“Mother,” Brooks said, interrupting something Mrs. Brooks was saying about the weather, “perhaps we ought to let Mrs. and Miss Jennings be on their way. As you have pointed out, the rain has not been conducive for outdoor activities as of late. I believe that includes conversations on church steps.”
His mother turned and smiled at him. If he were still a boy, perhaps he would have faltered at the forced expression, but his gaze remained stern. I will not have you arranging a match between Miss Jennings and me, he said with narrowed eyes.
Must you be as cold as the weather? His mother asked with a tilt of her head. When it became apparent that the answer was yes, Mrs. Brooks turned back to the other two women.
“I apologize, Mrs. Jennings,” she said with a slight bow of the head. “I have kept you and your daughter in the rain for too long. Perhaps my son and I can call on you at Stratton Street sometime this week?”
Brooks stifled a groan.
“That would be wonderful!” Mrs. Jennings said with a smile, her eyes flitting from mother to son. Brooks didn’t dare look at Miss Jennings, who was probably regarding him with one of those demure looks that a stupid man might find innocent. Fortunately for Brooks, he knew better.
After they went their separate ways and it was safe to speak freely, Brooks turned his head sharply toward his mother. “I hope you know I won’t be joining you on that call. Unlike that girl’s other suitors, I have actual work to do. Not to mention I’m not interested in Miss Jennings.”
His mother’s nostrils flared. They often did when she was displeased. She turned and glared at her son, her wrinkles in her forehead becoming more prominent. “Miss Jennings is a lovely girl,” she said before turning away again and lifting her chin. “Perhaps you ought to give her a chance. She looks at you as if she adores you.”
Brooks groaned. He loved his mother, but she had the terrible habit of seeing the best in everyone—even those who didn’t deserve it, like his late father. “Miss Jennings looks at any man who comes in her direct vicinity with adoration,” Brooks said. “How can she not? She is on the wrong side of five-and-twenty, and her father was a rascal who did nothing to protect her and her poor mother in the event of his death.”
His mother turned to him, her eyes widening and mouth falling open. “My!” she exclaimed. “I had no idea I raised you to be so arrogant! Mrs. Jennings and her daughter have certainly fallen on hard times, but that’s no reason for us to turn up our noses at them.”
Brooks huffed, shaking his head. “I am not arrogant. I am only pointing out that Miss Jennings wouldn’t have looked at me twice last year when there was still the promise of a dowry in exchange for marrying her, and I was nothing but a mere solicitor working for her father.”
“You do not give yourself enough credit,” his mother murmured with a frown. “You may not be a gentleman by birth, but you are by nature, and your business is more successful than some of these estates belonging to aristocrats. You could be quite the eligible bachelor if you only went out and socialized more like your father did.”
“Are you asking me to be more like my father?” Brooks asked, shooting a pointed look at his mother.
Mrs. Brooks offered a sheepish look in response. “No, but—”
“I apologize, Mother, but I have no desire to marry. And I think you and I would both agree that it’s for the best that I have a demeanor opposite of my father.”
They walked on in silence for a good five minutes before his mother began nagging him again. “But don’t you ever grow lonely?” she asked.
He sighed. “Why would I? You always provide such ample conversation.”
Mrs. Brooks glared at her son. “You know what I mean.”
“Do I?” He dared his mother to say what she meant with only a pair of playful eyes and a slight smile. She flushed and looked the other way with a huff.
“Do not make me explain myself any further!”
Brooks chuckled. “I appreciate your concern, Mother, but the kind of loneliness you describe is easily cured in a man—and it only costs five shillings and a trip to Covent Garden.”
“Samuel!” his mother sputtered. He winked at her, which only horrified her more. “Well, I do hope you take precautions like your father always did. I suppose the apple does not fall far from the tree.”
That made him flinch. “Stop comparing me to father,” he said to her through gritted teeth. She regarded him with an unapologetic look. He sighed again. “You know I only said those things to irritate you. I am far too busy to be some sort of drunken rogue.”
When his father died two years ago, Brooks inherited his law practice—and all the work. But even before then, Brooks was much more conscientious than many of the young men his age at Oxford. While they drank, he studied. He didn’t particularly like the way he—or others—became when they were drunk.
As for women? He couldn’t recall the last time he laid with one. Finding and retaining a mistress seemed like too much work, and marriage was just out of the question. Even taking a hack to Covent Garden at the end of a long workday seemed like a hassle.
Willfully celibate would be the way Brooks described himself. To be sure, he was more than happy that way, not to mention confident that no woman could ever tempt him. And even if such a woman suddenly materialized in his life, his opinions on marriage would never change, and their relationship would be doomed—that much he was sure.
When they arrived back at their home on Dover Street after church, their butler Jenkins was pacing the entrance hall. He approached Brooks before the solicitor could even remove his hat, handing him a letter sealed with melted wax. Brooks recognized the Finch family crest immediately. He tore it open, his mother still hovering behind him. His face fell as he scanned the short missive.
“What is it?” Mrs. Brooks asked, voice full of concern.
“A letter from Charles,” her son replied, refolding the letter and placing it in his breast pocket as he glanced at his mother. “Lord Bolton is not well. They don’t believe he has much longer, and he has commanded me to come at once. I’m afraid I must go.”
James Finch, the Earl of Bolton, was a friend of his late father, not to mention a client. When his father died, Brooks took up the mantle of being Bolton’s solicitor himself.
“Shall I come with you?” his mother asked, furrowing her brow. “Lady Bolton might require comforting. We could hire a post chaise.”
Brooks did not answer right away, too busy wondering why Lord Bolton would ask for him of all people on his deathbed. Brooks was the executor of his will, so he assumed it had something to do with that. For some reason, his mind drifted to that secret daughter of his. If he meant to include her in the document, Brooks hoped he did so quietly. Lady Bolton would be devastated if she knew the truth.
“Lady Bolton has Rosamund,” Brooks finally said, pushing that secret—the one only he, his dead father, and Bolton knew—from his mind. “I will send for you if you are required. Perhaps it’s only a false alarm.”
Brooks left right away, hiring a post chaise as his mother recommended. He always did prefer private carriages to the stage or mail coaches when he was required to travel for work, as long carriage rides made him dreadfully ill. Stuffy coaches only made it worse. Still, his head started to ache almost immediately upon departure, and he grew increasingly nauseous as the carriage left London. Brooks was thankful that Linfield Hall was only thirty miles away.
Linfield should have conjured happy memories in his mind, ones of youthful summers long gone, filled with fresh air and exercise. But his relationship with Charles had soured over the years, their interests diverging at Oxford when Charles started preferring drinking and gambling above everything.
The hour was late when Brooks finally arrived at the country house in Kent. The butler showed him into the entry hall, a gaudy testament to the earl’s power, with its massive crystal chandelier and clusters of portraits hanging on the crimson walls. A few moments later, Charles came down the
main staircase—a marble monstrosity—and greeted him.
Charles looked worse for wear, with dark circles under his eyes and sunken cheeks. His hair was not the immaculate coiffure Brooks remembered whenever they ran into each other in London. His dark curls went off in every which direction, as if he had repeatedly been running his hands through them that evening. When he approached, the distinct smell of liquor followed him. Brooks gave a swift bow regardless.
“Must you always do that?” Charles asked with a grin, extending his hand.
“Are you still the son of an earl as well as my client?” Brooks asked, taking and shaking it.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m afraid I must always do that.”
Charles sighed, looking at Brooks disapprovingly. But Brooks did not falter, preferring to maintain the distance he had built up between him and his old friend. Anything Charles touched tended to turn to ruin, and Brooks wanted to avoid that, preferring the quiet solitude he found in adulthood to the messiness of his childhood.
“Is he upstairs?” Brooks asked, glancing toward the staircase. He, of course, being Lord Bolton. Charles nodded and waved Brooks upstairs, and together they climbed it to the second floor.
“The doctor told us he did not have much time left when he came for my father’s daily appointment this morning, though he seems to be doing better now,” Charles said. “This disease has been a fickle beast. Some days I think he might make a full recovery, but others…”
Charles shook his head and pursed his lips, and Brooks wondered what it was like to be close to one’s father. Charles may have been the worst sort of degenerate, but he did love his father, just as the earl loved his son. Brooks, on the other hand, could only muster up such tender feelings for his mother.
“My mother and sister are visiting with him now,” Charles continued, regaining the formality in his tone by clearing his throat. Charles never did like appearing weak, though Brooks felt he knew the truth behind his character, having known him so long. Charles was as weak-minded and self-conscious as most men, though the soon-to-be earl would never admit it.
“They had the servants prepare a room for you,” he added.
“Thank you,” Brooks said, “though I do wonder why your father wanted to see me so suddenly. Did he give any explanation? I have brought the will—”
“Do not mention the will to my mother,” Charles said as they turned off the staircase and moved onto the second-floor landing, his voice suddenly sharp. They were nervous as well, then. Brooks dreaded what awaited him at the end of the hall.
Charles took a breath, relaxing his stern gaze. He slowly smiled at Brooks, laughing slightly in what appeared to be a desperate attempt to remain calm. “She was fretting about it all morning but would not say why.” He stopped for a moment, turning and looking at Brooks, whose heart pounded. “She acts as if some great secret is about to be revealed. Do you suspect the same?”
Brooks thought of the school payments he arranged for the secret daughter and the argument he once witnessed between Lord and Lady Bolton in the study. Perhaps she already knew the result of her husband’s infidelity. “I suspect nothing,” Brooks said with a shrug.
Charles studied him for a moment, his gaze discerning as they searched one another’s eyes, then continued down the hall. If Lord Bolton revealed any secrets that evening, Brooks would not allow himself to become a scapegoat. A solicitor had a duty to keep his client’s secrets. Brooks had first discovered the existence of Bolton’s bastard under his father’s apprenticeship when his father ordered him to find the girl employment as a governess on behalf of Bolton. He couldn’t have very well told Charles about her without causing a rift in the family.
When Brooks and Charles reached Lord Bolton’s bedroom, they found him in bed, his wife sitting on one side and daughter on the other. “Brooks!” Rosamund exclaimed, pushing her chair back and rising to greet the solicitor.
Unlike Charles, Brooks maintained an easy friendship with Rosamund. If it weren’t for her blonde hair, she would be a mirror image of her mother, both of them being tall with long, graceful necks and high cheekbones. Meanwhile, Lady Bolton’s hair remained the same vivid red as it was twenty years ago. She rose, still wearing her silk dinner gown, floating across the room to offer Brooks her hand. He took it, and their eyes met. He wondered if they were both thinking about that day in the study. Lady Bolton had always looked out for Brooks, but had he done the same for her? A pang of guilt hit him, and he nearly flinched.
“How is he?” Brooks asked after he regained his nerve, eyes drifting toward the shriveled husk of a man lying underneath velvet bedclothes. The man appeared to have aged at least nine years instead of nine months since Brooks saw him last, and he had only been sick for a third of that. Brooks could hear his haggard breathing from across the room.
“Not well,” Lady Bolton said.
Bolton’s sunken eyes searched wildly while his body remained prostrate in bed. “Is that Samuel?” he asked, his voice hoarse. Brooks went to his side, where their eyes could finally meet.
“It is,” he said.
“Leave us,” Bolton said, mustering all the authority an aristocratic man as physically weak as him possibly could. Brooks turned to the man’s family, finding three pairs of uncertain eyes staring at him. He tried to offer them a reassuring smile.
“We’ll be fine,” he said, nodding slightly. He watched each of them go, Lady Bolton lingering to offer Brooks a sad smile before finally leaving. She might as well have put a dagger through his heart if they shared the same suspicions.
“Sit,” the earl said.
Brooks took Rosamund’s old spot beside the massive four-poster bed. “What is it, my lord? Charles asked me to come straight away, and I did.”
Though he appeared weak and fragile, Bolton attempted a smile. “You are a good boy, Samuel. Your father was always much too hard on you.”
The younger man’s jaw tightened, an involuntary reaction to any mention of his father. “I don’t think you summoned me to Kent to speak about my father,” Brooks said sharply. “What do you want, Lord Bolton?”
“Being bedridden gives a man much time to think, Samuel,” Bolton said, an unmistakable sadness in his voice while his gaze became distant. “I have been thinking of my daughter. Not Rosamund, but August.” Brooks frowned, and the two men stared at each other in silence. “I know you know about her. Your father told me he had you find her employment as a governess when she turned eighteen, but I think I could have done more for her.”
So it was as Brooks suspected. He sat back in his chair, exhaling deeply. “You paid for her schooling. Isn’t that enough?” Bolton scoffed, but Brooks continued. “You said it yourself. She has employment. She does not need you anymore.” He shook his head, hoping he could talk Bolton out of this. “What more could you do for her?”
Bolton shook his head. “More than that,” he stubbornly reiterated. “I wish to bring her here—to Linfield. I have never seen the girl for myself, and I would like to change that before I die. I fear I will not be able to rest in peace otherwise.”
Brooks stared at the earl for a long moment. “And what of your family?” he asked, his voice rising with his anger. He thought of Lady Bolton, of the hurt she would feel at the revelation that her husband had fathered a child with another woman. Bolton made a dismissive sound.
“Plenty of men like me have bastards,” he practically spat. “I may be dying, but I am still the Earl of Bolton. My wife and children will accept her if I tell them to.”
Brooks couldn’t help but raise a skeptical brow. Bolton would not be able to order his family to do his bidding much longer. “And what about when you are gone? Will they still accept her then?”
Bolton grew red in the face. “You will make them! As executor of my will, you will make them!”
He launched into a violent coughing fit. Brooks stood, procuring a handkerchief from his pocket and handing it to the earl. He took it and covered his mouth,
coughing, staining the fabric with specks of bright red blood.
Brooks sighed. “I’m afraid it is not in my power to do such a thing.”
Bolton ran his eyes over Brooks. “But it is in mine. I will leave her something to make them think twice before besmirching her. The ton does love a surprise heiress. She will have no problem finding a husband at the right price, especially if my son supports her in town.”
Brooks fell silent, knowing the earl had it all wrong. The girl would be out of place in town, with a mother who wasn’t hers and two siblings who knew nothing of her, but it appeared he had no sway over the man’s decision. “How much do you intend to leave her?” he finally asked.
“Twelve thousand pounds.”
His eyes widened. “Have you lost your mind?” he practically shouted. “That is the same as Rosamund’s dowry.”
“Equal sums for both Finch girls,” Bolton said, his tone resolute. “And you will leave tonight to fetch her for me. The doctor says I do not have much time left.”
Brooks opened his mouth to protest again. “Lord Bolton—”
“I will pay you handsomely, of course.”
The young solicitor pursed his lips. He never was one to turn down a client, especially when money was involved. “Fine. But you will tell your family about her before I return. I mean no disrespect, my lord, but I refuse to be the one who breaks your wife’s heart with such news.”
Chapter Three
Portsmouth, England
April 1816
* * *
“Miss Summer. There is a man here to see you.”
August looked from her book to find Mr. Dunn’s housekeeper, Mrs. Howe, standing in the classroom doorway. Her two charges gasped. “A man?” Sophie, age eight, echoed.
“What sort of man?” Charlotte, age thirteen, asked in an equally curious tone.
August shot a warning look at the girls, who sat at a table in the middle of the room taking a French exam. Still, they looked from the housekeeper to their governess with wide, excited eyes. Although they were five years apart, they almost looked like twins due to their similar features: curly brown hair, round cheeks, and dark eyes—not to mention their matching mischievous smiles.
Lady August Page 3