Schooling the Viscount

by Maggie Robinson

  That was the extent of excitement here—one was forced to shoot copper roosters out of sheer boredom, and then wonder which way the wind was blowing. No wonder the young people left.

  Henry wondered why Rachel was still here. She was very pretty, and should be married by now. He estimated she was around his own age, give or take a year or two. Why hadn’t some local farmer swept her up? It was difficult to believe she’d never received a proposal besides his.

  His lips twitched. He wondered if a clandestine courtship was possible under the prying Puddling eyes. Even now a lace curtain twitched from the upper story in the neighboring house. Henry had half a mind to unbutton his trousers and water the garden.

  No. Surely that would be against the rules. They’d really think him a pervert then.

  He threw himself down on the iron bench and stared at the little fish pond, wondering if anything could survive the green scum on the top. A giant bumblebee whizzed over his head, and birds chirped remorselessly from the flowering trees. It was all very pastoral, a far cry from the noise and dirt of London.

  Or the vast sunbaked plains of the veld.

  Twenty-one more days. If he behaved himself. It behooved him to do so, thus wooing Rachel Everett was out of the question. She was probably a virgin anyway, and not likely to succumb to the usually fatal Challoner charm. Henry had always been successful with the ladies. It was only since his injury and return home that he’d had difficulty spurring enthusiasm for the conquest.

  By God, he was only twenty-five years old, not some pensioner like Ham Ross, who moved pretty spryly uphill for a man his age. Henry wasn’t spry at all. He couldn’t even jump over a low stone wall.

  He was feeling sorry for himself again, a pointless endeavor. The good reverend kept telling him he had a lot to be grateful for, and Henry reckoned the man was right. He might be under his father’s thumb at the moment, which was never a good place to be, but it was all in the name of “helping” him.

  Henry didn’t feel helped, however. His dreams were still unpleasant, despite waking up to the bleating of sheep rather than breech-loading rifles. His foot ached and his mind was foggy.

  And he was thirsty.

  Mrs. Grace appeared at the conservatory door. “Would you like your tea in the garden today, my lord?”

  Tea. Bah. It wasn’t as if he was addicted to drink, despite what everyone here seemed to think. Certainly, he liked a good time, and wine or whiskey often facilitated his pleasure. He’d been a gentleman about it all—he didn’t roll under the table in a coma or sing on the street or lose his luncheon. One would hardly know he’d tippled.

  Or so he told himself. Perhaps it was true that lately he’d gotten a trifle carried away. Lysette and Francie might be considered proof of that.

  “That would be lovely, Mrs. Grace,” Henry said with little enthusiasm. At least there would be no vicar to harp on his numerous blessings. Henry was aware he was lucky he hadn’t been born in a slum. He was a viscount with all the hereditary privileges. One day the pater would pop off and Henry might even find himself in Parliament doing something about all those slum dwellers he’d seen when he returned. Somehow he’d never noticed before when he was a young man kicking up his heels in London.

  But why should he wait? He might do something right now and earn his way out of this hell. Were there any poor people in Puddling? He couldn’t offer them money—he had none himself, just enough for the odd bun at the bake shop every other day. Perhaps Walker would know who was in need. Henry might read to the blind or play checkers with a sick non-contagious child. Not Mary Ann.

  How low he had fallen when he looked forward to such tame activities.

  Chapter 6

  Rachel had evaded Dr. Oakley’s searching looks and had gone back to the schoolhouse. Dust motes swirled in the afternoon sun, and she sat at her desk staring at their glittery brilliance. Perhaps it would have been better if she got up and dusted them away, but somehow she didn’t trust her knees.

  That blasted man had proposed to her. Of course, to him it was all a lark. He didn’t mean a word of it. But Rachel had, like most girls, dreamed about a proposal from a handsome swain someday, and had quite looked forward to it, even if the possibility was becoming more remote by the year.

  Lord Challoner had the handsome part down pat—he had curling golden hair and sky blue eyes, was tall and fit and, well, somewhat fabulous. Unlike many fashionable young men, he was clean-shaven. He must have looked a treat in his uniform, and had probably broken hearts anywhere his booted foot stepped. His limp didn’t bother her at all—it was barely noticeable unless one looked for it.

  He did have brackets about his mouth and eyes, showing his years in the sun and the cost of what it took to disguise his pain. She didn’t think they were from his dissipation alone. In fact, she was beginning to wonder whether the man was as bad as he was supposed to be.

  He was a dreadful flirt, true. But there was something in his eyes—

  Rachel shook her head of such nonsense. She had ever brought home wounded hedgehogs and half-drowned kittens. Right now, the ugliest dog in the world had a place of honor in front of the hearth because no one else had wanted him. She was too sympathetic by half, even with her pupils. The parish school committee had spoken to her twice about her lax disciplinary standards. One more time and she’d be removed as Puddling’s primary school teacher.

  She gave the dust motes a stern look. They continued to tumble down from the rafters.

  Ah, she was hopeless. Rachel believed children flourished with soft words of praise rather than canings and humiliation. She wasn’t mean by nature, and didn’t much want to be.

  She’d had no training to teach—the job had fallen into her lap more by way of last resort than anything. There were few children here in Puddling, and fewer teacher candidates. What with the yearly bonus every Puddlingite family received, they could afford to send their children away to school to better themselves. Most didn’t come back to the restrictive village. Who wanted to live in a place where the pub was closed more than half the year? Many of the Guests had problems knowing when to lower their elbows. It was a shame moderation seemed to be such a difficult concept for the bon ton.

  Rachel was a moderate sort of woman herself—moderately tall, moderately smart, moderately pretty. She was nothing special. It was only because she was the only woman under fifty Lord Challoner had seen that he’d latched onto her, as it were. The latching had been amazing, but it was not to be repeated.

  Noting the time, she shoved papers to be graded in her canvas satchel, locked up the school house and made her way back up the hill to the small attached cottage on New Street she shared with her father. New Street had been new in 1483, and its houses were built for shorter, less privacy-seeking people. The rooms were miniscule, the stairs terrifyingly vertical, and her father had taken over the front parlor as his bedroom accordingly as he’d aged.

  He spent most of his time outdoors when the weather was good. She found him in the postage stamp-sized back garden, sitting on a chair and puffing on his pipe. The remains of his tea tray were propped on a barrel, and Rachel noted the extra cup. Ham had wasted no time.

  “You’re very late today,” Pete Everett said. Rufus, the ugliest dog in the world, wagged his tail but didn’t even bother to get up from his flagstone square. Ungrateful beast.

  “Don’t worry, Dad. Supper will be on the table in no time.” It would be leftover stew, soft enough for the old man to chew with the few teeth he had left. Rachel had been a late-in-life child for her parents, a rather stunning surprise considering their ages of forty-five and sixty.

  Despite being much younger than her husband, Rachel’s mother had died three years ago. Rachel felt honor-bound to remain in Puddling to care for her father until he joined his wife. Though she thanked God her father was in excellent health, every now and again she wondered what she was missing in the outside world. Puddling’s pleasures were delibera
tely rather finite in deference to its pleasure-abusing Guests, and reading novels and newspapers after supper could only get one so far.

  Rachel had never been to London. Had never really been anywhere except nearby Stroud on Market Day and a church field trip to the Roman ruins at Cirencester. Though her father had been born right here in this seventeenth-century weaver’s house eighty-four years ago, he’d traveled far afield, serving in the army in India and the Crimea for decades. Their home was crammed with souvenirs from those places, lovingly dusted and polished daily by her father. His eyesight was still good enough to tell when she didn’t clean the brass bells thoroughly, though he’d never work the loom in the upstairs room again.

  “Never mind about dinner. Aren’t you going to tell me?” Pete Everett asked.

  “Tell you what?” Rachel replied, stalling for time.

  “Ham came over to see me. Didn’t want to waste the climb into the village. At our age, he might not make it up Honeywell Lane again except in a coffin to the churchyard. What’s our new Guest like?”

  Rachel had never been able to fib to her father, or really anybody. It was a curse.

  “I only spoke to him for a moment. He came by the school.”

  Pete blew a smoke ring over a raspberry bush. The little garden was his pride and joy and he took care of it all by himself, with Rufus obligingly digging alongside him on occasion. “Ham says he’s a good-looking fellow.”

  Rachel pretended to pull up a weed that wasn’t there. “I suppose.”

  “Army man, I understand.”

  Lord Challoner’s particulars had been passed around the village so that Puddlingites would know how to deal with him. “I read that, too.”

  “Wounded in Africa. War is a dreadful thing, Rachel. Don’t let any of your sons go for soldiers.” He’d been full of hair-raising tales when she was a little girl.

  “I’d have to get married to have sons, Dad.”

  “That might happen yet. I worry about you. I won’t be around forever, you know.”

  “Yes, you will. And don’t worry. I’m perfectly fine just as I am.”

  It was almost true. Or it had been until she’d been kissed by Lord Henry Challoner and felt bumblebees buzzing inside her head. “So, did you have a good visit with Ham? I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

  “Ham likes to play the hero. Always has, ever since he was a little nipper, and so I told him. He hasn’t had this much fun is years. Center of attention.”

  It was true they’d formed quite the wheelbarrow parade. “Nevertheless. The exertion wasn’t too much for him?”

  “Ham’s strong as an ox. I envy him. Rachel, you’re avoiding the subject. What was Lord Challoner doing at the school?”

  “I think he meant to explore.” Escape was more like it. The school lane ended, Puddling Stream began, and enticing steep green hills rose up all around it. The center of Puddling was on a tricky hill itself, and most days Rachel was breathless by the time she walked home.

  Her father set his pipe down on the barrel. “Do you think he’ll bother you again?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. Dr. Oakley was very firm with him. He’s to stick to his usual walk from now on.”

  “What if he doesn’t? He knows where you are now, Rachel.” He looked grim.

  “For heaven’s sake! He just went right instead of left. The man has no interest in me whatsoever. I’m not like his fancy London ladies.”

  Maybe he went around asking them to marry him too.

  “No. You’re better. Young reprobate like that—there’s no telling what mischief he’s used to getting into. You watch yourself, my girl. Ham says he’s willing to sit outside the school with his blunderbuss when he’s done collecting eggs. He invited me to join him. I still have my sword.”

  It only needed that. A septuagenarian and an octogenarian guarding her from the predations of a Guest. “Your concern is very flattering, Dad, but you’re worrying over nothing. Lord Challoner is a gentleman, for all the trouble he’s been in lately. I think he’s just had difficulty adjusting to civilian life.”

  “Pah. He should be grateful he’s not in some foreign place getting his brains blown out.” He tapped the ashes out of his pipe, and they fell on the stone path and Rufus sneezed. “You won’t do anything silly, will you?”

  “Silly? What do you mean?”

  “You’re so soft-hearted, always thinking the best of everyone. That man wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have real problems. We’re the resort of last resort, you know. His father must be desperate.”

  Or difficult. Uninformed. Controlling. Rachel had seen Guests come and go, and often thought their families contributed a great deal to their problems.

  Rachel had been lucky. Her parents doted on her, yet provided the discipline for her to grow up unspoiled. She may not have traveled anywhere, but if she ever did she was sure she could hold her own. She was sensible. Clear-headed.

  Usually.

  She grinned at her father. “I promise I’ll behave. Now sit right there and enjoy the sun. I’ll just go in and see about supper.”

  She hurried into the warm kitchen and took her apron off its hook. Her father was every bit as capable as she was to reheat the stew, but she liked doing what she could for him. He was determined not to be a burden, and he wasn’t. His mind was sharper than hers at times, and it was obvious he’d enjoyed his visit with his old friend Ham. He’d cut into the fruitcake and forgot to close the tin. The two of them had eaten almost all of it in a very short period of time.

  Rachel set the pine table and looked out the window over the sink. Her father’s eyes were closed. Ham must have interrupted his afternoon nap, and the excitement of the day had gotten to him.

  It wouldn’t do for Rachel to feel excited. So what if she’d received her second (and almost third) kiss? It meant nothing to a fellow like Lord Challoner, who practically kissed women for a living.

  Rachel wondered what he was having for supper. Probably not leftovers. Mrs. Grace was a good, plain cook and had a new range to work on. Shockingly, his cottage was even electrified with a generator, and there was a boiler to heat the tap water. All the modern conveniences. Only the Sykes estate on the other side of the village could rival Stonecrop Cottage for being up-to-date.

  But, according to Lord Challoner, there was “nothing to do.” How would he like to heat up water to wash the dishes, or pour lime down the privy hole? Trip on uneven stones on the floor and listen to the wind rattle the old window panes? That would keep him busy enough.

  Rachel knew she was being unfair. The man must have sacrificed his comfort being in the army for six years. He’d done his share of sleeping rough and eating muck. The Boer farmers had humiliated the greatest power on earth, besieging their forts and ambushing convoys. Commissions were being formed this very minute to look into it. How did the great British Empire lose face so badly?

  No wonder he drank and wenched to try to forget. And there were his injuries, too. But, she reminded herself, he was not a wounded or ugly puppy, but a proud, powerful lord who still had bark and bite to him.

  He was To Be Avoided.

  Chapter 7

  “Fu—” He bit off the expletive and steadied himself. Henry had hit his head on the bedroom doorway again. Had the cottage been built for midgets? He knew it was newer—there was even a plaque over the front door with the builder’s initials and the date, barely three years ago. People weren’t as short as they used to be, but of course, Henry was taller than most. He would have to remember to “Duck or Grouse,” as those clever signs in old inns said.

  He turned on the lamp and caught sight of himself in the mirror. His bandage had migrated south, and the whack to his head had caused his wound to leak. Bloody hell. Mrs. Grace had left for the day, not that he wanted her help. She would just screw up her lips and go all prune-faced on him, as though he’d been tiddly on his way to bed.

  As if he could get in
ebriated on tea—he’d had pots and pots of it today to keep him awake in case he was suffering from a concussion. The result was he was feeling a little wild, blood racing, and sorely wished for a bit of poppy to put him to sleep.

  Definitely forbidden, and likely unavailable in purest Puddling. He’d have to count imaginary sheep, though Lord knows there were plenty of real ones about. They were probably right out there on the hill outside his window jumping fences.

  Henry had a magnificent view from the cottage, but it was dark now. The village, save from the earlier ringing of the church bells, was dead quiet. The incessant bells had given him a headache—it must have been bell ringers’ practice, since they went on forever in various intonations and made no note whatsoever of the time. He’d only come upstairs because his watch told him it was ten o’clock, not because he was tired.

  Henry was buckling under to his schedule, and he hated himself for it. Until a few months ago, he’d been the one giving the orders. After his capture, he’d spent a few miserable days bleeding until he was exchanged for a flock of Boer prisoners. His Majesty’s Army had not done it out of the goodness of its heart, but through the bullying of his father, whose contacts were of the very highest, right up to the queen herself.

  And then Henry—still in his hospital bed—had faced a formal inquiry alleging that he allowed himself to be captured—that he’d failed his rank and country and class. The whole process had infuriated him. Try retreating when your boot’s been shot off and your foot is on fire, he’d wanted to say. But he lay unbowed—as if you can lie down and still be unbowed—for the hearing, biting his tongue. What was the point of telling these stupid old men off? They knew nothing about ordinary soldiers and were never likely to. The recent wars had been debacles, and Henry was glad he was shot of his army life, even if he’d had to have been shot to get out. Getting a damned tin of tobacco from Queen Victoria at Christmas was not enough to make up for even a minute of it.