by Edith Layton
“Oh, here’s a tire-eater! Never fear, my dear, for I believe your future and your virtue will be safe with this young one at your side.”
The earl looked hard at Colin then, and in that brief time, all scorn and contempt was erased from the older man’s jowled, mocking face, and a fleeting spasm of displeasure replaced it, as a passing light of some bitter inner admission lit his pale green eyes.
“Aye,” he said almost to himself, still staring at the unblinking boy, “I shouldn’t sleep easy if we lived in ancient days, for though I’ve a quiverful of boys between you and the title, lad, still you’ve the look of a master about you.”
And then he laughed, and then his habitual look of lazy pleasure was back upon his face, and so Colin believed the whole of it had been mockery. For he was only fourteen, and far too tall, his flesh hadn’t had time to cover his newly lengthened bones, and he was swarthy as a Gypsy and had been silent and sullen throughout the visit. And the earl had three fair sons, two already grown men, and one of an age with Colin, and all lithe and richly clad and self-important, for though all had known their distant cousin, all had ignored him this time, as though they’d known he’d come to call with hat in hand and nothing in pocket. And all, even the one of an age with Colin, had looked at his mama as their father had done. For they were the infamous Haverfords of High Wyvern Hall, and knew they were expected to be precisely as they were.
Proud Harry, Wicked John, Secretive Maxmillian—their distant cousin Colin could well believe they might enact bloody scenes from a bygone age in their attempts to oust one another and sit upon their father’s throne chair in the ancient stone main hall. But as for himself, he wanted nothing to do with the title with all its majesty and money, or the Hall, for all its size and history. He wanted only to keep his small family’s roof over their heads, but knew in that moment the agony and frustration of being too young to make any difference in their or his own fate.
Papa had been an only son of a younger son, the Midland Haverfords, only a cadet branch of the noble line. Papa had been a career soldier, and though the little French Corporal had provided employment for him for the past years, in the last year, in Holland, Bonaparte had accounted for his death as well. Mama had a good background, but only a respectable, not a wealthy or titled one, and Welsh at that.
The earl was close-fisted, but he was right and the solicitors were right, the manor would have to be sold. After all, the cottage was never so small as the name implied; it had enough bedrooms and fifteen acres with it, and as it was the one thing entailed upon Papa, it was theirs and they’d owe no living man for the living to be had, however meager, from it. There was also the matter of a small allowance from the earl, to be given for the look of it in the world’s eyes, since they were his relatives. For incredibly enough, as the earl had said, since none of his own sons had wed as yet, and because of some uncles who’d failed to do so, and some others who’d been barren or female-producing, Colin was fourth in line for the title. And, Colin had thought all the long bleak way home from High Wyvern Hall, about as likely to inherit it as he was to be able to solve his family’s financial woes.
He’d said good-bye then, in his own way, to all the things he’d known since birth. He’d shooed away his eight-year-old sister, discouraged his five-year-old brother’s company, and been grateful the baby was still in the cradle, for a fellow didn’t want anyone seeing how badly his older brother was taking the remove. It was true he’d been away at school since he was eight, but “home” had only one meaning to him, and now he’d never be entitled to set foot upon the place where his family had lived forever, ever again. So he said good-bye to the stream he cooled himself with in summer, and bade farewell to the towering oak that always whispered threats to him every stormy night outside his bedroom window, and bid adieu to that small clearing on the rise where he’d buried, in their time, Jasper, the spaniel, Fancy, the hound, and Beau, the turtle.
He’d known that the morning the family loaded their clothes and few personal possessions into their carriages was going to be difficult, but he’d steeled himself for it so that he could be a support to Mama and an example to the children. The servants had blotted their eyes as they stood in the doorway to say good-bye, and it was ironic, he’d thought, that they could choose to stay on in Eden if they wished, and he could not.
Mr. Yarrow, the new owner, and owner of a mill and a thriving new manufactory, stood in the dooryard with his man at law and watched the Haverfords depart. His wife and young children were there as well, and Colin had thought it was because they were so anxious to move in. It wasn’t until he’d seen the Yarrows eyeing each trunk that left, whispering together, and ticking off items on a list that he realized they were counting the trunks and watching to see that nothing they had bought, which was almost everything they’d seen, was taken from their grasp. Colin had stiffened in indignation, but he’d continued to stand dry-eyed and cold, supervising the remove.
When the last coach had been loaded, and the children boarded, with Nurse and Mama shaking hands all round, Colin had come out of the house for the last time, with his tin box of treasures in hand, almost as if it were the last security he held. And Mr. Yarrow had cried out at once, as Colin made to enter the lead coach, “Here, hold on, laddie. What you got in hand, eh?”
How to say what it was? The earl stirred in his coach, miles and years removed from the event, still wondering at how he would describe it even now. There was pride to consider, and insult, and honesty, all together. He’d stolen nothing, but was angry at the accusation, yet aware that though the items he held were his own, they were totally unknown to the rest of the world. In the end, he’d tried to be so supernaturally blasé, civilized, and urbane that he had, of course, failed utterly. For, “Oh,” he’d said dismissively, waving a hand as he imagined one of his noble cousins might, “nothing to speak of, sir.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, laddie,” Mr. Yarrow snapped, with a quick sharp look to his wife, who nodded excitedly, for here was precisely what they’d been expecting. It was unheard of, and thus very suspicious, that the Haverfords thus far seemed to have kept to their bargain. For the Yarrows knew no one of their acquaintance who wouldn’t try smuggling out something valuable, something they ought not, under cover of the confusion of a major removal.
“I’ll just have a look,” Mr. Yarrow said briskly, striding to Colin and putting out his hand for the box.
It was unthinkable to struggle, and yet equally appalling to think of his closely guarded valuables exposed to everyone’s gaze, for somehow then, for the first time, he dimly recognized that his goods were foolish, even laughable items to have hoarded so diligently for all those years.
“They’re nothing,” he’d said, backing away, laughing a false laugh that cracked even as his voice had been doing lately, “only,” he said in a last anxious attempt to be adult and casual, so that what he meant to sound amusing and ironic came out a little frantic, “my little treasures, you see.”
“Oh, I see very well, thank you!” cried Mr. Yarrow, and pounced, and while all the family and servants and neighbors stared, snatched the tin box away from him. He pried the ornate lid off as Colin began to murmur for its return, and then, dragging his fingers through the contents, Mr. Yarrow grew an increasingly confused expression. Then, a second later, a hundred years later, Colin heard him cry in vast chagrin, disguised as amusement, for he’d expected to discover all manner of exquisitely expensive worthy things hidden so as to be spirited away from him.
“Oh, treasure indeed. A boy’s treasure. A magpie’s hoard. Look,” he shouted, holding up his hands as the objects fell from his fingers back into the box. “What a cache! Broken bits and lost ends, shining gewgaws and old buttons, rotten acorns and pieces of shells! Here—take back your treasure, laddie, here, here, didn’t you hear me? Take back your rubbish, and good day to you, sir.”
He’d never answered, not then, nor even when his mama had gently tried to broach the sub
ject again, miles from home. But when darkness had fallen, before the coaches had pulled up for the night, quietly, so as not to awaken Mama where she’d dozed in her corner, he’d opened the window and tossed the box, the shameful box filled with rubbish, out, somewhere on the road between home and exile.
When he’d finished with school, the earl bought him colors in his father’s unit. He sold out after a year, taking great care to return the money whence it had come. Then, on advice from a friend, he shipped out to the Caribbean islands, to make his fortune. He’d made the acquaintance of hunger there, even in that lush and tropic place, hunger of a sort that came from more than having missed his tea. And he’d become familiar with weariness too, the bone-bred exhaustion that came from more than exertion in the social whirl. But he’d been glad of it, for it strengthened his purpose, reminded him of his situation, and kept him from the seductive easy style of life he might have followed in that green and easy land. He worked at anything he could turn his hand and his broad back to, and invested everything he made, save for that which he sent home to help the family. It transpired that he had a very strong back, and just as important, a strong talent for investments.
He worked in the fields of sugar plantations, he bought shares in a distillery. He managed the workers in the fields of sugar plantations, he bought sugar and rum for export. He bought sugar, coffee, and spice plantations, he bought distilleries, he even bought, at the last, shares in the very ship which carried him home, enormously wealthy, after seven years, to prepare to take on the title Earl of Clune.
The old earl, the disease which he’d contracted from one or two of his many forgotten pleasures now ascendant, slumped in his chair in his opulent study and looked out of pale green eyes at the dark young man who was to be his heir.
“I knew it in my blood then,” he croaked, his voice already ruined by that which was slowly taking his life. “I did. A chill, something in the air, a feeling, call it what you will, that day, I knew. I’ve lived with ghosts too long not to know one, even when it comes from the future, not the past. It’s yours now, lad, or as soon as may be. I wish you well with it. I do, you know. And do you know,” he said with the travesty of a laugh, “I do believe you’ll do better with it than we would have done, any of us. I do believe it’s time for someone like you to be master here. Someone who can master himself might take the curse from this place, this name.”
There was nothing to be said in reply. The night before his own wedding, Proud Harry had taken another proud man’s wife and then a ball in his chest for it. Wicked John’s drinking would have ended him more slowly if it had not dazed him enough to fall into the frozen Thames one riotous night in town, and while all his boisterous companions giggled and tried to remember what to throw to a drowning man, besides quips, he’d drowned. And Secretive Maxmillian had a row with one of the many lovers he’d been wise enough to be secretive about, thus enabling the gentleman to run him through before his father found out about the liaison.
Now, a year after becoming the eighth Earl of Clune, an honor as unwished for as it was still improbable to its recipient, the eighth earl rode to a mean slum to pick up a box of trinkets for an impoverished governess, and not for one moment did he believe his actions to be either singular or unworthy of him. He’d been poor, he’d been unemployed, and he had once owned such treasure. With all he had now, earned and chance-gotten, he still would have given much to have that tin box, which was more than likely part of an east-bound roadway now, perhaps even enshrined forever by the efforts of Mr. Macadam, even as it was in his memory.
His servants, however, were appalled at the street where they were told to wait for him. The footmen stared in horror as their master insisted on entering the hovel alone, and his young tiger and the coachman began to theatrically and with many elaborate wasted gestures clean the firearms they’d brought with them for the edification of the crowd of urchins and their elders who materialized from out of the shadows to goggle at the stationary carriage.
Mrs. Rogers ducked and bowed and scraped so many times, her chins quivering in excitement, that the earl grew impatient with her, and abandoning the manners he’d begun with, demanded to be let up to Miss Dawkins’ room. This appeared, oddly, to be precisely what she wished, for with a sigh of repletion and sheer adoration now shining in her small eyes, she immediately handed over the key and even managed to look blissful when he flatly ordered her to remain belowstairs, after she’d ignored all his hints that she needn’t bother accompanying him.
But, he thought, when at last alone with Miss Dawkins’ door shut behind him, if her belongings were as he’d imagined them, it wasn’t fair that any others see them. He even felt guilty himself as he stood and gazed around the small room. The place almost fitted him as close as one of Weston’s jackets, and the only lifting of his spirits came when he realized that it was scarcely likely he’d miss anything hidden here.
Little time elapsed before he’d gotten all her belongings, clothes as well as the sampler on the one bureau, and a tray with a bottle of lilac scent, combs, soap, ribands, and a sewing case, into her portmanteau. He knew, as she did not, that in such surroundings, these items were most likely to be the first to disappear when their owner was missing for more than a day. And then, and only then, when all else was accounted for, did he lift the small gilt casket from the bureau top and take its key from underneath it. He ought, he knew, to immediately see to giving it, along with her message, to the children down the hall.
He hesitated with the little gold box in hand. He’d no more right to see what it contained than Mr. Yarrow had to pry into what he had collected those years before. But perhaps because he thought no one else would ever know, and perhaps precisely because he thought of that incident again and so in some small unexamined corner of his mind almost believed he’d find half a Roman coin, a marcasite buckle, or an acorn shaped remarkably like the king’s own head, he inserted the key, cracked the lid open, and stared at what lay within.
It was not very much, as he expected, but it was of better quality than he’d anticipated. There was no gimcrackery, no nuts or stones; she was, after all, a grown young woman and not a child. But there was nothing of very great value either: a military medal and ribbon, an amethyst ring, a cameo brooch, and a silver locket. There were a few calling cards, and an elegant old miniature of a lovely golden-eyed lady who must have been some ancestor, painted on ivory, set in a circle of seed pearls, most missing, the whole suspended from a worn back riband. Yes, he thought, not realizing he was nodding affirmatively even as he cradled the delicate piece in his palm, treasures, yes, these certainly were treasures.
“Now, I’d put that back very slow, I would, and I’d keep my hands in sight all the while too,” a hard young voice declared stridently.
The earl spun round to look to the door. He blinked. An assortment of children completely filled the doorway. And they were all glowering at him. There was a pretty blond little girl holding a doll almost as big as herself against her shoulder, an older, darker-haired boy with a broom in hand, and the speaker was a fair-haired youth only a little senior to the others. He had his mouth set grimly and was cradling the bulk of a large cudgel in the crook of his elbow, while gripping on to it tightly with his other hand.
“Now, you’re bigger, true, but there’s more of us, and you’ll never get us all at once. And think of the ’oller we’ll set up,” the boy said loudly, and the others nodded, while the girl’s doll, the earl was surprised to note, now began hiccuping gently.
“I’m a friend of Miss Dawkins’,” the earl explained.
“Aye, and I’m ’er dad, I am,” the boy said sweetly.
“She sent me here to pick up her things, and to speak with you, as well,” the earl said patiently.
“All I’m listening for is the sound of you…leaving,” the boy answered, trying to tap the cudgel against his arm in a threatening manner.
“I assume you’re Alfie,” the earl said thoughtfully, watching th
e child and taking his measure. “All right,” he said suddenly, loudly enough so the children all winced and shuddered back for an instant before they squared their shoulders and stepped forward again.
“Now, listen,” the earl said, setting his booted feet apart, standing straight, and crossing his arms in front of his chest, so that he appeared to dominate the small room. “Do you honestly think I need these trifles I appear to be stealing?”
“Who’s to say?” the boy replied angrily. “P’raps you made your bundle from stealing little things, like. Lots of little things add up,” he said.
“True,” the earl answered, a smile making a fleeting appearance on his dark face. “And I suppose you think I crept up here to make my fortune.”
“Nah,” the boy said scornfully, “spider couldn’t creep up by old Rogers on rent day, she’d be waiting at the door to collect from everyone. But you could of tossed ’er a tuppeny piece and got up ’ere for it.”
“I am Colin Haverford, Earl of Clune,” the gentleman stated coolly. “Miss Dawkins came to my home seeking a position I’d advertised. She collapsed, she’s ill. I’m letting her stay on until she’s recovered, and she asked me to collect her things and send to you with the news of this.”
The younger children seemed impressed and not a little disturbed with this information, but the older boy appeared to be even angrier.
“Ooo, ’eavens, sir, wot a lovely story you do tell.” He sneered. “And I’m s’posed to be lummakin enough to believe a belted earl would ’op to a servant’s bidding? Oh, pull the other one, luv, to make ’em even.”
The dark gentleman’s face seemed to grow even blacker. His ebony brows dipped downward and almost met over his narrowed jet eyes. His strong jaw set hard. The little girl trembled, and the older boy took a tighter grip on his makeshift club.
“My nephew,” the gentleman began in cold flat tones, “who’s a spoiled young idiot, misused her good nature and then ill-spoke her to save his own worthless neck, and so lost her a good position. Then, soon as I clapped eyes on her I made it worse by offering her a bad one, if you get my drift. Now she’s sick and I’m feeling guilty as bedamned, you miserable whelp, and I’m trying to make it up to her, you see? And furthermore, when I came to get her things, I snooped, even as you would, because earl or not, I’m human too, damm it!” the earl shouted.