Seriously, one hopes your journey goes well and you will soon arrive safely back to home and hearth. Miss Winnie, at the least, longs for the sight of you.
Hadrian Bothwell, Vicar
St. Michael’s of the Sword
Rosecroft Village, Yorkshire
Ten
“So you’ll leave us on the morrow and take Mozart with you?” the duke asked as he pushed a brandy decanter toward his firstborn.
“Val seems ready for a change, and there’s plenty of peace and quiet in Yorkshire,” St. Just replied, pouring himself half a finger of brandy and watching as His Grace cut a deck of playing cards.
“Not drinking much these days, are you?” His Grace observed. “You’re my witness; I’m trying to behave, as well.”
“On the advice of the physicians?”
“Who else?” The duke rolled his eyes. “And once Her Grace gets wind of something like that, I am a doomed man.”
“I’ve never quite understood how she manages you,” St. Just said, taking a small sip of very good brandy.
“Neither have I.” His father smiled. “That’s part of her genius. Val gets his music from her, Westhaven his brains, and you…”
“Yes?” St. Just arched an eyebrow, for what could he possibly have inherited from a woman with whom he shared no blood?
“Your heart, lad.” The duke tossed his brandy back in a single swallow. “Hell and the devil, that’s good stuff.”
“My heart?”
“You were a puny little thing when your mother left you here.” The duke eyed his strapping son. “I am ashamed to say I did not take an adequate interest in your early years, which is part of what haunted me about Rose’s situation.”
“Would you care to explain that?”
“Let’s walk, shall we? Elsewise I’ll be pouring myself one more tot, and one more, and so forth, and Esther will be wroth.” He hoisted himself to his feet and led the way to the back gardens, St. Just ambling at his side.
“You were saying you were negligent,” St. Just prompted.
“I was.” His Grace smiled thinly. “Just as Her Grace informed me we were to become parents, the title befell me, and your mother attempted to renew her acquaintance with me. I sent her packing at first, but she was savvy enough to contact Esther a few years later and threaten to put it about I’d walked away from my by-blow.”
“So you were indeed negligent,” St. Just said, bewildered his father would so blatantly admit such a thing.
“It wasn’t until she contacted Esther that your mother bothered to let on you existed.” The duke sighed heavily. “Just as Gwen Hollister neglected to inform Victor of his paternity.”
“The circumstances were very different.”
The duke waved a dismissive hand. “Keep your powder dry, for God’s sake. We can all agree those circumstances were unfortunate all around. But in your case, I assumed your mother got pregnant on purpose then bided her time until I was invested. She approached me then waited until we had both heir and spare in hand before threatening us with you.”
“What do you mean, threatening you?” St. Just asked, his stomach beginning to rebel against even the small amount of brandy he’d imbibed.
“She wanted a king’s ransom to keep her mouth shut. Said she’d talk to the gossip rags, write her memoirs, drag my name through the mud, and so forth. I was younger than you are now, lad, and hadn’t much bottom. It was Esther who understood Kathleen’s real agenda.”
“Which was?”
“Kathleen said we could either pay, or she’d leave you on the doorstep for all the world to see. Esther told her we’d take you gladly, and Kathleen handed you over. The only condition Esther put on the transaction was that the woman was to stay away from me. My duchess is no fool.” The duke smiled dryly.
“So that’s why I never saw my mother again?”
The duke cocked his head. “You never saw her because she didn’t want to cost you what providence had tossed in your lap. Her Grace wrote to your mother every six months until your mother died when you were twelve. She sent likenesses and a lock of your hair. She took you to the park so your mother could sit in a closed carriage and see you from time to time, and when your mother passed on, Her Grace kept in touch with your Irish cousins. Her Grace accurately divined that Kathleen’s plan had become to see you raised under your father’s roof.”
St. Just heard his father’s voice, a tough, pragmatic bray that had been part of his life for more than a quarter century, but the words were barely registering over the pounding in his chest.
“I don’t understand,” he ground out. “Why wouldn’t my mother want me to know she was seeing me? I was five when she left me. I knew very well whose child I was.”
“Your mother,” the duke said with uncharacteristic gentleness, “wanted you to prosper, St. Just. She wasn’t a bad woman; she was a good woman, in fact, but she made hard choices, and in the end, did what was best for you. She wanted you to believe you were a son of this house and felt you’d not make that transition were she tugging your heartstrings in a different direction.”
St. Just sat there in the growing darkness, hearing crickets chirp and cicadas sing. A soft breeze was wafting over the flowers, and his whole life was being turned inside out.
“She didn’t just walk away,” he concluded.
“She retreated to a careful distance,” the duke said. “I have every confidence had she survived, she would have reestablished contact with you when your discretion could be trusted. In this regard, she was much more praiseworthy than Maggie’s mother.”
“How do you reconcile yourself to this?”
The duke shrugged. “I was young and never expecting to inherit. There was not a more useless creature on God’s earth than myself as a young man. I behaved badly and have tried to right the wrongs I’ve done. Her Grace has had her hands full with me.”
“We all have,” St. Just muttered. “You know there were times when Bart and I were up to our knees in mud, living off cattail roots and whatever we could hunt, and he would turn to me and say, ‘At least His Grace can’t lecture us about duty now.’”
The duke looked chagrined but nodded. “I made the same mistakes with Bart my grandfather made with his sons, and my father made with me. Pathetic, but there it is. So promise me, St. Just, you and your brothers will do better, hmm? I will be watching from the right hand of the Father, drinking all the brandy I please, ranting at your brothers, and waiting for Her Grace. You may depend upon it. And see that you join me there in due course, or Her Grace will be unhappy. Wonder how God will deal with that?”
“You’d best not take up that position quite yet,” St. Just warned. “Rose told me before she left she wants more than this one summer with you. You are a bruising rider, and you know the best stories. As grandpapas go, you are in every way a capital fellow.”
“And you allowed her this fiction.” The duke smiled his most charming smile. “Your sons will do the same for you one day, St. Just.”
“Assuming I have sons.”
“Her Grace has remarked that your years of command will give you an edge when you take up parenting,” the duke said.
“Because I’m used to giving orders?”
“Because you’re used to having your orders ignored. But as to that, Rosecroft, I wanted you to know I’ve had a word with those fellows at the College of Arms.”
“Regarding?”
“Your earldom, my lad.” The duke glanced over at him. “And yes, I am meddling, but I don’t think you’ll mind if the language of your patent simply allows for your oldest child of any description to inherit.”
“Are you announcing a penchant for the St. Just line to produce bastards?” St. Just asked. “Shouldn’t it be my firstborn, natural, legitimate son surviving at the time of my death?”
“Should.” The duke’s tone became a bit frosty. “Should is not always a useful word. Your brother Bart should have lived, so should my older brother and your brother
Victor. I flattered myself you would see any of your progeny inherit rather than have the Crown get its hands on what you will no doubt make a profitable little estate.”
“You’re sure I’ll make the earldom prosper?” St. Just asked, knowing the damage was done in terms of legal language.
“No doubt in my mind.” The duke grinned. “You and your brothers have the knack, unlike my humble self. I wield a wealth of influence, but had Westhaven not taken up the financial reins, that’s all I’d be wielding.”
“And you’ve told him this?”
“I have. Boy about embarrassed himself. Asked if I was enjoying good health or if I’d done something to aggravate his mother. I could answer yes to both honestly.”
“As you are always doing something to aggravate Her Grace,” St. Just concluded with reluctant affection.
“Just so, lad. Just so. For example, I am now going to wheedle my eldest into sharing just one more half a tot with his dear old papa, hmm?”
***
To St. Just’s great surprise, the duchess was up and waiting for him when he rose to depart before dawn the next morning. Breakfast had been a hurried business, with Val bleary-eyed across the teapot, muttering distractedly about scores and manuscripts. St. Just took himself down to the stables, where three more geldings were being readied for the trip north. Val would ride one, St. Just the other, and the third would carry a pack.
And there, on a dusty old tack trunk, sat Esther, Her Grace, Duchess of Moreland, in a night rail and wrapper, sturdy sabots on her dainty feet.
“Your Grace?” St. Just frowned down at her in surprise. “Does His Grace know you’ve taken to drifting about en dishabille?”
“He is snoring peacefully,” she replied, rising, “but Percy told me you’d been laboring under some misconceptions, and this is the last we will see of you for some time.”
“Shall we sit?” St. Just offered his arm and escorted her out to a stone bench flanked by flower beds. He loved this woman, but he’d be damned if he’d ever gotten the knack of deciphering her silences.
“St. Just, I am a mother,” the duchess began, “and you will recall this when I tell you your mother loved you. My heart broke for her the day she left you here, and it broke for you, as well.”
It’s still breaking for you. She didn’t say the words. They were evident to him in the earnestness of her expression.
“My little heart was none too pleased with the situation either,” he murmured. “I just wish…”
“Yes?”
“I wish I’d known she still… maintained an interest,” he said. “I feel petulant and stupid for it, but why wouldn’t a mother want a child to know she loved him?”
“Hard to understand, isn’t it? Imagine what it would have taken were Douglas to walk away from Rose.”
“I don’t understand.” St. Just frowned. “He would never abandon that child. He committed hanging felonies to protect her, come to think of it.”
“Consider your mother carried you under her heart for nine months,” the duchess replied. “She delivered you into this world at risk to her own life, prostituted herself to keep a roof over your head, and raised you every day for five years. How on earth could she have survived giving you up?”
St. Just shrugged. “I figured I wasn’t much fun to have underfoot. Small boys can be a big nuisance when a woman depends on her social life for her livelihood.”
“For God’s sake, Devlin.” The duchess stood and glared at him. “Would you have tossed one of your younger sisters to the press gang because she wasn’t much fun to have underfoot?”
“Of course not.” He got to his feet, using the advantage of his height to glare back at her. “My sisters are my family.”
“No woman tosses her own child aside for mere convenience,” Her Grace said, abruptly every inch the duchess despite being in nightclothes and wooden clogs. “You would not treat a horse that way; what makes you think Kathleen St. Just would treat her child thus?”
“It made sense.” St. Just stalked off a few paces, and for the first time in his life, raised his voice—not to a shout, but to an emphasis—at the duchess. “I was five years old. I thought my mother left me because she didn’t want me. I never saw her again, never got a letter, a Christmas present, or a glimpse of the damned woman. How was I supposed to know that added up to a heroic sacrifice? She left me, and in the care of a man who never spoke when he could yell, and never showed affection. She left me in the care of a woman I was told to address as Her Grace. I never knew your name until I was off at school, for God’s sake. How is that love to a little boy?”
He stood there, glaring down at a woman who had shown him nothing but kindness, who was still trying to show him nothing but kindness.
“You wait right here,” Esther said to him sternly, as if he were quite small, “and do not depart until I have returned. We’ve done you a disservice, St. Just, by assuming the past should stay buried, but you do us a disservice, as well, by thinking we’d toss you to the rag and bone man were you anything less than a perfect little soldier. Your brother was rash and vainglorious and suited to the soldier’s life, but I should never have let your father buy you a commission. I have regretted it every day for more than ten years, young man, and I will not stand by, heaping up more regrets, while you torment yourself with a fiction that your mother willingly orphaned you.”
She stomped off, putting St. Just in mind of the Greek goddesses of old. Her green eyes had spit fire, her words had cut like a lash, and she’d been magnificent.
“What on earth was that about?” Val asked, strolling down the path from the manor. “Her Grace just whipped by me as if His Grace was in very serious trouble.”
“Not His Grace.” St. Just shook his head. “Me. Am I a perfect little soldier, Val?”
Val looked him up and down. “A perfect, somewhat largish soldier.”
St. Just winced. “Perfect?”
“You were never injured, and yet you fought in every major battle on the Peninsula, as well as at Waterloo,” Val said. “You were mentioned regularly in the dispatches, decorated like a German Christmas tree, and any horse you touch now sells for a small fortune based in part on your reputation among your fellow officers. You were perfect enough we can now hang an earldom around your neck—and those aren’t dispensed like candy. I gather, though, you’ve acquired a little bit of tarnish around the edges?”
“The patina of age,” St. Just murmured. “Are you ready to depart?”
“I am. You’re not?”
“I am under orders to wait for Her Grace’s return. I find myself reluctant to disobey.”
“One can understand this, as the woman reduces Percival Windham to blancmange. And here she comes, albeit looking a little more the thing.”
“Valentine.” Her Grace nodded at her youngest son. “Did you eat breakfast?”
“I did. St. Just is my witness.”
“St. Just.” Her Grace shoved a packet of letters at his chest. “These should have been given to you a lifetime ago, but the moment was never right. Read them.”
He took the letters from her but did not even glance down at the papers in his hand. “They’re from my mother?”
She nodded, holding his gaze. “The last one was written about a week before her death, when she knew she would not recover. I still cannot read it without losing my composure. Now the both of you get on your horses and go before I start to cry.”
“Good-bye, Mother.” Val wrapped his arms around her and suffered kisses to both of his cheeks. “I will practice every day, mostly, and I will use my tooth powder, and I will keep St. Just out of trouble, mostly, and I will write, sometimes. I love you. Don’t tell my sisters where I’ve gone.”
“You naughty, honest boy,” his mother said. “Safe journey, and I love you.”
St. Just watched this scene, one like many stored in his memory of his half brothers casually teasing their mother, assuming she’d be there to tease when next they got ar
ound to paying a call. It made him a little crazy to see the same thing yet again today, so he turned to go.
“Devlin St. Just!” The duchess’s voice had the whiplash quality to it again, and Val grimaced at him in sympathy. Devlin turned and prepared for the usual lecture on his duty to look after his little brothers, but the duchess simply opened her arms to him. He went to her and cautiously leaned in for a hug.
“You are not a perfect soldier,” she whispered, “but you are a perfect son, and I love you.” Her embrace was fierce, and in his arms, she did not feel like an older woman. She felt like a mother trying to get through to her pigheaded offspring.
“Good-bye,” he said, “I love you, too.”
She stepped back, her smile radiant. “Look after each other.” She shook her finger at them both. “I have my hands full with your father and your featherbrained sisters. I can’t be fretting about grown men.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” they said in unison, exchanging a smile. She let them go. She was still beaming from the front steps when they trotted down the drive.
***
“Can I play it?” Winnie asked, running her hands over the closed lid of the gleaming grand piano. It had been delivered that morning by four large men and four monstrous draft horses.
“Best not,” one of the men said. “If, God forbid, something busted on the way, Lord Val will want it righted first.”
Winnie looked disappointed but nodded.
“And I’d be keeping yon beast a safe distance, too.” The driver nodded at Scout. “Some of them like to nibble the linseed oil in the finishes, and half-gobbled piano legs will not set well with his lordship either.”
“He sounds like a man of particulars,” Emmie said.
The driver shrugged. “Easy fella to like, for Quality. Don’t be disrespecting his pianos.”
The Duke’s Obsession Bundle Page 54
