Brave New Earl

by Jane Ashford

  Tab batted at the quill pen on the desk, trying to bite the feather. When Jean lifted it out of reach, he jumped, missed his footing, and tumbled into her lap. Laughing at his indignant expression, Jean got hold of herself. She had a system for her life; it worked quite well. The important thing was to preserve it. She should write the Phillipsons, in the guise of a report on their grandson perhaps. Their relief at hearing that Geoffrey wasn’t coming to live with them would outweigh any other concerns.

  The letter took a while to draft. Tab wished to add toothmarks to the fresh paper, or at the least chew on the quill, and the simplest words came slowly. The task left Jean curiously fatigued.

  • • •

  “That went well,” Arthur said to young Tom as they walked back to the house together. Geoffrey had stayed on in the stables, brushing his pony under the groom’s supervision.

  “Love at first sight, I’d say,” replied Tom with a grin that lit his homely face.

  “You’re happy for Geoffrey.” Arthur was interested in Tom. He hadn’t come across anyone just like him before.

  “’Course I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Beg pardon, milord?”

  “You haven’t known him long.”

  “It don’t take time to like seeing people happy. Most folks do, unless they’re bad ’uns.”

  “I’m surprised to hear you say so, with the life you’ve led.”

  Tom looked over at him as they walked. “It ain’t been that bad, milord.”

  “Many would disagree with you. Don’t you grieve for your parents, for example?” Grief had been on Arthur’s mind recently.

  “I never knew them.” Tom shrugged. “I don’t think a person grieves over what they can’t remember.”

  “Even though their loss was quite unfortunate for you, and unfair?”

  “That’s not the same, is it, milord?” The lad’s plain face creased in thought. “I might feel aggrieved, if I was that way inclined, which I ain’t. Because what’s the use? But that wouldn’t be grieving.”

  “No?”

  Tom shook his head. “Grief is more like… Say I had a meat pie, and I took a bite, and I found it was the finest pie I’d ever et. A little taste of heaven, y’see? Everything about it just perfect. And then say, right then and there, I dropped that pie in a river. After just that one bite. And there wasn’t another such pie to be had, for any money. Then I’d grieve.”

  “Because you knew what you’d lost.”

  “That’s it, milord.” Tom nodded, satisfied he’d made his point.

  “‘Grief’ seems a strong word to use over a meat pie,” Arthur replied. He was finding Tom a surprisingly stimulating conversationalist. “Not much like losing a person you care about.”

  “I ’spect that’s a deal harder. I wouldn’t know.” The lad thought for a moment. “I’ve left some people behind. Mrs. Dunn who ran the dame school was right sad when I went. But I had to move on.”

  Was he shallow or cold? “You weren’t sorry to make her sad?”

  “I was, milord. But you know, she was sad over every single kiddie who left for more schooling or a ’prenticeship. So it weren’t just me. And I promised I’d go back and visit her. Which I did. And will whenever I get back to Bristol.”

  The path divided before them, one branch heading for the front door of Furness Hall, the other for the back. “Was there anything else you wanted, milord?” Tom asked. Arthur shook his head, and the lad gave him a little bow before taking the latter route.

  He should do something for Tom, Arthur thought as he walked on. He wasn’t sure what as yet, but the lad was full of possibilities. Was this more of the interference that Miss Saunders had deplored? Surely helping people was a good thing? Arthur smiled as he heard Miss Saunders’s voice suggesting that he might want to consult Tom before defining the specifics of this help.

  • • •

  The meal Jean shared with Lord Furness and his uncle that evening was stiff and formal. They’d had easy conversations over the last two days, but on this night their exchanges died away after a response or two. Their host seemed morose, his uncle distracted. Jean’s spirits sank as she searched for remarks to break the silence. She was glad to rise from the table and go back upstairs.

  Some hours later, she woke from a bad dream and lit her candle. She took deep breaths to push the dark away. Reaching for her book, she looked also for Tab. He’d curled up on the coverlet when she got into bed, a purring comfort, but he wasn’t there now. “Tab?” she said.

  He had a habit of mewing when she spoke to him, but there was no response. Jean held up the candlestick and looked about the room. He wasn’t on the window seat or the armchair or the hearthrug. She couldn’t see him anywhere. “Tab?”

  Silence. Jean got out of bed and carried her light about the room, illuminating the dark corners. She looked under the bed, inside the wardrobe, behind the open draperies. There was no sign of the kitten. She checked the windows. They were securely closed against the raw March night. Tab couldn’t have gotten out, yet he wasn’t there. “Tab?”

  Concerned, she looked everywhere again. There was no sign, no sound. She set down the candlestick and put on her dressing gown and slippers. Holding her meager light, she slipped out into the corridor. It ended on her left, and Tab wasn’t in it. Jean turned right and walked toward the center of the house, searching. She knew there was little chance of finding one small kitten in this great, dim house, but she couldn’t help but try.

  At the stairs, she could only go down. The servants’ quarters above were reached by another stair. Jean searched the parlors on either side of front hall, calling softly and beginning to feel foolish. This was obviously a futile quest. She had given up and turned back when she noticed a line of light under the library door. She went in, finding the chamber still warm, the coals of a fire still glowing. “Tab?” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Jean started so violently that a drop of hot wax splattered from the candle to the back of her hand. The pain made her breath catch.

  Lord Furness rose from the chair by the hearth. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “With no lights?” In her fright, she sounded accusing.

  “I don’t sleep well,” he replied. “I often come down. And you?”

  “I was looking for the kitten.”

  “Got out, did he?” Still half in his broken reverie, Benjamin eyed his guest. The lines of her body were beautifully revealed by her thin wool dressing gown and gossamer nightdress. Her hair had been braided down her back, but soft tendrils had escaped all around her face. He imagined what that hair would look like loose—what a wild riot of curls.

  “I don’t see how,” she said, her tone oddly defensive. “But he’s not in my room.” The candle wavered in her hand. “Oh, what if he’s in the kitchen when your cook gets up?”

  “The cook will cope.” Miss Saunders’s unexpected appearance was like a dream, yet so different from the ones that usually disturbed his nights.

  “Why must everything I do go wrong? I had this one small creature to care for—”

  “And tomorrow we will find him,” Benjamin interrupted. “There’s no sense looking in the dark. Too easy for him to hide. We’ll turn out the staff in the morning. By then, he’ll be hungry and come looking for food.”

  “Yes.” Miss Saunders startled suddenly, setting the light of her candle dancing over the walls. “The portrait seemed to move.”

  Benjamin looked up at Alice’s likeness above the mantel. “Yes, when it’s dim like this, she does. Seem to.”

  “You loved her very much,” said Miss Saunders softly.

  “We met at a ball in London, fell in love, married, and were parted by death all in a year. Such a short time to encompass so much.”

  “A life sliced in half,” she replied. Her tone was contemplat
ive and…bitter?

  “Yes.” Benjamin sank back into his chair. “You understand that?”

  “Oh yes.” Absently, she sat down opposite, putting her candle on the low table by the fireplace.

  “A love you lost?”

  She shook her head, setting the errant curls bobbing. “Say rather…a person who defined my existence.”

  It was a striking phrase. He waited a moment. When she didn’t go on, he asked, “Who?”

  Miss Saunders hesitated before answering, “My mother.”

  “Ah. That can be a deep bond.”

  “Yes.”

  The single word dropped between them like a rock tossed into a well. The echoes were odd, Benjamin thought. Not sadness, not regret. “You miss her a great deal.”

  Miss Saunders laughed without humor. “How I wish I did. She haunts my dreams.”

  Benjamin felt as if some mighty hand had reached deep inside him and struck a chord. His whole being resounded with it. He leaned forward and took her hand. It was trembling.

  As his strong fingers closed over hers, Jean couldn’t look away. Under his dressing gown, his nightshirt was open at the neck. The strong column of his throat rose above a muscular chest. She’d never been more intensely aware of another person, much less a man.

  “The past keeps its claws in us,” he said.

  The phrase was so exactly right. “It feels like talons,” she said. “Sunk right in. No matter how you fight, they won’t come loose.”

  “A mouse carried off by a hawk,” he said.

  Lips parted in amazement at his understanding, Jean nodded. Lord Furness leaned nearer. She’d moved toward him as well, she realized, irresistibly. For a moment, a kiss seemed inevitable. They grew closer, closer. She could feel a hint of his breath on her skin.

  Then, all at once, he seemed to become aware of their proximity, their laced hands. He let go, drew back. In a welter of emotion, Jean did the same. Color flickered in the corner of her eye; the image of her cousin Alice looked down on them from above the mantel.

  Lord Furness cleared his throat. “So, you see.” He took a breath. “Previous…events make it more difficult with Geoffrey. For me. Despite what I might wish.”

  Jean gazed at him.

  “The resemblance.” He indicated the portrait with a gesture. “It…flashes out at me. There and then gone. He looks just like his mother, and then he doesn’t. If it was one or the other, I’m sure I’d grow accustomed. But I find it hard to take the…sudden blow.”

  She nodded. Her dreams were like that. Some memories as well.

  “I’m very glad you’re here to help,” he added.

  “You are?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d thought you seemed to be doing well. With the pony and all. Perhaps I wasn’t needed.”

  He sat straighter. “We agreed to work together, for Geoffrey’s sake.”

  “But I’m not sure what I can do.” She wanted to help him, Jean realized. She wanted a number of things she hadn’t recognized until tonight.

  Lord Furness turned away. “I ran today,” he said in a harsh tone. “I had to get away from him. My own son. I hid in this room as I’ve been doing for far too long. I wanted never to come out.”

  “But you did.”

  “And I was a bear at dinner. Surly and curt.” He turned back to her. “Do you see that hiding is easier?”

  Jean couldn’t look away from those blue-gray eyes. They were mirrors and temptations and beckoning abysses. “Yes,” she whispered.

  He blinked. Jean felt as if she’d tripped on a missed step. She felt Alice staring down at her. In a confusion of emotion, she stood. “I…I should go up.”

  He didn’t argue. Was he finding it just as difficult to speak? Shaken, Jean took her candle and went.

  When she entered her room—minutes, eons, later—Tab was sitting on her bed. He gazed at her in seeming reproach and mewed. “Where were you?” cried Jean. “I looked everywhere.”

  “Mew,” said Tab. He kneaded the damask coverlet, pulling a thread of the pattern loose.

  “Don’t. Oh, I’ll have to ask for a plain bedcover.” She put the candlestick on the bedside table and ran a hand over the kitten’s silky fur. He flopped over and offered his pale belly, tiny paws waving in the air. Jean laughed and petted him.

  Seven

  When Benjamin rose the next morning, after a restless night, he discovered that someone had slipped a scrap of paper under his bedchamber door. He picked it up and read the unfamiliar handwriting:

  Kitten found.

  The terse message made him smile, and then frown. She’d really been there—in the library—last night. With her unruly hair and clinging dressing gown and haunted eyes. He might have thought it a dream, but here was proof. And so she’d also heard him say things he never said to anyone. She’d struck a sympathetic chord, at that late hour, in those shifting shadows, and he’d succumbed. Of course he regretted it now, as one did a reckless indulgence. Miss Saunders would look at him differently today. She’d imagine she understood him, and perhaps pity him. Benjamin gritted his teeth. He dressed quickly and headed out to get some air.

  A soft mist drifted over the lawns of Furness Hall and, with it, a hush. He could hear the soft drip of dew from leaf and branch. The damp air brushed his cheek as he walked through the gardens, where daffodils poked from the earth. The sky would clear later, he judged, and the day would be warm. The lure of a good gallop drew him around to the back of the house. Physical exertion always improved his mood.

  Benjamin strode into the stables and was about to call for a groom when he heard a high, light voice say, “We’ll go everywhere.” There was no one in sight, but he knew the voice. It was Geoffrey, in conversation with someone. “To the stream,” the boy continued. “And the woods. Tom says there’s a fox den on the other side of the hills.”

  Geoffrey was in the loose box with his pony, Benjamin realized. The other new arrival, Molly, looked on from the next stall.

  “He wouldn’t take me to see it, because he didn’t have permission.”

  Geoffrey said the final word as if it was a curse.

  “We’ll find it. And watch the kits play. I won’t let them hurt you!”

  Benjamin smiled at the picture.

  “When I’m bigger, we’ll go to the gorge. Ourselves. And stay as long as we want. I’ll show you the caves.”

  The boy’s tone implied that he was intimately familiar with these caverns.

  “You can’t go inside though,” Geoffrey continued. “Because you might get lost and fall into a…a pit. There’s lots of pits.”

  He’d been told exactly this on their picnic, Benjamin remembered. He could tell Geoffrey had no idea what a mine pit was really like.

  “I wouldn’t let you though. You don’t have to worry. I’ll never let anything bad happen to you.”

  On the echoes of that fierce little voice, it came to Benjamin that Geoffrey possessed a personality all his own. Startlingly intelligent for his age and defiant, he wasn’t the least like Alice. His looks were a distraction, in a way a deception. He was…developing into himself.

  “I’ll be like the lord,” his son continued. “He can go riding whenever he wants. Wherever he wants.”

  Moving without thought, Benjamin stepped forward. “Don’t call me the lord,” he said.

  Geoffrey had been tucked into the back corner of the stall on a pile of dry straw. He jumped up.

  “You should call me Papa,” Benjamin added.

  His son eyed him with Alice’s blue eyes but his own stubborn jaw. His expression was an odd mixture of shyness and doubt. Benjamin had the uncomfortable feeling that his appearance had spoiled the boy’s fun. Only then did it occur to him that someone ought to be watching him. “Where is Lily?” he asked.

  It was precisely the wron
g thing to say. Geoffrey scowled. “Asleep. I can go down to the kitchen and ask for breakfast if I wake up at the crack of dawn.” A sideways flick of his gaze seemed to acknowledge that this was not the kitchen. Going on the offensive, he added, “Fergus is my pony. Isn’t he?”

  A long tug-of-war over what was and was not permitted unfolded in Benjamin’s mind. Yet in the face of his son’s vibrating longing, he had to say, “Yes, he is.”

  There was that grin again, blazing on Geoffrey’s small face. The air of the stables seemed to lighten with it. Benjamin’s heart stirred. And again, he made a misstep. “But Lily, or someone, should always know where you are,” he said.

  Geoffrey scowled again. “When I’m grown up, I’ll do what I want!”

  “You won’t, actually,” replied Benjamin. “It may look that way to you now, but life isn’t like that.” Why had he said that? He’d sounded like his own gruff father, with his discouraging philosophizing. Benjamin tried to make amends. “Have you had your breakfast?”

  But Geoffrey took this as a dismissal. Scowl deepening, his son pushed off the side of the stall, scrambled over the rail, and stomped out of the stables.

  Benjamin watched him go with a mixture of perplexity and regret. When the sound of Geoffrey’s footsteps had died away, Benjamin turned toward the box where his own horse was kept and discovered Miss Saunders, standing by the open door at the other end of the stable aisle. Their eyes met. Benjamin felt his cheeks warm. How much of that conversation had she heard?

  She should have moved on earlier, Jean thought. But she’d been transfixed by the scene. When Lord Furness told Geoffrey to call him Papa, and the boy wouldn’t, she’d felt so mournful. And now, facing this tall, masterful figure, she was shaken. He had the looks and bearing of an autocratic nobleman, yet his commands meant nothing to a stubborn little boy.

  She’d come here to save Geoffrey from neglect, Jean thought, and she wasn’t sorry, no matter what anyone thought. But she’d been wrong about the method. Man and boy should be brought together, not separated.

  The idea bloomed in her mind like a rose opening, revealing petal after petal. She imagined Geoffrey truly finding a father. She saw Lord Furness joyful over his son, instead of always melancholy. Yes. It only remained to see how she could bring this about. She had no notion, but she was filled with the determination to try.