A Truly Perfect Gentleman

by Grace Burrowes

  “That word… Yes, he was reckless. Let’s sit beneath my maple.”

  Gnarled roots lifted the soil at the base of the tree, canting the white wrought-iron bench slightly higher at one end. Addy often took a pillow out here and read. She’d been beneath this tree, trying to compose a letter to her sister-in-law, when word of Roger’s death had reached her.

  “You should take a nap,” Grey said, coming down beside her on the bench. “Grief destroys our natural rhythms, and you barely slept last night.”

  Addy did not recall falling asleep. She’d been sitting on her sofa one moment, prattling to Grey about who among Aunt’s friends would need to be notified of her death. The next, she’d been aware of Grey lifting her feet to the cushions, stuffing a pillow beneath her head, and retrieving a quilt from her bedroom.

  While she’d dozed, he’d been busy, for Addy had awoken to a house draped in crepe, the knocker off the door, the mirrors covered, and fragrant lilies in the windows of the formal parlor.

  The scent of those flowers made real that Aunt had died, but how had Grey procured lilies before the sun had properly risen? From the kitchen had come the aroma of fresh bread, and the voices wafting up the stairs suggested Aunt’s senior staff was on hand to join in the mourning.

  Grey had done what needed doing, though soon he needed to leave.

  “I must deal with the vicar.” Addy had sent the note, though Grey had had to remind her. His presence beside her on the bench steadied her. They’d barely touched since last night, but she’d leaned on him shamelessly.

  And that had felt natural and right, damn it all to Hades.

  “The vicar can do little,” Grey said. “He’ll swill tea and cite biblical passages meant to be comforting, though they are flimsy consolation against the loss of a loved one. He’ll encourage you to attend services, and you’ll go, Beatitude, because it’s the only way you’re allowed to leave your house and all the wretched crepe staring you in the face during first mourning. Why am I telling you these things? You are a widow. I am merely recalling the loss of parents, aunts, grandparents, uncles, a pair of cousins…”

  He ran a hand through his hair, and that small gesture revealed that death upset him as well.

  “You inherited the title when your Papa died. Did you want it?”

  “Of course not. What fool wants a title when an earldom means he loses his only surviving parent and becomes responsible for scores of people who have every right to look to him for sustenance? He must husband thousands of acres, flocks and herds, forests, meadows… Anybody who views a title as a mere license to frolic doesn’t deserve membership in the peerage. My father understood that and made sure I did as well.”

  Hence, Grey’s need to marry well. Even through the weight of grief, Addy could spare plenty of resentment for his circumstances.

  “You don’t want your son to have to feel that way, though. You want him to have the means he needs to be a good earl.”

  Grey crossed his feet at the ankles and leaned back so his head rested against the tree. “I want to have the means to be a good earl, but Addy—”

  She put her hand over his mouth. “You are a good earl. You are a very good earl, a good brother, a good cousin, a good neighbor, a good friend. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your company, Grey Dorning. I might have called on Theodosia, but she is not… She has become Mrs. Tresham, a duchess-in-waiting. She could not have played that harp. She would never have taken matters in hand as you have. I am in your debt and always will be.”

  That was Grey’s cue to rise and leave quietly through the back gate. Instead, he took Addy’s hand.

  “I will alert Mrs. Tresham to developments here,” he said. “But, Beatitude, I’d like you to do something for me.”

  He’d never asked her for anything, though she’d given him her heart. “Name it.”

  “I want you to go to Canmore Court once you’ve tended to Mrs. Beauchamp’s affairs. Leave Town and spend time with your family. You have nieces and nephews, you have a right to a dower house, and you should at least see that it’s maintained to your standards.”

  His hand was warm around hers, but he was letting her go—again. Leave Town was a kind way to inform Addy that he’d soon be back at his courting game, if he hadn’t already embarked upon it.

  “I had thought to go to Bath,” Addy said. “Aunt’s friends are there, and they will be solicitous of my loss.”

  Those friends would speak about an Aunt Freddy whom Addy had never known, a young, vivacious, pretty lady who’d nonetheless never quite settled into the narrow role society created for intelligent, opinionated women.

  “Please, not Bath, Beatitude. The elderly congregate there with the infirm. Your aunt would want you to enjoy the company of family, to be around children, and to go for mad gallops as a vicar’s hoyden daughter used to do. Climb a few trees, tear your hems in the raspberry patch. Nap in a hammock or two while reading Byron’s racy prose. I need to know that you will not be toppled by grief.”

  Toppled by grief when Grey took a wife, as he must. How delicately he dealt with the impossibly painful.

  “I don’t want to go to Canmore Court. They will try to discuss Roger.”

  Grey clasped her hand in both of his. “Then discuss him. He was a selfish fool who appreciated neither his wife nor his brother nor the children who would continue the succession. You and the present earl have common ground, and you likely have common guilt as well. Put it behind you and move on to happier pursuits. Aunt Freddy would tell you the same.”

  Addy leaned into him, and he settled an arm around her shoulders. What he asked was too much, a parting in truth, not merely a decision to avoid each other. Grey was all but ordering her to find somebody else to fall in love with, but that would not happen.

  “Thank you for being my friend, Grey Dorning. I will think about your suggestion.” Addy would resist, but soon—with a few days at most—she’d leave Town as he’d asked her to. Casriel was not a man to issue warnings for the sake of filling a silence.

  “Thank you for being my friend, Addy. I will miss you.”

  Addy pressed close, and to blazes with anybody spying out of the neighbors’ windows. She was exhausted, she’d suffered a blow—two blows—and was entitled to a small lapse in decorum.

  Grey let her be the one to sit up.

  “Be well, Grey, and if you can, be happy.”

  He said nothing, merely pressed his lips to her temple, rose, and departed quietly through the back gate.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Grey was relieved to see Sycamore, hale, whole, and casually strolling into the town house office.

  And Grey was furious with a sibling who lacked the consideration to leave word of his whereabouts. But then, since parting from Addy two days ago, Grey had been furious most of the time.

  “Took a jaunt down to Dorning Hall,” Sycamore said, hands in pockets, not a care in the world. “Everybody sends their love. Have you cried any banns yet?”

  “You took a jaunt…” Grey rose, lest he pound his fist on the desk. He’d rather pound on his baby brother. “Did it not occur to you to ask me for use of the traveling coach? Did it not occur to you to let me know you’d taken a sudden notion to ruralize? Could you not be bothered to send a note reassuring me that you’d not been taken up for debt?”

  Sycamore looked him up and down. “What has you in a pet?

  “I had visions of you selling your cravat pins for food in Calais, or fleeing for your life because a patron at The Coventry conceived a notion to do you an injury. One funeral a week is one too many.”

  Sycamore took down the abacus that hung on the wall near the landscape of Durdle Door. “Who died?”

  “Mrs. Beauchamp.” And thank God convention decreed that women typically did not attend graveside services, or Grey would have snatched Addy by the hand and… “Did you purloin the traveling coach to prevent me from eloping with Lady Canmore?”

  “Casriel, I’d buy you a co
ach if you promised to steal away in it with her ladyship. I simply wanted to see my other brothers and thought perhaps you’d appreciate an eyewitness report of doings at the Hall.”

  “Report, then, and be quick about it. I must change for an evening out.”

  “Where?”

  “None of your damned business.”

  Sycamore gave him another look, much like the looks Grey had been enduring from his staff for the past several days.

  “You leave,” Grey said, “and tell no one of your plans, but you expect me to consult you regarding my social calendar. The Quinlans are hosting a soiree this evening.”

  “Not La Quinlan, Grey. You cannot… Is this your way to evict the brothers from the Hall? She’ll drive them all screaming for the Royal Navy within a fortnight. Send your regrets, for I’ve brought money.”

  Sycamore withdrew a folded paper from his coat pocket and set it on the desk. His gaze gave away nothing, suggesting the money did not have a respectable provenance.

  Grey opened the paper, which was a duly executed bank draft. “This is signed by Aloysius Pletcher.” A good amount of blunt. Enough to repair many roofs, not nearly enough to prevent an engagement to Miss Quinlan. “How did you come by it?”

  “Ash came by it. The lovely Miss Tansy Pletcher became Mrs. Hammond Barclay ten years ago. Left her tinker for a well-to-do tannery owner and is a respectable goodwife over in Exmoor. The Pletchers used the money you’d given them until that time as a dowry for the fair Tansy.”

  Grey sank into the chair behind the desk. “And they’ve been collecting additional money from me for ten years?”

  He’d consumed countless pints of ale at the Pletchers’ tables, kept them informed regarding Tabby’s progress at school, shared many of her letters with them, and encouraged her to both write to them and spend time with them. He considered the Pletchers extended family of a sort, though they clearly considered him something else entirely.

  “I don’t understand, Cam. They took money they didn’t need, money Tansy didn’t need, and never said a word to me of her marriage.” While Grey had sold his father’s Italian glass panes to buy hay for the shire’s flocks. That wasn’t wrong, exactly, but the sense of having been taken advantage of remained.

  “They saved this money for Tabby,” Sycamore said, propping a hip against the desk, “or so they claimed when Ash pressed them. I don’t know the particulars, don’t know how much you’ve been sending them, but they haven’t any means to invest the money. You do. Ash pointed that out to them and also made plain that Tansy’s frolic with you left her none the worse for the experience, while you’ve taken responsibility for Tabby without a word of complaint.”

  Grey stared at the bank draft, a small fortune that had come from his conscience and his own pockets. “Of course I did. She is my daughter.”

  “Nothing compels even a gentleman to support both a daughter and her well-situated mother ten years on, Grey. You will take that money, or I’ll hand it over to Worth Kettering for investment in one of his magical schemes.”

  Jacaranda’s husband was a genius with investments. Out of pride, Grey had avoided imposing on him, though Sycamore would do exactly as threatened.

  “I’ll take it to Kettering,” Grey said. “This sum is not the dowry an earl’s daughter should have, but it’s something. In five years, it will be more, particularly if Kettering manages it. Please tell Ash—”

  Sycamore shoved away from the desk. “Tell him not to meddle in your affairs? Tell him yourself.” Cam was angry, though unlike Grey, he was managing to conceal his ire.

  “I’ll give him my thanks in person then,” Grey said. “I would never have thought to ask the Pletchers to account for the funds. I’ll thank them as well, and now I must change for the evening.”

  “You’ll keep the money?”

  “You’ll not go haring off without letting me know I needn’t worry?”

  Cam shrugged. “I was homesick. I’m coming with you to the Quinlans’.”

  Of all Grey’s brothers, Cam was the most determined, which was saying something. “Sycamore, I don’t need a chaperone. I won’t spill my punch or make drunken pronouncements. Miss Quinlan and I are approaching an understanding of the marital variety, and that does not require your assistance.”

  Grey had fallen into a bleak sense of inevitability where Miss Quinlan was concerned. With Mrs. Beauchamp’s final obsequies having been tended to, Addy had no reason to linger in Town.

  And Grey had no excuse for putting off his courting.

  “Grey, how much is enough?” Sycamore asked, marching up to the desk. “Ash takes a notion to chase down money that’s been leaking from your pocket for years, and a goodly sum lands on your desk as a result. That means you needn’t consign yourself to marriage with a vain, spoiled young woman who will be—not coincidentally—miserable as your countess.”

  “I will do my utmost to make her happy.”

  Cam slapped both palms on the desk. “You cannot make another person happy. You cannot buy all of Oak’s paintings, make Valerian’s book a wild success, give Thorne tenants of his own, or make my gaming hell thrive. You cannot make Sarah Quinlan happy, but you damned sure ought to be spending more time seeing to your own joy in life.”

  Grey rose, standing eye to eye with Cam, the bank draft on the blotter between them. “Our father would disagree with you. With a title comes a responsibility to manage the head of the family’s duties. Those duties were imposed on him as a result of present company, and I will do at least as much as he did to uphold the honor of the earldom.”

  The anger faded from Sycamore’s eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Papa had to marry because I was on the way. My mother was a decent young woman, not a tavern owner’s wayward daughter, and Papa and Mama had no choice but to marry.”

  “Which he well knew when he was frolicking with your mother, and which she knew too. You are not the reason they married, Grey. I come by my impulsive nature honestly. Don’t burden your brothers with your own misplaced guilt. Marry because you damned well want to marry, and do not wed a woman who will bring you nothing but suffering.”

  The bank draft sat open on the desk, a reproach of some sort, though Grey could not fathom for what. He should not have trifled with Tansy, but neither should he have blindly continued to send money to her parents when they nor she had need of it.

  And Tabby did.

  “This is Tabby’s money,” Grey said, stuffing the bank draft into his pocket. “I’m exceedingly grateful to have it, but it changes nothing about my own circumstances. How are our brothers?”

  Cam wanted to argue. Grey saw that in the compressed line of his brother’s lips, the mulish glint in his eyes.

  “They are managing. They would be loath to see you marry a carping twit who will turn Dorning Hall into Versailles-on-the-Winterbourne. Ash pressed the Pletchers for these funds because he knows what a desperate situation you’re facing.”

  “Ash declined to return to Town with you?”

  Sycamore sidled away to study the landscape of Dorning Hall with the ruins in the distance. “Oak, Valerian, and Thorne keep an eye on him. He’s getting dressed each day, taking meals, that sort of thing.”

  Drifting, in other words. When autumn came, Ash typically threw himself into the harvest, but inevitably, winter saw his spirits plunge. Cam’s words echoed: You cannot make another person happy, though Grey would and could keep Ash safe.

  “If you’re coming with me this evening, you must promise not to act on any impulses, Sycamore. The key to our brothers’ fortunes, as well as to those of half the tenants in the shire, lies in my ability to win Miss Quinlan’s hand in marriage. She’s amenable to my suit, and I owe her the niceties.”

  “She told you that?”

  “She knows her mind.”

  “But does she know your heart?” Cam left the office on that question, moving too quickly for Grey to land a punch.

  Chapter Sixteen


  Grey had donned his finest waistcoat for the occasion of the Quinlans’ soiree—blue silk the hue of a Dorset summer sky shot through with green and gold embroidery. Those colors put him in mind of ripe wheat fields and lush hedgerows. He doubted Miss Quinlan would notice, but this was as close to shining armor as he possessed.

  “My lord.” Miss Quinlan’s curtsey threatened to put the contents of her bodice on display before the whole receiving line. “A pleasure to see you.”

  “A pleasure to be here, particularly on so fine an evening. You know my brother Mr. Sycamore Dorning, I believe?”

  Sycamore took hold of the lady’s proffered glove and bowed smartly. “An honor, Miss Quinlan, and might I say, that is a beautiful locket? Whose images do you carry so close to your heart?”

  She simpered, letting Cam keep hold of her hand. “That is for me to know, Mr. Dorning, though I might confide that secret to his lordship some fine day. Enjoy the punch, and don’t forget to admire the roses. They are coming into their full glory at such an obliging time.”

  A headache started a dull tattoo at the base of Grey’s skull. “Come along, Sycamore. Roses in bloom are not to be missed.”

  Miss Quinlan sent him an arch look, as if he’d meant that observation flirtatiously.

  Which he had not. As the evening lumbered along, Grey was the object of more arch looks from Miss Quinlan. Drusilla Arbuckle merely smiled at him, and Lady Antonia spared him the merest nod while she gestured emphatically at Lord Dentwhistle in a corner of the terrace.

  Even Lady Antonia’s philosopher nuns held more appeal for Grey than Miss Quinlan’s melting glances and simpering.

  Beatitude, I miss you. He’d no sooner allowed himself that single, vastly understated thought than Miss Quinlan attached herself to his arm.

  “Papa has a Gainsborough. It’s time you admired it.”

  Papa also had a very forward daughter. Grey stayed where he was, amid the crowd milling on the torchlit terrace. “A sporting portrait?”