeonhole. It was like having a fine dinner served on a silver charger that one intended to steal later on. The trouble was that, looking out the window, Georgie didn’t know whether he was looking at the charger or the meal. His pigeonholes were in danger of getting disordered.

  Besides, there was desire—simple, selfish, easily satisfied—and then there was whatever Georgie had wanted when he felt Radnor’s overlarge presence behind him. There was nothing simple about that.

  He turned abruptly away from the window and surveyed the contents of the room. Radnor had expected housebreakers. Perhaps that was a mania of his, but perhaps he had something worth stealing. If so, Georgie couldn’t fathom what, unless there were thieves with a fondness for mouse droppings and stained papers. But who knew what might lie buried beneath the haphazard piles of books or within the half-decayed trunks. All the more reason to bring this room to some semblance of order.

  Lawrence sluiced himself off with water from the well. The water was cold, but he was hot, and evidently he didn’t have any servants to draw him a bath, even if he’d wanted one. He wondered which brave, misguided souls had remained. Not that he was going to visit the kitchens and find out. They’d likely flee at the sight of him, shirtless and dripping wet, like something that had washed ashore. And, truth be told, he didn’t care who his servants were as long as they stayed silent and left his supper outside the study door.

  “Good God, man.” It was Halliday. “You’ll catch your death.”

  Lawrence made a noncommittal noise, too physically and mentally drained to enter into a debate about the dangers of standing outside in wet clothes. Instead he proceeded to wring the water out of his hair while Barnabus greeted his friend. “Firewood,” he offered after a moment. “It’s too cold to swim.”

  “Ah.” The vicar had known Lawrence long enough to be familiar with his habits. “I see.”

  Lawrence had learned years ago that when he felt the creeping unease that signaled what he had come to think of as an attack of madness, he could sometimes set his mind to rights by exhausting himself. It was probably only a temporary reprieve, only delaying the inevitable moment he went as fully and irretrievably mad as his father and brother. But temporary relief was better than no relief, so in the summer he swam in the sea, and in the colder weather he chopped enough wood to warm a house far grander than Penkellis. He didn’t know why it worked, but he imagined his mind as a fire with too many twigs. Some of the tinder had to be burnt off before the fire was any use at all.

  “Did the secretary arrive?” Halliday’s voice was too casual.

  “Yesterday.”

  “Is he settling in?”

  “I mistook him for a housebreaker and nearly throttled him. Later I threw a book at his head. This morning he sorted my papers and I threw them into the fireplace.”

  Halliday winced. “That would be a no, then.”

  “He’s a London popinjay.” Lawrence pulled his shirt on over his head. “He smells like flowers.”

  “His references were—”

  “He’ll be useless.” Worse than useless. Distracting.

  Lawrence slid his braces up over his shoulders, then shrugged into his waistcoat and coat, all while the vicar shuffled and looked around the garden as if it held anything of interest.

  “David Prouse had another sheep stolen,” Halliday finally said.

  Like as not it had fallen off a cliff into the sea or been stolen by a neighboring farmer. These things happened and always had. “Am I supposed to have stolen this one too?”

  “The general sentiment is that you sacrificed it as part of an eldritch rite.”

  Lawrence snorted.

  “I wish you’d take this seriously,” Halliday protested. “Show your face at the village fete, buy some jam and pie at the ladies’ auction. Otherwise people make up their own stories, and every little thing that goes wrong within a league of Penkellis is laid at your doorstep. It’s only a matter of time before something serious happens and you’re blamed for it.”

  Lawrence wasn’t concerned about his tenants thinking the worst of him. After his father and brother, they had every reason to suspect the Earl of Radnor of
any and every crime. “If the villagers are indulging in superstition, perhaps they need stronger spiritual instruction.” Lawrence shot a pointed glance at the vicar.

  Halliday threw his hands up in surrender. “Don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me. I lie awake nights wondering what I’ve done wrong here. Do you know, when I went to Bates Farm to read to the old lady, I found salt sprinkled on the windowsills.”

  “Salt?”

  “To keep away the evil spirits, I gather,” the vicar said, his voice weary.

  If only it were that simple, Lawrence thought. If only evil could be kept away with a dusting of salt, a bowl of iron filings, an old incantation. But he knew that the madness that ran in his bloodline would one day fully claim him as surely as it had claimed his brother and father.

  Georgie tried to orient himself within the rabbit warren of rooms and corridors, heading towards what he hoped was the back of the house. Because if there were any servants—and he reassured himself that there simply had to be, despite all appearances to the contrary—they’d likely be in the kitchens.

  Even the most mazelike places had a certain logic to them. Georgie, born and bred on the labyrinthine streets of London’s rookeries, could often intuit how a new place was laid out. When he found himself in a new town, at a new house, among a new set of people, he knew how to detect the various currents that led towards money, towards pleasure, towards power.

  That was what Georgie did: he slid into places he didn’t belong. Nobody realized what had happened until the damage was done, like a stiletto in the heart. It was only a matter of the right words spoken to the right people and a total indifference to the truth.

  Quietly, casually, he would mention that he had invested his small inheritance in a business venture: canals, mines, shipping . . . it hardly mattered. Interest was piqued, greed uncovered. Georgie would offhandedly mention the name of the firm in question, the greedy gentleman invested, and Georgie disappeared into thin air, as effortlessly as he had appeared, taking half the proceeds with him.

  Mattie Brewster took the other half in exchange for tolerating Georgie’s doing business on Brewster’s own ground. It had seemed a good deal ten years ago, when he had been too young and foolish to consider what it would be like to have a man like Brewster as his enemy. As his family’s enemy. Now it was too late to renegotiate. It was too late for a lot of things.

  Georgie had never felt bad about his swindles until he became foolishly fond of old Mrs. Packingham, with her perpetually tangled embroidery floss and the equally tangled tales of her youth. Before her, he had taken from people who were greedy enough to throw caution to the wind and rich enough to spare money on rank speculation. They were no better than gamblers, and nobody wrung their hands when high rollers lost their money, did they?

  As he wound his way through the passageways of Penkellis, brushing aside cobwebs and stepping lightly over creaky floorboards, he checked for signs of civilization, some clue that would bring him closer to a hot meal and a working chimney: a sconce that had been dusted, a carpet that had been rolled up rather than left to molder, the telltale lemon scent of cleaning polish.

  But he found none of those things. All the rooms outside of the tower that held Radnor’s study were in various states of ruin. No attempt had been made to stop the progress of decay. The house had simply been given up as a lost cause. All the doors Georgie opened led to rooms as bad as the one he had slept in last night. Some weren’t even furnished at all; others smelled of damp and mushrooms.

  Finally, he smelled bread baking. Thank God. A few paces later he heard voices, then arrived on the threshold of the tidiest room he had seen yet in this shambles. It was a small kitchen for this size house but neat as a pin. Two women were having what looked like a comfortable coze near a blazing fire. One of them, a girl of maybe eighteen, combed out her golden hair while an older woman shelled walnuts.

  Georgie cleared his throat and both women leapt to their feet.

  “We’re decent women!” said the walnut-sheller, walnuts and baskets skittering all over the flagstone floor.

  “I’ve got a knife,” said the hair-comber, producing a small blade from the depths of her apron.

  “I’m George Turner.” He held up his hands as if in surrender and tried to sound like the sort of man decent women didn’t need to fear, which was no more than the truth. “I’m to be Lord Radnor’s secretary.” He gave a slight bow and his best smile. “I apologize for having taken you unawares.”

  “Flimflam.” This from the walnut-sheller again, a stout woman of about five and thirty, dressed in a tidy gray cotton frock and sturdy-looking cap. “His lordship has no secretary.”

  “Which is why he’s engaged me,” Georgie offered. “Will you tell me what time supper is served?” Since arriving yesterday, he hadn’t had anything to eat but some bread and cheese he had tucked into his pocket at the inn, and that had been finished hours ago.

  More staring, and then the women shook their heads.

  “If I were you, I’d put up at the inn,” the older woman said. “This house ain’t fit. Rats. And worse.”

  “Yes, so I’ve gathered.” The room where Georgie had slept last night had been little better than a barn. Bone tired from days of traveling, he had managed to fall asleep despite musty-smelling bed linens and the unmistakable sound of mice in the straw mattress. A younger Georgie might have gladly bedded down for another night in far worse accommodations: mice didn’t bite much, at least not compared to rats. But his time living—and thieving—among the gentry had gotten him used to beds that didn’t have creatures living in them and sheets that didn’t make him sneeze. “But it’s cold and dark, and I’m not leaving this house tonight, or indeed until I complete my employment with his lordship.”

  The women exchanged a glance. “There’s some bread over there,” the older woman said, gesturing with her chin to a tray bearing cold meat and a few loaves of bread. Neither woman moved.

  Georgie thanked the women and helped himself to a loaf of bread, temporarily giving up his hope for a hot meal as a lost cause. Then he bowed his way out of the kitchen as suavely as he would have left a duchess’s drawing room a few short weeks ago.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After another day of organizing dirty papers, Georgie despaired of ever enjoying a decent meal, a proper fire, or a tolerable conversation. Radnor grunted or, when pressed, emitted a grumpy monosyllable. Twice, a tray bearing cold ham, bread, and apples appeared mysteriously outside the study door, and Radnor fetched it in as if this were an utterly unremarkable event. Georgie helped himself to an apple, and Radnor stared, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that his secretary required feeding.

  This wasn’t the only time Georgie felt Radnor’s intense gaze. Perhaps it was because the earl had been alone for so long that another human’s presence was a novelty worth noticing. Perhaps it was Georgie’s own isolation at Penkellis that had him hoping those penetrating stares had more behind them than curiosity. But Georgie had too much practice deceiving others to be able to deceive himself. He darted a glance at where the man sat with his absurdly huge boots propped up on his desk, one muscled arm hooked behind his neck. He wanted Radnor. Badly. And, if those stares meant anything, Radnor wanted him at least a little in return.

  Perhaps Penkellis had more to offer than a couple of candlesticks.

  At some point in the evening—it was hard to say precisely when because none of the clocks kept proper time, but it was after they had burnt through several candles—Radnor wordlessly got up, strode into the adjacent room he used as a bedchamber, and slammed the door shut. Georgie interpreted this to mean the day’s work was done.

  Georgie stood and stretched, stiff and restless from so many hours sitting still. Despite the late hour, he was too fidgety to sleep. He’d take the opportunity to explore Penkellis. No, explore wasn’t quite the word. Browse, more like. As a child, he used to loiter outside the butcher’s shop, eyeing roasts and joints he could never afford, pla
nning what he’d buy in the dimly imagined future where he had enough coin.

  That was what he did as he twisted through the dusty corridors of Penkellis; he planned what he’d stuff his pockets with when he finally went back to London. What would he bring to Mattie Brewster to bargain for his life, for his family’s safety? A rolled-up painting? A couple of silver candlesticks? None of it would be adequate to purchase his freedom, so this was just as much a game of make-believe as it had been when he was a child.

  He’d have to search the study more carefully, find out whether the earl really had something he was worried thieves might take. Georgie was conscious of a nagging sense of shame when he thought of duping the earl. Before he could berate himself for the miserable state of his pigeonholes, his foot went through a rotten piece of floorboard.

  “Blast!” he muttered. This house was beyond simple dilapidation. There was something decidedly not right about this place. He had always enjoyed solving puzzles, and Penkellis—and its master—seemed a puzzle very much in need of solving.

  What a bloody waste to let a house like this rot. Radnor ought to be ashamed, but then again he took no better care of himself than he did the house. He hid in his tower, surrounded by disorder and decay, utterly alone.

  Georgie could hardly stand it and was working up a righteous anger when he pushed open a set of double doors.

  “Oh hell—” His words caught in his throat.

  It was a library. Or, rather, it had once been. A window had blown out, and Georgie could see ivy trailing into the room, creeping onto the tall bookcases. Everything about this room was wrong. It smelled of the sea and loamy earth, not like an indoor place at all. A shaft of moonlight shone through the broken window, illuminating a toadstool growing out of the floor.

  It wasn’t the decay that was so troubling as much as the way the strangeness of the place warped one’s expectations. A specter could float by and Georgie wouldn’t be in the least surprised. He’d wave to it, wish it good evening.