Formidable Lord Quentin

by Patricia Rice

  FORMIDABLE LORD QUENTIN

  A Rebellious Sons Novel

  Patricia Rice

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Edition

  March 31, 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-444-4

  Copyright © 2014 Patricia Rice

  One

  Late July, 1809

  “I hate to abandon you in this horrid hot town, Bell,” Abigail Wyckerly, Countess of Danecroft, protested. In her traveling gown and bonnet, she descended Belden House stairs, trailing her gloved hand over the banister. “The Season is over and you’ll be all alone in this old house. I wish you would come with us.”

  Isabell Hoyt, dowager Marchioness of Belden, in hastily donned morning gown, declined the use of the rail, following her friend with naturally graceful poise. Both in their late twenties, the countess’s more matronly, but properly draped figure played counterpoint to Bell’s slender one in dishabille.

  Despite Bell’s worldly ennui, Abby’s wisdom found its target.

  Not acknowledging a pang of loneliness at the reminder of the empty months ahead, Bell languidly waved away her friend’s suggestion. “Dearest Abby, I am not the sort to pamper your charming menagerie of children and pets. The country has been bred right out of me, I fear. I will be fine. There will be enough of us left in Town to sit about roasting those who abandon us.”

  Bell’s words rang hollow, even in her own ears. Once upon a time, her life had been built on children and pets. She’d outgrown that infantile phase, she assured herself.

  “Gossiping with a bunch of old biddies,” Abby declared with scorn, much too perceptively. “You are in dire danger of becoming one of them. You are too young to bury yourself in trite nattering.”

  “Boredom trumps the constant hullabaloo I once lived with,” Bell countered with a trace of aspersion.

  Undeterred, Abigail beamed at her former mentor. “You are too clever to live so idly. You need another project. I will think on it. But in the meantime, I must confess that I’m eager to return to my menagerie. Should you change your mind, we’ll put you up in our highest tower, and you may descend only when the children are out of the way. The stable is yours, and you know it.”

  Bell’s investment had helped Fitzhugh Wyckerly, the earl of Danecroft—Abby’s husband—to build his stable so his impoverished estate could start producing an income.

  Bell considered money to be something one invested in happiness. Just seeing how happy Abby and Fitz were together had paid off better than she’d dared hope.

  But the mention of horses reminded her of why she would never return to the country, where animals were a way of life. “Perhaps if there is a pleasant day, I might take the carriage out. We’ll see,” Bell lied politely.

  A sharp rap at the townhouse door sounded from the foyer below, bringing them to a halt on the upper stairs.

  “Were you expecting company at this early hour?” Abby asked in surprise. “Or have I lingered longer than I thought with my farewells?”

  As if in answer, the tall clock at the base of the stairs chimed ten in the morning. Bell was most generally not out of bed at this hour.

  “I thought you were the last to leave town,” Bell said, leaning over the rail to be certain a servant had heard. “A puzzle! Let us spy and see who it might be.”

  A sturdy footman wearing a stiff mien of disapproval hurried down the hall below to unlatch the massive entrance doors. Stepping out of sight, Bell gestured for Abby to join her in the shadows of the landing.

  “Perhaps a new protégée?” Abby asked teasingly. “It’s time for one.”

  “Nonsense, you saw all the pleas Belden ignored, as he ignored yours.” Bell was still incensed over that cache of unanswered letters in her late husband’s files. “I believe I have succeeded in finding and aiding all the impoverished relations he abandoned. There are no more who need introductions to society.”

  Bell diverted her interest to the opening door below.

  A disheveled boy of roughly six years rushed in, then skidded to a halt and gazed in shock at silk-covered walls, gilded mirrors, and polished Chippendale. Behind him followed a young woman wearing a black, baggy gown ten seasons old, and a hooded bonnet so large, her face couldn’t be discerned. She carried a wriggling infant of indeterminate sex and stopped woodenly just inside the door.

  Bell had to grab Abby’s arm and hold her back. The big-hearted countess loved babies and would have run straight down to welcome the strangers with open arms and coos and cuddles. Bell, on the other hand, had learned to fear surprises. This was why she hired large, reliable footmen. A woman living alone needed security.

  A more slender female with the yearling gait of an adolescent bounced in. She, too, was garbed in sackcloth and virtually invisible. Bell had just started to wonder if they came from one of those exotic countries that hid their women behind walls when two black crows followed them in.

  The man wore the most hideous flat black hat that had ever afflicted Bell’s gaze. He was dressed entirely in ebony except for his neckcloth. The woman with him was large and buried in enough dark broadcloth to dress an entire orphanage.

  “This is the home of the marquess of Belden?” the man intoned in a broad American accent.

  The home of Lachlann Hoyt, the current marquess, was in Scotland. Belden House was the home of Edward, the late marquess, but the footman had been trained not to divulge the slightest bit of information to strangers. He stiffly held out a silver salver to deposit a card on.

  The stranger laid a rectangular packet on the tray. “Then our charges have been safely delivered.” He turned to the youngsters. “Godspeed, children.”

  He was about to turn and usher out his companion when the boy broke into wails. Bell could no longer hold Abby back. The countess flew down the stairs to hug the child and rebuke his elders.

  With amusement, Bell listened to the petite countess scold like the farmer’s daughter she’d once been and the mother she was now.

  “It is utterly rude to simply abandon children like errant parcels! Let the servants fetch the marchioness. Go sit in the parlor. Young man, stop the crying. If something is wrong, you must use words, not wails.”

  Laughing silently as the tall Americans were herded by a nagging banty hen into the visitor’s parlor, Bell waited for the footman to run up the stairs to deliver the packet. He startled a bit at finding her hiding on the landing, but he made a dignified recovery, bowed, and held out the tray.

  “Have cook send up tea and biscuits,” she said, gesturing carelessly and trying not to reveal her eagerness to discover if this missive contained a new challenge.

  Abby had been right. Bell always dreaded the loneliness of Town after everyone had fled to the cooler countryside. During the busy months, Bell didn’t have time to miss the fields of her childhood. In summer, however . . . She plotted. Only this summer, she had run out of ideas, and weeks of boredom stretched ahead.

  Bell’s dislike of boredom had been the reason she had spent her first summer as a widow searching through her late husband’s files in hopes of discovering the whereabouts of her family, a fruitless search, as it turned out.

  Instead of finding her father’s whereabouts, Bell had learned to her disgust that the husband she had once admired as all that was superior in men— had entirely abandoned his many impoverished female relations.

  That had given her a new mission to mask her loneliness and disappointment at not finding her sisters. Giving her husband’s money back to his deserving family members had kept her entertained these last years and been well rewarded by friendship with the late marquess’s many and scattered relations, like Abby.

  Bell hid her anticipation until the servant had
run back down the stairs. Biting her bottom lip, she opened the oilcloth packet, and frowned at finding only a single sheet of vellum inside.

  As executor of the estate of Glendon Boyle, recently of Boston in the state of Massachusetts, I have been requested to deliver the deceased’s worldly possessions to the Marquess of Belden. Guardianship of his unmarried descendants under twenty-five is hereby bequeathed to the marquess in deference to all that gentleman has done for the family.

  Bell’s vision blurred, and light-headed, she grabbed the stair rail. It could not be so. The estate of Glendon Boyle . . .

  She struggled to comprehend the rest of the verbiage, but she could not read past that first sentence.

  Daddy was dead?

  In all those years of not knowing, she had hoped and prayed . . .

  She clutched the rail and tried not to shatter. She’d had a decade to develop a formidable control over her volatile emotions, and she desperately employed those measures now. Her eyes remained dry. She didn’t wail like the child below. She didn’t call for smelling salts she didn’t own.

  Still, she couldn’t shut out a sudden rush of images of Irish skies and emerald fields, a laughing lilt, and strong hands holding her on her first pony . . . Unwelcome tears threatened. She hadn’t cried in eons—probably since the last time she’d seen her family. She’d cried buckets then. Cried and cried until she’d been certain her soul had shriveled to a dried-up walnut.

  Those had been futile tears. She refused to waste more. Stiffening her spine and taking a deep breath, she re-read the missive, hearing the sarcasm as her father consigned his heirs to the man he most despised. There had always been method to her father’s madness.

  Hands shaking, Bell proceeded downward, listening to the voices carrying up from the parlor. Could this letter possibly mean . . . Despite her despair, her heart dared to pound harder in anticipation.

  Perhaps sensible Abby could make sense of the gibberish in this missive. Her father, Glendon Boyle, had been the Earl of Wexford, but there was no reference to his title. Perhaps the letter was from a fraud.

  Yes, with the aid of her late husband, her father had run off to hide in the Americas after a series of disasters, but . . .

  She couldn’t think further than that. Recalling the young people below, she felt hope thumping like a drum in her ears.

  Impostors, her head said scornfully.

  Tessa, Syd, her lonely heart cried.

  Impossible, said her cynical head. Never. Tess and Syd here?

  Oh, please, Lord . . .

  She’d thoroughly crumpled the letter by the time she arrived at the door to the visitor’s parlor. Abby had the boy and the toddler in hand and had been about to lead them from the room. Bell scarcely noticed. Her gaze traveled directly to the two younger females, who had quite improperly thrown aside their hideous bonnets.

  Two heads of chestnut-red hair lifted expectantly. Two identical sets of velvet-lashed emerald eyes flashed. They’d been born with their father’s coloring, so similar to Bell’s own. The last time she’d seen them, they’d barely been older than the boy who accompanied them—but she’d recognize her sisters anywhere.

  “Tess, Syd,” she whispered, and tears flowed despite all she’d done to defeat them.

  “Isabell?” they asked in unison, standing uncertainly.

  “Is it really you?” the elder asked. Tess had been almost ten when they’d parted, the more likely of the two to remember her.

  Swallowing the huge lump in her throat, Bell glided toward them, eagerly drinking in every aspect of their grown-up faces. Gently, she touched a tiny scar on Tess’s hairline. “It still shows,” she said in wonder. “I’m so sorry.”

  Openly weeping, Tess— Lady Teresa Boyle— flung her arms around Bell. “It’s you, it’s really you! I didn’t think we’d ever see you again!”

  Bell held out her arms to include her younger sister, who was still stunned to speechlessness. With both her sisters in her arms again after ten long years, she could scarcely breathe from joy and weeping.

  “You smell the same,” Sydony whispered in wonder. “Any time I smell lily of the valley, I remember you. You just don’t look like you anymore.”

  Since the eighteen-year-old girl her sisters remembered had worn her hair hanging to her waist and roamed boldly about her father’s lands wearing a stable boy’s gear, her baby sister had reason to complain. Bell laughed and choked on tears at the same time, hugging them harder.

  “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you!” Bell cried. “I cannot believe you’re here. Papa never wrote. I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t even know you were alive!”

  “Papa said the marquess forbade him to write ever again. He said he’d be ruined all over if we tried to write to you.” Tess hugged her tighter, then stepped back. “I did try a couple of times, after we moved from Virginia to Boston, but I never received a reply. We didn’t know if you were alive either.”

  Bell cursed her parsimonious husband for the thousandth time. Edward must have destroyed her letters! He’d kept all the other pathetic begging letters he’d received from his family, but not the ones that would have reunited her with her sisters. Had he even opened them or just cast them directly upon the fire?

  Remembering the angry man who had saved her and her sisters from her father’s debtors, she had a glimmer of understanding of why he’d keep her from her drunkard of a father. But to keep her from her sisters . . .

  It was too late to castigate the clutch-fisted old goat now. She’d thought she’d loved Edward once. He’d bought her gowns and jewelry, offered her entrée into the highest society, and given her a marvelous new life. He really hadn’t owed her or her family more. Bell understood that better than her younger self had. She didn’t have to like it.

  Looking uncomfortable and out of place in the airy pastel room, the grim black crows rose stiffly from the blue brocade sofa. “We’ll be going then. Our job here is done,” the man said.

  The boy in Abby’s hands began to wail again.

  Bell hid her impatience with the odd couple who had safely delivered her most precious dreams. “Don’t be foolish. We haven’t even been introduced. May I have the pleasure of the acquaintance of the generous protectors who have returned my family to me?” With the practiced decorum learned in a decade of London society, Bell released her sisters and held out a welcoming hand.

  “Thaddeus and Lucretia Gibbons.” Tess hastily introduced them. “Daddy’s lawyer recommended them as they were coming this way anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons, this is our half-sister, Lady Isabell Hoyt, the Marchioness of Belden.”

  Isabell was proud to know that her little sister remembered some of her etiquette, even if she hadn’t quite got the introduction right. Americans didn’t have titles, so Tess might be excused her small lapse until Bell had time to brush up their memories a little.

  The Gibbonses didn’t accept her hand but stiffly nodded.

  Abby whispered, “The little ones need a water closet. I’m whisking them away. I’ll return shortly.”

  “If you will show me the way, I’ll help you, my lady,” Tess said politely, taking the youngest child in hand. “Beebee is only just two and barely trained.”

  Still lightheaded, Bell dropped into the nearest chair, finally acknowledging the younger children. She was not maternal, like Abby. “Beebee?” she asked faintly as a maid entered with a tray of tea and biscuits.

  “Short for Beatrice. Tess is a widow,” Syd explained as the little ones were led away. “We thought she was safely settled, then Dawson—her husband— caught some fever and died in Jamaica not long after the babe was born. Tess was devastated. She still cries.”

  Syd, the younger of Bell’s sisters, studied an embroidered, bow-legged chair, then lowered herself into it as if fearful of sullying the cloth. The Gibbonses finally gave up and settled back on the sofa.

  Hands shaking too hard to lift a teapot, Bell indicated that Syd take charge. The girl did so aw
kwardly, as if unaccustomed to using one of the major skills young ladies her age were proud to show off.

  They were the daughters of an earl. Bell didn’t wish to contemplate what kind of life her sisters had led in her scapegrace father’s care. She forced a smile and waited for her guests to sip their tea before asking one of the ten thousand questions buzzing through her exceptionally light head.

  “You were an acquaintance of our father’s, Mr. Gibbons?” she asked politely.

  “Only indirectly, my lady,” Mr. Gibbons said, sampling one of Cook’s strawberry tarts.

  “He means the Methodists sometimes brought Daddy home from the tavern,” Syd said without an ounce of shame, as if a father who got too drunk to walk was a common occurrence. “Daddy took our step-mama’s death hard.”

  Bell bit her tongue. Glendon Boyle, the scapegrace Earl of Wexford, had taken her mother’s death hard and his second wife’s death even harder. And there were some who said his drinking had led to their deaths in the first place. But their father was dead, and the girls didn’t need a loving memory tarnished. Bell was the one who had learned the hard way to scorn the weaknesses of the male of the species.

  “Your step-mama?” she inquired in trepidation. He’d killed off three wives?

  “Kit’s mother. Papa had to find someone to look after us when we arrived in America. Charity was our nanny, and then they got married. You would have liked her. She was from Ireland too.”

  Bell kneaded her brow. She didn’t know a great deal about children, but she knew quite a bit about the ways of men and the laws of inheritance. She would very much like to ask how old Kit was and how long ago her father had married the nanny, but she already knew the answer. Her father had always wanted an heir. He’d marry any female he got in the family way.

  The grubby urchin that Abby was leading back to the parlor was now the Earl of Wexford.

  Two

  Lord Quentin Hoyt, fourth son of the current marquess of Belden, handed his lathered gelding to a stable hand. He checked his pocket watch as he strode down the mews to his back gate. Satisfied at the time he’d made, he handed his hat to a footman who hurried to greet him. Still wearing his muddy boots and the filth of the road, he eagerly took the stairs two at a time to his study.