“I’m planning on it.” Because if nothing else, a married man could establish his own household.
“As if you could,” Tye snorted, eyeing his brother’s crotch meaningfully.
“You need to be more careful, Tye.” Thomas ignored his brother’s insult, which was old and—much to Thomas’s relief—groundless. “Papa won’t stand for more of your carrying-on, and I’m done with it, too. We’ve become a perennial joke, with bets laid as to how long we’re allowed out of Hampshire before Papa has to drag us by the ears back to the family seat. Pretty soon, we’ll be like old Wilton, virtual prisoners of our family’s outrage.”
“Wilton’s no prisoner.” A sly look came into Tye’s eyes as he crossed to the wardrobe. “He’s a canny old thing, and if you had the amusements to hand he did, you might not be off to dance and small talk your way through endless evenings of bad music and low stakes.”
Thomas was weary, and not only because he faced a journey of several hours on horseback in the summer sun come morning.
Tye handled the clothing in the wardrobe as if already choosing which of Thomas’s belongings to pilfer for his own use.
“Now you envy the Earl of Wilton, whose own family won’t have him. Consider what that says about you, Tye, and consider that I mean it: I’m done with your nonsense.”
“Safe journey.” Tye stepped back and closed the doors of the wardrobe. “I’ll be thinking you of, swilling orgeat and showing the debutantes around the archery butts, while I find better sport with an entirely different variety of female.”
He gave an airy court bow in parting, and Thomas closed the door with a sense of relief. Old secrets, secrets that went back to childhood, bound them, and so, too, did a reluctant protectiveness on Thomas’s part. Tye had been the oldest, the one their mother doted on, and Thomas knew what that had cost his brother.
***
“Why are you still awake?” Peak’s voice held a note of censure, but Cato knew that voice and heard the hint of concern in it as well.
“Missing me, Peak?”
“Hush your trash.” Peak took the seat beside Cato on the bench outside the stables. Right beside him. “Pretty half-moon tonight.”
“The moon always seems bigger in the summer. And to answer your question, I am waiting for our errant lord and master to come home.”
“Paying a call on the widow, is he?”
“He is.” Cato shifted, so his thigh was aligned with Peak’s. “Like an idiot, he walked through the self-same woods where somebody took a shot at him.”
“Hard to shoot straight in the dark. Even with half a summer moon.”
But easy to lurk in the shadows, as Cato had been lurking. “He wants to get shut of the lady, but the poor bastard’s so hard up he can’t give up his toy.” Cato glanced at his companion. “She lets him get away with this.”
“Women are fools. Some women.”
“Women have their pride. All women.”
“Men, too.” Peak’s teeth gleamed briefly in the shadows. “Lady Rammel is no fool, and once she gets her bearings, she’ll send him packing.”
“You care to wager on that?”
“How are we to prove our wager if Amherst and the widow come to a parting of the ways? He’s not about to blame her for sending him elsewhere to scratch his itch. The woman has a baby on the way.”
Peak’s insights were interesting, and often deadly accurate.
“You have a point, except Amherst talks to me more and more as if he trusts me. He might admit to being cashiered from her bed.”
“You’ll abuse his trust, too, won’t you?”
Cato blew out a breath and switched to Gaelic. “Do you know how close you push me to the edge, sitting out here with me like this on a soft summer night? How you abuse my trust?”
“I know.” Peak rose easily, too easily. “Believe me, Catullus, I know.”
Maybe it was Cato’s imagination, or his wishful heart, but he could have sworn he felt deft fingers brush softly over his hair before Peak ducked into the safety of the stables.
***
“Your mother is asking for you.” Robert Benning, Baron Trevisham, tried to keep his expression impassive as he surveyed his older son.
“This is supposed to be news?” Tye took a casual sip of brandy. The quantity of liquor Tye could hold had become…appalling, even for a hounds and horses man who was never far from his flask.
“She’s your mother,” Trevisham snapped. “She asks little enough in this life. You will attend her before you seek your bed.”
“Yes, my lord.” The note of mockery in Tye’s voice was underscored by a small salute with his drink. “Before I do, Tom suggested I ask you about the family finances. Are we pockets to let, Papa?”
Trevisham winced inwardly, for the familiar address grated coming from Tye. When had his strapping, smiling firstborn turned into such a selfish, useless man? “What has put such notions in your brother’s head?”
“Who knows where young Thomas gets his fool ideas?” Tye sipped again. “We both know he’s fanciful, but he’s also occasionally right.”
“The last girl you trifled with,” Trevisham said, “her family required a settlement.”
“A settlement?” Tye rose, his tone incredulous. “For that little baggage?”
“The little baggage required a surgeon when you were done with her, Tidewell.” A mercy she hadn’t required the priest as well. “I gather what few wits she had were still out begging a week after your tryst.”
“Right. You were taken in by a Drury Lane farce, Papa.”
“Perhaps, but I’ve bought off your last scandal, my boy. Until you get your hands on my title, you’re as common as dirt, and you can be held to account for your criminal behaviors. The worry and heartache you cause your mother should be reason enough to clap you in irons.”
“You see me.” Tye waggled the decanter. “Clapped, as it were.” He smiled at his own salacious humor. “If you’re so concerned about Mother, why aren’t you the one patting her hand and passing her tisanes?”
“She’s asking for you,” Trevisham retorted, but that was as much as he’d say and they both knew it.
Lady Trevisham had been asking for her older son pretty much since the day he had been born, and if the baron had been puzzled at first, he’d soon acceded to his wife’s preferences. She loved all three children, of course, but in her eyes, Tye would always be special.
More’s the pity all around.
“You’ve evaded my question, my lord.” Tye set the decanter down, though it was almost empty. “Are we approaching dun territory?”
Trevisham considered his son, saw the gray making inroads on Tye’s dark hair, the lines fanning out from his eyes. Maybe a serving of reality was in order.
“We’re not rolled up. Yet.”
“Yet? Do you plan to leave me a bankrupted title?”
That would, of course, be the priority around which Tye’s world organized itself. “Of course not. You know as well as I do that harvests have been off lately, the winters long and hard. I’ve made investments, but they haven’t done well this year, and then too, you and Thomas go sporting up to Town as if I were a nabob. Have you any idea what it costs for the two of you to while away a Season in London?”
Even one free of expensive scandals, though Trevisham could not recall when the last one of those had been.
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.” Tye ran a thick finger around the rim of his glass. When his father named a surprisingly large sum, that finger paused.
“And when I have to drag you home early,” the baron went on, “we get no refunds on the houses you rent, no forgiveness for the clothing you leave at the tailor’s, or the stalls you reserve in the mews. I am a simple country squire, Tye, and I am competent to manage that lifestyle. You, with your Town tastes and expensive misadventures with the fairer sex, you and you alone are what has put us in dun territory, make no mistake.”
Tye resumed his seat, not visibly
affected by his father’s accusations. When Trevisham saw his son would offer no apology—no comment, in fact—he stomped toward the door.
“Don’t fret, though,” the baron said, turning his back on his son. “I’ve some things in train that will yield a return sufficient to keep me and mine in adequate style. Not that I’d expect you to care. Don’t forget your mother,” the baron admonished, and then he was gone, leaving Tye to wonder if he’d ever, at any point in his misbegotten life, been able to forget his mother.
***
Ellie rolled over, which became more of a maneuver each week. Outside her window, night was fading and song birds cheerfully noted the approach of day.
Dratted birds.
A new day, one she should start with a sense of relief. She’d concluded her dealings with Lord Amherst, lover and dallier at large. Except she hadn’t planned on parting with him, it had just…happened, in an inconvenient and poorly timed display of the good sense she was supposedly known for.
Good sense, and… love. Trenton Lindsey had doubtless strolled through the wood to come calling in the dark of night. Anybody seeking to harm him need only wait for him to take the same risk again, and Ellie would have another grief to deal with.
She had been honest, up to a point. A week of silence from him, followed by passionate tenderness, and no explanation for his absence, that had been difficult. The idea that he might have been followed through the shadows of the wood, that the next time he came to her by moonlight, harm might befall him…
Ellie could not have that on her conscience.
Tears threatened again, the same tears that had assailed her the previous night—part sorrow, to be parting from a man she held dear, and part anger, because regard for Trenton had left her no choice.
“Blast all men to Halifax,” Ellie muttered as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat for the now obligatory minute to get her bearings. Then she spied the bouquet on her nightstand.
Ellie brought the flowers to her nose, smiling despite the lump in her throat.
“How did he scamper up and down my balcony with flowers?” Rosemary, for remembrance; vervain, for enchantment; wood sorrel, for joy; and campanula, for gratitude.
No roses, for love—that would have provoked at least two handkerchiefs worth of tears—but what lovely sentiments. Trenton had been a busy fellow last night, for he had to have gathered the flowers after Ellie had sent him packing.
After Ellie had cried and held on to him so tightly and cried some more. After she’d fallen asleep still clinging to him in the darkness.
The odd little bouquet wasn’t a note, wasn’t anything, but she took another whiff, and considered Trenton’s farewell gesture. She should dash off a thank you note. A thank
you note sent between neighbors for a kindness rendered was the least courtesy required.
Chapter Sixteen
“You’ve a very pretty estate over in Hampshire.” Benjamin Hazlit, Heathgate’s preferred investigator for hire, offered the compliment to Trent and accepted a drink from Heathgate.
“My father has a pretty estate,” Trent replied. “But thank you. My memories of the place are not exactly fond, but Benton does a good job with it.”
“It’s thriving, in case you’re interested.” Hazlit was turned out in conservative country attire, but his complexion, dark to begin with, had apparently been subjected to the Hampshire sun.
“I make regular visits. I have to pay the trades, and I also want to keep an eye on my father.”
“Wilton himself wasn’t the object of my inquiry.”
“Nonetheless, he’s the ranking title in the parish,” Trent finished the thought, “and you heard gossip. I doubt we need to be delicate for Lord Heathgate’s ears.”
“You do not.” Heathgate sat on his desk, a raptor in country-gentleman’s clothing. “Try the whiskey, Amherst.”
Trent dutifully sipped his drink, then sipped again. “Where on earth did you get this?”
Heathgate’s smile was smug. “It’s my private label. I think it makes the best argument against abstaining ever there was, is, or shall be.”
“To your health.” Trent lifted his glass a few inches. “What did you hear, Hazlit?”
“Your father is trifling with one of the local girls. She isn’t well liked, puts on airs, but she’s from decent people.”
To have this conversation while sipping this whiskey was profane.
“Imogenie Henly. I’ve talked to her father. I’ll do so again, sooner rather than later. What else?”
“Your father is becoming great good friends with your former father-in-law,” Hazlit went on. “They rode to hounds together through the years, and now Trevisham has offered Wilton the use of his box in the north.”
“Which Wilton will not get around to using.”
“One hopes not, though Trevisham can’t very well leave Hampshire for an extended frolic on the grouse moors when he’s nigh pockets to let.”
Well, damn. “How did you learn this?”
“The usual means.” Hazlit sniffed at his whiskey, the gesture somehow elegant. “You have a pint or two or twenty in the local watering holes, ask if any of the Quality are hiring, and you hear the baron has started letting his older staff go, he’s slow paying the younger ones, hasn’t had any work done on the manor in ages, that sort of thing.”
What was said at the local watering hole about Lord Amherst, and had Hazlit troubled himself to hear that, too?
“What else?”
“The baroness is not enjoying a social life,” Hazlit reported. “She’s supposedly prostrate with nerves over her sons’ latest debacle in Town, but I was told it’s an annual malady. Sooner or later, the older son, Tidewell, must be brought home in disgrace, year in and year out.”
“Yet the entire five years I was married to his sister, he couldn’t be bothered to call on us, and we generally tarried in London for at least the start of the Season.”
“As to that…” Hazlit exchanged a look with Heathgate. “How well did you know your wife before your married her?”
“I knew of her,” Trent said, knowing as well that his business had been discussed between the other two men in his absence, the way physicians would consult on a vexing case. “She was six or seven years my junior, so we never moved in the same social circles, even in Hampshire. She was Tom and Tye’s pretty younger sister; I saw her at services, or assemblies, eventually, but I wouldn’t say we were even acquainted.”
Another glance between the marquess and his snoop, which even good whiskey could not smooth over.
Hazlit set his drink aside. “I suspected as much. I spoke with a lady who had been your wife’s undergoverness some twenty years ago.”
“And?”
“She describes a child who went from being sweet but shy to nervous in the extreme, and she attributed the shift to the ceaseless teasing and tormenting of her older brothers.”
“Tidewell was fifteen years Paula’s senior. You’d think he’d be beyond teasing a sibling so much his junior.”
“But Tom would have been less than five years her senior,” Hazlit pointed out. “Perhaps he was the more reprehensible of the two. Tidewell is still bothering young girls, though. His latest Season ended when he trifled with a young lady whose brothers took exception to her ill usage.”
Every family had its burdens. “Trifled with?”
“The details were not available in Hampshire. They will be in London. He might have called her an indecent name. Duels have been fought over less.”
“He might have raped her,” Trent countered, thinking of his late, unhappy, nervous wife. “As a baron’s son, Tidewell probably considers himself above the law.”
“He likely is, in a sense. His papa paid off the girl’s family.”
With money the baron apparently could not afford to part with.
“Where does this leave our investigation of the shooting?” Heathgate posed the question from his perch on the desk.
> “A little wanting for motive,” Hazlit admitted. “I could find nothing to indicate the Bennings are still grieving Paula’s passing, but I did hear mention that Lady Trevisham had also buried a sister at a young age.”
“Paula told me that. Said she had an aunt who’d died at the age of sixteen at boarding school. Said it made her reluctant to go off to finishing school herself, but she enjoyed it, for all her misgivings.”
“Do you know where she attended?”
“Same place her aunt did.” Trent closed his eyes in concentration. “Miss Somebody’s Academy for Distinguished Young Ladies… Peachem, Pantry…”
“Palliser?” Hazlit suggested.
“Yes.” Trent opened his eyes. “In the Midlands on the site of some priory old Henry confiscated. I saw it once on my way to Melton to meet Darius. Pretty place.”
“One of my sisters considered teaching there before she took to governessing,” Hazlit said. “She’s a frightfully intelligent woman, my sister.”
Ellie was frightfully intelligent, too. Also shrewd, kind, brave.
Passionate.
And done with him, as she should be.
“Paula was bright enough,” Trent said. “She lacked confidence, until her temper was goaded.”
“Did she ever talk about her family?”
Trent searched his memory, feeling like a witness in the box before hostile counsel, though neither of the other men could be enjoying this interview.
“She spoke of her father, sometimes. She’d say she missed him, but never asked that we take the children to see him. She left Trevisham Grange to join my household and never once went back.”
“Which isn’t so unusual,” Hazlit said. “What about correspondence? With her mother, her friends from school, anybody?”
Not a detail, and yet Trent hadn’t noticed this at the time.
“Nobody. I think the baron’s sister had sponsored Paula’s Seasons, but the old dame has since died. Even she couldn’t spare Paula a note once we wed. It’s sad, now that I think on it. At the time, we had other concerns, and the children started showing up.”
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 23
