Evelyn patted the back of his hand with her free one, and smiled with genuine pleasure and amusement. “Goodness! I am glad that you did not ask while we were in the kitchen or one of the drawing rooms.”
“Perhaps a generally good thing,” Mayson said. “Handsprings tend to play the… er… wreak havoc with the china.”
“Indeed they do,” Evelyn replied. “Mayson, I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone who can do the things that you do.”
“As I told you, I learned a great deal from the cook, and I trained with a gentleman from the Far East. I learned a great deal from him.”
“That I might believe. But Mayson, you are not like most of the servants, and you are nothing like any other cook I have ever met.”
Mayson sighed. “I suppose that since I have asked and you have said there is a good chance that you might say yes, that I should tell you who I really am.”
“I am listening,” Evelyn said. “Are you about to tell me that you are a long, lost prince or a convicted criminal?”
“Not quite,” Mayson replied. “But I am practicing a small deception upon the world. Have you heard the maids talk about the ghost of Hillsworth?”
Evelyn laughed. “Oh, I have heard the story. He goes about the hills, and on nights when the moon is full he raises up his hand to display the crescent moon birthmark on his wrist.”
Mayson paused a moment, as if afraid of what she might say next. Then he took a deep breath and said, “Good. I will not have too much explaining to do.” He carefully peeled back the wrist cuff of the thin leather fingerless gloves he always wore. There, on the inside of his wrist was a red birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon.
Evelyn looked at in surprise, then lifted her eyes to his. “You...?”
“I am Mayson Rutley, the Earl of Tolware.”
Evelyn stared at him, round-eyed with shock. “But... I thought...”
“That the Earl of Tolware was dead? That was the impression I wanted to give everyone. My uncle was trying in various subtle ways to get me killed, or poisoned, or to create an accident.”
“Your uncle... but isn’t he still taking care of Tolware?”
“Yes, if you could call it that.”
“But how did you end up here? Is any of what you have told me true?” Evelyn would have withdrawn her hand, but he held it tightly in both of his, as if he were drowning and it was a lifeline.
“I really did go to a military school and do a tour of duty in France,” Mayson said, gazing earnestly into her eyes. “That school had a nasty reputation for deaths by hazing or by mistreatment. I was supposed to end my days there. I got out of it by volunteering to go to France.”
“But did you not know that there would be fighting there?”
“Absolutely I knew. But as a ‘graduate’ of that prestigious school, I went as an officer, not a conscript. Which, if I claimed my rank, would have been true anyway.”
“So you had a batman because...”
“Because I am an Earl, and because I was an officer.”
“But the cooking part?”
“Also true. You need to understand, Evelyn, that we went with minimal provisions and were expected to ‘requisition’ food from available supplies. The school was famous for turning out soldiers who could ‘live off the land’ for weeks.”
“But it was not like that, was it?” Evelyn watched his face. Usually so expressive, he held it studiously blank.
“No, it was not like that. Living off the land meant stealing from farms and peasant folk who had little enough to live on as it was, especially after two armies had rolled back and forth across their farms. My men were starving, many of them had dysentery. It was beyond bearing. So I set some rabbit traps, happened to find a scrawny hen that had escaped from somewhere, and I boiled grain, added the pitiful meat scraps, some herbs I found in a hedgerow, and my fellows and I, all twelve of us, had a decent meal.”
“But it didn’t stop there, did it?” Evelyn asked, her eyes shining with comprehension.
“No, it did not. When our tent neighbors got a whiff of good food cooking, and learned how we did it, they brought their meager supplies to combine with ours. After that, it was not too long before I was made quartermaster and head cook, with a reputation for turning a handful of grain and a bone into edible food. From then on, I saw absolutely no part of the fighting unless the scent of cooking brought the enemy to raid our camp.”
“Did that happen often?” Evelyn asked, fascinated by his story in spite of her better judgement
“Once or twice,” Mayson replied. “But less often as my reputation as a cook grew. You’d be amazed how interested men can become in protecting their source of good food.”
Evelyn laughed at that, as he had meant for her to do. There was no point in telling her about the days when boiled grain was all he had to offer his men, or the days when the relentless rain put out the fires or when it was not safe to have a fire, and their grain was soaked instead of boiled.
But then her face sobered. “But how did you learn to cook? I always pictured you as a starving waif that some kindly cook took under his wing.”
“You would not be too far from wrong there. My father was obsessed with the idea of turning Hillsworth into a place of classical beauty where his neighbors could congregate day or night for revels and frolics. My mother grew ill of a fever not long before I was born, so I had a wet-nurse and was essentially raised by the servants.”
“I’ve heard of that happening in great houses,” Evelyn nodded.
“Father had a temper that knew no bounds. When things did not go his way, he took it out on his younger brother and on me. Oddly enough, Uncle Leroy worshipped the ground he walked on, often remarking that he should have been my father’s heir instead of me.”
“Why not you?”
“I was not an easy child, I fear. I was often sickly, hated hunting, and grew pale at the sight of blood. Our cook, who had several nieces and nephews, probably saved my life. He let me hide in the kitchen when Father was in one of his moods. This went on long enough, that when I asked if I could help like the kitchen boys were doing, he would give me small chores, such as rolling and cutting dough. When he found that I had a genuine interest in cooking and a knack for it, he taught me. All on the sly, of course. Father would have had a hysterical fit if he had realized.”
“What happened to your father?”
“He became ill. The physicians could not seem to discover why. They bled him nearly dry, dosed him with all sorts of concoctions, yet he slowly grew weaker. Toward the end, he lost his appetite, and I would go to the kitchen and cook special foods to tempt him into eating. But it was all for nothing. I was four-and-ten then.”
“So it was your uncle who sent you away to school?”
“Yes. He declared that he had no idea how to care for a youth, and sent me off to the military boarding school. It was quite famous, after all, and had a reputation for turning out successful officers.”
“But also a different sort of reputation, I would guess,” Evelyn put in.
“Yes. A very different reputation. It was where the peerage sent their failures, unwanted younger sons, and children born on the wrong side of the blanket who were too well-placed to be ignored. A right lot of young hellions, for the most part.”
“How did you survive there?”
Mayson laughed. “The kitchen again. This time, it was Zhao Bai Li who was my refuge and teacher. He was the school’s cook, and he ruled the kitchen with an iron fist. It was after I saw him calmly send one of my nastier classmates on his way that I asked if he would teach me.”
“And he taught you about golden milk.”
“Yes, that and many other healing recipes. There were several of us who found Mr. Zhao’s kitchen to be a refuge.”
“Zhao was his surname?”
“Yes. The Chinese write their names differently from us.”
“How did he come to be the school’s cook?”
“I don’t k
now. He would never say. I suspect that he was an exile of some sort but he taught those of us whom he deemed worthy how to survive in that school.”
“And you learned more than about cooking.”
“Yes, indeed I did. I suppose he is still there, cooking and teaching the ‘worthy ones’ to survive.”
“That is an amazing tale,” Evelyn said softly. “But why... “
“I like living,” Mayson said wryly. “I was still too young to take control of the estate when I came home from the war, since my father had set the age of inheritance at thirty. I believe he had intended to still be alive when I had my thirtieth birthday.”
“Can you prove who you are?” Evelyn asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“How old are you now?”
“Three-and-thirty.”
“Why not go claim your inheritance? Why let your uncle, who clearly is not doing a good job of managing the estate, run through everything?”
“First of all, he cannot run through everything. Unless he can prove that I am dead or two more years pass without my appearance, he cannot assume the title or touch the principle.”
“That is an odd way of setting things up,” Evelyn said. “If shopkeepers set the inheritance of their shops in such a way, soon there would be no cobblers or weavers.”
“I think my father had some inkling of the kind of person his younger brother had become. Or perhaps he was setting it up in that way so that he could keep control of everything longer.”
“But you would not inherit until after his death, would you?”
“That is right. But he knew he was ill. He spent many hours mewed up with his solicitor shortly before his death.”
“Mayson,” Evelyn said, now holding his hand in both of hers, so that their hands were clumped together, as if they were one fist.
“Yes, Evelyn?”
She felt a sick, churning lurch in her stomach, for she knew the consequence of her next words. An earl could never wed a shopkeeper’s daughter. Even so, she said what she believed to be true. “You should claim your inheritance. It is the talk of the entire countryside how your uncle is treating the people at Hillsworth. It is not fair to them to leave things as they are.”
“You might be right,” Mayson replied soberly. “But I do not think it will be easy.”
“Doing the right thing hardly ever is,” Evelyn said.
Mayson nodded soberly. “I know,” he said.
“Evelyn?”
“Yes, Mayson?”
“I would still like to ask you to marry me, and I will, come summer’s end, no matter what else happens.”
Evelyn gently disengaged her hands. “You say that now, Mayson, and I believe that you mean it to be true. But you might find that things are vastly different once you take up your title.”
Mayson looked into her eyes soberly. “Evelyn, do you think you could love me?”
“It is a little too soon to say for sure, Mayson, but perhaps I could. But your duty must come first.”
Shyly, tentatively, Mayson brushed a tendril of hair away from her face. “I am mindful of my duty, Mrs. Swinton, and of the need to give you time for your grief to run its course. But only one thing could possibly keep me from asking for your hand.”
“What is that?” Evelyn felt her stomach clench. Somehow this conversation had gotten completely out of hand.
“If you told me with all honesty and sincerity that you could never love me or that there was some other person living who had claimed your heart. I will always respect your wishes, but no power on earth will keep me from loving you.”
It took all of Evelyn’s resolve not to melt and say “yes” right then. But she understood how the world worked, and she would rather not have anything happen that they would both regret. Then, almost without her conscious volition she heard herself say, “Claim your inheritance. If you still feel the same way after you have come into your own, I am unlikely to say you nay.”
Mayson recaptured her hand, and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Everything I am, everything I have, and everything I ever will have, I will gladly lay at your feet, my lady Evelyn.”
“I’m not a lady,” she protested softly.
“You are my lady,” he said. “And you always will be.”
The sun brought sparkles to the water, sparkles almost as bright as the little stars that danced in her heart. Even though she knew better, Evelyn could not bring herself to say no.
Chapter 17
Leroy Rutley closed the door behind his visitor. “You came about the advertisement,” he stated.
Yes,” his visitor replied. “My principle is interested in the bounty you are offering. What is this person to you that you offer such a high reward?”
Mr. Rutley replied, “He is my nephew. He has been missing for some time and as it stands now the estate require a great deal of repair and maintenance, all of which must be done out of the proceeds from rent and sales of stock and crops. I cannot touch the principle or even the interest, yet the servants, the farmhands, and all the other workers must be paid.”
“I quite understand,” said his visitor. “My principle has a similar problem and it is for that reason that he is interested in the bounty.”
“Have you some reason,” asked Mr. Rutley, “to believe that you know the location of my nephew?”
“Indeed, I do. I have heard stories and perhaps a name. What kind of proof do you need of his location or his demise?”
“I suppose his body would do, dead or alive. Alive perhaps would be better? Or dead. It is somewhat a matter of indifference to me.”
“That is a most amusing attitude,” said the visitor. “I gather that you were not in line for the inheritance.”
“Oh dear me, no. No, I was the second son, always the second son. It was dinned into my awareness from the beginning that my older brother was the head of the house and that his son should inherit after him. No one was planning on an illness, a miserable wasting illness.”
The visitor barked a short laugh. “I don’t suppose you had any influence on this illness.”
“No,” Mr. Rutley said. “Believe it or not, I was actually rather fond of my brother. It was his spoiled brat of a son that I could not stand. Always talking back, always knowing everything, always good at everything, even though he was often sickly, and so polite. He was so good it was beyond bearing.”
“What of your own family?” his visitor asked.
“My family? My brother married my only love.”
“It would seem to me, then,” said the visitor, “That you would have a vested interest in the caring for her child.”
“One would think that, wouldn't you? But the mewling little beast was the cause of her death.”
“I see,” said the visitor. “That is, indeed, quite interesting. I can see how you might feel some animosity toward the child, but surely you cannot really blame him for his mother's death?”
“I suppose it’s unreasonable, but love is not reasonable, nor desire for revenge.”
“Were you responsible for your brother's death?”
“No, no. No such thing. Nor will I be responsible for my nephew’s death.”
The visitor looked down at his shoes, then looked out the window. “A curious attitude, My Lord.”
“Oh, I am no Lord,” said Mr. Rutley. “As you might guess, that is part of the issue.”
“Oh, yes, I quite understand that is part of the issue,” said his visitor.
“But enough of this,” said Mr. Rutley. “Can you assist me?”
“I believe I can,” his visitor said. “I shall see if I can drive your problem away or simply dispose of it. Of course there is that matter of proof. I am assuming that a body that has clearly come to harm might be proof.”
“One does not like to say so,” protested Mr. Rutley, “but in truth, it would solve a great deal.”
“I’ll see to it,” said his visitor. “You'll be hearing from me.”
Chapter
18
Mayson shook his head over the sorry state of the Sunday roast. Mr. Sparks had forgotten to keep it turned, and it was blackened on one side, but raw on the other.
How could he have forgotten to turn the roast? Did not his nose inform him?
Mayson sighed. There was no help for it. While it was not an enjoyable thought, the fellow would have to go.
Before I Was Yours, My Earl: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 11