If He's Tempted

by Hannah Howell

  “Oh, I have more male relatives than most women want and can call on them whenever I wish. You will undoubtedly meet some as I think we will need some help before this is all through. There is far more to all this than Lady Letitia thinking to sell off her daughter for a tidy profit.”

  “I think so, too, m’lady. There be all the missing, aye? I also think this is going to be hard on the earl. Very hard. He knows his mother is a bad woman but I think he doesn’t know just how bad she is.”

  “No, he does not. I heartily wish it otherwise but I fear he is about to suffer a lot of hard blows as this problem is sorted out.”

  “I will take care of him, m’lady. So will the others. He is our brother even if he was never told so. He was still good to us and brothers have to watch out for each other.”

  Olympia nodded and hoped Brant had plans to help young Thomas become more than a servant for the rest of his life. There was such strength and heart in the boy it would be wasted if all he did was tend horses in some lordling’s stables for the rest of his life. It was a strong point in the boy’s favor that there was no hint of anger or resentment in him toward the man who got all the benefits of being the son of an earl while he and the others got so little. For that alone, he deserved far better than he had been given so far.

  It was two hours before they set out for London. Olympia sighed as she settled herself comfortably in her carriage seat, ignoring the stern look of her maid. Brant and Thomas had set off in a separate carriage, leaving young Merry to ride with her and Enid. The man was determined to protect her reputation, Olympia thought with a smile. It was something she was well accustomed to. The men in her family had been doing so for years, ever since that horrible night thirteen years ago. She had long ago given up trying to make them see that it was no fault of theirs.

  “He does not know what is said about him, does he?” asked Enid.

  “No,” replied Olympia, glancing at young Merry and knowing, by the sad look upon the girl’s face, that she knew at least some of the rumors about the earl. “Do you think I should have told him?”

  “No, he had had enough shocks, I am thinking. Needs a rest from it for a bit. He will find out soon enough. But, you cannot be letting him stay at the Warren with you.”

  “Enid, who is the baroness here?”

  “Do not get all up in the boughs with me. You know I am right. If he moved into the Warren when you are there alone, there would be nothing left of your reputation by week’s end, if not sooner.”

  “I still do not believe I have a reputation of any sort. I just am. And part of what I am is a Wherlocke and our reputations are not so grand.”

  “Good enough that you get invited to a lot of things and are welcome in most of the better houses. That would soon come to an end.” Enid held up her hand when Olympia started to speak. “And do not say that would not bother you. It might not do so as much as it would some other lady of breeding but it would hurt and I will not believe it if ye tell me otherwise.”

  “No, you are right. Depending on who did the shunning it could hurt a great deal. More importantly, it could hurt others in the family. Howbeit, the man is about to discover that he is not welcome anywhere. What is one to do? He can hardly stay out on the street or even in some inn for all the time it might take to save poor Agatha.”

  “Then we shall just have to think of some solution as we make our way home. There is an answer to it all. We just have to find it.”

  “You have changed your opinion of him.”

  “Some. Merry tells me there is no meanness in the man, even when he is deep in his cups. There is a sadness in him though. A deep hurt. He is trying to drown it in women and drink. Fool man.” Enid shook her head. “I have never understood why they think that will work.”

  “It clouds the memory and dulls the pain for a while and sometimes that is good enough. If all Penelope told me is true, I think there is also a lot of guilt in the man. I could feel it at times. I fear the trouble with Agatha and the discovery that his father has filled the staff at his homes with his illegitimate offspring has only added to that. Now he will be facing the consequences of trying to dull that pain.”

  “So you think he will be drinking again.”

  “No, because he has the wit to know he needs his head clear to help his sister and his need to help Agatha is strong. Very strong. But as soon as he begins his search for a place to stay in London and the doors are shut on him again and again, he will need to be watched.”

  “But you just said you did not think he would be drinking like a sot again.”

  “And I am sure of that, but he will be angry and we both know who that anger will be aimed at. We will have to make certain he does not do anything particularly foolish until he gets that anger under control.”

  Neither of the other women argued her opinion and Olympia sighed, closing her eyes against the looks of understanding on their faces. Brant was about to walk into a dark truth that had been hidden from him for too long. He might know that he had been behaving badly for two years but he had obviously been kept utterly ignorant of how his mother had used his behavior to further destroy him in the eyes of society. His pride was about to be eviscerated.

  Chapter 5

  Humiliation was no stranger to Brant. It was not usually delivered at the hands of a sneering butler, however. He was, after all, the Earl of Fieldgate, a man with centuries of history and breeding behind him and, due to some clever investments, quite a lot of money. Not long ago many a mother would have plotted long and hard in an attempt to get him to marry her daughter. Now no one wanted him within a mile of their women.

  He stared down at the shreds of his calling card the butler had torn up in his face and thrown at his feet, all the while reciting Lady Anabelle Tottenham’s sincere wish that Lord Fieldgate curl up and die. There had been a reference to an overdue journey to the fires of hell as well. Brant could not recall insulting the woman at any time but then there was a lot he could not recall from the last few years. Nor could he recall insulting her somewhat oafish son who had been side by side with Brant in many a round of dissipation. He would be extremely surprised, however, to discover he had attempted or succeeded in seducing the lady as she was sixty if she was a day and she had not aged well.

  Idly straightening his coat, he went back down the steps and began to stroll down the street to where he had left the carriage. He had no idea where he was going now. Every door he had knocked upon had been firmly shut in his face. Every person he had tried to speak to had refused to see him and sent him on his way with cold precision or outright rudeness.

  He shook aside his confusion over the why of that for he had a more important problem to sort out. Where should he go? He had hoped to find some old acquaintance to stay with but the women of the aristocracy were blocking him from that goal at every turn. The Mallam town house, owned for many years by the Earls of Fieldgate, could never be denied him but the very thought of sleeping under the same roof as his mother turned his stomach. He was not sure he could restrain himself from acting upon his anger with her. He glanced over at Thomas, clean and dressed fine, walking at his side.

  “It appears that I have no place to stay,” he said.

  “Foolish women.” Thomas shook his head as they reached the carriage. “You may be a rutting swine, m’lord . . .”

  “Thank you, Thomas,” Brant murmured. “How kind of you to say so.”

  Thomas ignored Brant’s interruption and continued, “But you would never, ever hurt any woman, not even the most evil-tempered besom.”

  “Thank you. ’Tis a shame none of my friends are in the city right now. If they were, I would have been saved from this rather humiliating exercise.”

  “Then we had best take ourselves back to the Warren. There is a lot of room there.”

  “I cannot stay there, Thomas.” Brant fought to ignore how much the idea of doing so tempted him. “Lady Olympia is unwed and none of her male relations are staying at the Warren to a
ct as chaperone. To share a house with her under those conditions would damage her reputation beyond repair.”

  Thomas made a sound that was rife with disgust and mockery. “Society is full of fools. She is no tender young lass but a widow. And good thing she is a widow, too, or she would be taunted sorely for being on the shelf and all.”

  “She would?” Brant blinked as all Thomas had just said finally settled in his mind and grabbed the boy by the arm. “Wait! Lady Olympia is a widow?”

  “You did not know?” Thomas finally pulled his arm free and started to climb into the carriage. “She was wed while little more than a babe and the fool then died. She says there are a lot of privileges to being a widow and one is that she does not have to be beholding to anyone.”

  Since he had no idea where else to go, Brant told the driver to take them to the Wherlocke Warren and climbed into the carriage. “That may be true but she must still take great care with her reputation, especially since I doubt many recall what must have been a very brief marriage. Even if we had a few of her close kinsmen there to chaperone us, it could still stir up some damaging whispers if I stayed at the Warren whilst in the city. We have just seen, most clearly, that I am a pariah.”

  Thomas frowned for a moment. “That means a bad person?”

  “Very bad.”

  “What? Because you drank too much and bedded a lot of doxies? Pah! That be what most of the toffs do.”

  “Perhaps, but I think not with the vigor I have over the last two years.” He sighed and looked out of the carriage window, fleetingly wishing he had not sent his own carriage back to Fieldgate. “I cannot think that I did anything worthy of this amount of scorn, however.”

  Brant wished his friends were in town. Somewhat estranged from him though they were, he knew without a doubt that not one of them would have denied him a place to stay. He had only briefly thought of going to their town houses anyway, hoping the invitation to use such places whenever he pleased had remained open, but decided it was wrong to put the onus of granting him or denying him entrance upon some hireling or relative.

  “There is, of course, nothing to stop us from going to the Warren to enjoy a little tea and company as I plan my next step,” he said after a moment of regret for allowing friendships to lag.

  Brant was pleased that Thomas simply nodded. The boy’s expression implied that he thought Brant had no idea of what needed to be done, but at least he did not voice his doubts about Brant’s intelligence aloud. For someone who had been no more than a boot boy a very short time ago, young Thomas had become quite confident of his place at Brant’s side. Under better circumstances, Brant knew he would have found great amusement in the way Thomas was striding out of servitude into the world of being an openly acknowledged bastard brother of an earl. It was not a particularly kind world for one born on the wrong side of the blanket, but, with every passing moment spent in the boy’s company, Brant suspected young Thomas would do just fine.

  As the carriage wound its way through the streets to the Warren, Brant thought about the new half brothers he had met as well as the ones who had gone missing. He had always known that his father had been consistently unfaithful to his mother yet had never considered the possibility that the man had bred a small army on the women in the countryside. That had been surprisingly naïve of him. He now wondered what he would find in the city as his father had been just as great a rogue when in London as he had been everywhere else.

  Upon meeting what appeared to be a stable staffed mostly by his father’s offspring, only Thomas had really cared to attempt to step away from the life of a simple country lad. Brant was determined to make life better for the others as well, appalled that his father had left nothing for the children he had bred so carelessly. There was a lot he could do to help the others step up from the rather lowly place of being no more than stable hands yet allow them to remain in the simple country life that they so obviously preferred. According to Thomas, Ned and Peter would also be wanting to better themselves. Brant just hoped the boys truly understood what they would face as children born on the wrong side of the blanket, even if that sire had been an earl.

  “This be where her ladyship lives, m’lord,” said Thomas, breaking into Brant’s thoughts as the carriage rolled to a stop.

  The Warren was looking much better than it had the last time he had visited it, Brant decided as he paid off the carriage driver. He had paid little attention to the place when he had stopped to ensure Olympia was settled and sent his carriage home before hurrying off to find a place to stay in a rented carriage. Penelope and Ashton had brought the house back to all its former glory. Looking up and down the street, he could see that many of the other homes were also looking much better than they had been when he had been here two years ago, the air of slow decay almost completely banished. A few more acquisitions and repairs and the little street would no longer be the less respectable neighborhood it had become.

  He suddenly smiled. Of course it would also be packed with Wherlockes and Vaughns. As he rapped on the door, he decided it might be wise to look into other areas that sat unobtrusively on the edges of society’s chosen neighborhoods to see if they, too, could be brought back to the higher standards that society had. It could be a very profitable venture. He was startled out of his thoughts when Olympia herself opened the door.

  “So, do you stay or do you go?” Olympia asked as she waved both Brant and Thomas inside and closed the door behind them.

  “I cannot stay and well you know it,” Brant said as Pawl arrived to take his coat, hat, and cane.

  “But you have no place else to stay, either, I wager.” Before Brant could reply, she said, “Come into the drawing room. Enid will soon bring us some tea and cakes and then we can talk.”

  It was going to be embarrassing to have to tell her what had happened to him, but Brant followed her, sensing that she would not be too surprised by it all. He felt a brief flash of anger that she had obviously kept secrets from him but easily banished it. Whatever had turned him into a person no respectable citizen wanted in their home was probably not something she would have been comfortable telling him. He was not sure he would have fully believed her anyway.

  Out of the corner of his eye he watched Thomas disappear down the hall toward the kitchen. Enid would spoil the boy with treats just as she was thoroughly spoiling young Merry. Brant could only pray that he would be able to find the girl’s sister, Thomas’s other aunt, who had disappeared about the same time as Ned and Peter.

  By the time the tea and cakes were served, and he and Olympia were alone again, Brant was prepared to discuss the humiliating fact that he had nowhere to stay. He now believed he could do so without complaining, something he felt he had no right to do. It was by his own actions that he was no longer accepted anywhere. If he had paused to consider the consequences of his deep plunge into debauchery at all, it had not really included the possibility of being utterly banished from the society he had been born into. He was, after all, that most cherished of English gentlemen. He was unwed, titled, without debt, and with a very respectable income. Even more in his favor, he was young, modestly handsome, in good health, and had all his teeth.

  “Something amuses you?” asked Olympia.

  Brant had not even realized that his last thought had made him grin but he quickly grew serious again. “I was just thinking on how I should be all any mother would want as a husband for her daughter.”

  “Ah, well, yes, you are.” And the fact that she absolutely loathed the thought of him with any other woman alarmed Olympia a bit.

  “But, I have seriously blotted my copybook with my behavior in the last few years as no one wished to even let me step inside their home.”

  Olympia set down her tea, folded her hands in her lap to subdue the urge to go to him and stroke his hair, and studied him for a moment. “You have rather thrown yourself headlong into a pit of debauchery and done so somewhat publicly, but so has many another gentleman. I do not believe, an
d never have, that you have done anything more than many another has, and they were not banished from society.”

  “Yet all doors are now closed against me.”

  “Perhaps,” she began, but then hesitated as she tried to think of how to express her thoughts on the matter in a way that would be the least painful for him to bear.

  “Perhaps my behavior has been made to sound a great deal worse than it was by someone so close to me no one would ever question the truth of such tales.”

  Olympia grimaced. “Yes, that was my thought when the first whispers about you began to slip through a drawing room or two.”

  “Whispers about what?”

  “That is not truly important.” She really did not wish to repeat any of them.

  “It could be important to me since I am the one who must try to repudiate them.”

  “You have been made to sound as if you are of the same ilk as men like Minden,” she finally confessed and saw him pale a little.

  “My mother has been a very busy woman, it seems.” He noticed she did not dispute his choice of enemy. “Not only was I not welcomed inside a single home I went to but no one would even discuss the letting of a room or house with me. I wonder what variety of evils she has accused me of. Minden has so many, if she chose his way of living as the one to blacken my name, she had a great many sins to lay at my feet. I shudder to think what they might be.”

  “I suspect you will soon discover that. If it is bad enough there will be many people willing to whisper the rumors in your ears or mine. After the first few I caught wind of, I ceased to listen.”

  “But did you cease to believe them?”

  “Of course. I know all your true friends, Brant. They would never have anything to do with a man of Minden’s sort, therefore you were being slandered. Now, as for where you may stay while you are in the city, you need not worry about that.”

  “I am not sure it would be wise for me to stay here and not just because my name has been so tarnished even a slight connection to me could be the ruin of you.”