Enticing the Earl

by Nicole Byrd

  The roads were still in wretched condition; the water had had little time to drain off, and the mud was still deep. He had to go slowly, allowing his horse to pick its way through much of the sticky mess.

  Worse, when he was barely a third of the way into his journey, he was met with bad news. The river Ouse was out of its banks, and the bridge and roadway flooded. There was no way across.

  Swearing, he knew there was no answer but to retrace his steps. He turned his tired horse and started back the way he had come, trailed by two other riders and a mud-stained gig with a father and his young son, and a farmer with a cart full of turnips.

  But they had all trudged little more than a mile before an even sadder sight presented itself. A carriage had slipped into the ditch at the side of the road. The horses were still struggling in the traces, neighing and snorting in a panic, and he could hear shrieks of dismay from inside the vehicle, as well.

  Sighing, Marcus knew he had no choice but to stop and do what he could to help. He pulled his gelding to a stop and slid off the animal’s back, tying him to a nearby tree.

  Where was the coachman?

  “Ach,” one of the other horsemen shook his head. “Poor man. He got caught under the team when they fell, I would say.” He motioned to a figure lying very still at the side of the ditch. Marcus grimaced. He went down to check, just in case, but found there was nothing they could do, so he pulled the long cape out from beneath the quiet form and spread it over the body to cover him decently. Next, he went quickly to the carriage and looked inside.

  He saw a woman with a trickle of blood on her cheek, and two children, who huddled against her. The boy was very pale, and his leg seemed to be bent at an odd angle.

  “Are you hurt?” Marcus called.

  “Mostly cuts and bruises, except for my son. I fear his leg may be broken,” the woman said. She sounded tremulous.

  “Try to hold him steady; we must see to the horses first, or they may overturn the carriage,” he called to her.

  Then Marcus went back to the front, where the farmer from the cart was already trying to catch the near horse’s head, but the beast was frightened and hard to control.

  “They’re in a panic,” Marcus said quietly. “Do you have any cloth with you, that we can tie over their eyes?”

  “Aye, I’ve some empty feed sacks,” the man said. He went back to his wagon and returned in a few minutes with coarse bags, which Marcus ripped into strips. Of course, he still had to catch the animal’s head and hold it still.

  Marcus came up from behind the near horse, while the farmer took the animal on the other side. “Here now,” Marcus spoke quietly to the horse, who danced within his tangled leads, whinnying with fear. The animal had a gash on his right rear hind leg, but didn’t seem to be badly injured. “Here now, it will be all right.”

  The horse half reared once more, then shook its head and seemed to listen to the calm tone of his voice. With a smooth motion, he slipped the band around its nose and up over its eyes. Unable to see, the horse stood suddenly still. Marcus rubbed its head and neck for another minute, speaking quietly, then he leaned over and, with the knife he’d borrowed from the farmer, cut the tangled leads where they threatened to trip up its legs, so that they could lead the horse away presently.

  On the other side, the farmer had settled the other rear horse in a similar fashion.

  Of the two horses in the lead, one was on its side, too badly injured to be able to get to its feet. One of the other men, who said he was a courier, had a pistol with him; when the third horse had been separated from its mate and led away along with the other two, he brought his gun and put the poor beast out of its misery.

  The gun blast sounded loud in the quiet countryside. Marcus walked back to reassure the people still waiting inside the carriage.

  “Is it one of the team?” the lady inside asked.

  He nodded. “The right front lead. It was too badly injured to save,” he told her.

  She nodded. “And my coachman?”

  He shook his head, and she paled. “Let’s see about getting you out.”

  “My son, first,” she told him.

  With help from one of the other men, they propped the carriage door open and reached in to lift the boy out as gently as they could. The lad gasped when they jarred his wounded limb, and before they were able to set him down on the muddy ground, he had gone so white Marcus thought he might pass out.

  The little girl came next, and then, with their assistance, the woman climbed out. She hastened to see about her son. “I need to get him to a surgeon,” she said, observing his wan face with a worried appearance of her own.

  “If I may,” Marcus told her. “I think we should set his leg and make a splint to support it before he is bounced about any further. Otherwise, the journey will only cause more damage to his injury.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Do you have any experience?” she asked, twisting her bloodstained handkerchief, which she had been using to wipe her children’s cuts, nervously between her hands.

  “I have set my servants’ limbs, and those of my troop, when I served in the army,” he told her.

  He knelt down beside the child, who clutched his mother’s arm when she hurried to him, the little girl on her other side. Marcus took out his penknife and ripped the cloth of the boy’s trousers so he could check the wound as gently as he could, although the child still shivered. Marcus was relieved to see that it appeared to be a clean break.

  He sent one of the others to find two straight tree limbs; when the man returned with cut saplings of suitable length, the farmer stripped the bark off with a small hatchet from his wagon.

  Marcus turned back to the youngster. “All right now. What’s your name, my lad?”

  The boy looked at him with some misgivings. “Richard.”

  “This is going to hurt, Richard, but I need you to be brave. We want your leg to grow straight when the bone heals itself, do we not? So you will be able to walk again and not limp forever?”

  “Yes!” said, the lad who looked about six years old. “I don’t want to be a bent over cripple. I will be brave.”

  “It will be one bad pain, and we will not mind if you wish to yell,” Marcus told him. “Sometimes men even need to cry; it is no disgrace.”

  “I will not cry!” Richard said, his tone stubborn.

  The child blinked hard as Marcus took hold of his leg, and when he pulled hard on the bone, the boy grunted more than yelled. He had gone very pale, and then he had to wipe his eyes, but he said at once, “I didn’t cry!”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Marcus agreed. “You were very brave, indeed.”

  “Indeed,” Richard’s mother told him, blinking hard herself and touching his cheek, while his younger sister looked on in awe.

  Meanwhile Marcus worked rapidly to tie the pieces of wood on each side of the leg, to keep the bone from slipping out of place again.

  He conferred with the other travelers. The gig was very short on space, but the wagon had no springs. In the end, they decided that putting the mother and boy in the gig was perhaps the best bet.

  “How far do you need to travel back to your home?” Marcus asked Richard’s mother.

  “I have a sister whose house is outside the next village,” she told them. “I can stop there; she can get word to my husband, who will see about the carriage and”—she gestured toward the silent body beside the road—“our poor servant.”

  One of her horses was tame enough to allow the gig’s owner and his son and her daughter to ride astride and follow behind the gig so he could reclaim his vehicle when they were safely delivered to her sister’s house.

  After she had thanked them all profusely, Marcus saw them off. Then he and the rest of the travelers continued on their way, as he circumvented the flooded out highway and continued on his own journey.

  By now, however, he had lost so much daylight, he knew he would have to spend the night at the next village, along with man
y of the other travelers. And when he and several others arrived, the only inn was sold out of beds. There was no hope of a private room as the inn was so crowded, but Marcus thought it just as well. Looking at the state of the tavern, he thought that he’d likely have left with a good selection of bedbugs.

  He was able to buy an ale and a dish of stew for himself, but the public room was heavy with smoke, full of the scent of unwashed bodies and the bedlam of many voices talking, snatches of an argument here and a drunken song there.

  When he finished his meal, Marcus went out to the stable to see to his horse, not trusting the local ostler. When he finished, he wrapped his cloak around him and sat down, leaning against a bale of reasonably clean straw, and shut his eyes. At least the stable was fairly quiet, as opposed to the taproom.

  The next morning he set out again, and by late afternoon he finally approached his own hunting lodge. He was relieved to see that here the rain had apparently not been as heavy, and there was no sign of flooding. His hunting box was built on higher ground, and they had never had water threaten them here.

  He urged his horse on and rode quickly up the drive, jumping off and hurrying to the door. A servant opened it at his knock, and came out to take his horse around.

  “Good to see you back, my lord.”

  “How is Mrs. Smith?” Marcus asked.

  “Doing well, my lord,” the footman said cheerfully. “She came to dinner last night.”

  “Excellent,” Marcus said. He felt better already. “Where is my brother?”

  “Ah, I don’t rightly know, your lordship.”

  About to head straight for the stairs, Marcus paused and looked back. “What? What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “He went into town, my lord,” the footman said. “He hasn’t as yet come back.”

  “Carter, you imbecile,” Marcus muttered beneath his breath, “is this how you protect the ladies?”

  Thirteen

  Marcus hesitated, not sure whether to head at once into town to find his idiot brother—no, first he had to see Lauryn, to see for himself that she was better, and just see her.

  He strode into the house and up the stairs, pausing to look into the sitting room. He had not really expected to find her there, but to his surprise, he found both ladies sitting demurely on the sofa drinking cups of tea.

  Lauryn glanced up, and her expression showed both pleasure and some concern.

  “My lord, are you all right?”

  He came inside the room and leaned over to kiss her, caring not at all that the contessa stared at them both. “Of course,” he said, “why should I not be?” Only then did he remember what a sight he was. Streaked with mud from his exertions at the carriage accident, he also still had bits of straw clinging to him from his night spent with the horses.

  Belatedly, he bowed to them both.

  “Do forgive me. I spent last night sleeping in a stable. Before that, the road was washed out from flooding and I had to travel the long way around. On the way, I came upon a family who had suffered a carriage accident and did what I could to aid them. So as you can see, I had numerous delays getting back to you, and I am not as neat as I would like to be when presenting myself to two ladies.” He looked down at himself and shook his head.

  “I think you have ample reason to be forgiven,” Lauryn told him, and the contessa laughed aloud.

  “My pauvre Zutton, you are always the hero,” she said, raising her brows and giving him a mischievous smile.

  “Nonsense,” he said, but he glanced back at Lauryn. She smiled, too. “I’m glad you’re back in one piece,” she told him. “It sounds like a most harrowing journey, my lord.”

  “I am more concerned that my feckless brother is not here, when I expressly gave him charge over you,” he told them, feeling angry again. “I will change and go into town and see if I can run him down.”

  “But, that makes not the logic at all,” the contessa pointed out. “You leave uz alone to go to rebuke pauvre Carter because ’e ’as left uz alone?”

  “It’s almost dinnertime, he should return at any time,” Lauryn added. “And you must be tired, my lord.”

  He wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to “my lord” him, but he knew that in public, she wouldn’t call him by his Christian name. Which made him ache to get her into more private circumstances, for that and other even more pertinent reasons.

  Perhaps they were both right, and he should wait to chastise Carter. He was tired and hungry, and he wanted to hold Lauryn, feel his arms about her once again. Damn his brother anyhow, couldn’t he do what he was told just once in his life?

  Marcus turned and walked across to the window. No, he had enough daylight left to ride into town and check the largest hotels and inns—there were only a couple—and he wanted to find Carter in the act—as it were—before his brother came riding home with another excuse for his irresponsible acts, as he always did.

  Then Marcus could ride back and celebrate a proper reunion with Lauryn, who looked delightfully healthy once more, finally with a little color in her cheeks. He turned back to smile at her, hoping to convey a promise.

  “I am going into town, but I will make it a short trip,” he told them. “I think I know where to find my errant brother. Tell the servants I will return in time for dinner.”

  Looking resigned, Lauryn nodded.

  The contessa made a clucking noise with her tongue. “Be on your guard, Zutton.”

  “Of course.” He bowed to them again and headed back outside.

  He had a fresh horse saddled in the stable, then rode for town. He made no effort to put aside his irritation, and with every mile closer, his anger only grew. If Carter had just listened—just because he’d been cut off from his drinking friends, his gaming, blast him—what excuse could he give this time?

  When Marcus rode into the area near the harbor, he kept a close eye on the faces around him, knowing he was near his brother’s usual haunts. He pulled up his horse near the hotel by the harbor. It was the best place to stay, and also had the best tavern in which to drink and gamble. If Carter were not here, there were only a couple of other likely places to check; it was not a very big town.

  Marcus tossed his reins to a groom, and started inside the doors of the hotel, when a familiar profile made him stop so short he almost stumbled.

  It was not his brother’s face, which he had expected to see.

  “Tweed!” he said, startled.

  The other man, who was shorter and stockier, turned and frowned at him. He had been about to walk out of the hotel, but now he turned back and faced the earl.

  “What did you expect?” his sometime business partner snapped. “You’ve been sending me letters and notes demanding that I come, haven’t you? Well, here I damn well am! I’ve been down to the warehouse twice, and your bloody guards won’t even let me in, so what the hell do you think I’m going to do to support you?”

  Marcus couldn’t help it. He leaned back against the hotel’s doorframe and laughed out loud.

  Tweed balled his hands into fists and his plain face flushed an ugly shade of red. “Damn you, Sutton, are you making sport of me? I finally find the girl I want to marry, and I had to leave her in London open to all the damn young twigs of fashion who are trying to steal her out from beneath my eye, just so I can come up here to help you go through moldy boxes of china. God knows what the hell good that’s going to do, and you have the nerve to laugh in my face!”

  “No, no!” Marcus said hastily. “It’s not that. But I was in London, man. I came all that way, and you didn’t wait to see me. I told your footman—why the bloody hell didn’t you stay put and wait for me to return to your house?”

  “What?” Tweed stared at him. “I thought”—he slowly relaxed his hands—“Oh, hell’s bells. What a mess. Serves you right for locking me out of my own warehouse. Come on, let’s have a drink.”

  “A fast one,” Marcus told him. “I need to find my brother. And we do need to talk at le
ngth, but it will have to be tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Tweed looked outraged. “I need to get back to London. I have to—”

  “I know, I know, you have courting to do,” Marcus nodded. “I do sympathize with the pangs of a man in love.”

  Eyes narrowed in suspicion, Tweed stared at him.

  “No, I’m serious, but still, you owe me at least a day, considering the trek you put me through,” Marcus told him. “Come on, I’m buying.”

  He slapped the viscount on the back; the man felt stiff with his wounded feelings. Tweed had always found it hard to un-bend. They walked inside and on to the bar where Marcus asked for two ales.

  “Make mine a Scotch,” Tweed said. “Now, why the damned brigade at the warehouse, and why would they not let me in to inspect the—”

  “Moldy boxes?” Marcus finished for him. “Because we have had a break-in, and a guard killed earlier this week.”

  “Killed?” Tweed stared at him. “What on earth did they think was inside that was so valuable? The thieves must have been disappointed. How much did they take away?”

  “Nothing that we could tell, that was the strange thing,” Marcus told him.

  Tweed shrugged and picked up his glass. After he swallowed a mouthful, he said, “Not so strange, they found nothing they expected to find. They swore a lot and got out before they were caught, that was all.”

  Marcus stared at the shorter man, who was looking into his glass. “Mayhap. But it still seems singular to me.”

  “What else?” Tweed demanded. “You said you wanted a long talk.”

  “I do, but I don’t have time to go into it now. You know we had a suggestion of trouble on that ship before she even set sail, and then when she was reported missing—well, she seemed to carry her own curse, didn’t she?” Marcus shook his head. “I’ll be back early tomorrow, and we’ll get you back on your way to London and your chosen lassie as soon as we may.”

  Tweed made a sour face, but he didn’t protest again.

  Marcus left him getting another drink, and, since there was no sign of Carter, left the bar to seek out another tavern. Where the hell was his brother?