Third Son's a Charm

by Shana Galen

  He hadn’t felt them in some time now. Not since he’d been back in London long enough to believe the end of the war wasn’t merely a dream from which he’d wake. It really was over. He was safe. He had no reason for anxiety.

  Until tonight.

  He’d escorted Lady Lorraine to the refreshment table and handed her a cup of lemon water. He would have rather drunk piss than the weak broth, but his mother had always said “Suum cuique,” which was a fancy way of saying “To each his own.”

  Before the lady had finished her cup and departed, she’d whispered, “Meet me tonight in the library.”

  Now Ewan stood at the door of his bedchamber—the Duke of Ridlington’s chamber, really, for it was the duke’s house—and listened to the silence of the house. It had been silent for more than three quarters of an hour, and Lady Lorraine was probably waiting for him.

  And he hadn’t yet joined her because of the nerves. He didn’t fear he’d lose control and take her on the desk as he’d imagined ever since he’d pushed her down and enjoyed the sight of her rounded bottom wriggling in the air. He could control his impulses.

  He didn’t fear death. If the duke discovered them and thought the worst, well, dying in a duel would be a far better death than many he had faced.

  He feared the words on the page.

  When he’d returned from the war, Ewan had confidence enough to stand up when called stupid. If he’d been stupid, he wouldn’t have survived the war. No one without courage and cunning had survived. And he’d had plenty of both. He was not a stupid man.

  The trouble seemed to be the boy still inside him. That boy was not convinced. That boy still felt stupid. That boy still wondered if perhaps the man hadn’t fooled everyone, including himself.

  Trying to read again would prove how stupid he was once and for all. And perhaps Ewan did not want to face the ugly truth.

  And perhaps he was a bloody coward.

  He lifted the file of papers he had been trying unsuccessfully to make sense of, pulled the door open, and stalked to the library. The door there was already ajar, and Lady Lorraine looked up when he entered. She sat behind her father’s desk, looking quite small and feminine in her white dressing gown with its high neck. The dog was in her arms, sleeping peacefully with his chin on one paw. She’d lit a lamp and set it on the desk, and shadows flickered over the books’ spines.

  “I was beginning to wonder if you would come.”

  “We should do this another night. It’s late.” Coward.

  “It’s only a little after two. This might be the earliest we are home for several more nights.”

  “You must be tired.” Yellow-bellied coward.

  “No. Are you?”

  He wanted to say yes, but exactly how afraid was he? It was words on a page, not a man with a musket. Act like a man, he told himself. “No.” Abruptly, he sat in the chair opposite her, his papers on the desk. The little fur ball raised his head, then went back to snoring softly.

  Lady Lorraine gestured to several books she’d laid out on the desk. “I found these primers in my—”

  “What did you and my cousin speak of tonight?” he asked. He was obviously desperate if he was, one, initiating conversation and, two, discussing his cousin.

  “I think you heard the most salient part of the conversation,” she said.

  “You want him to prove he loves you.”

  She frowned at him as though confused by his sudden chattiness. “I suppose some of what you said made me think. Perhaps I’ve been too trusting.” Her gaze lowered to the books on the desk, and she laid a hand on one.

  “Go on,” Ewan said before she could open the book. “What else did you discuss?”

  She took a breath and sat back in her chair. “I don’t wish to speak of it. Nothing untoward, I assure you. But he said…several of his comments made me…if not suspicious, curious.”

  He nodded as though to encourage her to keep talking. The bloody woman was always talking and talking. Why did she have to choose tonight to act close-lipped?

  “Mr. Mostyn, are you trying to avoid our purpose here?”

  “No.” Liar.

  “Then why don’t we begin? I have this primer I used when I first learned to read.”

  Ewan recognized the book. He’d had the same book. For years he’d struggled with it, never able to move to the next level.

  “Not that one,” he said, his hands growing damp. He rubbed them on his trousers.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  He stood, and the dog jumped up with a sleepy yip of alarm. “This was a mistake. I have to go to bed.”

  “What?”

  She might have said more, but he was out of the room and on his way into the vestibule before he heard the click of the puppy’s nails on the floor behind him.

  “Wait!” she hissed, her voice sounding far too loud in the cavernous vestibule. “Mr. Mostyn!”

  He swung around, finger to his lips.

  “I am trying to be quiet,” she whispered. “Come back into the library and explain to me.”

  “Go to bed.” He started for the stairs again.

  “If you go to your room, I will only follow you.” Her voice was low but not a whisper. He could hear the threat in the tone of her voice.

  Bloody woman. She’d do it too, and as bad as being discovered in the library together might be, being discovered together in his bedchamber was worse. He could lock the door, but then she might resort to waking the entire house by pounding on it.

  Or she might do worse.

  His thoughts flashed back to her descent from the tree outside her window. And damn him to hell if he hadn’t left his father’s account books in the library. He had to go back to retrieve them. Ewan marched back to the library and took his seat like an errant schoolboy. When she sat across from him, he pointed to the books, lifted one at random—not the dreaded book of his childhood—and handed it to her. “Teach me.”

  “Shouldn’t we discuss what just occurred?”

  He lifted one brow. Now that she had him here, she wanted to delay? He would never understand women.

  “You are right.” She opened the book to the first page. “Let us begin with the alphabet.”

  He raised his opposite brow.

  “I know.” She held up a hand. “This might be too basic, but it is the way the teachers I have observed always begin with the lit—with the new readers.” She pointed to the open page filled with letters. Ewan kept his gaze on her face.

  “You see, every letter has a sound. You can use the sound to help you read new words. A has the sounds ah and ay. B has a buh sound. C can sound hard or soft—”

  “I know the alphabet and the letter sounds. I can read. I…” What to say without saying too much? She might not want to laugh, but if he told her the letters moved, then she might smile or think he was funning her. “I have trouble,” he said finally.

  “Very well. Then why don’t we start with the first page of text and see where the trouble lies.” She turned several pages until she reached a page with large letters printed on it. She slid the book toward Ewan, and he pulled it close, hunching over it.

  He sat in a chair across from her—large, high-backed, and softly upholstered. He put his thick finger on the page to hold it down, and possibly to hold the words in place as well. The letters blurred and then came into focus.

  “The.” He moved his finger to the next word. This one was more difficult. First the word seemed to begin with a T but then the C came into focus. He could make no sense of it and his head started to pound. He guessed. “Tac.” Next word. “Sat.”

  “Wait.”

  At her correction, Ewan wanted to hurl the book across the room. He hated this already. He felt big and stupid, as he always had.

  She’d risen from her chair and moved to peer over his shoulder. H
er small, delicate finger tapped the word he’d had so much difficulty with. “This word is ‘cat,’ not ‘tac.’ You see, it begins with the letter C.”

  Ewan didn’t see that at all. Sometimes it began with a C and sometimes a T and sometimes he didn’t know what the hell it began with.

  “You’re doing well,” she said, and he looked at her as though she was daft. He was doing as poorly as ever. His childhood tutor would have smacked his hands with the book by now.

  “Begin again.”

  He sighed deeply. “The cat sat.” He knew that part. Now the next word. He tapped it with his finger. “No.” He shook his head. “On.” He looked up at her for confirmation. She smiled and nodded.

  “Good.”

  Ewan shoved the book aside. “This is pointless. I can’t do it.”

  Lorrie pulled the book back in front of him. “But you are doing it. You must have a little patience. It takes time.”

  “I am nine and twenty, my lady.” Ewan stood. “A child reads better than I do. You are wasting your time.”

  “It is my time to waste.”

  “Waste it on someone else.” He might have walked away from her, but he paused at the hard glint that came into her eyes. He didn’t think he’d like what she had to say next.

  “You would give up? This easily? I did not think you such a coward.”

  Ewan moved toward her, checking himself before he might put his hands around her neck.

  “If you were a man, you’d be on your arse right now.”

  “It wouldn’t be any less true if a man said it than when I say it. You are afraid to try.”

  Ewan moved toward her until he had her backed against her father’s desk. “You have no idea what I have seen and what I have done. I am not af-f-f—” Abruptly, Ewan closed his mouth. He hadn’t had trouble speaking since he was a young child.

  “I wondered if you had stuttered as a child.”

  How the hell had she known that?

  “Is that why you are so laconic?”

  Ewan didn’t answer, not trusting his tongue. His throat felt as though someone had wound a rope around it, his tongue sat like a limp trout in his mouth.

  “You aren’t the only one who has this problem, you know. When I am in Bedfordshire, I like to go to the village school and help the teacher. He has too many students to focus on any one or two, and the girls are always ignored in favor of the boys. A few years ago, there was a boy who had a stutter and also what Mr. Fletcher said he thought of as some sort of word blindness.”

  Ewan tried to swallow past the tightness in his throat. Word blindness. He had never heard the phrase before, but as soon as she uttered it, he felt strangely relieved. Somewhere inside him the boy he had been raised his dejected head. Ewan had not known he was lost, but with two words, he had been found.

  “I worked with the boy for months, and we had made progress, but then he had to help on his father’s farm, and I had to come to Town. The next time I saw him, he was doing better, but I cannot help but think how far he might have come if we had not been interrupted at such a crucial time.”

  Her green eyes had been fixed on his chest, not really seeing him, but with a faraway look. Now they sharpened and met his gaze. “If you will allow me, perhaps I can help you as well. If nothing else, it is worth a try.”

  For a moment, he began to hope. Perhaps there was a chance his future did not have to mirror his past. He could stop standing on the outside. He could finally be part of the world everyone else inhabited—a world that, to him, was full of jumbled letters and confusion.

  But he’d tried before and failed, and he had vowed never to allow himself to hope again. He had been disappointed for the last time. He did not need it proven, yet again, what a stupid brute of a man he was. He would risk life and limb for this woman because he was duty-bound to do so. What was more, he’d come to care for her, and he would have done it even if no one had paid him.

  But Ewan would not risk his pride.

  No woman, no experiment, was worth the tattered remains of the little vanity he had left.

  Twelve

  Lorrie hadn’t expected the Viking to walk away. She’d hoped to challenge him, raise his fighting spirit, but instead he’d pushed away from her and strode out the door.

  She’d stood in the office and wanted to call him back—and not only because she hated to lose. She hated to lose him. Finally, Lorrie looked down at the papers on the edge of her father’s desk. The Viking had carried them into the room and left them, probably by accident. She opened the folder that contained them and scanned the contents—account books, bills of sale, mortgage papers. All of it seemed to pertain to the Earl of Pembroke. On another sheet was a long list of numbers, many of them scratched out. Was this the Viking’s writing? Were these his attempt to work out the financial matter he had mentioned? But surely he would need to be able to read these papers to understand the problem. Lorrie didn’t know how long she had stood in the library, looking through the papers, but finally, Welly whined and Lorrie had realized the Viking wouldn’t be back.

  Back in her own room—after a quick stop in the garden so Welly could sniff every flower, insect, rock, and finally empty his bladder—Lorrie lay in bed unable to sleep. When had she begun to look forward to seeing the Viking every day? When had the mere fact of him leaving a room made the world dim? She had thought teaching him to read would give her the time with him she craved—and perhaps result in a few more of those forbidden but wonderful kisses. Now she’d driven him further away.

  “Unfortunate,” she said to herself. In his little bed near hers, Welly’s head popped up at the sound of her voice. “Because perhaps I really might be of some help to him.”

  It didn’t surprise her when the Viking was absent from breakfast the next day or when he chose to meet the family at the theater—the god-awful opera again—instead of riding in their coach. It didn’t surprise her when the Viking spent a week making every effort to avoid being alone with her. He was with her all the time, but always out of earshot or behind one of the half dozen or so of her fawning suitors. Lorrie was beginning to wonder if she’d ever have a chance to speak to him privately again. She’d inquired about him very indirectly on several occasions and managed to piece together half a dozen facts—the most salient of these was that he had served as the muscle inside a gaming hell called Langley’s in St. James’s.

  Lorrie could only assume he must have had lodgings at the hell because he did not appear to own a flat, and he had to sleep somewhere when he was not sleeping in her father’s town house, and that was all too common an occurrence now. Her other option was the club the Viking and the other men of Draven’s troop frequented. But she thought she might have even less luck gaining entry into the club than into the hell.

  She had only begun to scheme a way to pay him a visit at the club when one night, after appearing to completely ignore her at a ball, he made a point of handing her into the coach. A perfectly capable footman stood by, and so Lorrie had turned her head in surprise.

  “The library,” he’d whispered. And then he was gone.

  She half believed she’d imagined the whispered request. She’d wanted so badly to see him that it seemed impossible her wish was finally coming to fruition. That night she’d barely paid any attention as Nell had undressed her and helped her don her nightclothes. All Lorrie cared about was the interminable amount of time before the rest of the household went to bed and she was once again alone with the Viking.

  Finally, the house was silent, and she padded downstairs on bare feet. She had slippers, but she could only find one, and from the lowered ears and drooped-head posture Welly had been giving her, she could guess where the other had gone.

  Lorrie pushed the library door open and stepped inside, surprised to see the Viking seated at her father’s desk with his back to the door. He made the large furnishing seem so
small. Indeed, the entire room, with its high ceilings and shelves of books soaring upward, was dwarfed by his presence.

  And when he turned to look at her with those cool blue eyes, she caught her breath.

  I’m in love with him.

  The thought had come from nowhere, and she immediately pushed it away. Ridiculous. She was in love with Francis. Charming and handsome Francis…who she had not thought about in days.

  “Close the door,” he said.

  His low voice, little more than a rumble, awakened butterflies in her belly, and she was glad to turn away and have something to occupy her hands, which had begun to tremble.

  When she turned back, he pointed to the desk. The folder with Pembroke’s papers were before him. Lorrie frowned, uncertainly. “You want me to teach you how to read?”

  “No. I told you. It’s pointless. No offence, my lady, but better tutors than you have tried and failed. My father spared no expense, and although none of them ever called what I have word blindness, they all said the same thing in the end. I will never read.”

  Lorrie swallowed, feeling miserable. She had wanted to help so badly. “That isn’t true,” she said finally. “It might be slow and difficult, but I believe you can learn.”

  He waved a hand. “I don’t have time for slow and difficult at the moment. I need your help.”

  “My help?” She pressed a hand to her heart.

  He wet his lips as though the act of speaking was a novelty. “I recently visited my father at his town house. Your intended was there.”

  “Francis?”

  He made a sound of agreement. “They had called for me to tell me…” He paused and cupped the back of his neck as though it ached. “They wanted to inform me…” He rose and paced behind the desk.

  She’d forgotten how much he seemed to dominate a room when he stood. Even a comfortably sized room like her father’s library seemed cramped when he moved about in it. It was as though everything that was not him or part of him shrank in comparison.

  He paced, seeming to struggle with finding the words he wanted. “The problem seems to be that my father is ruined.” He nodded as though to say, There. I have said it.