by Anne Gracie
“But do we know his father has indeed passed on? We cannot just pick a child up like a stray puppy and transport him out of the parish.”
He looked thoughtful. “You are right. I shall investigate the matter more fully.”
He turned to Callie. “Princess, can I interest you in a game of cards? And Ethan, perhaps Miss Tibthorpe would offer you a game of chess. I noticed last night she seemed more than a little acquainted with the game.”
A few moments later Callie found herself frowning over a hand of cards, trying to recall the rules of bezique. With no apparent effort he had everyone sorted: Tibby’s employment, Callie’s future, her son’s education, Jim’s, too, and their entertainment for the evening.
“Why would you concern yourself with the education of a chance-met orphaned fisher boy?” she asked him, playing a card at random.
He glanced at the portrait of his great-aunt. “It’s Great-aunt Gert’s legacy. She was a great one for taking in stray, unwanted boys. I suppose that’s how Mrs. Barrow ended up working for her—they were kindred spirits from opposite ends of the social scale. Great-aunt Gert took me in and Mrs. Barrow took in Harry.” He played a card. “Great-aunt Gert shaped our futures and Mrs. Barrow mothered us.”
“But I thought Harry was your brother.”
“My half brother,” he corrected her. “Born on the wrong side of the blanket. We had the same father, but Harry’s mother was a maidservant. When she found herself increasing, my father paid the village smith to marry her.”
“Oh,” she said, then didn’t know what to say, because she could hardly ask him whether he was born on the wrong side of the blanket, too. She put another card down.
“My mother was married to my father,” he told her. “But they’d been having tremendous rows at the time, and both of them had been unfaithful, so when she told him I was not his true son, he believed her.”
“But that’s dreadful!” she exclaimed. “How could she do that to him? And to you?”
He shrugged. “I believe their marriage was famously tempestuous. Or should that be infamously?”
“What do you mean, you believe? Didn’t you know?”
“No, they reconciled when I was three, and again when I was six, but my father would never allow my mother to bring me home on any of these occasions. I was kept in London. He refused to tolerate the sight of me, even though she insisted I really was his son.” He shrugged. “He never believed her.”
“But that’s terrible.”
“Not really. He had no reason to trust her word; her infidelities were almost as legendary as his.”
Callie frowned. “Then how—” she began, then stopped. She’d been about to ask the most impertinent question. She bit her lip.
“How do I know I really am my father’s son?” he supplied. “And I warned you about that lip-biting—you’re doing it all wrong. D’you want me to show you again?”
Callie felt her face flame. “Stop that!” she hissed. “Not in front of other people!”
He heaved a sigh. “You are hard on a man, you know. Now where were we? Oh yes, you were wondering how I know I wasn’t really a by-blow,” he reminded her, and before she could inform him she was wondering no such ill-bred thing, he continued, “Harry and I are a few months apart in age, but the resemblance between us is noticeable. Does that explain it?”
It did. Obviously, with two different mothers, the resemblance must come from his father.
But it didn’t explain why he and Harry had grown up together, and why Great-aunt Gert had raised him, and why Harry had been a wild child. She had no difficulty understanding why he’d described himself as a needy child. Any child would, in such an appalling situation. “You said you and Harry had grown up together.”
“Yes, Great-aunt Gert took us both under her wing.” He jerked his head toward the severe woman in the painting. “My father’s spinster aunt, a bold tartar of a woman who most people were frightened to death of.”
Looking at that portrait, Callie could well imagine it.
“She descended on my mother’s London residence one day, marched up to the nursery, and simply confiscated me. Told my mother she wasn’t fit to raise any child, let alone a Renfrew boy, and that she, Great-aunt Gert, would do it from now on. She picked me up—literally, I was about seven, I think—handed me to her footman like a parcel, and swept us off in her carriage.”
Callie was shocked. “But didn’t your mother fight her?”
He shook his head slightly. “Mama didn’t say a word. It was probably a relief to her to have me out of the way.”
Callie couldn’t believe the lighthearted way he spoke of it. “I would kill anyone who tried to take my son from me.”
He smiled. “I can believe it. But Great-aunt Gert was not a woman to be gainsaid. Most people were terrified of her.”
“And no wonder, if that’s how she behaved. Poor little boy. You must have been terrified.”
He trumped her card. “I was at first, but it wasn’t long before I learned that under that Attila-the-Hen exterior, Great-aunt Gert had a heart of the purest gold. She was, quite simply, a darling.” He glanced at the portrait and raised his brandy glass in a toast. “To Great-aunt Gert, who made me the man I am today.” He drank.
Callie watched the movement of the strong column of his throat as he drank. Great-aunt Gert had much to be proud of.
“And Harry the wild child?” she asked, after a moment.
He set his glass aside. “Harry was a lot like Jim when I first met him—a wild little ragamuffin. But Great-aunt Gert had him educated—educated both of us together and sent us to our father’s school, much to Father’s fury. He had us removed in the end, so Great-aunt Gert sent us to Harrow instead, which angered him nearly as much.”
He grinned reminiscently. “Great-aunt Gert was a radical with no opinion of the airs and graces of the aristocracy. She was also a crushing snob who considered a Renfrew—even a bastard Renfrew—superior to any other being. She left me her fortune, but she left a legacy for Harry, too, and my share has a dozen stipulations. Miss Tibthorpe’s employment will fulfill one of them. It would have delighted her to have a fisher child educated with a royal prince. And she would have liked your boy a lot. Great-aunt Gert admired courage above all else.”
They were to leave for London immediately after breakfast. Callie and Tibby had packed their meager belongings and their cases were waiting in the hall. Kitty-cat yowled angrily from a strong wicker basket, one ginger paw swiping furiously at anyone rash enough to pass close enough. Juno sat nearby, sniffing occasionally at the basket and watching interestedly as the ginger paw swatted at her in vain.
Breakfast was a quiet affair. Mrs. Barrow had done them proud, with mounds of bacon, eggs, deviled kidneys, and smoked kippers, lashings of toast, and hot, fragrant coffee, but nobody seemed to have much of an appetite except for Gabriel.
“Mr. Gabe!” Mrs. Barrow burst into the room. “Sir Walter Tinknell is coming down the front drive with a couple of his men, and there’s other soldiers with them—half a dozen—foreigners, I reckon, and all on horseback.”
They all hurried to the window to look. Sure enough, a small cavalcade was coming down the driveway. Two men rode at the head. One was red-faced, elderly, and fat, dressed in a tight blue coat with large gold buttons and riding a smart bay hunter. The other was beautiful, blond, and elegant: a picture of masculine perfection. Slender, lithe, yet with a sleek power, he rode a magnificent black stallion as if born on horseback. A thin golden mustache lined his upper lip. His uniform set off his fair good looks, being black and heavily frogged in gold. He wore a bell-topped shako with a gold coat of arms and a curled feather.
Callie felt her insides freeze. “It’s Count Anton!”
Eleven
“I haven’t seen so much gold braid since the last time the prince regent inspected the troops,” Gabe murmured. “And what a magnificent horse!”
“I wish he’d fall off and break his neck! Ni
cky!” Callie looked around. “Where is Nicky? He’s not outside, is he? If Count Anton sees—”
“He and Jim are in the kitchen, having breakfast,” Mrs. Barrow assured her.
“Fetch him here to me at once! We must leave, immediately!”
Gabe held her by the arm. “Callie, you can’t run from him now. If you did, he would only ride you down on that big horse of his.” He glanced at Mrs. Barrow. “But fetch both boys here.”
Callie tried to pull out of his grip. “But if he finds us, he’ll take us back and then he’ll—”
“I won’t let him take you anywhere,” Gabe reassured her. She didn’t look very reassured. He held her hands tightly, stroking them with his thumbs, and added, “He can hardly kidnap you when the local magistrate is looking on.”
She frowned. “Why has he brought a magistrate? He must think it gives him some advantage.” She looked at him with misgiving. “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.” He glanced out of the window. “A magistrate implies some legal maneuver.”
“Nicky! He wants legal custody of Nicky.”
Gabe wasn’t convinced. “How could he gain legal custody of your son before you?”
“Because Zindarian law is Gothic, that’s why. A female has no status in law. If the male heir is a child, the oldest adult male becomes the head of the family until the child becomes an adult. Currently the head of the family is Uncle Otto, but if he died—and he is an old man—Count Anton would become the head of the family until Nicky turns eighteen.”
She clutched his forearms. “What if Uncle Otto is dead? Anton will have free rein.”
Gabe stared at her somberly. “It’s a bluff. He must suspect you are here, but he cannot know it. Take Nicky upstairs and hide there. I’ll get rid of Count Anton and his magistrate.”
“Give me a gun, just in case. Those dueling pistols.”
He squeezed her hand. “No time, they’re out in the curricle. Besides, what’s needed here is strategy, not force.”
Mrs. Barrow and the boys arrived, and swiftly Gabe explained their roles. They all looked stunned.
“It’ll never work,” Callie muttered.
“Trust me,” he said softly. “I’ll keep you and Nicky safe. Now go!” As he spoke, the front doorbell jangled imperiously. She glanced at it and fled with Nicky up the stairs.
Jim’s eyes lit with excitement. “Are we foolin’ the preventives, Mr. Gabe?”
“Something like that,” Gabe told him.
Everyone disappeared to take their places. Mrs. Barrow eyed him. “They’re never the preventives, Mr. Gabe.”
“No, but the man with the magistrate is responsible for burning down Miss Tibthorpe’s cottage. He’s in pursuit of the princess and Nicky and he means them harm.”
Mrs. Barrow bristled. “The villain. Will you have him arrested then, sir?”
Gabe shook his head. “We have no proof. And I have no doubt he has diplomatic papers to ensure he cannot be touched by English law.”
The doorbell jangled again. “Shall I admit this cockroach, then?”
“Yes. Tell him I am unavailable.” Gabe raced back up the stairs as Mrs. Barrow marched to the front door. He waited on the landing and listened as Mrs. Barrow answered the door and explained that the master of the house was unavailable.
“Unavailable! How extremely convenient,” a smooth voice with a faint foreign accent said. Gabe recognized the voice. Last time he’d met it it had been attached to a pair of boots that were kicking him.
“I really must insist,” the magistrate declared. “Count Anton, the prince regent of Zindaria, has laid very serious claims against Captain Renfrew.”
Prince regent, Gabe thought. Uncle Otto must indeed be dead.
“Serious indeed to disturb the son of an English earl in His Own Home!” Mrs. Barrow countered in a belligerent manner.
The magistrate cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Count Anton claims that the young crown prince of his country has been kidnapped and, er—”
“What?”
“He claims the crown prince is being held here.”
“Here?” Mrs. Barrow repeated in loud surprise. There was a pause, then she raised her voice. “Oy, Barrow, the squire here reckons we’ve got a crown prince hidden away here somewhere. Have you seen one?”
“Nope, not in the kitchen,” Barrow’s voice floated back.
Gabe grinned.
“Enough of this nonsense,” Count Anton pushed his way past Mrs. Barrow. “We will search ze house!”
“You will do no such thing!’ Mrs. Barrow told him. “Sir Walter, are you going to let this foreigner shove his way into an English gentleman’s home? And you lot—get back!” she added to the entourage.
Gabe decided it was time to make his entrance. He sauntered down the stairs. “What the devil is all this commotion about?” he drawled. “Mrs. Barrow, I told you I did not wish to be disturbed.”
Seeing the magistrate, he cut across her apologies, saying, “Ah, Sir Walter, excellent. Have you apprehended the culprits?”
Sir Walter looked surprised. “Culprits?” he repeated cautiously. “What culprits?”
“The ones who terrorized Miss Tibthorpe and burned down her cottage.”
The squire’s eyebrows flew up in surprise and Gabe nodded. “Appalling, isn’t it? Whatever is the country coming to when a lone woman is terrorized by thugs and her cottage burned down.” He glanced disdainfully at Count Anton and added, “Who is your friend, Sir Walter? I don’t recognize the uniform. Not English, I hope. Surely not even Prinny would design such a ridicul—such a uniform.”
The count regarded him with an expression of haughty contempt. He was indeed a handsome devil, thought Gabe, but it was a beauty that repelled. His eyes were strange, as if they had no color. They flickered and he gave Gabe a severe, military bow. “I, sir, am Count Anton, prince regent of Zindaria, and I demand you release ze princess of Zindaria and her son, Crown Prince Nikolai.”
Gabe stared at him for a long moment and then turned to the squire. “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”
The squire’s ruddy face turned even redder. “Captain Renfrew, sir,” he began in embarrassment. “The count insists these people are being held here. He carries letters of authority from his government—”
“I am the government of my country,” Count Anton snapped. He stared narrowly at the marks of Gabe’s injuries and glanced at the hand with the mark of his boot heel.
“Perhaps, but this is England. You have no authority here.” Gabe gave him a cold smile.
The count’s lips thinnned. “I demand you—”
“Your demands mean nothing here!” Gabe’s voice cut across him like a whiplash. “And I don’t take to posturing bullyboys marching into my house and issuing demands.”
Sir Walter made placatory gestures. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, I am sure there is no need for this hostility. Count Anton, Captain Renfrew is a gentleman known to me, the son of the earl of Alverleigh and a fine officer, mentioned several times in dispatches. As I assured you earlier, he cannot possibly have anything to do with the kidnapping of your crown prince.” He gave a look of appeal to Gabe. “Captain Renfrew, all this could be cleared up in a moment if you’d just allow us to search the house…”
Gabe fixed him with the sort of look that could make a troop of hardened soldiers hang their heads. “Search my house?”
The squire looked uncomfortable, but held his ground. “It’s a grave accusation, sir, and one with government implications. I’m sure it’s a mistake, but it would be better all round if we just cleared the air.”
The man was embarrassed, Gabe saw. He was already half convinced he’d come on a fool’s errand.
Gabe gave a curt nod. “Very well, explain.” He folded his arms and waited.
“We’re wasting time,” the count began.
Gabe shot him a hard look. “I could always just throw you out on your arse.”
“Captain Renfrew,
Count, if you please,” Sir Walter said. “The count has received reports that in the last two days you have had a strange woman and a small boy living here.”
“He has, has he?” Gabe said. “What the devil business is it of his who I have here?”
“You have! Admit it!” the count snarled.
Gabe gave him a frigid stare.
“Captain Renfrew, please,” the squire begged.
Gabe shrugged. “There is a lady and a boy staying here, Sir Walter, though if that boy is a crown prince of anywhere I’d be astonished. Still, I suppose he could have been stolen by gypsies at birth…”
“He was stolen by you!”
Gabe unfolded his arms. “You are becoming excessively tedious, my man. You need a good thrashing and a lesson in manners.”
The squire stepped in between them. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please. Captain Renfrew, if I could just meet this lady, all this could be sorted out.”
Gabe considered it. “Very well, but you—” He stabbed a finger at the count. “—behave yourself. I would not have any lady exposed to your uncouth behavior.”
He led them to the drawing room, opened the door, and said, “You see, Sir Walter? No stolen prince or princess.”
Count Anton shoved past them. “Aha!” he exclaimed in triumph and pointed to the woman sitting in front of the fire with her back to them. “There she is!”
Tibby turned with raised eyebrows. “I beg your pardon,” she said with frosty disapproval. She glanced from Gabe, to Sir Walter, to the count. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?”
Gabe turned to the squire. “This is Miss Tibthorpe, whose house was burned down yesterday. I have offered her refuge here, indefinitely.”
The squire bowed. “Miss Tibthorpe, may I offer my sincere condolences on your loss. It was a shocking thing—”
“A shocking thing indeed when one’s house is burned under one.” Tibby stared fiercely at the count. “My sole comfort is the sure and certain knowledge that the perpetrator will burn in hell!”
The count prowled toward her in a threatening manner. Gabe stepped in between them. “One more step…” he said in an icy voice.