“You may say Adrian’s mother has been taken ill,” she told her mama. “I will write, I promise. But if I am to support him, I have to start now.”
Mickey had still not told them where he was going, insisting the story about his mother was true, but she would wear him down. At the worst, she’d end up at the family seat of the Dukes of Preston and meet his mother.
She started by speculating aloud about the places they were to visit, and where they could stop on the way. His cagey responses made Livia positive that Mickey knew what was going on. She had started this journey to call his bluff, but he was still holding strong.
Not until the end of the day, when they were about to rack up at an inn did he relent. After Finch had left the coach to attend to the unloading of the luggage her mistress would need, he closed his eyes and shook his head. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”
“No,” she said cheerfully. “And we have three more days.”
“One,” he said. “One.” And he drew a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Here.”
She took the paper but kept her attention on him. “You can read?”
He shrugged. “My ma taught me. She wanted me to go to the charity school at the docks, but she died.” He said it without emotion, but turned his head to glance out of the window. His mother’s death affected him, but he didn’t want people to know it.
“How long ago did she die?”
“Five years.”
“And you’re twelve.”
He turned back to face her, cocky grin firmly in place. “Thirteen now. I had a birthday.”
Thirteen. He’d been on his own since he was seven years old. No child deserved that. And if he’d learned to read by then without anyone’s tuition except for his mother, he was a bright boy.
She recognized the address on the paper as an old house that was part of Jeffrey’s estate. She hadn’t thought of it until this moment, though. It had nothing of note, and Jeffrey had left the house to deal with another time. As far as she knew, it was a ruin.
Except that it couldn’t be.
It didn’t take long for Livia to work out what was happening. Oh God, he’d gone after Jeffrey. There could be only one reason. She’d told him of her baby, and he’d gone to discover more about the lad. Either that, or he knew where her son was.
And Jeffrey, seeing the loss of his expectations when she married Adrian, would not want the boy any longer. He would hide him, send him where nobody would ever find him. Rather than that, Adrian had gone after him.
Finch returned and Livia informed her, and the coachman that their route would deviate a little. The man didn’t grumble to her face but did inform her they would have to take a side road when she gave him the address. “And in this weather, your grace, it’s likely to slow us down.”
“As quick as you can,” she said. “Time is very important.”
Every mile that passed, she gnawed at her nails, but they had another day to travel before they reached their destination. She hardly slept that night, though the inn was good and the beds comfortable. The more she tried, the more sleep escaped her.
Her husband wouldn’t be pleased to see her, that was for sure.
* * * *
Having a horse go lame after the first station and then finding the next steed he hired was no better than a slug had not improved Adrian’s temper. The journey had taken much longer than he’d planned. The inn they’d stayed at, chosen from necessity, proved rowdy, the beds lumpy. Adrian chose to sleep on top and use his greatcoat for cover against the freezing night. He paid for extra logs for the fire, and probably managed two or three hours of sleep. He’d managed on much less.
The going proved harder. They passed through a wood that had collected the rain of the last few days and stored it, churning the path into mud under their hooves. The frost was better. Loomis never complained, merely got out the map book they had brought to check they were on the right route.
Except then they got lost. By the time they regained their path, they’d traveled ten miles in the wrong direction. Loomis apologized until Adrian snapped, “Enough, man!” at him, and then felt bad because the fault lay with him as much as it did the footman.
And all the time anxiety gnawed at his stomach.
Finally, as dusk was falling on the second day after they’d left Haxby, they arrived at a pair of gates. They lay open, one lurching to the side, an overgrown drive beyond. Their horses traversed the rough, rabbit-holed path with great care. If they had to leave, they would need to lead their mounts back up because darkness would have fallen. They couldn’t risk laming the animals. The nearest inn was five miles away, and it was only a small place. Doubtful they had any decent horses for hire.
Adrian did everything he could to quell his growing ire. His temper had let him down before. Over the years he’d learned how to harness it, wait until the icy blast arrived and he could think again. But now, with the weather doing its best to snow, and failing because the cold had overwhelmed it, Adrian couldn’t find that core he needed. Only red, flaming fury drove him to get to the house and rescue the boy.
Sir Jeffrey meant to kill him, Adrian was sure of it. With the boy out of the way, youthful indiscretions were done away with. Sir Jeffrey was a tragic widower with a wife who died in childbirth, a war hero, if one didn’t know better. Constructing his own past, turning his sordid doings into positive actions. Only Adrian stood between him and a child’s life.
He hated politicians. Oily bunch of self-serving acolytes. He’d had a few trying to climb into his backside before, an experience that was as uncomfortable as it sounded.
He forced his mind on the practicalities. They had to deal with the situation and leave, most likely with a child who hadn’t ridden a horse. A frightened child.
The front of the house appeared dispiritingly shabby. At first glance it presented as a modest Jacobean mansion, but on closer inspection slates were missing off the roof and the paint on the woodwork was peeling and shabby. A beam on the first floor had a disturbingly deep crack in it, and green, slimy algae concealed much of the wood. Since the place was Jacobean, that added up to a lot of wood. A lot of rotten wood.
The knocker on the front door was rusty, so it was just as well Adrian had no intention of using it. While Loomis found somewhere to tether the horses, he nudged the slab of planked wood, ready for it to resist him.
It didn’t. Instead, the door swung inward. Not silently, which was a shame, but the creak echoed through an empty hall. Their boots echoed on the floor. No servant came to greet them. No sound of life. Why bother to lock the door when there was nothing to steal?
Adrian’s stomach plummeted. Had Lady Creasey fooled him? Sent him on a wild goose chase? He could have wasted days getting here, only for—
A sound came from above, accompanied by a sprinkling of dust. Someone was upstairs. Glancing at Loomis, Adrian jerked his head. Loomis nodded. Adrian didn’t have to tell him to draw a pistol. He pulled out his own, checked it, even though he’d loaded it himself, and walked toward the staircase.
They had no chance of walking quietly, but they went as quietly as they could, and at a gesture from Adrian, placed their feet at the same time. Whoever was upstairs would think only one person was here. At the top of the stairs, Adrian made another gesture. Loomis understood. He would not make himself known.
Adrian placed his gloved hand on the dirty latch and opened the door.
The room was large, and empty but for a few sticks of furniture. A man stood facing him with weapons drawn. A sword, of all things. And he had a small boy in front of him.
Adrian’s attention went immediately to the child. Skinny, dressed warmly but plainly, he was about the same height as Mickey—but with a head of flaming red-gold hair.
He’d know that shade anywhere. Slightly darker than his wife’s but to compound the issue, the lad had
deep blue eyes. This was his wife’s child. Ten years old.
The boy stared at him, his mouth open.
Grabbing his shoulder, his fingers digging into the lad’s flesh, Sir Jeffrey dragged him to stand by his side. “His name is John. He is my son.”
Adrian gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, now you acknowledge him?”
The boy was shivering. His clothes were adequate, and a fire burned, or rather smoked, in the grate. It was not cold that caused that trembling. It was fear.
“Let him go,” Adrian said.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? He’s mine. As is Livia.”
“I married her,” Adrian said bluntly.
“I married her first.”
Cold swept through him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and tightening his grip on his pistol. But that could not be true. Could it? Three years ago Parliament passed a law regulating marriage. Before that, the ceremony had been a casual affair. In some places all it took was a mutual vow, said in a holy place.
Livia had loved this man, or thought she had. Once, she might have stood in a place with him and exchanged vows. Could it be true?
It didn’t matter. “I married her in front of witnesses. We satisfied every legal requirement. If you went through anything with her, it was not real. She is not your wife.” And he loved her. He would not let Livia go, not to anyone. Least of all to this man.
“Any children you bear will be bastards.”
Considering his own origins, Adrian had little concern for these threats. “You will have to pay a great deal of money to prove that.”
Sir Jeffrey studied Adrian closely. “You’d like that, would you not? This is my son and my house. You may leave now.”
Adrian let a corner of his mouth curl in a wry smile. “And let you have your will with the boy? Without him, you have scrubbed the slate clean. Did you not think I had worked that out?”
His opponent’s eyes widened. Just a little, but enough to let Adrian know he had struck on the truth. “How could I do such a thing?”
“Easily, I imagine, taking into account the way you treat other people. You do not really see them as separate beings, do you? They are there to serve your needs, nothing more.” His mouth flattened into a tight line.
“You appear to assume so much about me. How can you know that?” The pitch of his voice rose.
Oh yes, Adrian was certainly on the right track. “Because I have known one like you before.” More than one, but one in particular.
“Who?”
“My father.” He remembered well enough, though he would not discuss it with this toad.
“Both your fathers died—the natural one and the cuckold.” Sir Jeffrey’s lips lifted in a sneer. “History repeats itself, does it not? Since I have cuckolded you. Or is it the other way around? You have helped a number of wives deceive their husbands in the worst possible way. Now you have helped another one.”
Adrian didn’t bother to reply to that accusation. Why should he care what this idiot thought? “You are welcome to try the case in the courts. But today I have come for the boy.”
For the first time he met the direct blue gaze of the child. And almost reared back. The boy was terrified. He lowered his tone, softened his words for the lad. “Would you prefer to come with me?”
The boy nodded eagerly and Adrian’s heart broke. This child was willing to go with a stranger, rather than stay with the man claiming to be his father. Fathers didn’t behave like that. They cared for their children. Or they should. He knew all about that too. He would not leave without the boy.
A disturbance sounded below and he smiled. Loomis would stop anyone coming in here. There were bound to be a few servants around. Even though the place stank of damp and mildew, it still had a roof. Just. Someone was still living here, God help them.
“Your caretakers seem to have returned. Now hand the boy over. You heard him. He wants to come with me.”
“Whoever gave children the right to decide?” Sir Jeffrey dropped the sword. It clattered to the floor, the only shiny object for miles, apart from the cut-steel buttons on Adrian’s coat and waistcoat.
Adrian took a step forward, intending to snatch the boy away from his tormentor. He wanted none of this. If they had to walk the five miles in the freezing cold, they were leaving this place.
Sir Jeffrey tightened his hold. His other hand held a gleaming pistol. The click signaled the cocking of it. “Don’t do it,” Sir Jeffrey warned as Adrian readied his own weapon. “Let the hammer down. Gently. Then drop it.”
He turned the flintlock, and pressed the barrel against the boy’s head.
* * * *
“Hurry, oh, hurry!” Gazing out of the coach window, Livia could only see trees and hills, with sheep scattered over the frost-sprinkled landscape. Nothing else.
The coach drew to a halt. The footman swung down, opened the door and let down the steps, together with a blast of chilly air.
“We’re here, your grace.”
“Are we?”
“You mean those?” Finch pointed to a pair of gates on her side of the coach. One swung drunkenly from a single hinge.
“I asked at the inn in the village. They said here.” Pushing his wig aside, the coachman scratched his head. “I can’t see how somebody could live here. There’s a house up there. I saw it, but the trees around it are overgrown. Must have been a tidy manor once.”
Stunned, Livia took the footman’s hand and allowed him to help her to alight. Just as well she wore her sturdy ankle boots because the ground was hard and uneven. No sign of a gracious path, or any tended greenery. Hedges encroached so far there was hardly room to pass by them. Lifting the skirts of her riding habit, heedless of gentility and grace, Livia prepared to edge her way around them.
“Wait!”
Mickey rushed up to her, brandishing a pair of pistols. The ones they kept inside the coach in case of trouble. They were always loaded. Livia took them both. “Yes, I might need these.” She shoved them into the capacious pockets of her cloak.
“Can you use them?”
Blue eyes met gray. “Yes,” she said.
Mickey nodded. “Any more around?”
“Coachman has a pair, as well as his shotgun.”
Mickey turned back. “Gimme one.”
In other circumstances Livia might have found amusement in the way the burly coachman, made even bulkier by his layers of clothing, handed the boy a pistol. He didn’t even ask if Mickey could use it. Somehow, Livia assumed that would be a redundant question.
Even Finch found a small pistol. Armed to the teeth, Livia, Mickey, her maid, her coachman, his relief driver and the footman stepped forward. A veritable army. “Stay behind,” she said to the footman. “Somebody needs to look after the vehicle.”
“There’s nobody for miles, your grace.”
“There’s somebody in there.” She nodded in the direction of the yet-unseen house. “And I don’t trust them one bit.”
Dilapidated or not, the house was a fair size, which indicated a fair number of servants. She wouldn’t put it past Jeffrey to order one of them to take the coach, or at least raid it to see what they could find. Or to set the horses free to delay them.
Grumbling, the footman remained behind, going to the horses’ heads to placate the animals. He’d walk them if they took too long.
The decision to leave the coach in the road had been a good one. They were bound to have lost a wheel at the very least in one of the holes that riddled the drive. Despite that, it didn’t take long for them to reach the house.
“The door’s open, your grace,” the coachman said.
“I can see that.”
“We need to keep quiet,” Mickey put in.
Two horses stood, gently steaming, although someone had thrown blankets over their backs. They were loosel
y tethered to the overhanging branches of an oak tree, a little distance from the house.
The place was filthy, neglected, some of the windows smashed. Not a place to bring up a small boy, Livia thought indignantly. “Why do we need to keep quiet?” she asked Mickey, turning back to him.
“Because if he hears us coming…” Mickey drew his finger across his throat in a dramatic gesture.
Alarmed, Livia agreed. “You’re right.” She paused to tuck her skirts up so they wouldn’t make too much noise. “Everyone, no talking inside the house. I want to find the child and leave. If he is on his own, we can do that easily. If not, we’ll need all our wits about us.” If he was here at all. Jeffrey had described this place as “neat.” It looked far from neat to her.
A flight of crumbling stone steps led to the open door. Livia followed John Coachman through. Her gown made the tiniest sound as she pushed past, and she paused to catch her breath.
Then she wished she had not. Damp permeated this place like a shroud around a slowly rotting corpse. Too much wood for a worm to resist. And the place was all but empty. This could not be the house. It just couldn’t.
But as she turned to gesture everyone outside, a sound came from the floor above. A child, crying.
Either this place was haunted, or it held what she had come for. That and her husband.
Men’s voices sounded, angry tones coming down to them. She recognized them both.
And at the top of the stairs stood a man Livia had come to know quite well, although she couldn’t recall his name. Her husband’s favorite footman. Loomis held his finger to his lips. She acknowledged his warning with a nod.
Livia led the way up the stairs, which creaked and groaned in protest, but only a little. Fortunately the wind was getting up, and outside the leafless trees were rattling their branches and groaning in their turn.
Boundless (The Shaws) Page 25