by Liz Carlyle
Lady Mercer sank onto the proffered seat and handed the letter to him. With eyes that were momentarily horrified, she looked up at him. “A tutor, Charlie,” she whispered, her voice suddenly breaking. “He sends a tutor for my children! He shall force his way into this home by whatever means possible. What are we to do?”
Charles Donaldson went down onto one knee beside her and skimmed the letter. “I think... I think, milady, that we can fight this.” The young Scotsman looked up to hold her troubled gaze. “Shall I send a footman tae fetch McFadden? Or one of the other solicitors?”
Lady Mercer swallowed. “I do not know,” she admitted wearily. “I am sick to death of all this bickering! I advertised for a tutor, and heaven knows the boys need one. We cannot go on as we are, acting as if life as we knew it has ended.”
“Aye, but sich a one would be a stranger tae us, Lady Jonet,” he softly cautioned, reverting to her old name. “What d’we know of this man?”
“Nothing good,” she answered grimly. “James is sending a snake into our midst. Depend upon it”
“Shall I have the footmen send him packing then, milady?” inquired the butler. “It says he’s tae come at three o’clock.”
Lady Mercer grasped the letter in both hands, crushing it to her lap in obvious frustration. “No, don’t send him away, Charlie.” She rallied again, just as she always did, stiffening her spine and pulling back her narrow shoulders. Her deep voice returned to normal, with its hard edge and faint burr. “Undoubtedly he is nothing more than one of James’s henchmen, and therefore only minimally qualified. Once I have met the fellow, perhaps I can unearth some shortcoming, and find a better candidate. Even James cannot argue with that”
“Verra good, milady.” Smoothly, Donaldson stood. “You look a wee bit drained. May I send Miss Cameron to attend you?”
Her lips tightly compressed, Lady Mercer stood and shook her head. “No, I thank you. Cousin Ellen cannot understand me when I am blue-deviled. I’ll do naught but distress her, and you know that as well as I.”
“Aye, milady.” Donaldson could not help but smile. “Ye might at that.”
———
As was his custom, Cole rose at dawn to throw on his clothes and saddle his horse for a long morning ride. Shunning the more fashionable environs of town, he ignored Hyde Park and everything in between, riding north instead, up Gray’s Inn Road and into the countryside. On this particular day, he pushed his horse hard for almost an hour, turning toward home only when the need for breakfast compelled him to do so.
Despite Cole’s admittedly academic bent, he had always done his most serious thinking from the back of a horse. Today it was not working. Halfway through St. Pancras, with all of London now stirring about him, Cole still had no notion why he had agreed to his uncle’s mad, self-serving scheme. What had he been thinking? Just what did he hope to achieve?
Oh, matters were a bit dull within the army just now, it was true. But there were things to do. His dub in Albemarle Street, the two or three academic societies to which he still belonged, and an occasional trip to the War Office to chat up old friends. Reading his scientific journals, writing letters to inquire into the welfare of his former men, and every evening, a little drinking in the local public house, which was filled at night by an eclectic mix of actors, students, and poets, along with a great many men such as himself, old soldiers with too much time to spare.
Well—.’ The truth always slipped out in the end, did it not? The fact was, Cole was just dead bored with his life. After hobbling about Paris for three months, making mini mal contributions to the peace effort, he had returned at last to London—how long ago? Seven months? He counted on his fingers. Yes, and damned dull months they had been, too.
His splintered thigh was solid once again, and the few shards of metal which were destined to work their way out had long since done so. Cole knew he was fortunate to have broken the bone in a fall from his horse, and that the grapeshot had been glancing and secondary. Better men than he had lost a leg to amputation. Almost a year later, only a few scars and the occasional ache remained.
And now, he no longer had any excuse to avoid going home. Home to Cambridgeshire. Home to Elmwood Manor, the estate he had not seen since leaving England before the war. As manor houses went, it was hardly a grand place. It appeared to be early Georgian, with two small but well-balanced wings, but from the rear gardens, one could see a goodly portion of the original Tudor structure. Long ago, perhaps in his great-great-grandfather’s day, Elmwood had been a vicarage.
Indeed, it was still referred to as such by the villagers, because for a hundred years or better, even after the house itself had been sold by the church, someone within the walls of Elmwood had served them as vicar of Saint Ann’s. But no longer. That was yet another of life’s crossroads which Cole had managed to circumnavigate. For a time after leaving his position at Cambridge, he had acted as curate, with every good intention of stepping into the pulpit at some future date. But in the end, he had chosen muscular Christianity over the more pastoral sort, and had resolutely beaten his plowshare into a sword.
Cole still was not perfectly sure why he had done it. He knew only that he had felt driven to join the army; driven toward war by an emotion he could not name. Patriotism, he had called it at the time. Certainly, he had not done it for financial gain. His officer’s commission had been expensive, and he had had a wife at home for whom to provide. And although Cole was far from being a rich man, his mother’s marriage settlements had provided him a steady income upon his twenty-fifth birthday and his father had left him Elmwood Manor.
Elmwood consisted of a small home farm and five tenant properties, whose holders tilled the same land their fathers and grandfathers had before them. Since the war, Cole had taken the unheard-of step of leasing the whole of it, parceling the home acreage into fifths, and giving it over to his trusted tenants. The manor, for all practical purposes, now ran itself.
Three months past, unable to reconcile himself to the thought of going home, he had sent along Moseby, his orderly, to look things over. All was well, according to Moseby’s infrequent reports. Cole’s plan to follow shortly thereafter had come to naught. And now, he had to admit to himself that he had no wish to return.
Cole spent the remainder of the morning at his club, taking a late, leisurely breakfast and debating with his cronies the state of the empire’s residual military strength. But as always, Cole came away a little empty, finding himself unable to fully savor the morning despite the intellec tual stimulation it afforded him. Such occasions merely served as a poignant reminder of those men who had been left in the ditches of Portugal. Good officers and valiant men who would never again argue field strategy, never again take up arms for their king.
Other men seemed to accept such things more readily, and Cole often suspected that his scholarly devotion to religion and philosophy had left him singularly unsuited for an officer’s life —or at least unsuited to the aftermath of such a life. Eventually, Cole returned to his rooms to catch up on correspondence, and then, with unerring care, he shaved and dressed for his meeting with Lady Mercer. He was half reluctant, and yet more than a little curious, to meet the lady once again after all these years. Although Cole was certain she would not remember him. No, she would not. Would she?
He presented himself in Brook Street, only to find that he had arrived a quarter hour early. Cautioning himself that it would not do to wait upon the marchioness betimes, Cole resolved to spend his excess energy in pacing further up the street, then turning the corner to stroll through the mews behind. Like any good military man, he reconnoitered the establishment from all angles as he went. It was a typical Mayfair townhouse, though somewhat larger than most Pour rows of deep windows across the front, a service entrance below the ground floor, a narrow, well-shaded backyard with an elegant garden, and a row of fourth-floor servant’s dormers in the rear.
Opposite the yard lay the mews. The quarters could probably house two car
riages and provide accommodations for another half dozen servants. On this side of the alley, no one stirred. But in the back garden, a servant lingered, a huge, red-haired fellow, who was rather aimlessly hoeing about in a freshly turned flowerbed, seemingly unaware that he had just trod across a swath of spring daffodils. At Cole’s approach, the man tensed and lifted his eyes to stare malevolently across the low fence at him. The message was clear. Cole touched his hat respectfully and moved on past the garden gate. Lady Mercer’s servants, it would appear, were not the sociable sort.
———
“Psst, Stuart!” In a sunny shaft of dust motes, Lord Robert Rowland stood, tugging plaintively upon his elder brother’s coattail, nearly yanking him off the crate on which he perched. Precariously balanced on his knees, Stuart, Lord Mercer, shook off his pesky young sibling, then stretched up to meet the high attic window, peering out over the dusty sill.
“Quit jerking, Robin!” he cautioned his brother, looking down from the crate over one shoulder. “If you make me fell, Nanna shall hear it, and we’ll both be put to bed without supper!”
Standing on tiptoes, Robert pulled a pitiful face. “But what’s that fellow in the mews doing now, Stuart? Let me up! Let me up! I want to see, too!”
Stuart turned back to the window. “He’s just walking around the back.” The boy grunted a little as he tried to scrub the grime from the glass with his coat sleeve.
“Hey, Stuart, d’you think he might be a spy?” asked Robert eagerly. “D’you reckon he’s the fellow who poisoned Papa? Perhaps we could trap him and catch him, if he’s the one.”
Stuart looked down with a scowl “Shut up, dolt! We’re not to know about that! And this fellow in our mews is an army officer, I told you already. They just shoot the enemy. They don’t have time to go about poisoning folks in their bedchambers.”
But Robert was desperate for a little excitement “Well, can you tell if he’s spying on us? Maybe that’s what he’s up to?”
“He’s snooping a bit, but he isn’t spying!” reported Stuart from his perch. He leaned closer to the window. “Anyway, I don’t think he’s the fellow who’s to come this afternoon. Not wearing those fancy regimentals.”
“What regiment is he from?” asked Robert enthusiasti cally, trying harder to scrabble up beside his brother.
Stuart hesitated, and Robert knew why. The sighting and identification of all things military was a source of constant dissent between the boys. And despite his being the younger, Robert accounted himself more of an expert in the field. His collection of toy soldiers was vast, much loved, and intently studied.
“Umm...” Stuart hesitated. “Life Guards.”
At last, the smaller boy succeeded in scrambling up and squeezing into the dormer with his brother. He sighed sharply. “Oh, Stuart, you are an ejit and that’s a fact! That fellow there is a Royal Dragoon.” Robert pronounced the words with the same awe one might reserve for the heavenly host.
“Is not,” retorted Stuart, clearly affronted.
“Is too!” insisted the younger boy. “And that’s what I call a proper coat, too! D’you see any cheap brass buttons stuck all over it? No. And the trousers, Stuart! They are not at all the same.”
“Oh, it’s Life Guards and I know it,” insisted his lordship haughtily.
“Oh, Stuart! You are such a—a—” Lord Robert groped desperately for the new phrase he’d overheard in the stables yesterday afternoon. “A horse’s arse!” he bellowed triumphantly.
“Am not!” answered Stuart. “And you are just a—a dog turd. A scrappy little dried-up dog turd.”
“No, I’m not!” wailed Robert, outraged.
His brother narrowed his eyes. “Are too!”
“Horse’s arse!”
“Dog turd!”
“Horse’s arse!”
“Dog tur—yowch!”
Abruptly, a meaty fist reached out and dragged his most noble lordship rudely backward off his perch. “Aye, an’ just what d’ye think yer aboot, my fine fellow?”
“Nanna!” cried the boys in unison.
“Doon’t ‘Nanna’ me, my laddies “ the plump old nurse said grimly, grabbing up Robert in the other hand and giving him a little shake. “ ‘Tis no good yer up to, plain enough. Now, doon the stairs, wi’ the both of you, and we’ll see if there’s tae be any supper.”
Chapter 2
After Long Years, How Should I Greet Thee?
Perhaps it would have eased Cole’s mind had he known that his visit to the tall brick townhouse in Brook Street was as unwelcome an event from within as it was from without. But he did not know it, and as he laid his hand upon the cold brass knocker at precisely two minutes before the appointed hour, his faint curiosity began to give way to a grave sense of uncertainty, which was further heightened by the hollow echo of the knocker dropping onto the wood.
After a long moment, the door swung noiselessly open to reveal not one but a pair of ruddy-faced footmen, and not the tall, handsome sort of fellows that one would normally associate with the finer homes of London. The decidedly elegant gray and maroon livery aside, it appeared that the Marchioness of Mercer employed a couple of former pugilists as household servants.
“Aye, wot ‘cher want?” grumbled the first, his language a dead giveaway.
Apparently, Lady Mercer really didn’t give a damn about who opened her fine front door. Strangely enough, Cole’s assessment of the lady went up a notch. With military precision, Cole whipped out his card.
“Captain Amherst to see her ladyship,” he announced, shifting his weight forward to step into the hall.
“Aye, ‘old up just a bloomin’ minute, gov’!” said the other, planting a handful of beefy fingertips in the middle of Cole’s chest. The footman glanced to his right where his sparring partner stood, squinting at Cole’s card. Together, they looked it over, silently mouthing the words. “Cap’n Amherst, eh?”
“Yes, and I believe I am expected,” said Cole, striving to keep a straight face. “You might just drop that card onto a little tray, take it up to her ladyship, and put an end to your troubles.”
“Oh, our troubles, is it?” The footman with the card flicked a rather suspicious look up at Cole. “An’ just wot would yer be knowin’ about ‘em, sir?”
Cole glanced back and forth between them, more than a little confused. The second pugilist seized upon his hesitation. “No soldiers s’pected,” he announced, moving as if to shut the door in Cole’s face. “An’ the ‘ouse is still in mourning.”
Cole should have been relieved by their refusal to admit him. In fact, at that very moment, had he possessed one grain of sense, he would have accounted himself the most fortunate of men, turned on his heel, walked right back down to Pall Mall, and gotten himself cheerfully drunk. Unfortunately, there was just enough muscular Christianity left in him to resent the affront to his dignity.
“I am expected,” he insisted, in the tone of a man who was accustomed to seeing soldiers snap to his command. “I come at the behest of Lord James Rowland to wait upon Lady Mercer. Now if you would be so good as to take my card and go up those stairs with it, I am sure all will be revealed to you!”
Invoking James’s name was a dreadful error. Eyes bulging, both men shifted their weight forward onto the balls of their feet, but Cole was saved from an almost certain death—or at least severe dental damage—by the sudden appearance of a tall young man in butler’s garb.
“Why, here now!” he said in a light brogue. “What’s all this trooble?”
“Gent ‘ere says he’s to see ‘er lay’ship, Donaldson,”
answered the first footman a bit defensively. “I tole him she weren’t receivin’ but I reckon ‘e finks ‘e can stroll on in.”
“Right,” the second footman chimed in. “Claims ter be another o’ that Lord James’s chaps wot keeps coming ‘round ter bother ‘er la’yship.”
Donaldson’s eyes skimmed down Cole’s length, mild surprise lighting his expressive blue eyes. “Gads!
” he said softly. “Are you Amherst?”
———
Despite the fact that for the first eighteen years of her life Lady Mercer had been an innocent, provincial miss, she realized that she had become—out of necessity—a woman who was rather indurate and cold. At times, her very heart felt like a chunk of winter’s ice that had been hacked from a frozen pond, packed in sawdust, then dropped into a deep, dark pit for storage. After a decade of such an existence, she was now rarely caught unprepared by anyone or anything, and certainly not by the vagaries of fate.
Nothing, however, could have prepared Jonet for the man who came striding down the hall toward her drawing loom at five minutes past three on that fateful afternoon. She had expected a man to arrive, certainly. Someone who would look at least marginally like a tutor of young men, she had assumed. But from the very first, she had doubted that Lord James’s lackey would be the usual impoverished Milquetoast of a fellow in a rumpled frock coat and a scraggly haircut.
Well—at least she had gotten that much right, Jonet weakly decided, watching her caller walk inexorably nearer. With a gait that was long and lean-hipped, Cole Amherst moved with his shoulders set rigidly back, his heavy boots echoing through the corridor. He wore the fine red coat of a Dragoon’s officer, turned back into facings of midnight blue, and covered in a shade of gold which perfectly matched his hair.
As he paused formally at attention in the frame of her doorway, the army captain looked more like a work of portraiture than a man of flesh and blood. As if the painter, in the way of some so-called artists, had looked at a normal man, then imbued him with all the artistic license reality might allow. Amherst’s shoulders were just a little too broad, his jaw too elegantly chiseled, and his chin too deeply dimpled to belong to a mere mortal. And his mouth! Sinfully full, rich with promise and passion, Amherst’s mouth was that of a profligate, yet Jonet was sure he was anything but.
He was tall, too. At least six feet, and most of it looked to be legs. Long, lean, very fine legs that seemingly went on forever. Or was it chest? Jonet swallowed hard again. Yes, there was a great deal of chest there as well. Her eyes skimmed up his length. Only a brow which was lightly furrowed and a nose which was a touch too aquiline saved Captain Amherst from what might have been ruinous beauty.