Brave New Earl

by Ashford, Jane

  Benjamin almost envied his easy attitude. “And you encountered Geoffrey.”

  “I did. Hiding in a hollow log with his feet sticking out for anyone to see. I asked him what was toward, gave him a bit of my bread and cheese, and we got to talking.”

  What did his son talk about, Benjamin wondered. He ought to know. “Mrs. McGinnis tells me you brought him home.”

  “Of course, milord.”

  “You might have left him and gone on. He had nothing to do with you. Or you could have taken him along on your wanderings, I suppose.”

  For the first time, Tom looked disturbed. “That woulda been wrong.”

  “Why?” Benjamin asked.

  “Well.” Tom frowned, seeming to grope for words. “Young Geoffrey ain’t like me. He’s a…regular person. Got a home and family. Belongs here.”

  Miss Saunders made a sound. Benjamin ignored it. “So regular that he paints himself red and threatens people with a dangerous weapon?” she asked.

  “I cannot see how he got holt of that thing,” Tom complained. “He knows such stuff is not allowed. But that boy can be slippery as any eel I ever saw. He gets up in the night betimes, when you think he’s sound asleep.”

  The nursery maid nodded confirmation of this. “I sleep right in the room, but he slips past me. I can’t stay awake all night. And then when I go to dress him in the morning, his feet are black with dust. His hair full of cobwebs sometimes. When I ask how he got so dirty, he just laughs at me.”

  Briefly, Benjamin wished they would all just go away and let him sink back into peaceful gloom. Only yesterday, he’d enjoyed quiet solitude in this chamber, unaware of the chaos looming. But the gimlet-eyed Miss Saunders wouldn’t just disappear. Nor would his interested uncle, who appeared to be stifling a laugh, damn his eyes. And clearly, something had to be done about Geoffrey.

  “I can go first thing in the morning if you want, my lord.” Tom was genial and respectful and apparently undaunted by the prospect of homelessness.

  The housekeeper and the maid looked apprehensive. Benjamin thought his uncle’s laugh would escape this time. He didn’t check Miss Saunders’s expression. “We’ll leave things as they are for now,” he said. “While I, er, take stock.” And tried to form a plan for dealing with his son.

  The nursery maid slumped in relief. Mrs. McGinnis almost smiled. She touched Tom’s arm and ushered the two of them out. To Benjamin’s surprise, his uncle went with them. A blessed silence fell over the room.

  Except… Miss Saunders sat on the sofa, hands still folded in her lap, and a comprehensive critique of his character on her tongue, no doubt. She certainly looked disapproving, and primed to speak, and…really rather pretty. A curl of brown hair had escaped its pins and fallen over her brow, as if to point out the fine bones of her face. Her eyes crackled with intelligence and conviction, that coppery sparkle very much in evidence. If her lips hadn’t been pressed together—to hold back disparaging remarks, no doubt—they would have been beguilingly full, a lovely rose pink.

  A vagrant spark illuminated Benjamin’s inner gloom. He found himself moving and then sitting beside her. “Well, have at it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Tell me what a dreadful person I am.”

  Jean had been thinking something like that, but his urging and his expression gave her pause. The melancholy cast of his handsome face reminded her of an image of Sir Galahad she’d seen in a stained-glass window. Dark lashes made his blue-gray eyes startlingly vivid. It was disconcerting to have him so close. From inches away, there was no denying the power of his presence. But nothing excused his cavalier treatment of his son. “Well, it’s even worse than I expected,” she said.

  “It?”

  Briefly she was lost in the intensity of his gaze. “Geoffrey.” She must stay focused; she had a mission. “Your son, Geoffrey. Who is growing up completely unsupervised, apparently, except by a vagabond.”

  “That seems a harsh description for young Tom,” he replied.

  To herself, Jean admitted that the boy had been likable—and oddly reassuring somehow. As if he could definitely be trusted. But that didn’t excuse the situation. “He isn’t a proper teacher. Geoffrey needs to learn responsibility and the skills to fulfill his future position in life. What if he decided follow Tom’s example and wander off across the country?”

  “Like a ‘red Indian’?” asked her host. He smiled.

  A tremor ran through Jean. A simple change in expression should not be able to alter a man so completely. That wasn’t credible. Or fair. Lord Furness wasn’t warm or sympathetic. She’d seen how he was, how he treated his child. But his smile was like a sudden burst of sunshine through that stained-glass window she’d pictured. He was illuminated, and the result left her breathless.

  At a loss, she fell back on stored outrage. “You find that prospect amusing?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  His smile died. Jean dismissed her sharp pang of regret.

  “You are unmarried,” he said.

  He had no right to examine her in that searching way. She had no reason to feel flustered. “Obviously. As I told you, I am Miss Saunders.”

  “A spinster, in short. What do you know about rearing children?”

  “I know what everyone knows. That they require love and attention.” The chocolate-box boy drifted through her mind again. Those truisms would have sufficed for him. Would they for the untamed Geoffrey?

  “Because you’re a woman, you know this?”

  Jean was immediately conscious of being a woman in the close company of a very attractive man. His arm lay across the back of the sofa. One muscular leg was crossed over the other. He was bent a little toward her, satirically attentive, and he seemed to fill her mind as well as her vision. What did she know? Anything? She hadn’t questioned her mission before meeting Geoffrey, or really planned for afterward, except in the vaguest way. “I know that your child would benefit from a father’s firm but kind guiding hand,” she managed.

  “Do you? How fortunate for you. My father never provided such a service. Perhaps yours was a paragon?”

  Jean felt herself flush. She would not talk about this. Or think of her late father and his string of mistresses. She barely remembered what he’d looked like.

  “Did he guide you in this exemplary way?” her companion asked.

  “He lived in London.”

  “And you did not?”

  “No.” Jean braced to repel any further intrusive questions. This was none of his business. And who was he to judge fathers—or daughters, for that matter?

  “So he was absent in reality. Rather than in the next room and oblivious. Which seems worse somehow.”

  Jean stared and saw her surprise mirrored in his expression. He hadn’t meant to say that, obviously.

  “My father spent most of his time right here in this room,” Lord Furness added. He looked around as if seeing the library with new eyes. The view appeared to unsettle him. “I was brought in occasionally to be…viewed.”

  “Scolded, you mean?” Jean wondered.

  “No. My mother and Nanny took care of that, when necessary. Just to affirm my existence, I think. As the son and heir.” He looked perplexed.

  She gazed at him. His face was forbidding again. That smile seemed like a dream.

  “I am not sending Geoffrey away,” he said fiercely, surprising her. “If you think you can force me to do so, you are delusional.”

  Jean’s righteous indignation came flooding back. “If you think I’ll leave him in his present state, you do not know me!”

  “A lack for which I can only be grateful.”

  She sprang to her feet, more hurt than she wished to admit. Why had she stayed here alone with him? He was impossible. And it wasn’t proper. Jaw tight, Jean stalked out, heading for her bedchamber.

&n
bsp; Benjamin sat on, solitary, as he liked to be, in his usual refuge. His pulse, which had accelerated, gradually slowed. He told himself that he welcomed the silence. Hadn’t he been wishing for it? Solitude was solace. He’d have to find a way to be rid of Miss Saunders—and his uncle, too—tomorrow. Why had he allowed them to stay this long?

  He had a sense of being watched. He looked up at the portrait of Alice, meeting its serene blue eyes. He could find no resemblance to her irritating cousin in those perfect features. Alice had been quiet not disruptive, gentle not argumentative. “What do you think of our son?” he asked.

  Of course, there was no answer, and never would be. Alice wouldn’t see Geoffrey listen to reason and give up his ferocious behavior. Grow tall, go to school, whatever else the future might bring. She was gone.

  Gloom rolled over Benjamin, submerging all else. He slumped, resting his head on the back of the sofa. He was so very tired.

  Three

  Arthur Shelton lingered at the breakfast table the following morning, wondering when the other denizens of Furness Hall would appear. It felt rather like waiting for the curtain to rise on a new play—one where he was both audience and…accidental instigator. There was a neat phrase. Now if he could just ensure that the action of this drama benefited all the players. In a life that had been full of responsibility, this was a new sort. He buttered a second excellent scone. His nephew’s staff had a number of deficiencies, but the cook was outstanding.

  Miss Saunders came in as he ate. She wore the same dress she’d arrived in, still showing signs of the red paint Geoffrey had smeared on it, suggesting she hadn’t packed a great variety of clothing. “Good morning,” Arthur said. “I hope you slept well.”

  “Not terribly well.” She sat down opposite him.

  “I am sorry.”

  “Did you hear a sort of…screech in the middle of the night?” asked Miss Saunders as she filled her cup from the teapot.

  “A screech?”

  She frowned. “That’s not the right word. The noise was high-pitched, but it also had a whispering quality. I don’t know what to compare it to.”

  “I heard nothing. Are you worried the house is haunted?”

  Miss Saunders looked surprised. “I thought it might be an owl outside my window. Or Geoffrey playing a prank, since they said he gets up at night.”

  She was an eminently sensible young lady, Arthur noted. Pleasant and intelligent, if a bit more forceful than he’d realized when he met her at the Phillipsons’. She’d impressed him before he’d learned of her connection to Alice and her strong views on children. She was pretty, too, which Benjamin was bound to appreciate. And the way her hair tended to spring from its pins, as if making a bid for freedom, added a piquancy to her character.

  “It’s so odd that you’re here,” she went on, helping herself to a scone. “I came because of a rather unusual conversation we had at the Phillipsons’.”

  This called for a diversion. Arthur was aware that his actions skirted very close to interference. Or to be honest—which he always tried to be, at least in his mind—they fell right into that category, a place he’d never thought to find himself. But he couldn’t sit by and watch Benjamin grieve his life away. “Didn’t we discuss how our families are related?” he said.

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “My sister was married to Benjamin’s father, you know.” He’d noticed her interest in his deceased brother-in-law yesterday.

  “So you were friends with the previous Lord Furness.”

  “I’m not sure I could call him a friend. My visits were too few, and he never came to London. Ralph and I were acquainted certainly.”

  “What sort of man was he?”

  Arthur was mildly puzzled by the question. But he was happy to talk of this rather than explain the hints he’d let drop at the Phillipsons’ about neglected children. “He was scholarly. That’s the best way to describe him. He was happiest delving into a new book or scientific paper, adding to his extensive stock of knowledge. He might have been better suited to a university post than the position he was born into. He did his duty by the estate, but he much preferred his studies. His chief area of interest was the native peoples of North America.”

  “Red Indians,” said Miss Saunders.

  “I wonder where Geoffrey picked up that name? Ralph thought it stupidly inaccurate. He was fond of telling people—on the rare occasions when the matter came up in conversation—that they are neither red nor Indian.”

  She looked puzzled.

  “It’s a pity he’s not here,” Arthur went on. “Ralph would be only too glad to explain that the explorers who first encountered the native tribes were looking for a sea route to India. They called them Indians because they thought they’d succeeded. At first.”

  Miss Saunders appeared to consider this and file it away. “So he was more interested in his studies than his family?”

  Arthur nodded. “He cared for my sister. I have no doubt about that. But otherwise…that seems a fair statement.”

  “It’s a legacy that just goes on, isn’t it?” She sounded bitter. “Some people should not be allowed to be parents!”

  Here was the fire that had caught Arthur’s attention in the beginning. “Such a ban would be difficult to enforce.”

  Rather than reply, Miss Saunders bit into her scone and chewed in an oddly vengeful way.

  “I thought we might speak with Geoffrey this morning,” Arthur said.

  She cocked her head.

  “If there is to be a change in his living arrangements—”

  “As there must be!”

  “We should find out what he would like,” he concluded.

  Miss Saunders looked startled, then thoughtful. “You’d ask him?”

  Arthur nodded. “He’s allowed an opinion. Or an inclination, shall we say, at his age. He won’t have everything his own way, of course. He is a small child.”

  She had put down her scone and was examining him closely. “You are an unusual man,” she said.

  This was not a line of thought he wished to encourage. It might lead to questions about how the current situation at Furness Hall had come to be. The earl rose. “I’ll fetch Benjamin.”

  Miss Saunders didn’t object. She simply watched him go. Intelligent indeed, Arthur thought. It would be best to keep her mind busy with topics other than himself. He’d line up a list of subjects. An idea occurred to him. This young lady might offer a canny female perspective on his other projects.

  Arthur found his nephew still in his bedchamber, engaged in a battle of wills with Clayton. Benjamin could not know—yet—the futility of opposition. “Good morning,” Arthur offered.

  “It might be, if I was allowed to dress in peace,” growled Benjamin. He reached for a coat hung on the bedpost.

  “Not that one, my lord,” said the valet.

  “One coat is as good as another,” Benjamin replied impatiently.

  Clayton’s impassivity wavered momentarily at this heresy. “There is a small stain on that one, which I will be happy to—”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  The valet silently indicated the stain. It was hardly noticeable, Arthur thought. Until one’s attention was drawn to it.

  Benjamin sighed. “Very well.” He tossed the coat on the bed and turned toward the wardrobe. Clayton was there before him, opening the doors. “Don’t get in there,” protested Arthur’s nephew. “Ah, you are in.”

  After a rapid, expert inventory, Clayton chose a coat from those in the wardrobe and brought it over to help Benjamin put it on. “If you will let me have your boots this evening, I’ll see what I can do.” He averted his eyes from Benjamin’s footgear as if the sight pained him.

  “Isn’t that rather beneath your touch?” Benjamin asked.

  Arthur was glad to hear amusement in his tone this time.
A feud between his nephew and his valet would be awkward. “Clayton has a special formula for top boots,” he said. “Mine are the envy of the fashionable world.”

  Clayton didn’t show satisfaction, though Arthur knew he felt it. His expression stiffened when Benjamin glanced at Arthur’s boots and said, “Nice gloss.”

  “I would also be happy to cut your hair, my lord.” The valet got his own back through a dry, critical tone.

  Benjamin ran his hand through his undeniably shaggy locks. “Deuce take it. I hate haircuts.”

  The earl had rarely seen Clayton at a loss, but this pronouncement clearly astonished him. “Hate them, my lord?”

  “All that fussing about my head. With sharp blades.” Benjamin made a throwaway gesture. “You’ll have to content yourself with my boots.”

  Gathering up the stained coat, Clayton bowed himself out, dissatisfaction in every line of his immaculate form.

  “Your valet is a petty tyrant,” Benjamin said when he was gone.

  “There’s nothing petty about Clayton,” Arthur replied.

  Benjamin turned from the cheval glass, gathering his floating thoughts. They’d been dominated by a pair of sparkling brown eyes for the last little while. Some earlier musings returned to his mind, centering on the nature of coincidence. “Tell me again how you became acquainted with Miss Saunders.”

  “It was at a rout party, I believe. We were talking of our families and discovered they were connected. I came to see if you’re ready to talk to Geoffrey.”

  An uncomfortable combination of annoyance and guilt distracted Benjamin. “He is my son. I require no readiness.”

  “Precisely. Shall we go and find him?”

  He went out before Benjamin could reply, much less object. And by the time he caught up, he found Miss Saunders with his uncle, the two of them waiting at the foot of the stairs like sentinels. He walked between them, without wishing his other self-invited houseguest good morning, and started up. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The nursery at Furness Hall lay in a wing that jutted from the back of the main block, putting it quite a distance from the public rooms. A large space on the third floor, painted a faded blue, it was an irregular chamber of peaked ceilings and dormer window nooks. When Benjamin entered, the books on the shelves, the long table with mismatched chairs at one end, the slightly shabby cushions, and boxes of toys were instantly familiar. The cone-shaped tent made of draped blankets was new, as was the clutter of dry branches, leather scraps, and pebbles on the floor nearby.