Marcus Fitzsimmons was almost equally tall, the oldest of the three men at about thirty. His breadth seemed more a result of the enjoyment of good living than an active life. He was dressed modestly in a tweed coat made of the local oily wool, and a serge waistcoat.
His blue eyes were almost grey, flat like a pewter charger, expressionless even when he seemed to be laughing or talking animatedly. He had a broad forehead and a rather florid complexion which suggest he enjoyed the outdoors and his fair share of wine and whiskey. He was handsome in a rather rugged way. Elizabeth was sure many a woman would have found him a good catch provided his fortune were not too mean.
Wilfred Joyce was about twenty-six, and dressed head to toe in black apart from his snowy white linen. She noted his coat was of good quality, perfectly tailored for his broad shoulders, accented by a fine silk waistcoat and cravat. His chest was muscular, rippling with every movement of his magnificent physique. His eyes could only be described as aquamarine, constantly changing like the sea depending upon the light and his thoughts as he gazed upon various people and objects at the table.
His face looked as though it had once been exceptionally handsome indeed, but a hard life, with a broken nose and cheekbone, and a scar which extended down his left cheek to his chin, had rendered his face a much more rough and masculine version of his sister's.
His past life had also affected his posture, for he seemed to sit hunched as though on the edge of his seat all the time, as if any moment waiting to be attacked, or to attack.
She also noted that he ate his meal stiffly. She had watched him out of the corner of her eye as he'd cut up the entire plate of food in front of him into small bite-sized pieces, and exchanged with Mitchell. She smiled inwardly at his kindness to the one-armed man, and he rose in her estimation immediately.
Having made her survey of her three companions, she turned her attention back to the flamboyant young major. She couldn't help but stare at his beribboned chest until Parks laughed and said, "La, if you think these are impressive, you should see Stewart's. Not to mention Will's. They would put even Stewart's collection to shame."
Will fidgetted under the gaze of his companions, but Marcus said in an affected drawl, "Oh, please, it's too awful. No more war stories, I beg you."
"Personally, I'd be only too pleased to hear Will's adventures," Thomas said in a cool tone which surprised his sister.
"Of course," Fitzsimmons said, giving his most dazzling smile. "I just meant that often one is subjected to such lurid tales, which would not be fit for the ears of two such charming ladies."
Elizabeth looked at him narrowly,
Vevina rolled her eyes.
Parks guffawed outright.
"I will not claim to have more than a passing acquaintance with the charming Lady Elizabeth," Parks said with a gallant bow in her direction, "but Vevina does not need to be sheltered from distasteful subjects. She knows only too well what the war has wrought. She has nursed many a man back to health, including her own brother and husband. I will not even make her blush by recounting her legendary fighting in the thick of the battle at Cuidad Roderigo."
"Now that I would like to hear about," Thomas said, his eyes glowing with interest, "for it was there I was injured."
"Perhaps later," Will said gently. "As Mr. Fitzsimmons has said, we should at least try to get through one dinner without mentioning the war. Except for one thing, if I may, Your Grace?"
Thomas looked at him curiously. "Yes, of course."
"A tradition, you know." He stood, raised his glass and proposed a toast. "To all the friends we have lost, and new ones we will find."
"Here, here," Parks and Thomas both said at once.
Fitzsimmons scowled, but drank a sip from his glass.
Vevina toasted as well, and raised her glass high to salute her husband on the opposite side of the room.
"That was the toast Will made at our wedding, and one that I have drunk every day since," Vevina explained. "We've suffered a great deal during the war, it's true. But it also brought us all together, and has given us so much to be grateful for."
Will sighed and turned his attention back to his meal. "So tell us, Lady Elizabeth," he said after a time, "how do you find Ardmore?"
"I have not had much chance to explore it as of yet, but I'm looking forward to settling down here."
"Really? Here? I thought you lived in England," Fitzsimmons said.
She nodded. "I used to. But now I am to be the new owner of Ellesmere Manor. My brother is very kindly allowing me to strike out on my own, to learn to run an estate myself."
He laughed shortly. "What a queer notion!"
Thomas glared at him. "Am I to take it then, sir, that you feel women are unequal to the task?"
"No, not at all. Only that it is odd you should give up the delights of what is by all accounts such an impressive family home only a few days' ride from all the entertainments of London and less than a day away from Bath, to come to this rustic backwater."
Elizabeth shrugged. "I find it lovely here. There is much to do. And I love the sea."
"But it is not London, you must admit," Fitzsimmons said, inwardly congratulating himself on having recovered very well.
Will said, "I think it's admirable that Lady Elizabeth would like to do something more with her life than seek endless rounds of enjoyment."
"Yes, it never did me a bit of harm going off to the war," Vevina opined.
"Ah, but you didn't have much of a choice, did you?" Fitzsimmons put in, and then realised he had made yet another faux pas.
Brother and sister looked at him narrowly, their family resemblance more noticeable than ever.
"One always has a choice," Will said quietly.
"Yes of course, I simply meant that—"
"We all wanted to do our part," Thomas said with a suave smile. "All of us with the nerve for it, that is."
Again Elizabeth could detect some strange rippling undercurrents in the conversation.
"Yes, even your cousin Samuel went in the end. Funny, that. He never could abide hunting and shooting," Will commented with seeming nonchalance.
Marcus Fitzsimmons's eyes narrowed to slits. "I, on the other hand, am proficient at both."
"Then it is a wonder you did not join," Thomas observed.
Parks had tried to restrain his laughter, but another chuckle burst from him.
"Just what is so amusing?" Fitzsimmons demanded.
"The word proficient. Since Vevina and Will trained up thousands of soldiers including me, I should think only that word could apply to them. Not even I can match their skills, though God knows I've tried."
The two young men, so similar they could have been twins, yet so different it was as though they were worlds apart, exchanged glances, and Will looked away.
Elizabeth tried to fathom what was going on all around her. She thought she heard plain English. Why then did they all seem to be speaking some secret language of which she was completely ignorant?
Chapter Seven
"So how do you like the neighbors hereabouts?" Will asked, trying to include her in the conversation once more.
"I look forward to getting to know them better."
She looked down the table at the others with a smile, and observed that some of her new guests looked up and then dropped their gazes as if unwilling to meet her eye.
Hers? Or someone else's at the top of the table? Surely they had not taken exception to her brother? Parks? Vevina and her brother?
Parks turned the conversation again, this time to music and poetry. They got on much better with this topic, though Fitzsimmons was very vociferous in his opinions, however uninformed they were.
Parks declared, "I first fell in love with Vevina over Beethoven."
"No, it was definitely my sewing skills. If it hadn't been for me you would have been running around Cuidad Roderigo stark naked," Vevina laughed.
Elizabeth started and blushed.
Will explained pat
iently, "Young Parky here enlisted at fourteen. He was growing so fast that by the time he ever got to Spain he had outgrown almost all his uniforms. Vevina made him a new wardrobe, and got to swagger about in his old ones."
"I see. Well, that was very kind of you, Vevina."
"No, it wasn't your sewing, it was your embroidery," Parks said. "You make the most exquisite designs. I quite envy Stewart his wardrobe."
"Kind of you to say so, Parky, but really, I'm sure Elizabeth's needlework is far superior to mine."
"We shall compare afterwards," Elizabeth said politely.
"Any wife of mine would not have to trouble to do such menial things for me," Fitzsimmons asserted with no small degree of hauteur.
"Menial? Rather a sign of devotion, care," Will said.
"But one has servants for such things."
"My wife also does all of my mending, and some wonderful fancy work," Thomas put in proudly.
"My wife will have better things to do with her time, and hands, eh?" Fitzsimmons said with a nudge in Parks' ribs.
The ribaldry froze them all. Fitzsimmons had to recover once more as Will asked in a dangerously soft tone, "What do you mean by that, sir? Surely a woman's accomplishments cannot be viewed in so dim a light."
"I meant she would be busy tending our children, of course."
"My sister manages to look after all four quite admirably and still be a devoted wife in every respect."
"Then she is an exceptional woman," Fitzsimmons conceded.
"I rather think she might not be the only one so gifted," Will said with a warm smile at Elizabeth.
"Oh, yes, certainly, Mr. Joyce. I do not see that running an estate and raising a family and being a good wife necessarily have to be incompatible."
"But my dear Lady Elizabeth, why bother when you have servants?" Fitzsimmons drawled.
"Because they look to me for guidance and direction in the same way that soldiers look to their commanders for leadership," she said, venturing a small smile up at Will.
His aquamarine eyes sparkled. "Very true, my dear. Well said."
Fitzsimmons turned the conversation once more his way, with another of the incomprehensible remarks she had come to dread. "Yes, but what do you do if you have a bad or corrupt leader, one not worth following?"
Thomas fixed him with a gimlet stare. "There can be no question of that in my sister's case, now can there?"
He paled. "Er, no, of course not. I wish you much joy of your new home, Lady Elizabeth. Welcome to Ardmore. We will be so please to have you amongst us to help us polish our ways. I expect to be a reformed man under your regard."
Thomas relaxed against his chair back slightly, and gave a small tight smile. "Surely not, Fitzsimmons. Surely you are exactly as you choose to be, no more and no less."
"There is always room for improvement."
"So my commander keeps telling me," Parks said with a wink at Will.
"Ah, but Stewart was your commander before I was. I cannot take all the credit for your reformation."
"No. But thanks to you I have struggled devilishly hard to give up the foie gras and caviar."
Elizabeth laughed. "If those are the worst of your vices, sir, then I think you can be assured of a place in Heaven."
"I certainly hope so," he said with surprising devoutness. "I'd very much like to see all of my friends there. What larks, eh, Will? No pain, no suffering, all the happiness you missed out on with—"
Vevina shook her head. "There is said to be no gender in Heaven, so I'm afraid your flirtatious ways will not come in useful there."
"Moi? Flirtatious? My dear Vevina, I'm wounded. As If I ever say anything I don't mean."
Will laughed heartily. "That's just the trouble, Parky. You say everything you really do mean. There is such a thing as too much candor, you know, especially when it comes to women."
"Do you think so?" Elizabeth asked, before taking a sip of wine. "I would like to be told the truth, no matter how awful it is to hear."
Will sobered, "You say that now, Lady Elizabeth, but I warrant no woman in the world wants to be told her new hat looks like an old bucket."
Elizabeth giggled in spite of herself. "Perhaps not, but there may also be a way to say it without hurting the lady's feelings?"
"Dashed if I can think how," Parks said.
Will raised his hand as if offering proof. "There you have it. Just what I was saying. Try not to express your opinions quite so bluntly, and you will have the women flocking to you, rather than flying from you."
"And are you such an expert on women?" Fitzsimmons said, challenge glinting in his eye.
Will's handsome face turned to granite. "Not at all. Anything expertise I may claim is thanks to my inestimable sister, and my mother before that. I am no philanderer, sir."
"Then where does the soldier's fearsome reputation as a ravisher of women come from?" he said with a smirk, obviously trying to bait the younger man.
Will shrugged. "Not just soldiers. Sailors as well. The glamour of travel, the romance, one would presume. And I am sorry to say, some excesses when taking the spoils of war, if you grasp my meaning."
"No one in our set is like that," Parks said in a firm tone. "If we soldiers got up to one iota of what we are rumored to we would never have won the war. Boney would have wiped out one half of us, and the clap the other."
The silence which followed throughout the room was one in which they could have heard a pin drop.
"Is this the thing you warned me about not doing, Will?" Parks said in a stage whisper.
Will's lips twitched as he restrained a smile. "Yes, afraid so, old son."
The Teagues and Lynch sisters glared at Will as though what had been said were all his fault, not Parks'.
As soon as was convenient, they indicated that they had finished their meal and were ready to go into the drawing room for coffee.
Fitzsimmons thought to linger for port and cigars, but Thomas shook his head. "We say and do nothing in this household that would not be suitable in the presence of the ladies."
"You had better tell that to young Parks, then," he said with a smirk.
"That was slightly unfortunate if taken out of context," ,Elizabeth said mildly, "but not overly shocking."
"Besides," her brother said, "it is no less than the truth. I was a soldier too, after all, as was Clifford and the rest of my particular set from Eton and Oxford. We were known as the Rakehells for a certain glamour and our pursuit of social justice, which got us into a few scrapes.
"But in the Army we did not conduct ourselves in a manner which would support the stereotype of the seducing soldier. I'm sure that none of these here gentleman who have also served would give me any cause to fear allowing my sister to remain in their company. Am I correct, Elizabeth?"
"You are, Thomas. I'm not some shrinking violet who does not know how the world works."
She did look uncomfortable, however.
Will took her arm, careful not to touch the bare flesh which peeped between the top of her long glove and the bottom of her sleeve for fear of acting upon his rampant desires. Never had a woman affected him so deeply with just one glance of her eyes, or the smell of her lovely womanly fragrance.
"I'm most sorry if he shocked you," he said in a low tone. "He is young yet."
"Not at all." She met his gaze, so alluring yet so bleak. "You can't be so old, Mr. Joyce, and yet, with the way you comport yourself, I might think you the most mature man here," she could not help observe.
His expression was bleak. "Do you think so? Ah well, it's been a long war. And even before that—"
"I say, Lady Elizabeth, what about some croquet?"
She tore her eyes away from Will to smile at the irrepressible Parks. "Only if we can find a few others to join us."
Monroe and Marcus Fitzsimmons agreed, but Will still seemed to favour one arm, she noticed. He slipped away from her side and went over to his sister.
Mitchell joined them, and they settl
ed themselves on the sofa near the large French windows to play with the children.
Her eyes lingered on Will's broad back for a moment. She was sorry she had agreed to play and thus had excluded two such pleasant companions.
The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection Volume 2 Page 39
