The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5

by Catherine Coulter

  With luck she wouldn’t be missed until the morning. Unless he remembered and came back to tie her hands. Then things would be a bit more difficult.

  At least Georgie was far away from here, all the way up at York, and thus would be safe from their stepfather’s rage when he discovered that his pigeon had escaped the cage.

  His pigeon also knew where to go.

  2

  St. Cyre Town House

  London

  April 2nd

  “MY LORD.”

  “Keep your voice down, Quincy,” Gray said, not opening his eyes. “Eleanor’s asleep.”

  Quincy eyed the sleek Eleanor and lowered his voice to a whisper that he soon realized wasn’t all that much of a whisper, since Eleanor opened her eyes and frowned at him. “It’s important that you come to the drawing room, my lord. You have visitors.”

  The baron lightly stroked his fingers over Eleanor’s soft back one more time, patted her head, trailed his fingers along her jaw, which made her stretch out beneath his hand, then stood. Eleanor raised her head, blinked at him once, twice, then flattened herself again. She didn’t move.

  “She’s still sleeping,” Gray said. “She does that sometimes, have you noticed? She’ll look you straight in the eye, then just blink out again. I don’t think she wakes up at all. Now, it’s very early for visitors. What visitors?”

  “Your two great-aunts, my lord.” Quincy eyed the silent Eleanor. He would have sworn that Eleanor had been very much awake when she heard him.

  “What two great-aunts?”

  “From what Miss Maude said, they are your mother’s aunts.”

  He was frankly surprised. He remembered them, but it had been so many years, too many years. He’d been a young boy, perhaps seven, when they’d last visited.

  He stared at the soft, pale brown leather chair his mother had loved. He could still see her lightly rubbing her palm over the seat. It was odd that he would remember such a thing, since they’d stayed in London seldom over the years. “Those old ladies. I haven’t heard from them in more years than I can count. I wonder what’s going on.” His mother had been an only child—more’s the pity, Gray had thought many times. If she hadn’t been, perhaps there would have been a brother to protect her; her father had died in the colonial war in a place called Trenton and there’d been no man at all to take her part. There’d only been her son, a very little boy, who’d been helpless to save her until he was twelve.

  He shook his head. Long-past memories, dead memories that should stay buried since there was nothing to be done about them at this late date.

  Gray had eaten his breakfast some two hours earlier and had been working a bit in his library, his only companion his prideful Eleanor. He stretched as he walked toward the front of the house. The St. Cyre town house stood in the middle of the block at Portman Square. Its drawing room gave onto the park across the street, just now coming into its spring plumage.

  It was a wretched morning, gray and drizzling, the air damp and cold. It was the second of April and there wasn’t a hint of sun—not that the sun was ever really expected in London.

  When he walked through the drawing room double doors, hearing Quincy say in his gravelly voice, “Lord Cliffe,” he nearly stopped dead in his tracks.

  Two old ladies were standing there in the middle of the large room, all muffled up in scarves, bonnets, cloaks, and gloves, staring at him like he was the devil himself.

  “You are my great-aunts?” Gray asked as he walked toward them, smiling easily because he was a gentleman. Today, which had promised to be rather boring until he took himself off to Jenny’s apartments to make love to her until he was scarcely breathing, had now changed course.

  One old lady stepped forward, taller than most females he knew, thin as a post, her face long and narrow, her skin dry and slightly yellowed, like aged parchment. She looked at least old enough to be long dead, but her walk was spry, the look on her face determined.

  “We need your assistance,” she said, her voice low and quite beautiful. She had a very long neck and a lovely mouth that still held nearly a full complement of teeth, from what he could see. He bowed, waiting, but the old lady just looked at him, then stepped back, like a soldier returning to formation.

  The other old lady, this one short and very slight, looked briefly at her sister, then took three steps toward him, dainty little fairy steps. “I’m Maude Coddington, my lord. What Mathilda would have said if she’d felt like it, which she rarely does, is that we’re your great-aunts. We were your grandmother’s younger sisters. Unfortunately your dear grandmother, Mary, died birthing your mama, our little niece. Our other sister, Martha, died of an inflammation of the lung three years ago, and that leaves only Mathilda and me.”

  Maude looked fluffy, what with all the ribbons and bows that adorned what he could see of her gown. There were even several swags of fruit on her bonnet, grapes and apples. She probably came only to the top button on his waistcoat; Mathilda came to his forehead. These two were sisters? He wondered what his great-aunt Martha had looked like. He’d once seen a portrait of his grandmother, painted when she was eighteen.

  “It was the vicar’s fault,” Aunt Mathilda said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Gray said. “What was the vicar’s fault?”

  “Martha,” Aunt Mathilda said.

  “What Mathilda would mean, were she to feel like telling you of the incident, is that our sister, Martha, was walking with the vicar and it began to rain and he did bring her home but it was too late. She became ill and died.”

  “Oh. I’m very sorry.” He smiled at them because he was exquisitely polite and because he was frankly curious. They’d also made him smile. He said, “Thank you for explaining things more fully. Now, please, won’t you be seated? Yes, that’s right. Ah, you’re here, Quincy. Do bring us some tea and some of Mrs. Post’s lemon rind cakes.” He waited until the two old dears had arranged themselves on the settee opposite him. Then he sat down. “Aunt Mathilda said you need my assistance. What may I do for you?”

  “Not money,” said Mathilda.

  “Exactly,” said Maude. “How very distasteful that would be, two old ladies coming to you with their mittens out. No, we have no need to beg financial assistance from you, my lord. We live near Folkstone. We are comfortably situated. Our father left us very well off indeed.”

  “Rich husbands,” Aunt Mathilda said.

  “Yes, well, our husbands left us well situated as well. They were good men, as men go, and thank the good Lord that they always go, eventually.” Aunt Maude drew a deep breath and added in a very dramatic voice, “No, my lord, we beg your assistance as head of the St. Cyre family.”

  “Very young,” said Mathilda.

  Gray said slowly, “I suppose I am rather young to be the head of the family, not that there’s all that much family to head. I just turned twenty-six. I have some cousins that I never see, who probably don’t care if I’m above the ground or under it, but no one else until now. I’m very pleased to have you as my aunts. I will naturally offer you any assistance I can. Ah, here’s Quincy with Mrs. Post’s cakes and the tea.”

  Gray watched as Quincy, who’d been very thin as a young man and now, in his middle years, had become as plump as one of Mrs. Post’s buttocks of beef, laid out all the food, poured the tea, and then assisted the two old ladies out of their myriad layers of clothing. Mathilda was dressed entirely in black, from the old-fashioned bonnet on her head to the slippers on her long, narrow feet. All black. Even the cameo at her throat was black. He’d never in his life seen a black cameo.

  Maude was dressed in purple. No, that wasn’t exactly right. There was some brown and pink mixed in there, diluting the purple, which was a visual relief. There was a word for that color. Oh, yes, it was puce, a very ugly word, he’d always thought—sounded like the color of day-old remains. Her bonnet was puce, th
e slippers on her very small feet were also puce. Puce, he thought, looked rather nice on Maude.

  When the two ladies were seated again, cups of tea held gracefully in their veined hands, Gray said, “Pray tell me what you would like me to do.”

  Mathilda took a sip of her very hot tea and said, a wealth of information in her eyes, “Flood.”

  Maude bit into one of the lemon rind cakes, sighed, showing teeth as nice-looking as her sister’s, then swallowed and said, “We recently had a fire at our lovely home just north of Folkstone. It’s called Feathergate Close, has been for three hundred years. We’re not certain why, but it is a charming, rather romantic name, don’t you think? Not, of course, that it matters much, after all this time. Actually, after Mathilda and I die, Feathergate will come to you.” Maude paused, beamed at him, then continued quickly after a quick nudge from Mathilda—more of a sharp poke, actually.

  “Yes, dear, I’m getting to the point. One doesn’t want to rush things. The boy must be softened up properly.”

  She gave him a beautiful smile. He supposed that meant he was properly soft. “Now, in any case, after this dreadful fire, there were many repairs to be done. We would like to remain here with you for a while, until our house is habitable again.”

  “What about the flood?”

  “Oh,” said Maude, delicately wiping her fingers on the soft white napkin after she put another lemon rind cake into her mouth. “The flood came after the fire. Our dear mother’s Chippendale dining room chairs nearly floated out of the manor. Unfortunately the flood didn’t come in time to put out the fire, but rather a full three days later. Then it rained and rained. It was more depressing than having the vicar propose yet again to Mathilda, which he did just last Sunday morning, after services, right there, in the nave of our church.”

  “What did Mathilda do?” He was sitting forward, fascinated.

  “What? Oh, she told him yet again that she’d had her taste of the marital flesh and she believed, given the evidence of him standing right there in front of her, that he would provide her nothing that would enhance either her experience or her current well-being.”

  “Aunt Mathilda, you said all that?”

  “It’s what she would have said if she’d wanted to,” said Aunt Maude. “Your great-aunt Mathilda is a moving speaker, an orator of great breadth, when she wishes to be. I believe with the vicar, however, Mathilda merely had to look down her nose at him and let it quiver just a bit. It told him quite enough. She does not believe him to be worthy of any of her excellent oration.”

  Aunt Mathilda nodded complacently. “That’s right. Mortimer killed Martha, after all.”

  Maude cleared her throat again. “He probably didn’t do it on purpose, but he did take Martha for a walk, as we already told you, it rained, and she died. He was very sorry. But now he wants Mathilda.” She stopped, gave a deep sigh, and continued. “It’s a pity that he couldn’t have prayed to prevent the fire and the flood. But he didn’t. There is quite a bit of damage from both the fire and the flood, and so there was no choice but for us to come to you and throw ourselves upon your mercy. Will you let us remain with you for a bit of time, dear boy?”

  This was quite the strangest thing that had happened to him in some time. Gray looked from Mathilda, the orator if only she felt like orating, to the slight, more informative Maude, pictured their mother’s Chippendale dining room chairs floating out of a house onto a front lawn, grinned at them, and nodded. “It would be my pleasure, ladies. May I also offer my assistance in the repairs being made to your home? I can send my man down to Feathergate Close to ensure that everything is going the way you wish it.”

  “No,” said Mathilda.

  “Actually, my lord . . .” said Maude, leaning forward. Then she just stopped. Gray blinked as he saw his mother’s lovely pale green eyes in Maude’s face, pale green eyes that were also his. Maude looked briefly at Mathilda, then cleared her throat. “We have men we trust entirely doing the work. We feel that everything is being done as swiftly as possible. We are content.”

  “I see,” said Gray. He took a drink of his own tea, now tepid. “Naturally you are welcome in my home.”

  “Alice,” said Mathilda.

  “My mother Alice?” Gray asked, an eyebrow up in question.

  “Ah, yes, your dear mother,” said Maude. “She was such a lovely little girl. We missed her sorely when she was wedded to your father, although that was so long ago we’re not really certain if that is precisely what we miss. But you know, your father took her away immediately. We saw her only twice between her marriage to your father and your birth. Why, I believe the last time we saw you, you were a very little boy. Ah, yes, whenever we thought of dear little Alice, we missed her.”

  “Bloody rotter,” Mathilda said and stared hard at Gray.

  “What Mathilda means, if she felt like explaining things more fully, is that we weren’t at all certain at the time if your father was truly an excellent enough gentleman for our little niece. Your mother was so very gentle, so loving, so—well, weak, to spit out the truth of it. I imagine that had your father been a saint, Mathilda would still feel he wasn’t good enough for your mother.”

  “He was a vicious rotter,” Mathilda said again, more forcefully this time. She was staring hard at him.

  Gray looked from one old lady to the other, then slowly nodded. “Yes, you’re quite right. My father was a rotter of the first order. Ah, I see. You wonder if I’m like my father. There’s no reason for you to believe me, but you should. I’m not at all like my father.” They obviously didn’t know what had happened those many years ago. He wondered why not. Surely anyone who’d wanted to know could have easily found out everything.

  “Now, ladies, allow Quincy to bring Mrs. Piller to you. She is my housekeeper, was my mother’s housekeeper before I was even born. She will know exactly which bedchambers would please you the most.”

  “There’s Jack,” said Mathilda. “Jack needs a room as well. Close.”

  More than one word, Gray thought. This must be incredibly important to her. Perhaps she was readying herself to orate.

  “Jack?”

  Maude patted Mathilda’s knee and nodded, making the fruit on her bonnet tilt to the side. “Yes. We brought our young, er, valet with us. His name is Mad Jack. Since he assists both Mathilda and me, we would appreciate it if he could be placed near us. Perhaps he could sleep in a dressing room off one of the bedchambers?”

  “Mad Jack is your valet? A boy whose name sounds like a highwayman’s sobriquet?”

  “Well,” Aunt Maude said, after a very brief eye flicker toward Mathilda, “it’s really just Jack, but our boy, Jack, is also a bit on the energetic side, not wild, mind you, but he does many things, some of them stimulating enough to turn an old lady’s hair quite white.”

  “Hmmm,” was all Gray could think of to say. He did blink, but if either of the great-aunts noticed it, they paid it no heed. They really had a valet named Jack whom they called Mad Jack? It wasn’t at all expected, but on the other hand, who cared? Gray said, “Perhaps you’d care to give me just a hint of some of the stimulating things that Mad Jack might do here at my house?”

  Mathilda said, “Not a blessed thing. Forget ‘mad.”’

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Maude. “Our little Jack is all that is calm and serene when he’s in a stranger’s house, particularly one as grand as this.”

  Fascinating, Gray thought, and said, “All you have to do is consult with Mrs. Piller. Where is this Jack?”

  “He’s probably sitting quietly in the entrance hall,” said Maude, “guarding our luggage. He’s a very good boy, very well mannered, very quiet, at least most of the time, at least in strange houses. You’ll never know he’s here. We’ve had him with us forever, very nearly. Yes, Jack’s a very sober lad, loyal as a tick, and he prefers to keep to himself when he’s not keeping u
s. He won’t cause any harm, no ruckus at all, he’s a studious, quite inoffensive boy. Do just as Mathilda said. Forget the ‘mad’ part of his name. It is simply a fancy, a silly name that an old lady simply plucked out of the air of her burned and flooded house.”

  “Jack is also welcome, with or without his highwayman’s sobriquet. Now, since we’re all related, and perhaps you ladies do care that I’m above the ground and not under it, I should like it very much if you would call me Gray.”

  “Grayson,” said Mathilda. “That’s your name.”

  “Well, actually, that’s a bit much, I’ve always thought. My friends as well as my enemies call me St. Cyre or Cliffe, but usually just Gray.”

  “That will be just fine, my boy,” said Maude as she rose and shook out her puce silk skirts.

  Mathilda rose as well, turned toward the drawing room doors, and shouted, “Jack!”

  3

  THE BARON didn’t get a good look at Jack the valet, mad or otherwise, as he was wearing a wool cap pulled to his ears and had his head turned away, seemingly staring hard down at the aunts’ two valises. He did see, however, a boy about fifteen years old, skinny as a toothpick, clad in baggy breeches, scuffed boots, and a bilious jacket the color of pea soup left too long in the pot. He didn’t look in the least like a boy who would deserve such a dashing handle. Skinny, ill-garbed little nit. He supposed that to two old ladies, any youthful behavior at all could easily be deemed mad. What had he done? Hurled a teacup to the floor and stomped on it?

  He saw the valet pick up the aunts’ valises, grunt, and promptly drop them. He stared down at them, then seemed to gird his loins and began to drag them. What did he plan to do with the valises once he reached the stairs? Gray wondered. And was he totally untrained? A valet wouldn’t haul valises up the main staircase, even a mad one.