Texas Viscount

by Henke, Shirl

  The classy whore on the gangplank.

  She sat behind a desk, poised on the edge of a battered swivel chair like a sparrow ready to take flight, engaged in conversation with one of the minions of the law. Her hair was pulled up in some sort of knot at that delectable nape, and she'd discreetly pinned her bodice closed, but he'd recognize her anywhere.

  In the dark. Blindfolded. The faint essence of wildflowers wafted subtly toward him. Since the crowded room was filled with cigar smoke, volumes of dusty papers, mildew and just plain old grimy dirt, the aroma was probably his imagination. He was remembering what she smelled like from their encounter on the wharf that morning.

  Pausing by the door, he asked one of the men in uniform, “That little gal over there.” He didn't have to point, as she was the only female in the room. “You wouldn't happen to know her name, or address, would you?”

  “Blimey, mate, ain't got no idea. We gets 'em in ‘ere all the time. Mostly nights, though.”

  Just at that moment, as if overhearing them, she looked directly at Josh. Instant disdain flashed into her eyes, then was replaced by something else. Shock? Fear? Outrage? It looked like a combination of all the above, and he was damned if he knew why. All he'd tried to do was rescue her from that bully boy manhandling her. Of course, Mitz's pimps had followed him, and that had complicated the situation a bit, but she had no reason to react this way, blast it.

  Shrugging, he nodded and winked, giving her a broad grin as he strolled out the door a free man. Somehow, he figured she'd be detained for a while. Served her right for being so uppity. Maybe next time they met, she'd be in a better mood.

  Sabrina would have choked him with her ungloved hands if she'd not been so busy explaining how she'd become involved in the frightful mix-up at the wharf. She had to be ever so careful not to get Edmund in trouble for missing his appointment to pick up the earl's heir. Of course, she could not imagine poor Edmund faring any better than she had after that wild Texan started a riot! Her poor cousin would most probably have ended up in jail and she'd be here bailing him out anyway. And he would then most assuredly have lost his employment.

  As things stood now, she had been afforded time to send him a message that he was to meet the coach here at the prison and escort his charge to Hambleton House. The driver and the footmen had miraculously reappeared like genies from a bottle as soon as the crowd dispersed, at least affording her the luxury of a ride to this odious place so that she could secure Mr. Cantrell's release. It had seemed to take an eternity, and all the while she stewed about harm befalling the earl's heir and Edmund losing his position in spite of her efforts.

  Not that this entire fiasco was anyone's fault but Joshua Cantrell's. Well, perhaps her cousin was not entirely blameless either. But even if Edmund had been at the gangplank precisely when the viscount disembarked, what could he or anyone else have done to stop the wild man from accosting that dreadful fallen woman? And then he'd turned his attention to her and brought those waterfront cutthroats trailing after him.

  They were all fortunate to have escaped with their lives. Still, she seethed at his sheer audacity in leering at her as he strode away in that rangy, loose-limbed way in which Americans seemed to move. He'd winked at her, too! Yes indeed, if she ever did have the grave misfortune to meet Viscount Wesley again, she would choke him. Bare-handed!

  * * * *

  Abington Clermont Cantrell, ninth Earl of Hambleton, rubbed his hands with delight after reading the message. At long last, after a quarter century of fruitless searching, his heir was safely in route to his city house. He'd almost despaired of finding his younger brother's grandson. Indeed, he'd not even known that his nephew Charles had a son, only that he'd married and sailed off into the sunset like the ne'er-do-well he was nearly thirty years earlier.

  At that time, Lord Hambleton's own son David was his heir, and David had two sons of his own. The succession seemed intact. But carriage accidents, consumption and influenza had taken their vicious tolls, leaving the old man but one slender hope. For all his nephew's profligacy—he was, after all, little better than a remittance man—it appeared that Charles' boy was a true Cantrell. Under the most appalling conditions, in the most primitive place imaginable, Texas—the old man shuddered just thinking about it—Joshua had made his own fortune.

  Imagine. A self-made millionaire before he was thirty. And he'd started out life in a bordello where his poor dying mother had sought refuge after her worthless husband had gotten himself killed in some senseless duel. Or shoot-out, as those wild American cowboys called them. The earl smiled, stroking his handlebar mustache.

  “I say, does something amuse you, my lord?” Wilfred Hodgins, his secretary, inquired as he placed a sheaf of documents from the Foreign Office on his employer's desk. Hodgins was fortyish with a receding chin that he hid unsuccessfully beneath a Van Dyke beard, and a receding hairline about which he could do nothing at all. His keen dark eyes took in the reports on the earl's heir, and he smiled. “You're anticipating his arrival, are you not?”

  “Most assuredly. I was also thinking that this young hellion has much in common with the new American president.”

  “Oh, that Rough Rider fellow from the Spanish war?” Hodgins inquired politely. “I believe he was a cowboy of some sort, too.”

  “Yes, and to quote his worst political enemy, 'Now that damn cowboy is President of the United States!' ”

  Hodgins digested this bit of information. Since the search for Hambleton's heir had finally borne results, the earl had become quite an authority on American politics, a subject which both mystified and bored his longtime secretary. “Oh, in all the excitement over the viscount's arrival, you haven't forgotten that the Foreign Secretary will be here momentarily?”

  “No, but I do hope we can keep the meeting brief. Joshua will be arriving shortly now, and I'm eager to meet the lad.”

  “I'm certain Lord Lansdowne will understand,” Hodgins replied as a light rap sounded behind him. He turned to the door hidden behind a walnut panel, designed to conceal Hambleton's long association with His Majesty's government's spy network. Opening it, he ushered in the head of the Foreign Office.

  “I see you're pleased with yourself, Hambleton,” Lord Lansdowne said as he stepped inside.

  Bowing discreetly to the two gentlemen, Hodgins left the room. The British Foreign Secretary walked over to the cabinet where the earl kept his liquor and, with long-accustomed familiarity, poured them each a snifter of fine cognac.

  Accepting the crystal stem from his old friend, the earl sipped contemplatively. “Yes. You've heard of his arrival, then?”

  “How could I not? Everyone in London has heard. The afternoon newspapers are full of lurid tales about his exploits at the wharf. It would seem he started a bloody riot. Are you quite certain he's the man for this assignment? Not to mention for the Hambleton titles?”

  “Of course I'm certain. What could be better? He may appear a boorish American bumpkin on the outside, but he's a shrewd, war-toughened observer on the inside. That's why, after I received the complete dossier on him, I had Spring Rice put a bee in Roosevelt's bonnet.”

  “All quite convenient, I must confess, if the boy's as intelligent as you and that unorthodox American president claim he is,” the Foreign Secretary said, tossing down his cognac and pouring a small refill.

  “After your own experiences in India and Canada, you of all men should approve of Joshua, Lansdowne. He drove cattle from Texas to the Dakotas, riding with grown men when he was only eleven years old! By the time he was twenty he owned a ranch—”

  “Which, according to the reports I read, he won in a card game,” Lansdowne interjected dryly.

  The earl waved that comment away. “The point is he held on to the land and filled it with his own stock, then began investing the profits. It's all here in black and white. Boy's quick as a whip and rich as a Romanov.”

  “And therein lies our problem. The always troublesome Russians. As Viscount Wesl
ey, your heir will have many doors opened to him, but do you believe he can penetrate the inner sanctum of this cabal intent on assassinating the Japanese minister? Time is running out. If they succeed in killing Hayashi, we can whistle down the wind for a Japanese alliance.”

  “I know,” the earl said, sipping his cognac. “But we can't trust anyone in our own bloody government at this stage of the game. My grand-nephew is our last hope.”

  “Do you intend to tell him about your connection to the Foreign Office?” Lansdowne asked. “I would prefer you did not.”

  Hambleton nodded. “I see no reason he should be apprised of it at this point. His friend Roosevelt has already informed him of the, er, difficulty vis-à-vis King Edward's nephew. We will need an agent you trust implicitly to act as your intermediary. Whom have you selected?”

  Lansdowne smiled like a Cheshire cat. “Michael Jamison. Young fellow who's proven himself most able. Third son of the Earl of Lynden. His grandfather had a distinguished career with us before inheriting the title. His grandmother was American, I believe, so they should have something in common.”

  Hambleton harrumphed. “If not for President Roosevelt's appeal to Joshua's patriotism because the Americans have a stake in this, he wouldn't have come to England.”

  “And you have an ulterior motive for involving him in this mission, eh?”

  “It will all work out, my dear fellow. I'm certain of it, if even half of what's written here proves true.” He thumped the thick dossier outlining Joshua Cantrell's life history.

  Lansdowne handed the earl a thick bundle of afternoon newspapers. “I'm afraid we may all of us have our work cut out, if even half of what's written here proves true,” he retorted.

  * * * *

  The house was not much to look at, to Josh's way of thinking, but he was not about to voice that thought aloud to the nervous youth assigned to escort him to the earl's city residence. Edmund Whistledown looked as typically English as Josh could ever have imagined—pale with sandy hair and shoulders almost as narrow as his face. The lad seemed disinclined to talk and stuttered when Josh asked questions. All he'd done was repeatedly apologize for failing to meet the ship.

  “I doubt it would’ve made any difference. Once I saw those scum roughing up that little gal, I'd'a waded in anyway,” he'd replied with a grin, rubbing his skinned knuckles. “You wouldn't have been able to stop me.”

  Whistledown's only reply was an a visible bobbing of his Adam's apple and an uncertain nod.

  Not wanting the boy to feel any more guilty or uncomfortable than he obviously already did, Josh did not press him. They passed the duration of the ride mostly in silence.

  The Hambleton city house was one of those tall, skinny stone buildings all lined up in rows, facing pruned-to-the-dickens little garden squares that the English seemed to set so much store by. Of course, since the Cantrell family had been living in it for hundreds of years, Josh supposed they were too attached to it to want to sell and build something a mite splashier. Like his place right outside Fort Worth. Brand spanking new, made of solid oak with a veranda all the way around the house, a forty-foot-long dining room, ten bedrooms and half a dozen water closets, thank you very much.

  Of course, he seldom spent time there, since he traveled on business so much, but it impressed the hell out of visiting cattle buyers and bankers. He imagined wryly that the earl didn't have to impress anybody. Shoot, he didn't even have to work. Josh still had a difficult time wrapping his mind around that concept. Generations of folks—including his own kin—were so rich that they just sat around and sipped tea, or whatever Englishmen did. In America every millionaire he'd ever met, and in the past few years he'd met more than his share, all worked their tails off, whether they'd inherited their money like the Astors or made it themselves like Richard King or even old Jay Gould.

  If his lordship the earl thought he'd tether Josh Cantrell to a tea table, he had another think coming. He smiled at Edmund Whistledown and said, “Much obliged for seeing me here.”

  Then before the young man could do more than mumble, “You're most welcome, my lord,” Josh jumped impatiently from the carriage. A footman, ready to open the door, stumbled backwards to keep from colliding with the striding American, and bowed awkwardly. Josh wasn't rightly sure whether the boy was embarrassed for failing to perform his job, or for the gauche Texan who didn't let him. Whistledown followed, almost skipping to keep up with his charge's long-legged stride.

  Whistling, Josh bounded up the front steps, wondering how he would feel when he met his only living kin. He had no memories of either of his parents. “Garter” Gertie Greer had been the nearest thing to a mother he'd ever known. At the thought of Gertie sitting in some English parlor sipping tea, he broke into a broad grin. Now, that would be a sight to behold!

  Would the old gentleman like him? What in the name of God would they have to talk about? Certainly not his real reason for being here. A note had been delivered to him before he disembarked from the ship. He was to meet a fellow named Michael Jamison sometime tomorrow. He would be contacted and informed of the details. This Jamison worked for the Foreign Office and would fill him in as to what was known of the assassination plot and Edward's nephew's involvement through his Russian mistress.

  Women. Always trouble. An image of that bronze-haired spitfire flashed into his mind as the front door opened. Whistledown made his bow and scurried off, leaving Josh with a stern-faced man whose high starched collar looked about to choke him. The butler identified himself as Nash and extended his hand for Josh's hat.

  Unable to resist, Josh shook it heartily. “Pleased as punch to meet you, Nash. Say, is that your first name or your last?”

  The upper servant jerked back, then quickly recovered. “May I take your hat, my lord?” he inquired, ignoring the question about his name.

  Obligingly, Josh shrugged and handed his battered Stetson to the butler, while he eyeballed the place. A lot fancier on the inside than he'd imagined from out front, he'd grant the earl that much. Huge mirrors with Louis XV gilt frames hung on either side of the entry foyer. Enormous sprays of flowers overflowing from Messien vases stood in front of the mirrors. The floor was polished marble, and the twenty-foot ceiling was hung with a crystal chandelier that glittered more brightly than pictures he'd seen of the crown jewels.

  All this was definitely intended to impress visitors. But he wasn't a visitor. He was, by God, the earl's heir, and he'd be living in this magnificent mausoleum. Josh was not sure how well he'd sleep if his bedroom had a lighting fixture that size suspended over his bed, but he knew Gertie would have loved it. Personally, he'd rather have a mirror.

  From the top of the curving staircase, the earl observed his young charge as Nash showed him into a sitting room. The boy certainly looked disreputable enough. The newspaper accounts of the brawl had been appalling. If the boy behaved half so badly, he'd never be received in polite society at all. That would put a period to presenting him at court, not to mention using him to ferret out those individuals plotting against an Anglo-Japanese treaty.

  He'd take Joshua's measure and then decide what was to be done. Given the tendency toward exaggeration, even outright prevarication, in much of the press, their subject might be innocent of any misconduct whatever. The earl liked the boy's confident stride and the way he'd studied the interior of the house quickly, without gaping. If he was equally as adroit at judging people, the Foreign Secretary would be delighted. He would have to give Whistledown a good dressing-down about allowing Joshua to slip away and become involved in such a disturbance, but that could wait.

  He descended the stairs and made his way to his study. After an appropriate interval, he rang for Nash to escort his great-nephew down the hall. In his limited experience with Americans, he'd found them to be notoriously impatient. It would do Joshua good to wait a bit. If he himself were the smallest bit apprehensive about this first meeting and the impression he might make on the boy, he would never admit it, even to hims
elf.

  Josh entered the dark, masculine room, impressed by the floor-to-ceiling shelves of books and the patina of age that gleamed from the wood-paneled walls.

  The desk appeared well used, piled with papers much as his was at home, and the leather chairs looked inviting. The tall man standing in the center of the room did not. A thick silver mustache lined his upper lip, and his thinning hair was trimmed neatly with muttonchops brushed back so smoothly they looked as if nary a single hair would dare to move out of place. He was heavyset with bulldog jowls and shrewd gray eyes that missed little.

  Josh could see the earl examining his ripped, dirty buckskin jacket and denims, swelling eye and bruised knuckles. “So, we meet at last, sir,” he said, waiting for some cue.

  “I must say, it's taken long enough. Welcome home.” The earl stepped forward, and a broad smile suddenly changed his entire demeanor, tilting the mustache upward devilishly and making his eyes crinkle at the corners. He offered his hand.

  Josh took it and they shook hands firmly. The earl's hands were large and fine-boned but soft, while his own were callused from physical labor. “I don't rightly know if this is home, sir,” he said quietly. “Are you sure you got the right Cantrell?”

  He'd seen no family resemblance whatever until the old man threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Oh, I'm quite certain, you young scamp! My detectives were quite thorough.” He looked down at the ring on Josh's right hand. “That is the Hambleton family crest. Not too many of them floating about on either side of the ocean.”

  “From what I've heard of my father, he could've won it in a card game.”

  “Or lost it,” Hambleton replied as his smile dimmed. “But he did not. I knew him well as a lad. He was a few years younger than you are now when he and his bride left England. Here is the family portrait he sat for when he reached his majority.” The earl reached for a photograph amid the clutter on his desk and handed it to Josh.