The butler frowned. “Pity we cannot say the same about you, Master Geoffrey.”
“Well, aren’t you full of piss and vinegar this morning?” West looked from right to left, then leaned closer. “Not me, though. I left all my piss on Ashington’s roses.”
“I see you’ve been out drinking with Mr. Grant again.” Wilson lifted the flickering candle higher, as if he was assessing the state of what had shown up—again—on the doorstep. “No visible blood I can see. An improvement over last week, at least.”
“Grant spent the evening bedding, not brawling.” West fought off a yawn. “And as we’ve long discussed, I don’t need you to wait up for me.”
“Someone must.” Wilson’s frown deepened. “Otherwise you’ll be sleeping on the steps again. The neighbors are still talking about that.” Although he was close to seventy and starting to stoop, the butler shoved a shoulder beneath West’s arm and began to steer them both toward the dark staircase, the guttering candle held out to light their way. “I’ll just get you upstairs, then wake the scullery maid and have her bring you up a pot of coffee.”
“No.” West’s boot fumbled on the first step. Not coffee. God, no. He was finally—finally—tired enough to contemplate sleep. “No need to wake anyone. I would prefer to just close my eyes for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”
“Sleep away the day again, you mean?”
West gave Wilson a pitiful look as they began to climb the stairs. The old butler held West’s furtive ability to sleep in one gnarled, aging hand. With one word, the man could have the drapes in West’s bedroom drawn tight and order all household activity near his bedroom to cease. Or, he could direct an entire army of servants at Cardwell House to troop in.
Time to clean the chimney. Or beat the rug, as the man had ordered last week.
He held his pout until Wilson offered a long-suffering sigh. “As you wish. Shall I wake you later, Master Geoffrey?”
“Yes, please. Half past three, per usual, if you would.” He fought off a yawn. “I’m to meet Grant at White’s again tonight.”
“Yes, Master Geoffrey.”
West concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other. “You do realize you are the only one who calls me that.”
“Master?”
“Geoffrey. Only my family still calls me by my given name.” Although Wilson surely qualified as family. He’d been butler to West’s father, Viscount Cardwell, for as long as West could remember, and had faithfully served West’s grandfather before that.
“I think I’ve earned the right to call you whatever I wish,” the butler said, beginning to puff a bit as they neared the top of the staircase. “After all, I wiped your nose and your bum when you had your nursemaid too terrified to come near you with your pranks. And I’m the one who waits up worrying for you now. Your parents have long since given up.”
“Wiped my bum?” West managed a laugh. “Wilson. I am a grown man. One day I shall be Viscount Cardwell.” He managed to lift a drunken brow. “You ought to treat me with a little more respect.”
“Yes, well, if you would act like a future viscount, I feel sure I might find it easier to remember you are a future viscount,” Wilson replied in his dry, judging manner.
That stung a bit, however well deserved. And so, as they neared the top of the long flight of stairs, West set his foot on the exact right spot on the third step from the top, pressing the heel of his shoe down hard. A long, unmistakable flatulence echoed through the otherwise silent house.
The butler jerked still.
“Wilson,” West chortled. “You might need to see a doctor about that.”
The butler heaved a sigh and began to move them upward again. “That one was fairly juvenile,” Wilson said, “even for you.”
“Oh, it’s just a bit of fun.” That West had painstakingly inserted the inflated bladder beneath the boards yesterday and then waited for the perfect opportunity to unleash its brilliance was something he was somewhat proud of at the moment.
Wilson, however, appeared unimpressed. Per usual.
They reached the top of the staircase and turned left down the dark and silent hallway. “If I might speak plainly,” Wilson huffed, “you need to find something useful to do with your waking hours. When I think of the time you waste planning and executing these ridiculous pranks . . . cavorting about all night with your friends, stumbling home reeking of smoke and perfume . . .” He made a disgusted sound. “Just imagine the good you could be doing instead.”
“Good?” West snorted. “Now there’s a word one doesn’t often hear attached to my name.” He stumbled a bit, leaning heavily on Wilson’s stooped frame, then laughed. “Unless it is used in association with certain . . . nocturnal activities.”
As they staggered toward his bedroom door, relief swept through him at the thought of his mattress. He half-aimed, half-fell in the door’s direction, then he threw himself toward his bed, falling facedown into the feathered softness with a muffled “ooooomph”. It was tempting to just lie there and let the mattress have its way with him, but he rolled over with a groan and hopefully lifted his boot.
Wilson stood, immobile at the foot of the bed, staring down at him.
“Why are you still glowering?” West protested. “I made it home.” He tapped the eye he knew was still faintly blackened from last week’s pub brawl. “Safely, this time.” He waved his foot around but the servant made no move to help him, and the boot remained firmly in place, fitting West’s calves as tightly as any glove. “Perhaps, if you are refusing to offer a hand with my boots, you could summon my valet?”
“And wake the poor man from a sound sleep?” Wilson snorted. “I think not.” He placed the candlestick down on top of the bureau. “You terrorize him enough with your laundry, slinking about the gutters and burning holes in everything with those filthy cigarettes.” The older man lifted something up from the top of the bureau, fisted in one hand. “I want to speak plainly, for a moment.”
After a moment of squinting in the servant’s direction, West could see that Wilson was holding up the damned Victoria Cross he had been awarded by the queen last June for nothing more than stupidity and honest-to-God luck.
Grant had nearly wet himself laughing when West had received it, and West was inclined to agree with the sentiment. He needed to stop leaving that bit of frippery out on the bureau top.
Made people think he cared about it.
“What do you want with me, Wilson?” he groaned.
“You’ve been home from Crimea for nearly two years now.” Wilson waved the bronze cross about. “Returned a proper hero, the world at your feet, but it seems as if you have become one of your own jokes. Don’t you care what your family thinks of you? What the world thinks of you? What happened to the boy I knew, the interest you once showed in architectural design, when you were at university? You could do, you could be, anything you wanted.”
West closed his eyes and let his head sink back onto his pillow. “All I want is sleep,” he moaned. And if Wilson refused to help, he would sleep with his boots on, thank you very much.
It wouldn’t be the first time, and likely not the last.
“Master Geoffrey.” The voice was stern and disapproving.
But West refused to open his eyes. He was a grown man in charge of his own actions, and Wilson was supposed to be his servant. And what was this nonsense about Crimea? His year of service in the Royal Navy was scarcely more than a prank, a glorious, ill-conceived frolic he and Grant had undertaken to impress past and future lovers.
Not that he had ever spoken of it to any of them.
And he didn’t want to talk about it now.
“What, exactly, is your point, Wilson?” he muttered, wanting only to forget. It was difficult enough to sleep most days without being reminded of the war.
“You’ve not resumed your studies since you came back. Mr. Hardwick has sent his assistant around, asking when you might return to your apprenticeship. I had thought you might
wish to send him a reply.”
West rolled his eyes beneath his closed lids. The mention of Phillip Hardwick, one of the city’s most prominent architects, reminded him too much of his present uselessness. He’d once imagined he might create beauty from chaos, build the sort of soaring ceilings and useful structures that Hardwick designed with such ease. But Crimea had changed all that.
West didn’t see beauty in such things anymore.
And destruction was easier to embrace.
“There is no need,” he mumbled. But his words sounded slurred and pathetic, even to his own ears. “I’m going to be a viscount, not an architect.”
“Then you might act like it, on occasion. You’ve responsibilities, Master Geoffrey. Your father is no longer a young man, and if you aren’t going to resume your education or your apprenticeship, he could use some assistance managing his affairs. You could be learning how to be this ‘viscount’ you speak of. Instead, you’re out carousing every night.”
“Right. Making myself useful.”
“Useful to whom, exactly?”
West cracked open one eye and offered the servant a cheeky grin. “Why, to the female species, of course. And I’m a heroic friend to barkeeps and brothel-goers everywhere. Now, be a good man and close those drapes. It’s getting bloody bright in here.”
From the Diary of Miss Mary Channing
From the Diary of Miss Mary Channing
May 31, 1858
How am I to survive these two miserable months?
My hope to occasionally escape to the garden and read my books in peace has been sorely dashed. I can’t even open my bedroom window now. Every time I smell flowers I can’t help but think of the man from the garden. There is no doubt in my mind I have met a real-life villain. He probably steals from the tithing tray at church. Kicks at innocent chickens, and eats small children for breakfast. Well, if I have learned nothing else from books, it is that villains—particularly the handsome ones—must be avoided at all costs. A heroine must be true to herself.
Unless her true self can’t stop thinking about handsome villains.
Then she must lock herself inside and pull the drapes.
Chapter 2
“Must we read another chapter?” Mary sighed.
Normally, she would rather bite off her own tongue than say such a blasphemous thing. The book she was reading aloud to her sister—Villette, by Charlotte Brontë—was interesting enough, but it was difficult not to pray for an end to the current torture. Because three feet away on a bedside table, a vase of fresh-cut flowers sneered at her.
Every time she took a breath, her nose filled with the scent of roses.
Eleanor struggled to find a comfortable sitting position on her bed. “Not if you do not wish it.” She lowered her bare feet from the pillow—a necessary concession, given that her house slippers had purportedly ceased to fit sometime last week. “I confess, I have already read it. Ashington bought me the book before he left.” She smiled dreamily. “He thought it would help me pass the time until his return, the sweet dear. He really is the most thoughtful husband.”
Mary schooled herself not to react to the sound of her brother-in-law’s name. It had been this way for two exasperating days. Ashington, this. Ashington, that. Good heavens, the way her sister nattered on about her absent husband, one would think Lord Ashington hung the moon each night and single-handedly paved streets of gold.
Mary herself was less than impressed. She couldn’t help but think that a properly thoughtful husband might have timed his business trip to avoid his new wife’s final days of pregnancy.
Irritated by her own irritation, she looked down at her ink-stained fingers, rubbing at a particularly persistent spot on her thumb. She’d spent more time than usual writing in her journal since her arrival, and her fingers bore witness to her boredom, but writing in her journal was preferable to sitting here breathing in rose-scented air. “If you have already read it, you should have told me.” She felt more than a little cross. “We might have chosen to do something different.”
“But I thought you would enjoy it. It is by one of your favorite authoresses—”
“Eleanor,” Mary interrupted, her voice coming out sharper than she intended. How long had she been here in London? Two days? It felt like a year. Since her brief, ill-advised foray into the garden yesterday morning, she’d stayed safely—and miserably—inside the town house. She spent most of her time with her sister, who spent most of her time in bed. And Eleanor’s bedroom was beginning to feel as though there ought to be bars on the windows.
She looked up, not even sure why she felt so out of sorts. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Eleanor, but you shouldn’t be worrying about me. It is my job to worry about you. I am supposed to be your companion during this confinement.”
But she wasn’t proving very good at it, snapping over kind gestures, unwilling to read a perfectly pleasant book. An apology was needed, of that she was sure. But before she could find the words to beg forgiveness for her churlish behavior, her sister gave a low moan from the bed.
Mary jumped from her chair, the book and the flowers and her irritation forgotten. “Is everything all right?” She placed a hand against Eleanor’s forehead, her mind racing with all the things that could be wrong.
Ruptured spleen. Cholera.
Poisoned by the beef served at luncheon.
But one possibility needed no imaginative embellishment to send her stomach twisting: it was at least two months too early for the baby to come.
“Should I ring for a maid?” she asked, worried. “Call the doctor?”
“No, the doctor is due to stop by this afternoon anyway, and I—oomph.” Eleanor breathed out through her nose, then took up Mary’s hand and pressed it against her abdomen. “I think the baby is just feeling a bit vigorous today.”
Mary felt a violent kick beneath her palm, and gasped at the force of it.
Eleanor offered a thin smile. “He is going to be as strapping as Ashington, I fear.”
Mary hovered, afraid to keep her hand in place, afraid to pull it way. The thump came again, hard enough to startle her, even though she was anticipating it now. Good heavens, how was her sister surviving such an internal assault? It suddenly occurred to her that a ruptured spleen might not be such a far-fetched notion, after all.
She looked up at her sister, studying her face. Eleanor tried to hide her exhaustion behind a veil of happy smiles and rice powder, but the powder couldn’t hide the dark smudges beneath her eyes, or the way her shoulders hunched forward. Mary was reminded, in that moment, of how much she didn’t know. How much she would never know. She was twenty-six years old, unmarried, and only permitted this terrifying glimpse into impending motherhood because her sister had sought to share it with her.
She pulled her hand away from her sister’s stomach as the maid came in to announce the doctor’s perfectly timed arrival. She still felt shaken by the strength in that kick. She’d read enough about heroines who died in childbirth to know what was at stake here.
As they waited for the doctor to be shown up, Eleanor pursed her lips, seeming to sense the shift in her mood. “What is the matter?”
Mary shook her head. Eleanor always teased her about her vivid imagination, and she’d learned long ago to keep such thoughts to herself. “It is nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me, Mary.” Eleanor wagged a finger at her. “I’ve always been able to sense when something is bothering you.”
“That’s because you were usually the one doing the bothering.”
“Tell me.” Eleanor wiggled her fingers. “Or I shall have to tickle it out of you as I did when we were children.”
“As if you could catch me in your condition,” Mary scoffed, softening her sarcasm with a smile. “It is just . . . aren’t you worried? About the coming birth?”
“Goodness, what a question.” Eleanor shook her head hard enough to set her diamond earbobs swinging—another gift from dear Ashington, no doubt. “
Why should I be worried?”
Mary swallowed her immediate response. Not to put too fine a point on it, but why shouldn’t her sister be worried? Books were full of morbid examples of women dying, in the most terrible, gruesome ways. Childbirth was but one of the ways a heroine could meet her end. There was also gunshot, consumption, carriage accidents, summer colds . . .
Not to mention the ever-popular pox.
But those were not the sort of things one said out loud, especially not to a woman in the final stages of her confinement. “You could have twins,” Mary improvised, trying to steer her own mind away from the worst possible outcome. “Or triplets.” She leaned forward. “I recently read an article in the newspaper where a woman had four babies at once.”
Eleanor gaped up at her. “Honestly, Mary, four babies? At once? I am not a dog delivering puppies, you know. Your imagination is given too much free rein.” She rolled her eyes. “Too many books, I should say.”
“It isn’t that imaginative of an idea.” Mary flushed. “Multiples are not uncommon. We are twins, after all.” She hesitated, wanting to say more. She couldn’t tell Eleanor the full direction of her thoughts, not when her imagination—always active, thanks to reading so many gothic tales—was insisting on conjuring the specter of a future without her sister.
But she couldn’t quite leave it alone, either. She picked up her sister’s hand and squeezed it gently. “In all seriousness, aren’t you afraid of . . . complications?”
“Why must there be complications?” Eleanor looked pained by the notion. “Childbirth is a very natural process. Nothing to fear. I am young and healthy and, most importantly, determined to deliver this child with all due haste.” She looked up at the sound of the door opening, a genuine smile replacing her frown. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Merial?”
Mary turned her head to see a handsome man stepping into the room, a light dusting of gray hair peppering the dark hair at his temples. Surprise and dusty memories swept through her. Dr. Merial had been her family’s doctor when she was younger, but he’d moved his practice to London over a decade ago. She hadn’t seen him in an age.
The Perks of Loving a Scoundrel Page 2
