by Mary Balogh
Vanessa had an impression of tall, dark handsomeness, of a dark-complexioned face, a lock of dark hair fallen across his forehead, of black riding clothes that were well worn but nevertheless becoming on his athletic form. He stopped and clasped his hands at his back and smiled.
It was a smile of considerable charm.
He looked sufficiently like Viscount Lyngate that Vanessa would not have been surprised to learn that they were brothers.
“Ah,” he said, “the new earl, I presume? And his … entourage?”
Viscount Lyngate released Vanessa’s arm and strode forward, his heavy greatcoat swinging against his boots. He came to a halt only when he was almost toe to toe with the other man. They were almost exactly the same height.
“You were supposed to be gone by now,” he said curtly and with undisguised annoyance.
“Was I?” the other gentleman said, his smile still in place but his voice transformed into a drawl of what sounded like boredom. “But I am not, am I, Elliott? Introduce me if you will be so good.”
The viscount hesitated but then turned back to face them.
“Merton,” he said, “Miss Huxtable, Mrs. Dew, Miss Katherine, may I present Mr. Huxtable?”
Not a brother, then?
“Constantine Huxtable,” the gentleman said, making them all an elegant bow “Con to my friends.”
“Oh, I say!” Stephen exclaimed, stepping forward to shake the gentleman heartily by the hand while the ladies curtsied. “You have our name. You must be a relative.”
“I must indeed,” Mr. Huxtable agreed while Vanessa and her sisters looked on with interest. “Second cousin to be exact. We share a great-grandfather.”
“Indeed?” Stephen said. “Nessie has been telling us about our family tree, something the rest of us have sadly neglected, I am afraid. Great-Grandpapa had just two sons, did he not?”
“Your grandfather and mine,” Constantine Huxtable said. “And then there were your father and mine. And then my brother—my younger brother, who is recently deceased. And you. Earl of Merton. My felicitations.”
He sketched Stephen another bow.
So Constantine Huxtable and Viscount Lyngate were first cousins — their mothers were sisters. But it was another relationship that Vanessa was working out in her head. So were her siblings by the looks on their faces. Stephen was staring at their second cousin, his brow knit in thought.
“There is something here I do not understand,” he said. “You are the elder brother of the earl who just died? Ought not you to have been—? Ought not you to be—?”
“The Earl of Merton myself?” Mr. Huxtable laughed. “I missed my chance for glory by two days, lad. That is what comes of being too eager in this life. May it be a lesson to you. My mother was Greek, daughter of an ambassador to London. She met my father when she was visiting her sister, who had married Viscount Lyngate and lived with him at nearby Finchley Park. But it was not until after her return to Greece with her papa, my grandfather, that she confessed to being in an, ah, interesting condition. He marched her back across Europe in high dudgeon. He demanded that my father do the decent thing—which he did. But I would not wait for the fairy-tale ending—or beginning—to my own story. I bowed to the stress of a sea crossing that had incapacitated my mother, and I made my squalling appearance in this world two days before my father could procure a special license and marry her. Thus I was and am and forever will be an illegitimate son. My esteemed parents had to wait another ten years for the arrival of a live and legitimate heir. Jonathan. He would have been more than delighted to make the acquaintance of all these new cousins. Would he not, Elliott?”
He looked at Viscount Lyngate, one eyebrow cocked in what Vanessa suspected was mockery.
Clearly there was no love lost between the cousins.
“But he died a few months ago,” Mr. Huxtable continued, “several years later than the physicians had predicted. And so, here you are, the new and legitimate Earl of Merton and his sisters. I assume these ladies are all sisters, including Mrs. Dew? Mrs. Forsythe, we will have tea in the drawing room.”
He spoke with absolute authority and with an aristocratic ease of manner, as if after all he were the Earl of Merton and owner of Warren Hall.
“That is the saddest story I have ever heard,” Katherine said, gazing at him wide-eyed. “I must write a story about it.”
Constantine Huxtable turned his smile on her.
“In which I figure as the tragic hero?” he said. “But there are compensations for having been born two days too soon, I do assure you. A certain freedom, for example, which neither Merton nor my cousin Elliott here can enjoy.” He bowed to Margaret. “Miss Huxtable, may I have the pleasure of escorting you upstairs?”
Margaret stepped forward and set a hand on his arm, and he led her through the arch by which he had entered the hall a few minutes ago. Stephen and Katherine followed close behind, gazing with eager interest at this newfound cousin. Viscount Lyngate exchanged a glance with Mr. Bowen before offering his arm to Vanessa again.
“I do apologize,” he said. “He was asked to leave.”
“But why?” she asked. “He is our cousin, is he not, and has welcomed us with considerable courtesy when he might have resented us —or Stephen anyway His story is true, is it? He grew up here as the firstborn son of the Earl and Countess of Merton?”
“It is true. But English law is quite rigid in such matters,” he said. “There would be no way to make him legitimate even if there had been no other descendants of his line to inherit.”
“But if there had not,” Vanessa said as they walked through the arch and came to a magnificent marble staircase that wound its way upward, “he might have petitioned the king to grant him the title, might he not?”
Had she not read about such a thing somewhere?
“I suppose he might,” Viscount Lyngate said. “A lawyer would know the legalities of such a claim and the likelihood of his petition being granted. But there was a descendant—your brother.”
How could he not resent Stephen? Vanessa wondered as she looked up the stairs to where Constantine Huxtable was smiling at Margaret and bending his head to listen to something she said. It must seem to him that a crowd of strangers was invading his home.
He had been asked to leave his own home—by his younger brother’s guardian. By his own first cousin— his mother and Viscount Lyngate’s had been sisters.
“He is trouble, Mrs. Dew,” Viscount Lyngate said, his voice low “He can mean only mischief by remaining here. You must not allow yourself to be deceived by his charm, which he has always possessed in abundance. Your brother must be quite firm with him. He must be given a week’s notice at the longest. He has had enough time to find another home and pack his belongings.”
“But this is his home,” Vanessa said, frowning. “This is where he has always belonged. It would have been his if he had been born two days later.”
“But he was not,” Viscount Lyngate said firmly as they followed the others into a drawing room. “And life is made up of what-ifs. There is no point in allowing ourselves to be distracted by them. What-ifs are not reality. The reality is, Mrs. Dew, that Con Huxtable is an illegitimate son of a former earl, while your brother is the Earl of Merton. It would be a mistake to be swayed by pity”
But if one never felt pity for a fellow human, Vanessa thought, one was surely not fully human oneself, was one? That made Viscount Lyngate a little less than human. She looked at him, still frowning. Did he have no feeling for others, even his own cousin?
But he had moved away from her to stride forward to Stephen’s side.
Stephen was gazing admiringly at Constantine Huxtable. So was Katherine. Margaret was regarding him kindly. Vanessa smiled at him, though he was not looking her way.
What a dreadful day this must be for him. The fact that he was meeting four new cousins, all of whom would surely be kindly disposed toward him, must seem poor comfort.
For a few minutes Vanessa
had forgotten her initial awe at a mansion that was magnificent beyond anything she had dreamed of. But the awe returned suddenly. The drawing room was large and square with a high, coved ceiling, painted with some scene from mythology and trimmed lavishly with gold. The furniture was elegant and the draperies of wine-colored velvet. Paintings in heavy gold frames covered the walls. There was a large Persian carpet underfoot, fringed by wood so highly polished that surely one would see one’s face in it if one bent forward.
Vanessa felt a surge of unexpected longing for Rundle Park—as if she had abandoned Hedley there.
She must not—she would not—forget him.
Her eyes rested upon Viscount Lyngate, who even without his greatcoat still looked large and imposing and virile and masculine. And handsome, of course. And very much alive.
She resented him greatly.
* * *
Elliott and Con Huxtable had been the closest of friends all their lives —until just a year ago, in fact. The three-year gap in their ages—Elliott was the elder—had not mattered one whit. They had lived only five miles apart, they were cousins, neither had had many other playmates in their neighborhoods, and they had enjoyed doing the same sorts of things—mostly outdoor sports and other vigorous, energetic games that involved climbing trees and diving into pools and wading through muddy bogs and devising other such strenuous activities that had filled their days with exercise and fun and got them into a great deal of trouble with their respective nurses.
When they grew up, they had remained close friends and had continued to enjoy life together, even if doing so had meant frequently stirring up mischief and mayhem and putting themselves in danger and raking their way to an admiring reputation among their peers and a less approving notoriety among society in general. They had both been great favorites among the ladies.
They had been two young blades sowing their wild oats together, in fact, never doing anyone any great harm, including—by some miracle—themselves. They had been young gentlemen, after all, and had known where to draw the line.
Even after Con’s father died they had remained friends though Con had started to spend more and more of his time at Warren Hall with Jonathan, of whom he had been inordinately fond. Elliott had missed him but admired his devotion to the handicapped boy It had even struck him that Con was growing up and settling down faster than he was. Elliott’s father had been the boy’s guardian, of course, but he had been slack in his duties, trusting Con to look after the boy’s needs and oversee the day-by-day running of his estates with the aid of a competent steward.
And then Elliott’s father had died too.
And everything had changed. For Elliott had made the decision to take his new responsibilities seriously, and one of those responsibilities had been Jonathan. So he had spent some time at Warren Hall, acquainting himself with the nature of his duties there, though he had fully expected to be able to turn over the unofficial guardianship to Con again. He had even felt somewhat embarrassed that his uncle had not made Con the official guardian. He was old enough and quite capable enough, after all. And Jonathan had adored him.
But Elliott had soon made the painful discovery that Con had abused the trust Elliott’s father had placed in him, embezzling funds and stealing costly family jewels for his own gain, safe in the knowledge that Jonathan would never know the difference. And then there were the debaucheries Elliott had become aware of—housemaids impregnated and dismissed, laborers’ daughters ruined.
Con was not the person Elliott had always thought him to be. There was no honor in him after all. He preyed upon the weak. He was the very antithesis of a gentleman. It was no excuse that through no fault of his own he had narrowly missed being his father’s heir.
His villainy had been an excruciatingly painful discovery.
Not that he had ever admitted to the thefts or the debaucheries. Though he had not denied them either. He had merely laughed when Elliott had confronted him with his findings.
“You may go to the devil, Elliott” was all he had said.
They had been bitter enemies for the last year. At least, for Elliott it had been bitter. He could not speak for Con.
Elliott had, of course, taken Jonathan’s care and the running of his estates directly into his own hands and had spent as much time at Warren Hall as he had at Finchley Park, it had seemed. There had been precious little time left for himself.
Con had made that year almost intolerable for him. He had done all in his power to set obstacles in the path of his erstwhile friend and to influence Jonathan to defy Elliott’s wishes. That had not been a hard thing to accomplish—the poor boy had not even realized he was doing it.
Naively perhaps, Elliott had hoped that the worst of his burden was now behind him, for even though the new Merton was a minor and totally unprepared for the life and duties that would be his, and even though he had three sisters who were equally unprepared, at least there would no longer be Con Huxtable as a thorn in his side.
Or so he had thought. He had told Con to leave.
But he was still here. And he had chosen to greet the new owner of Warren Hall and his sisters with all the power of his great charm.
Common decency ought to have dictated that he leave before the new earl took up residence, even if he was a distant relative. But one ought to have known by now not to expect common decency from Con Huxtable.
Elliott left Mrs. Dew’s side and crossed the drawing room with determined steps.
“Indeed it is all rather splendid,” Con was saying, apparently in answer to something one of his young cousins had said. “My esteemed father saw fit to pull down the old abbey-cum-fortress-cum-hall soon after he succeeded to the title and to put up this testament to his wealth and taste in its place. Later he filled it with treasures from his travels as a very young man.”
“Oh, but I wish,” Katherine Huxtable said, “I might have seen the abbey.”
“It was nothing short of criminal,” Con agreed, “to have pulled it down, though perhaps one would not really have enjoyed its drafty corridors and dark, narrow-windowed chambers and archaic sanitation rather than the opulent comforts of this building.”
“If I had been doing it,” Merton said, “I would have left the old hall standing and built this house close by. History is all very well, and historic buildings really ought to be preserved, as Nessie is always saying, but I confess to enjoying the comforts of modern living.”
“Ah,” Con said just as Elliott was about to try maneuvering him closer to the window, where he intended to have a private word with him, “here is the tea tray Set it down in the usual place, Mrs. Forsythe. Perhaps Miss Huxtable will be so good as to pour.”
But then he smiled ruefully and bowed to her.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said. “As the eldest sister of young Merton, you are hostess here, Cousin, and do not need my permission to pour. Please proceed.”
She inclined her head to him and took her seat behind the tray Mrs. Dew joined her there in order to hand around the cups and saucers and the plate of dainties. George, in silent communication with Elliott, drew Merton and his young sister toward the marble fireplace, where they held out their hands to the welcome warmth of the fire.
Elliott strolled in the direction of the window, virtually forcing Con to go with him. He did not mince his words when they were out of earshot of the others.
“This is in decidedly poor taste,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“Putting aside my own inclination in order to remain here to greet my cousins’ arrival and help them feel at home?” Con said, feigning surprise. “I would call it in the best of taste, Elliott. I congratulate myself on my unselfishness and thoughtfulness.”
“You have greeted them and welcomed them,” Elliott said curtly. “Now you may leave.”
“Now?” Con’s eyebrows arched upward. “At this very moment? Would it not appear somewhat abrupt, somewhat ill-mannered? I am amazed you would suggest such a thing, Elliott. You, wh
o have turned into such a high stickler lately You are in grave danger of turning into a dry old stick, you know It fairly gives one the shudders.”
“I will not spar verbally with you,” Elliott said. “I want you gone.”
“I beg your pardon.” Con regarded him with a puzzled frown—and mocking eyes. “But do your wishes rule Warren Hall? Is it not rather those of Merton, my second cousin?”
“He is a boy,” Elliott said between half-clenched teeth. “And impressionable. And I am officially his guardian. You have already terrorized one child and there was precious little I could do about it—he was your brother and under your influence. It will not happen with this boy”
“Terrorized.” For one moment the air of mockery slipped and something altogether more ugly gleamed in Con’s eyes. “I terrorized Jon.” And then he recovered. “But of course I did, and it was easy to do. He did not exactly have all his wits about him, did he? Or if he did, there were not very many of them behind which he might have sheltered himself from my pernicious in fluence. Ah, Mrs. Dew—an appropriate name. I am parched and you bring me tea.”
His charming smile was back in place.
She carried two cups. Elliott took the other one and inclined his head in acknowledgment.
“Mrs. Dew,” Con said. “But there is no Mr. Dew with you?”
“I am a widow,” she told him. “My husband died a year and a half ago.”
“Ah,” Con said. “But you are yet so young. I am sorry. It is hard to lose loved ones —especially those who are as close as one’s own heartbeat.”
“It was hard,” she agreed. “It is hard. I have come here to live with Stephen and my sisters. Where will you live, Mr. Huxtable? Here?”
“I will find somewhere to lay my weary head after I leave here, ma’am,” Con said. “You must not worry about me.”
“I am sure you will,” she said. “It had not occurred to me to worry. But there is no hurry, surely. This house is more than large enough for all of us, and it is your home. And we really ought to get properly acquainted. An ancient family feud has kept us apart for too long. May I fetch you some dainties? And you, Lord Lyngate?”