My Kind of Earl

by Vivienne Lorret

  The old codger was always pushing for a bit more. But a grin tugged at Raven’s lips nonetheless. “Very well . . . Grandfather.”

  Even after such an intense debate, Raven felt lighter somehow when he left the room. As if a great stone had been pried from his chest.

  He had a grandfather now, and he had Jane. They were all the family he needed. All he ever wanted.

  Knowing he would see her again this afternoon for tea, his thoughts were distracted as he walked down the stairs to the foyer. He nearly collided with a man stepping in from the rain.

  The figure in the doorway paused, back turned to shake the droplets from the brim of his beaver top hat. “Take my coat, will you? And fetch me a whisky while you’re at it.”

  Raven remembered the voice and instantly bristled, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. Staring at the sharp profile, the hawklike nose and silver streaked sandy hair, he recalled the man from a confrontation at Sterling’s.

  Straightening his shoulders, Raven growled, “Take off your own bloody coat.”

  The man whipped around, blue eyes flashing daggers. They widened in twin recognition. “You! What are you doing in my uncle’s home?”

  “Paying a call on my grandfather.”

  It felt good to say it aloud to another person.

  It felt even better to see the shock on this prig’s face.

  Raven said nothing more and simply walked past him, through the open doorway. Yet, it didn’t escape his notice that the man was likely Lord Herrington, his father’s cousin—the same man who’d been campaigning for years to be named Warrister’s heir.

  This was Raven’s first lesson that, while a man might wish to have a family, he could not always choose them.

  * * *

  Jane put away all the jars, vials and gallipots from the trestle table in the conservatory, then dressed it in linens and her mother’s finest china and silver. She baked a special cake for Raven’s birthday tea, and Mrs. Dunkley set it on a porcelain pedestal in the center of the table, enrobed in pink icing and sugared flowers.

  For the occasion, Jane wore a dress of rose-and-white stripes with flounced sleeves. She wanted to surprise a laugh from him with this color scheme, reminding him of the night they’d met.

  Busy fussing with an intricately folded napkin, she heard the door to the garden open and then close. Her heart started turning in an endless revolution. She bit down on her lip to keep from grinning too broadly. He was here.

  She turned and her breath caught at the sight of Raven entering the light-filled chamber. He wore a fine suit, the charcoal-colored broadcloth tailored perfectly to his form, and his jaw was freshly shaven above a starched white cravat.

  Stopping before her, he bowed, then presented her with a bouquet of bright pink flowers.

  “For you, Miss Pickerington.” His gray eyes gleamed with mirth as he glanced to the table. “It seems we are of like mind as usual.”

  She smiled and took the flowers, her hands trembling slightly. She didn’t know why she was nervous all of a sudden. Perhaps it was because no one had ever brought her flowers before.

  “They’re lovely.” She drew in their sweet aroma, gathering them close. Then, without warning, he picked her up by the waist and twirled her around in circles. Her head fell back on a giddy laugh as she clung to his shoulders. “You’re crushing the flowers.”

  “A lesson to you to put them down sooner. You should have known I’d need to have you in my arms straightaway,” he said, nipping lightly along her exposed throat. “And you are positively delectable in pink. Then again, you’re quite tasty out of it, as I recall.”

  Her body clenched with tender yearning at the reminder. “Hush now. You mustn’t say things like that because Henry is joining us for tea. No doubt Charles, Phillipa, and the twins would already be here, but they are still writing their final examination essays.”

  “Then you leave me no choice but to put you over my shoulder and carry you back to my cave so that I can have my way with you.”

  As if to prove it, he held her tighter. His grin brimmed with wicked intent as he began to prowl toward the door.

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “With you, I think I would dare to do just about anything,” he said with a mysterious glint in his eyes. Yet, with patent reluctance that made her heart flutter even more, he lowered her to the stone tiles.

  They both heard her brother’s disconsolate shuffle in the hall. But, ever the scoundrel, Raven stole a quick kiss the instant before Henry appeared. Therefore, her cheeks were in high color when he ambled in.

  He looked between them before rolling his eyes. “I don’t have to be here for tea, you know. I can go somewhere else and be alone in the silence.”

  Recovering herself, she dashed over to her desk to put her disheveled bouquet in one of the jars she’d stashed earlier.

  She clucked her tongue. “If melancholia were contagious, I should shoo you from the room post haste. But even Doctor Lockwood said that you should move around a bit during the day. He believes that bed rest is important to aid recovery, but so is good circulation. Thirty minutes out of bed and in the sunlight will do you a world of good, I’m sure.”

  “She’s a hard taskmaster, this one,” Raven said, commiserating with Henry. “But perhaps this will help to ease some of the ailment you suffer.”

  Reaching into his coat, he withdrew a folded packet of papers. He held them out to her brother, who reached reflexively with the arm encased in a sling and winced before remembering to use his other hand.

  Henry issued a taut sigh as he took hold of them. “And what’s this, then?”

  “Open it and discover the answer for yourself,” Jane huffed.

  Her brother slumped down in a chair and spread the pages wide. He stared at them for a moment, then smiled and laughed out loud. “Compositions for the left hand. You’re a right solid fellow.”

  Raven shrugged and came around the table to hold Jane’s chair. “I just happened by a little shop this morning and thought these would keep you occupied during your recovery.”

  As she sat down, she smiled up at him, her heart twirling again. Her arteries were surely loomed in a tight swirl like ribbons on a maypole by now.

  He gestured to the center of the table with a nod. “And what’s this?”

  “It’s a fortune-telling cake,” she said as he took the place beside her. “There are small trinkets tucked inside, so be careful that you don’t bite down too hard.”

  “Just don’t get a button in your slice—that’s not a proper fortune,” Henry said.

  “I dunno.” Raven glanced to Jane. “I wouldn’t mind a button, as long as it had brown thread. What other fortunes are in there?”

  Henry listed them with absent finger-taps on the table as if he were already practicing the music. “There’s always a sovereign. Mother used to get a little cherub in hers, but by the time Theodora was born and the nursery expanded to two rooms, everyone agreed that we should lose that one. And cook always puts a ring in Jane’s cake, but she’s never gotten it in her slice. Then last year, one of us—and I’m not naming names—put a spinster’s thimble inside. Unfortunately, she didn’t get that slice either. But her friend did.”

  “And it wasn’t very kind of you,” Jane chided and turned the cake, repositioning it to better her chances. “Thankfully, Ellie is rather fond of thimbles and didn’t take umbrage.”

  Raven laid his hand over hers and slipped the cake knife free. “So then which slice do you normally get?”

  “Nothing,” Henry chortled. “Her slice is always empty.”

  “Ah,” Raven said thoughtfully. “The slice of possibility, where your future is what you make of it.”

  Jane smiled and lifted her brows smugly at her brother. “Precisely. It doesn’t matter what the slice holds. In reality, we all forge our own paths.”

  However, as she watched Raven cut into the cake, she still hoped to finally get that ring.

&nbs
p; Chapter 31

  After Raven and Henry left the conservatory, Jane went up to the garret in search of the matching slippers for the gown she planned to wear at Aversleigh’s ball.

  She’d found them quickly but spotted a few stains that needed tending. Thinking about the solution she would use, she wasn’t paying much attention to where she walked and accidentally tripped over a small black-lacquered casket.

  She landed, sprawled out on the floor. But she simply laughed at herself, far too content to be bothered by the bracing sting in her palms and smarting knees on the hardwood planks. She did, however, cast a glare to the culprit.

  And felt a jolt of surprise.

  It was a box from among her uncle’s things. She must have forgotten to have it brought downstairs on that first day Raven had come. Of course, it likely didn’t contain anything of import. But ever curious, she opened the lid.

  It was full of letters. Examining them in the bright shaft of light through the dormer window, she saw that they were written in French and addressed to Jean Louis, as in John Louis Pickerington, her uncle.

  She frowned in perplexity. More letters written in French to her uncle? It seemed too coincidental not to be related to the letter from Raven’s mother.

  However, this was not Arabelle Northcott’s handwriting.

  In fact, the script was small, with letters crowded together in utilitarian fashion. This writer, she surmised, was not given to wasting good paper. And the signature on the bottom was not Raven’s mother’s either. It was signed only with a single name—Helene.

  The paper was a fine quality, similar if not identical to that of the letter from Raven’s mother to Uncle Pickerington.

  Scouring through the depths of the box, there seemed to be more than a dozen letters, all in the same hand.

  Jane skimmed the French text quickly and realized it was a love letter. Helene, it seemed, was passionately in love with Uncle Pickerington.

  Letter after scandalous letter was written with an open eroticism that made her blush. But there was a vulnerability here in these pages, as well. When Helene described her bitter escape from a cruel husband—whom she called le Sinistre—and her fears that if she bore him a son then her husband would never let her go, it was impossible for Jane not to hope for the author’s happiness.

  Perhaps her uncle felt the same. Why else would he have kept the letters?

  Hmm . . . why indeed.

  Something began to niggle at the back of her mind. But she lost her train of thought as she read further. When Helene mentioned pining for him while he was busy teaching English to her mistress, a chill went down Jane’s spine.

  Her uncle had worked for the Northcotts after all. Proof of it was right here in her hand, written on paper from the Northcott household.

  But the question was, why had he lied about it?

  He’d been having an affair with a woman who’d likely been the Northcotts’ maid. Was he ashamed? Perhaps. After all, the woman was also carrying le Sinistre’s child in her womb.

  The child.

  “Wait,” Jane said into the stale air as the pieces started to fit together.

  Her eyes drifted to the corner of the page. She must have looked at the dates before, surely. Yet now, seeing the month and the year scrawled in black ink made her pulse thicken with dread.

  Fingers numb, she fanned out every yellowed letter, putting them in chronological order.

  All the dates were from the year 1799, except for the last letter. It was dated January of 1800, little more than a week before the fire.

  And in the letter were the damning words: “It has happened. I have borne the monster a son.”

  A son.

  This meant that there was another male infant in the house at the time of the fire.

  Dismayed, Jane realized that these weren’t just random letters left forgotten. They cast doubt on Raven’s legitimacy.

  Was that the reason he’d been left on the foundling home’s doorstep and no one had bothered to claim a reward for his rescue?

  She didn’t know the answer. But she wished with all her might that she could turn back time and stop herself from opening this box.

  * * *

  The more Raven thought about it, the more eager he was for his new life to begin.

  Of course, not even he was surprised to realize that his first order of business was to do something special for Jane. She’d done so much for him, after all. And knowing how much she loved her family, he knew exactly what to do.

  After his birthday celebration, he’d spent the better part of the day making inquiries about her uncle’s debts, and then arranging to pay them off in secret. Soon, she would have all her family together again.

  His second order of business was to hire a cook. And he knew just where to find one.

  Late that night, he walked the pavement toward Moll Dawson’s, hoping he’d find Bess in her usual spot. But as his polished shoes landed on the stone, every step had a queerly tardy echo.

  As if someone were following him.

  Raven whistled a tune into the cold December air, his breath misting in a cloud beneath the lamplight. He paused, pretending to pat his pockets for a cheroot, and surreptitiously glanced over his shoulder. Just beyond the shadow of the previous lamppost, a figure paused, too. And it wasn’t likely that he was alone.

  Walking on, Raven kept watch on the narrow inlet of an alley up ahead where the lamplight didn’t reach. One of two things would happen up there. Either he’d encounter his shadow’s bedfellow, waiting in the dark for the two of them to come at him at once . . . or Raven would lie in wait and teach this bloke a lesson he’d not soon forget.

  Approaching the alley, he heard the shuffle and scrape of a heavy step. He rolled his shoulders in readiness for whatever emerged from the dark and whatever came up behind him.

  “Well, if it ain’t me long lost chum from our foundling days and old Devil’s work’ouse,” a piercing voice drawled, squeaking at the ends in familiarity.

  Raven stopped as the large-bellied shape emerged, the fleshy cheeks giving the grown man with a scruffy beard a boyish appearance. “Gerald Tick?”

  The two of them had been part of the same group of boys that Mr. Mayhew had sold to Mr. Devons for his workhouse.

  “The one and only,” he said with a sneering brown-toothed grin as he spat on the ground. “Look at you in your posh clothes. Rumor ’as it that you ain’t no orphan anymore. Well done, you.”

  Wary about this reunion, he stayed where he was. But behind him he heard the approach of those echoed footfalls on the pavement. This time, when he looked over his shoulder, the figure was standing in the lamplight. And another grin greeted Raven.

  “Surely, you remember me, little flightless bird. Devil paid me right ’andsome to track you down whenever you’d run off.”

  Raven remembered the taunts and the jeers of “little bird, little bird, likes to eat rat tails for worms” every time he was locked in that cupboard. “Bertie Woodcock.”

  The man laid a three-fingered hand over his heart. “You do remember. I’m touched, I am.”

  “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, gentlemen?”

  “Gentlemen,” Tick screeched in a laugh.

  Woodcock took a step forward. From his sleeve, he pulled out a cudgel and smacked it sharply against his palm. “I dunno whot it is about you, but Mayhew and the old Devil weren’t the only ones who hated you. Believe it or not, there’s a bloke who don’t just want to teach you a lesson. Wants you dead and buried, ’e does. Says ’e’s willin’ to pay to make sure it’s done right this time.”

  Chapter 32

  Later that night, Jane paced the floor of the conservatory. Her thoughts were always clearer in this space. She’d brought down the black-lacquered casket with her, along with all those terrible letters that cast doubt on Raven’s legitimacy.

  In her mind, she ran through the facts in quick succession. The proof working in his favor was the mark on his arm,
the January he arrived at the foundling home—the same month as the fire—and his resemblance to the portrait of the Northcotts. All relatively solid arguments, she thought with a nod.

  Then she stopped abruptly on the stone tiles as the opposition chimed in.

  None of it was wholly indisputable. Logic dictated that every fact could be twisted and seen as coincidence by those who wanted to deny his claim. And they would . . . if this information surfaced. If . . .

  Could she keep it a secret? Should she?

  He could be the maid’s son, her mind whispered. She growled in frustration and shook her head, hating the turn of her own thoughts.

  The truth was, someone had saved a child from the fire and left him on the doorstep of the foundling home. Could it have been a mother who wanted to save her son from a sinister husband and father? If so, then where was Helene now?

  So many unanswered questions. Jane’s head was starting to throb.

  She had to tell Raven.

  But she knew what this would do to him. If she told him about these letters, she’d break his heart. And yet, if she didn’t, she’d be breaking her promise. He hated secrets.

  Before she knew what to do, she heard a tap on the glass.

  She quickly stashed away all the letters and closed the casket, stuffing it under her desk for good measure. Then she rushed to the door.

  But it wasn’t Raven standing in the cold December drizzle.

  “Duncan!” she said, stunned and out of breath. “What are you doing here so late? And why have you come to the conservatory door?”

  Her cousin shifted from one foot to the other and dragged off his hat, worrying the brim in clumsy folds. “Because he told me not to come . . . but, if I was going to ignore him and come anyway, that I should come to the conservatory. So here I am.”

  “Whyever would Raven tell you not to come?”

  “Doesn’t want you to worry. Said he’d be just fine. It’s only a little blood, that’s all.”

  Jane went cold all over. “Duncan, you have to take me to him.”