“You are to be commended for your generosity of spirit,” Colin said, “but the oldest boys are reaching a dangerous age. A somewhat more military approach with them might yield faster results. As it happens, I’m familiar with how the army shapes boys into men.”
“The lads are running out of time,” Hitchings said, “just as we are running out of money.”
Lord Derwent, who’d been notably silent throughout the meeting, sat back. “Just so, Hitchings. Out of time and nearly out of money.” He was a thin, older man, with a nasal voice that carried even when he spoke quietly. “This is as good a moment as any to inform the assemblage that the press of business requires that at month’s end, I must regretfully resign my post. With Lord Colin joining the board, we’ll maintain a quorum, if only just. I wish you gentlemen every success with the House of Urchins.”
While the men rose and shook Derwent’s hand, wishing him well, claiming they understood, and thanking him for his leadership, Anwen silently reviewed a litany of Welsh curses. Missing half the meetings and citing rules intended to squeeze legislation out of three hundred drunken members of the House of Commons was not leadership.
“Miss Anwen, thank you for attending on behalf of the ladies’ committee,” Winthrop Montague said. “Always a pleasure when a pretty face can grace a gathering, no matter how dreary the agenda.”
He was the chairman of the board of directors now, else Anwen would have made a comment about a handsome face being an equally pleasant addition to the decorative scheme—despite all the noise gentlemen typically generated.
“Thank you, Mr. Montague. I appreciate the chance to learn more about how the institution is managed. Lord Colin’s involvement gives me great hope for our continued success.”
Mr. Montague aimed a twinkling smile at her. “You believe housing a budding cutpurse is the path to success?”
Colin appeared at her side, her cloak over his arm.
“I believe,” Anwen said, smiling right back, “that when children have been cooped up for months, bored witless, beaten for the smallest lapses, without anyone to love them or remark upon their frequent good behavior, one minor slip is the behavior of a saint.”
If she’d kicked Mr. Montague’s ankle, he couldn’t have looked more surprised.
“A refreshingly optimistic point of view,” Colin said. “Somewhere between that outlook and complete despair lies a reasonable way forward, I hope.”
Hitchings had ushered Lord Derwent to the door, though the headmaster had clearly overheard Anwen’s outburst.
“Madam, I commend your faith in these children,” Hitchings said, “truly I do, and no one will be more pleased than I if Lord Colin’s attempts prove successful.”
Colin wrapped Anwen’s hand over his arm, as if he knew she was two heartbeats away from interrupting Hitchings’s lecture.
“But,” Hitchings went on, “if John’s adventure were to be mentioned in the newspapers, eleven other children would find themselves again homeless, friendless, and starving. When you advocate for giving John another chance, for seeing the good in him, remember those other children, and all the children who might someday benefit from this institution if we can overcome the present difficulty. A lark for young Master Wellington could have tragic consequences for many.”
He shuffled out, his birch rod for once nowhere to be seen.
“He has a point,” Mr. Montague said. “You must admit he has a point.”
So do I. “He’s had nearly a year to impress upon the boys the opportunity this place can be for them,” Anwen said. “Hitchings has tried, I’ll grant him that, but his efforts with the older boys have not been successful.”
“They haven’t entirely failed either,” Colin said, holding out her cloak. “And now it’s my turn to see if I can inspire the boys to more responsible scholarship. Montague, thanks for attending, and I’ll see you here Tuesday next.”
Mr. Montague consulted his pocket watch. “What’s Tuesday next?”
“The regular board meeting,” Anwen said. “And you are now the chair.”
Montague snapped his watch closed. “’Fraid that won’t do. I have a standing obligation on Tuesday afternoons, and until I can rearrange my schedule, Lord Colin will have to chair the meetings.”
Colin shoved Anwen’s bonnet at her when she would have reminded Mr. Montague that without him present, they’d not have a quorum, and thus no business could be transacted.
She snatched the bonnet from his lordship. “If you can spare me a few minutes, Lord Colin, I’d like to look in on the boys before I leave.”
“I’ll be on my way.” Mr. Montague sketched a bow and sauntered out the door, gold-handled walking stick propped against his shoulder.
“I can’t close the door,” Colin said, very softly, “though if you curse quietly, nobody will hear you.”
“I can curse in Welsh,” Anwen said. “But foul language won’t change a thing. That prancing bufflehead can’t be bothered to miss a card game for the sake of these children.”
“Is bufflehead the worst appellation you can think of?”
“Imbecile, buffoon, dandiprat.” She lapsed into Welsh, a fine, expressive language for describing what anatomical impossibilities a man might perform with his infernal consequence.
“I caught most of that,” Colin said. “Gaelic and Welsh being kissing cousins. Let’s take a look at the ledgers Hitchings left for us in the chairman’s office.”
Oh, dear. “You can understand Welsh?”
“When you speak it,” he said, leading the way down the corridor, “about as well as you can understand my Gaelic, I’m guessing. I’ll ask my man of business to take a look at these ledgers when he and I meet this afternoon.”
All over again, Anwen was furious. “Won’t approving such a review take a resolution by the board, discussion, a motion, a second, half the afternoon wasted debating a commonsense suggestion that will cost the institution not one penny?”
She’d seen the board pull that maneuver any number of times, only to table the motion because somebody was late for an appointment with his bootmaker.
“You raise an interesting point,” Colin said, pausing outside the office door. “If the board can’t gather a quorum, we can only have informational meetings, and as acting chair, we’ll do pretty much what I say we’ll do.”
“Oh.” Anwen’s anger evaporated into a pressing need to wrap her arms around Colin and hug him for sheer glee. She lifted the latch and pushed the door open, for the chairman’s office would afford them some privacy,
She stopped short on the threshold.
Four boys were gathered about the table, one of them—Dickie—wielding a tool that looked like a chisel with the narrow end flattened.
“That’s the strongbox,” Anwen said. “John, Dick, Thomas, Joseph, what are you doing with the strongbox?”
Lord Colin snatched the tool from Dickie’s hand. “They were breaking into the strongbox, and judging from the wear on these fittings, it’s not the first time they’ve stolen from the very hand that’s trying to keep them fed, clothed, housed, and out of jail.”
* * *
Esther, Duchess of Moreland liked to go barefoot.
Percival had learned that about his wife before they’d even wed. She also liked to have her feet massaged—no tickling allowed, unless a husband wanted to lose his foot-massaging privileges for at least a fortnight. Why those thoughts should occur to him as he peeked in on his wife at midafternoon, he could not have said.
She looked up from addressing invitations, a niece arranged on either side of her at the library table. Percival silently blew her a kiss rather than disturb her, and drew the door closed.
“Thomas,” he said to the footman on duty at the end of the corridor, “please send a tray of bread and cheese to the ladies, and include a bottle of hock with my compliments.”
“Of course, Your Grace. Some lemon biscuits too?”
They were Esther’s favorites. “Good thought
, and a few forget-me-nots if we have any on hand.” Esther said they were the same blue as Percival’s eyes.
Thomas bowed. “Very good, sir.”
A commotion in the foyer below signaled the arrival of the duke’s oldest son, Devlin St. Just, Earl of Rosecroft. Percival’s view from the floor above meant he could see that his son’s dark hair was still thick even at the very top of his head.
Esther worried about the boys going bald when their father had not, and Percival knew better than to make light of her concern, though what did a man’s hair have to do with the price of brandy in the bedroom?
“Greetings, my boy!” the duke called, halfway down the stairs. “You are without reinforcements?”
“Bronwyn remained in the mews, petting cats, talking to horses, and getting dirty,” Rosecroft said. “I’m sure she’ll come inside to polish a bannister or two before my business is concluded.”
A duke maintained a decorous household. A grandpapa had all the best bannisters.
“She will pay her compliments to me and to the ladies in the library,” Percival said. “You’d think the women were planning to invade France, the way they’ve gone about preparing for this card party. How is your countess?”
Rosecroft was taller than the duke by perhaps two inches, and whereas Percival’s coloring was fair, his firstborn was Black Irish to the bone.
“Emmie thrives, despite all challenges.”
And because the countess thrived—Rosecroft devoted himself to that very objective—the earl thrived and their children thrived as well.
“The library is occupied by Her Grace and the nieces,” Percival said. “Why don’t we join Bronwyn in the mews?”
Rosecroft passed his hat, spurs, and riding crop to Hodges, the butler. Not by a flicker of an eyelash did the earl react to the duke’s request for privacy.
“We will be called upon to name kittens,” Rosecroft observed, “and reminded that kittens and puppies make fine playmates.”
“So they do,” the duke said. “In fairy tales.”
Percival’s true motive for choosing the mews was that Rosecroft loved horses the way young grandchildren loved a smooth, curved bannister. The equine was Rosecroft’s familiar. When he’d been a shy, tongue-tied boy trying to fit into a bewildering array of brothers and sisters in the ducal household, the horses had given him solace and room to breathe.
Also a place to excel beyond all of his siblings.
“Tell me of your outing in the park with Anwen earlier this week,” the duke said as they crossed the garden. “She appeared quite invigorated by her excursion.”
“We met Lord Colin, as she’d told me we would. Man knows how to sit a horse.”
No higher praise could flow from Rosecroft’s lips. “Good to know. What else?”
“His riding stock has some Iberian blood, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find Strathclyde draft a generation or two back. Fascinating combination, the hot and the cold, the light and the heavy. The Clyde horse is a magnificent beast, but so are the Andalusian breeds. The result of a cross is a beast that’s both—”
“Rosecroft.” The result of Anwen’s dawn ride was a son trying to prevaricate at a dead gallop.
Interesting.
“Anwen’s hat, if that’s what it’s called, came loose. Lord Colin was compelled by gentlemanly concern to help search for it.”
The old hat in the bushes ploy. “Not very imaginative.”
“They found the hat, as it were, after diligent searching.”
“You are smiling, Rosecroft. Does one conclude you are proud of your cousin for losing her millinery?”
Percival was. Anwen spent too much time in her sisters’ shadows, too much time being quiet and agreeable. For a Windham—much less a Windham with flaming red hair—that simply wasn’t right.
“Her hat was very small, Your Grace. Locating it likely took determination on the part of both parties.”
A mutual hunt for the hat, as it were, the only acceptable variety. “What do we know about Lord Colin, besides that he rides well, has excellent horseflesh, and a keen eye for a stray hat?”
“He owns a distillery—a legal distillery—and the product is considered exceptionally good quality. He’s particular about the barrels he uses to age the whisky. He doesn’t bottle a young whisky.”
“Something of an innovator, then. What was his military record?”
“Brave on the battlefield, excellent record as an artificer, and a first-rate strategist. He’d leave his campfires burning and one man behind playing fiddle tunes, while the rest of his company sneaked off to go raiding. The French fell for that ruse repeatedly. He bothered to learn Spanish and French, and he stayed out of trouble with his superior officers, for the most part.”
Lord Colin’s older brother had kept him out of trouble.
“And with the ladies?” Percival asked.
They’d reached the back of the garden, and a shriek of childish laughter echoed from across the alley.
“Lord Colin was with the ladies rather a lot,” Rosecroft said. “No bastards, that I could find.”
That would matter to Rosecroft, given his own irregular antecedents. It mattered to the duke as well. Many a fine gentleman had illegitimate offspring, but in the estimation of polite society—and the Duke and Duchess of Moreland—those children deserved their father’s support.
“So Lord Colin has nothing scandalous lurking in his ancient history,” Percival said, though a man not yet thirty didn’t have ancient history. “What about recent history? Is he keeping a ladybird? Playing too deep? Making stupid wagers, or hunting for a different hat every day of the week?”
A half-grown orange cat skittered over the garden wall in a panicked leap and dodged off into the heartsease beneath the nearest balcony.
“The ladies seem to pursue Lord Colin,” Rosecroft said, as flowers bobbed in the cat’s wake. “The merry widows and bored wives.”
“And his lordship, being young, newly titled, and freshly sprung on polite society, does anything but flee over the nearest garden wall. I don’t like it, Rosecroft.”
Percival unlatched the garden gate, which opened on a shady alley. The Moreland mews and coach house sat across the alley, ranged around a small courtyard, where young Bronwyn was using a leafy twig to entertain a tomcat.
“I see you are charming Galahad,” Percival said. “Hello, princess.”
“Grandpapa!” Bronwyn abandoned the cat and pelted up to the duke, arms outstretched.
Percival caught her up in a tight hug, bussed her cheek, and set her down—with the older children, it was important to set them down quickly. Bronwyn would soon be too dignified for such exuberance, but Percival would steal a few more hugs before then.
“Galahad was taking a nap, but he woke up when he saw I had come to call. I’ve inspected the horses, Papa. They are all present and accounted for.”
“You inspected the hayloft too,” Rosecroft said. “That pinafore used to be white, Winnie.”
“It will be white again,” she said, rubbing a finger over the dust streaking her apron. “Just not today.”
Rosecroft ruffled her dark ringlets. “As long as you’ve already ensured the employment of the laundresses for another week, I don’t see any harm in a few more trips up and down the ladder.”
Bronwyn was a climber. Trees, attics, haylofts, the garden folly…She’d be atop any of them in a blink. An odd quality for a little girl, but her early years had lacked supervision. Rosecroft likened her aerial predilections to manning the crow’s nest, a safe observatory above all the fighting.
“Will you come up with me?” she asked, grabbing Rosecroft’s hand.
“Afraid I can’t,” Rosecroft said. “I must pay my respects to Sir Galahad.”
The cat was back to napping in the sun, a splendid orange comma of a feline, resting from his endless bouts in the romantic lists.
“He likes to play,” Bronwyn said, dropping her papa’s hand and scampering off.
“Does Lord Colin like to play?” Percival asked.
Rosecroft knelt to pet the cat, and stentorian rumbling filled the afternoon quiet. “His lordship doesn’t gamble to excess, he doesn’t chase the lightskirts overtly, I’ve never seen him drunk, nor found anybody who has.”
“My boy, you can either tell me what it is you’re reluctant to share, or you can tell Her Grace. I’d rather you told me and I hazard the duchess would rather you did as well.”
Rosecroft stood with the cat in his arms. The beast lolled against the earl’s chest, not a care—or shred of dignity—to its name.
“Lord Colin has debts,” Rosecroft said, scratching the cat’s chin.
“We all have debts,” Percival snorted. “Particularly at this time of year. You would be well advised to start saving now for Bronwyn’s come out, my boy. The undertaking can cost more than a military campaign, and Lord Colin has likely assisted in the launch of both sisters.”
“Something isn’t adding up,” Rosecroft said. “I mean that literally. Lord Colin is a single gentleman of means and new to Town, but for a fellow who’s never half-seas over, he has an enormous bill for liquor at every one of his clubs.”
Well, drat and damn. “You’re suggesting he has the very hard head of the former soldier?”
“He has bills all over Bond Street. Tailors, bootmakers, haberdashers, glove makers and more. His dressing closet must take up an entire wing of the house.”
“A dandy with a hard head.”
“Many a dandy has a hard head, and fine cattle, and some commercial revenue quietly supplementing his agricultural income, but I’ve never seen a single gentleman run up anything like the sums Lord Colin owes the trades after mere weeks in Town.” Rosecroft named a total that topped the annual income of most vicars and not a few barons.
“And the season’s only half over,” Percival muttered.
Esther would be unhappy with this development. She’d had hopes where Lord Colin was concerned. Anwen, however, would be devastated. No Windham daughter or niece could be permitted to develop expectations where a spendthrift younger son was concerned, no matter how he excelled at finding missing hats.
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