“This does not explain why Miss Rochester is being attacked in the streets,” his lordship said, drawing out his words as if he was thinking while he spoke. “Do you think the earl is to blame for that?”
“Unless you believe in coincidence,” Celeste replied frostily, reminding them of her existence. “We were shattered and lost when we first arrived. Hoping for direction, we sent messages to the earl and to our half-sister, who had promised to bring us into society. We received notes of condolence only. A month later, the attacks began.”
Nana finally spoke. “They were cruel to my little ones. Instead of sympathy, these cold English send unkind notes saying they are not in town, without saying when they might return or offering aid. We know nothing of this city, and they cannot even give advice. Jamar and Miss Celeste make repeated requests for allowances, for visits, for information, and we hear nothing. These are bad people. We want to go home to our families and friends, but we cannot.”
Celeste patted Nana’s hand, knowing her fear went deeper than expressed. The earl might sell off Nana’s sons while their mother was helpless here in England.
“Lansdowne is a powerful political figure,” Lord Erran said with a frown. “He may be strapped for cash, but I have not heard that he is so degenerate as to ignore his own relations.”
“Why would my father allow a bankrupt to be executor of his will?” Celeste cried in frustration. “I do not understand how this earl we do not know can control our property and lives!”
“Your father may not have named him executor,” his lordship explained. “If there is no formal document filed with English courts, he would be appointed executor simply as head of the family. You have not received the documents from the island authorities either?”
She shook her head. “I do not understand the delay. We wrote as soon as we realized there was a problem, months ago. There has been time enough for a reply. I fear Lansdowne’s hired help has intercepted them.”
“Do you know your father’s solicitors here in London?”
She was terrified he was simply another swindler out to deprive them of what little they had. She despised living in fear, but she’d lost all her security when her father died. If her persuasive voice had failed her too . . . She had nothing. Catastrophe loomed a single word away, no matter how she looked at it. She didn’t reply.
Jamar gave his lordship the name of the firm. He’d been handling Rochester affairs for decades. He knew these things better than she anyway.
“It’s a decent firm,” Lord Erran acknowledged. “I’ll draw up a statement that you can sign appointing me as your man of business in your father’s London affairs, and I’ll see what I can find out. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of who is standing in the office at the time a question comes up. If Lansdowne stepped up, they might take an earl’s word over a dead man’s.”
“Sign papers?” Celeste panicked, fearing anything that might give him authority over her. “Why can you not simply take me to these solicitors and let me speak with them? What do you expect in return for helping us?”
Nana squeezed her hand, but Celeste was not reassured. She could tell from his lordship’s hesitation that he most definitely wanted something—and this was his family’s house.
A commotion on the stairs interrupted any reply their visitor might make. Already on edge, Celeste rose to meet whatever calamity had arrived on their doorstep now.
“Celeste, there are soldiers out front!” Trevor shouted before he’d even reached the kitchen.
Every chair at the table scraped back.
Four
Erran held his hand up to prevent his hostess from fleeing up the stairs. “London doesn’t have an army. We do have a fairly new and inexperienced police force. Let me handle this.”
The sad story their tenants had recited of thieving executors wasn’t uncommon. The Chancery Court was buried in similar civil complaints, and it could take years to untangle lost or unregistered documents. Usually, only the lawyers came out ahead, so Miss Rochester had every right to be suspicious of him.
But Lansdowne . . . The irony of the earl’s relations landing in an Ives’ residence didn’t escape him. The Whig party needed Lansdowne’s support in this next election. Lansdowne was playing the reformists and Tories against each other, no doubt in an attempt to fill his coffers. Antagonizing the man at a politically sensitive time like this— would not aid Ashford’s candidate for prime minister.
The whole point of gaining this house was so Ashford could come to London and twist the arms of men like Lansdowne.
Erran took the kitchen stairs two at a time, passing a lanky youth resembling the woman below. With her striking eyes and lush lips, the lady had an expressive countenance that had almost caused him to lose the path of his thoughts several times. The boy was less prepossessing and more terrified.
Erran could hear the rustle of petticoats as Miss Rochester followed him up. Of course the woman hadn’t stayed behind. And from the sounds of it, the others were on her heels.
From the top of the back stairs, he could hear pounding on the front panel. The racket echoed in the nearly bare, dark-wainscoted corridor. He had vague recollections of this house from his childhood, but it had been leased to tenants for decades. He didn’t recall the emptiness. Or if a knocker had ever existed on the door. The pounding was quite loud enough without one.
“Don’t answer it,” Miss Rochester whispered, grabbing Erran’s arm and nearly upsetting his balance with the proximity to her lush scent. “They’ll go away. Everyone always does.”
“And then they throw rocks and chamber pots at you,” he responded in disgust. “Hiding is no solution.”
She held his arm with long fingers and pressed close enough that her skirts brushed his legs. “It’s my solution. I have not given you permission to run our lives.”
He’d never backed down from a challenge in his life—except from his inexplicable, potentially dangerous vocal ability. I will not shout, I will not . . . he chanted internally.
Keeping his tone even, he replied with patience, “They will simply keep coming back. At some point, they will batter the door down. Let me handle this while I am here. You and your siblings stay out of sight. This is my family’s house. I do not have to tell them you are in residence.”
That seemed to satisfy her. She studied him through wide, up-tilted eyes that jolted his pulse, then ushered her brother, Jamar, and a young woman he hadn’t seen earlier into a front chamber. She closed the heavy dark oak door to the foyer, and he could hear the click of a latch.
He’d like to think she was a woman of sense, but most likely, she would come after him with a tomahawk if he failed. He straightened his neckcloth, checked his buttons, and ran his hand through his disheveled hair. Donning his best glare, he opened the door.
A rotund bailiff Erran recognized from the courts stood on the step, his waistcoat stained with gravy and his outdated overcoat open to make room for his paunch. Behind him stood two trim policemen in their new uniforms, looking vaguely uncertain. Erran doubted they were accustomed to knocking on the doors of the wealthy.
He crossed his arms and glared down at the shorter bailiff. “What the devil do you mean by raising this rumpus? Do you wish to disturb the entire neighborhood at this hour?”
“We’re to evict these here tenants,” the bailiff said with an air of accomplishment, pointing at a battered document he produced from his pocket.
Erran prayed his hostess couldn’t hear that or she’d never speak to him again. “Then you have the wrong house. I am the brother of the marquess of Ashford, and we own this place and have so for a century. You cannot evict us from our own home.”
He snatched the document from the bailiff’s grubby hand while the young policemen looked even more uncertain. Shaking the paper open, Erran peered at it in the fading light, finding the name of Lansdowne’s solicitors on the last page.
Damn. Duncan was going to despise knowing a potential political ally
was a bully and a thief. He could hope this was the solicitor’s work and that the earl didn’t know about it.
“This is a fraud,” he said, looking over the bailiff’s head to his uniformed escort. “The marquess would not evict himself, and these papers are not penned by his solicitor. Ashford is ill and is not to be disturbed, which is why the knocker is not on the door,” he said pointedly. “Should you trouble us again with this taradiddle, we’ll have all of you arrested!”
“It’s not for his lordship,” the bailiff tried to protest. “It’s for these here foreigners that been walking our decent streets! Look at them names. It don’t say Ashford.”
Erran forced down his desire to experiment with his courtroom bellow. He was a civilized lawyer, not a beast who menaced the stupid. “It says Rochester, a very proper family who happen to be our guests and our cousins. That’s Baron Rochester to you, and they’re as English as I am. I have my doubts about your origins, however.”
While the bailiff flapped his gums incoherently, Erran glanced back to the policemen. “If you good sirs would remove this repugnant piece of filth from our doorstep, the marquess will show his appreciation later.”
Bribery, they understood. Nodding respectfully, they grabbed the bailiff’s elbows and led him off, protesting, into the dusk.
Erran shut the door. Before he could completely process the pure brutality of such fraud, the drawing room door opened and the Rochesters rushed out. Their dignified majordomo merely watched over them without expression.
“You should have shown us that document,” the lady said angrily. “How do we know that it didn’t come from the marquess and you were simply covering up the bad timing?”
“Dashitall, you’re a suspicious wench.” From his pocket, Erran produced the document he’d pilfered. “Here. Take it somewhere with light. I merely glanced at the names, but I recognize the earl’s solicitor.”
The boy held out his hand. “We have not been introduced, sir. I am Trevor, Baron Rochester.”
He could not be older than sixteen, much the same age of the blond girl beside him. The boy had his older sister’s dark coloring but lacked her extraordinarily light eyes. His as yet unformed features promised his sister’s handsomeness, but the plump bottom lip looked more petulant than pretty at the moment. His blond sister possessed the blue eyes but not the dark coloring or the striking cheekbones of her siblings. Still, she was pleasant enough and would do well when it came time to present her.
Erran shook the boy’s hand and introduced himself while keeping an eye on the older sister. Miss Rochester lit a candle and was perusing the eviction notice with more care than he had.
“He is saying the rents must be returned to the estate, and we must move by the end of next month! Is this at all legal?” she asked in dismay.
“Not in the least,” Erran said with assurance. “If you’ll return the paper to me, I’ll show it to our firm and have them respond appropriately with threats of lawsuits and criminal trespass. My assumption is that—if Lansdowne is truly behind this—he wants the cash your father paid to lease this place. Such a sum would stave off the worst of his debtors.”
She slumped dejectedly onto an old wooden settle. “Our own family wishes to throw us into the streets?”
“He doesn’t even know us,” the younger sister said, patting her on the shoulder. “If he cares at all, he may assume we can go to Mother’s family or our half-sister.”
“Your mother has family here?” Erran asked, consumed with curiosity. He really needed to be encouraging them to run to any other family, so Dunc could have his house back. But their executor’s dirty trick had raised his unholy need to fight injustice.
For all her strength in the face of adversity, the lady looked frail and vulnerable. Erran wasn’t in the habit of taking care of others, but her defense of her siblings appealed to his better instincts.
“Distant family, possibly,” she finally replied. “Mother was born in Jamaica. We lost her to an epidemic a few years ago. She used to correspond with people here, but we never met them, and from what little she said, she had never met them either.”
Erran rubbed his hair. “I don’t suppose she kept journals, did she?”
All three of the siblings stared at him. The young blonde was the first to respond. “Why, yes, as do we. It is a family tradition.”
“Malcolms, of course,” he said in resignation. “As I mentioned, my sister-in-law believes you’re related to her family, although I thought the Malcolm in your family name was from your father’s side. I will return with Lady Azenor on the morrow, if I might, and leave you undisturbed for the rest of the evening.” He bowed.
“Wait a minute!” Miss Rochester leapt up and caught his arm again.
He liked the way she touched him so easily. He also approved of the way her head rose past his shoulder. Her lips would be right where he could lean over and…
He had to evict her. Prurient thoughts were inappropriate. He waited patiently in the glow of the one candle.
“You did not tell us your urgent matter. If you are to help us, how might we help you?” she asked in concern.
“You can’t,” he said curtly. “I doubt anyone can. I’ll let Lady Azenor explain. It involves more mumbo-jumbo than I’m prepared to relate.”
And he was fairly certain that telling them he needed them out of his brother’s house immediately would not go over well. He should bask in the lady’s approval for this one brief moment, before she returned to regarding him with well-deserved suspicion.
***
Biting her bottom lip, Celeste pulled back the faded drapery to watch his handsome lordship stride down the road as if he hadn’t a care in the world. She knew better. She’d seen the weariness in his eyes and heard the worry in his voice.
“He saved us from the earl’s treachery,” Sylvia said hesitantly. “He’s a good man, yes? We can trust him?”
“We can’t trust anyone,” Trevor responded angrily. “They’re all as bad as pirates in this place.
“It’s not as if we can trust everyone in Jamaica,” Jamar said with his usual complacency. “Our neighbors will jump at the opportunity to buy our people even knowing they are free.”
“Papa protected us from seeing the evil,” Sylvia said sadly.
As Celeste could not. She hadn’t the strength to carry this burden alone, so she had inflicted her fear on Trevor and Sylvia. She regretted that. “Let us see about fixing supper, and then we must hurry and finish more shirts. I have told Mr. Taylor we must raise our prices or sell them ourselves. He has agreed to pay more, but only if we can continue producing in the same quantity. We cannot let him down.”
“I should be doing more to help,” Trevor grumbled. “We cannot afford Oxford now, so studying is wasted time.”
There was her real hope in inviting Lord Erran into their household. The brother of a marquess would surely know how one went about teaching a boy to be a baron and the owner of a vast plantation—
One that would be bankrupt and without field hands before Trevor came of age, if the earl had anything to say about it.
She would fight until her dying breath for their home and her family, but she rather suspected a man as evil as Lansdowne was capable of arranging that too.
“Let us see what his lordship’s family can do to help,” she replied with more equanimity than she felt.
“It’s rather like choosing the devil you know or the one you don’t, isn’t it?” Trevor asked, sensing her hesitation.
“Yes, rather,” she agreed, without adding that Lord Erran’s devils must be great for him to agree to help complete strangers. “Except we don’t really know Lansdowne any better than Lord Erran, do we? So it’s in ourselves that we must trust. We have this home, and we have our talents. Let us put them to the best use.”
What worried her most was that her best talent apparently did not work on the very autocratic Lord Erran. His family owned this house, and she could say or do nothing that would
stop him from taking it if he wished.
Losing another home would shatter her—and her family. She could not let that happen, if she must cause rioting in the streets to prevent it.
And she could. She’d done it before.
Five
Late that evening, Erran slammed his fist into a heavy canvas punching bag, relishing the release of frustration. He followed with repeated blows using both fists, working up a sweat and hoping to clear his head.
He could still smell Miss Rochester’s floral scent, feel her slender waist close to his and the softness of her breasts crushed against his chest. He wanted to beat Lansdowne’s solicitors and half the world into a pulp for harming such a delicate blossom.
And he needed to put her out of her home—Ashford’s home.
He whacked the heavy bag again, until it slammed into the wall behind it.
“Natural aggression is a good thing,” his Uncle Pascoe’s voice said from the cellar doorway. “But it ought to be channeled into more useful pursuits.”
“Right.” Erran wiped his brow on his drenched shirtsleeve. “I’ll punch a few boneheads, shall I?”
“Personally, I prefer chasing women for release of tension, but you apparently have different tastes. Does this have anything to do with removing the tenants from Ashford’s house?” Dressed in frock coat and pleated linen, still wearing his gloves from outdoors, Pascoe leaned his broad shoulder against the wall and twirled an affected walking stick.
His uncle was only in his early thirties and as hale and hearty as Erran, but Pascoe’s political role required that he play the part of effete gentleman.
“Your multi-talented valet has learned to use a crimping iron?” Erran asked, nodding at the pleated shirt, unwilling to discuss his reason for pounding the sawdust-filled bag. “I’ve admired them but I’m not about to learn to crimp them.”
Whisper of Magic Page 4
