Duke Du Jour

by Petie McCarty

  “That bothered you.”

  Bullen shrugged, his expression again stony.

  Jared sighed. This situation was becoming so very complicated. He didn’t want to get so intertwined he could not extricate himself later when he had to leave.

  “Why you?” he asked suddenly.

  Bullen’s brows went on point. “Why me what?”

  “Why did I pick you to manage my accounts when…father died.”

  “I’m your brother.”

  Chapter Seven

  Jared blinked.

  Once.

  Twice.

  “Brother,” he echoed.

  Stony-faced, Bullen nodded.

  “Your mother?”

  “According to our father, she was the daughter of an Italian count and came to London for a season to try her luck,” he said grimly.

  “Some luck,” Jared muttered.

  “One morning, an Italian nanny delivered a baby in a basket and only stayed long enough to dust off her hands and shove the basket at our father when the butler called him to the door.”

  Jared wondered what this confession cost Bullen.

  “The nanny said, ‘Here’s your son.’ To which our father roared, ‘Bull!’ ” He shrugged. “Hence, my name.”

  The tale would be humorous except for the dire look on his half brother’s face. No, make that his half-great-great-great-something-uncle’s…oh, never mind.

  “She reboarded her hired carriage and streaked right back to London,” Bullen was saying.

  Jared suddenly remembered the mention in Six’s journal of a parchment received from an Italian countess. Six had written he placed the parchment in his private journal, which of course Jared had never found.

  “And you knew all this, how?”

  Bullen gave him his best duh look. “Heddy, of course.”

  “But Father kept you.” A stupid statement, but Jared felt at a loss for the proper words.

  “I was raised alongside you. You were two years old at the time and took quite a shine to me, so our father let me stay. Not that he took any great notice of either of us, what with your mother—” He stopped and cleared his throat.

  “Dying in childbirth. That’s right,” Jared said softly and earned a strange look from his half brother. “You are obviously well educated.”

  “We shared tutors.” Bullen’s eyes narrowed again. “Father refused to spend the money to send me to Eton with you, but I was given free range of the library here that no one else used.”

  “Sorry.” Jared found he was, too.

  “Don’t be. Thank goodness your sainted mother thought filling the library with a wide assortment of books would impress her guests.”

  Jared only shook his head.

  Bullen seemed intent on finishing. “I found I had a love of horses and was promoted to head groom. I was forbidden, however, to tell anyone of my parentage, as were all the other servants. Or we would be sacked forthwith as Father always said.”

  Jared swallowed hard. He could not ever remember suffering a bigger dose of guilt or conscience. He hadn’t done this to Seven’s half brother, but his ancestor had, and this young man believed he had.

  “Don’t beat up on yourself. I had a good life. Heddy raised me in her cottage near the stables, and no one could have had a better mother.”

  Jared nodded glumly.

  “My only regret came when you left for the continent. I asked to be your batman, and you refused outright. I, too, was bitten by the patriotism bug, except I had to stay back here to mind the accounts.”

  Jared waited for the rest of the remorseful tale, but Bullen appeared to be finished. How could Six and then Seven have done this to their own flesh and blood? He grasped about for any kind words to salve his own guilt-ridden conscience.

  “Though I do not remember doing so,” he said, “leaving you back to tend my tenants appears to be the only smart thing I ever did. Now I would like to go visit those tenants.”

  Bullen beamed like a summer sun.

  ****

  Bullen had saddled two of Jared’s hunters the minute Jared mentioned visiting tenants. “I didn’t saddle Hammer, your favorite,” Bullen had said. “He is a bit much to handle, and with your memory loss, I thought it wise to wait on you riding him till you felt more comfortable.”

  Jared could ride any horse alive and had a future stable full of them but appreciated the concern on his ancestral brother’s part. The two worked their way south through the valley toward Dolan. Though Bullen had done well with what little he had received, Jared was appalled by the condition of some of the cottages and silently cursed Seven for letting things deteriorate so far. Worse still was the way the tenants looked at him, blamed him for their plight. All had given proper deference and the requisite Yer Grace tossed into clipped conversations. No fingers pointed, but he would remember the look in their eyes for the rest of his days.

  “Seen enough?” Bullen asked grimly, as they cantered away from a tenant cottage around midafternoon.

  “I deserve to see every deuced one,” Jared ground out.

  Bullen stared for a long moment and then nodded, suddenly veering onto a narrow path through the woods lining the road to Dolan. A half mile later, they came to a clearing in the woods about two acres in size. Two structures shared the clearing: a shabbily built lean-to barn, not unlike several they had seen earlier in the day, and a run-down cottage with three men struggling to haul a newly cut beam up to the roof peak.

  The men had tied a rope around the center of the timber and then looped it over a large poplar branch overhanging the roof. The other end of the rope they tied off around the trunk of a nearby tree. The men had used the rope pulley to get the beam to the roof, but the beam was so large and heavy, it took three of them to maneuver it in place. Hunks of thatch lay scattered everywhere after being tossed from the roof, and the existing crossbeam at the peak was cracked and bent.

  “They have to get the new beam in place before removing the old, so the side walls don’t collapse,” Bullen explained, watching the men work.

  “Oh, good Lord.”

  “At this rate, they will be here all night.”

  “Can they not get others to help them?” Jared asked, as the men manhandled the main beam toward a slot cut in the end walls alongside the cracked beam.

  The roofers had to concentrate on their task and had barely given them a nod and a “good day, Yer Grace” before ignoring them again, but Jared had not missed that now-familiar look in their eyes. The look that said, You did this to us. The look that scalded his conscience and made him wonder about his own tenants’ conditions in the future. Could his own tenants be descendants of these very farmers?

  He may not have created or contributed to the existing deplorable conditions on this estate, but he was Jared Seven at this moment and that made him responsible. He dismounted, tied off his hunter’s reins, and removed his jacket, waistcoat, and cravat.

  “What are you doing?” Bullen asked.

  “What does it look like?” Jared said, striding toward the cottage. “I am going to help my tenants.” He thought he heard Bullen mutter, “There’s hope for you yet,” but he couldn’t be sure.

  He did not miss the three heads that snapped up when he climbed the ladder to the crossbeams and grabbed one end of the timber. There was an altogether different look in their eyes now, and he could only hope it held a little respect.

  He nodded to the closest roofer. “You and I will take this end.” He nodded to the others, already shifting together toward the other end. “You two fit that end in.”

  “Bullen!” he called. “Untie the rope and help us shift it into place.”

  “Get ready,” his brother yelled back, already grabbing for the rope.

  With four of them holding the beam and Bullen maneuvering the pulley rope, they managed to set the massive timber in short order. Several of the crossbeams also needed replacing. The tenants cut, planed, and hoisted new timbers into place. Each man ac
cepted his job and worked in silence unless someone required direction. Additional thatch needed to be trimmed and fitted back in with the salvageable thatch removed earlier. Bullen pulled a wicked-looking knife from his boot and began cutting thatch.

  “You always carry that in your boot?” Jared stared at the blue-handled hunting knife in his brother’s hand. “It seems a bit large for your boot.”

  Bullen shrugged. “I always keep it with me.”

  “It’s a beauty.”

  “This is the only gift our father ever gave me. Handed it to me when he made me head groom. Told me not to make too much of it; there would not be any more gifts.”

  The old bastard. Jared wished the old coot were still alive, so he could strangle the blighter.

  “Forget it.” Bullen handed him some cut thatch and sent him up the ladder.

  As the afternoon wore on, the chatter picked up. The roofers chided each other and even teased Jared a time or two, though respectfully. Bullen felt no such compulsion to protect Jared’s feelings and, after the first timber had been placed, constantly harassed him to keep him on his toes.

  And Jared loved it.

  For the first time in his life, he was a man like any other man, helping his neighbors at a mutual task to benefit someone else. He felt wonderful. He would do it all over again tomorrow if needed.

  The men finished an hour before sunset, and the chatter had slowly petered out until everyone finished in silence. Jared climbed down the ladder and pulled on his waistcoat and coat, stuffed his cravat in a coat pocket. He turned and all three tenants stood before him, their caps in their hands.

  The middle tenant stepped forward as spokesman. “Thank ye, Yer Grace,” he said. “We couldn’t ’ave done all this today wifout yer help.”

  You wouldn’t have needed my help if the current Duke of Reston had not allowed you to get in this situation.

  What should he say in response? He couldn’t make any promises to these hard-working folks, since he was leaving as soon as he could get the fountain fixed. Some other Langley in the family tree would receive the entailed property and become Duke Eight. Unless Seven miraculously returned from the continent and produced Eight? If not, would the replacement duke care for these tenants? Jared could not even promise them that.

  He had never found a journal for Eight in the attic, knew nothing of their present financial problems. Even if Seven had been solvent, it did not necessarily mean his tenants were solvent. Some peers bled their tenants dry. Jared found he wanted to promise these three hard-working men that things would get better, but he had no right. Jared Thirteen would be leaving.

  He swallowed past the lump forming in his throat and gave them a curt nod.

  His tenant’s brow curled slightly in a frown and waited for Jared to say something.

  “I—”

  What should he say? He couldn’t lie. That would be worse, and when he went back to the future, what would they think of him then? Since he would just disappear, they would think Seven had deserted them. Jared realized he would hate it if the tenants thought that.

  “I want things to be better for you,” he finally said.

  All three tenants smiled brightly. “Thank ye, Yer Grace,” all said in unison.

  Jared mounted up and joined a stern-looking Bullen.

  “I hope you meant what you said.”

  “I intend to help them as long as I am here.” That was the truth.

  Bullen’s expression said he didn’t expect Jared to be around long.

  ****

  Jared had expected to sleep well after his arduous day toiling alongside his tenants. Instead, he had lain awake in his suite, battered by worries. After dinner, he and Bullen had done a thorough audit of the estate’s books, such as they were, and Jared’s financial antennae had gone on high alert. Nineteenth-century Haverly was hanging on by a thread, as were all of Seven’s other holdings. His ancestor had just about run them all dry.

  Long into the night, Jared had wracked his brain for some way to help his tenants, but his financial expertise was all linked to the twenty-first century. Getting a handle on the wisest investments to make in the Regency era would take him months. Time he didn’t have.

  He kept coming back to a passage he had remembered in Six’s journal where the old duke mentioned having a hidden cache in his library. Evidently, Six had not experienced a great deal of faith in his son’s management ability or his son’s intentions, for Six had written, “Thank God for my cache in the library, which can see this dukedom through some lean times should it be necessary. I have marked the cache’s location in my private journal, which I will turn over to my son when I feel comfortable doing so.”

  Had Six turned over the journal to Seven? And had Seven run through the cache as well? Jared needed to find out. He had risen early and searched the library downstairs from top to bottom, feeling for hidden latches and checking for hollow areas behind the walls or beneath the floor. But Six’s journal had remained hidden. Jared had already searched the twenty-first-century Haverly library when he had first read the passage in Six’s journal. He even opened each volume on the shelves to look for a hollowed-out niche and eventually determined the private journal had either been given to Seven or found by a later ancestor or been entombed during a prior renovation.

  If Jared traveled to London before his return to the future, he promised himself a search of the London townhouse on Grosvenor Square, in the off-chance that was the library to which Six had referred. If Jared left for the future early before any trip to London could be made, he would tell Bullen about the private journal.

  Jared could always leave word now for his Haverly successors to be sure to invest in trains, telegraphs, telephones, and other nineteenth-century inventions scheduled to change the course of history and the world, but those investments may come too late. For now, he and Bullen must create a strict budget for each of Seven’s holdings and hope for the best.

  He finally succumbed to sleep with his last and greatest fear squarely in mind. What if Seven truly did escape the assassination attempt on the continent? If Seven showed up while Jared was still here, he may never get back to the future.

  ****

  “How is your planning for the ball coming along?” the Earl of Wakefield prodded his daughter over breakfast.

  “Very well, Papa,” Ari said. “I have gone over the menus with Emma, and she has lined up two village girls, Rosemary and Beatrice Heath, to help her with the cooking and baking.”

  “Good, good. I received a note from the Earl of Dexter. He has assured me of his attendance,” he said, eyeing her for any sign of interest.

  She cheated him, of course, and merely nodded, then took another bite of her eggs.

  Albert Hart looked nonplussed and cleared his throat. “You know if you showed some interest in the earl, I might be willing to give you that season in London you always had your heart set on.”

  That did snap her head up. Her father looked positively hopeful. What was he up to?

  She chose her words carefully. “I thought you preferred a suitor from Hampshire, close by.”

  He spared a flash of chagrin. “I did. I have always thought you should stay close to home where I could watch my grandchildren for what years I have left. London is too dangerous a place to raise children.”

  “Papa, you have plenty of years left, and what are you up to? Why your sudden change of heart?”

  He grinned. “Dexter is an earl, and his estate is close enough for my purposes. He is a handsome one, too. You have to admit.”

  “Yes, he is handsome.”

  But my heart cannot seem to let go of my girlish dreams.

  Both times Jared had kissed her, she feared she would melt, and now she could not imagine kissing anyone else. No wonder the man was such an accomplished rake, and Jared would break her heart. She felt sure of it.

  “Well, my dear? What do you think?”

  “Rumor has it that Dexter is a rake of the same ilk as Jare
d.”

  The earl scoffed. “Dexter has a care for his estate and his stables, and that shows a man just sowing his oats, not a complete wastrel as Reston has proved to be these last few years.”

  Ari gaped at her father. “How can you say that? You have always had a soft spot for Reston. You two have spent an eternity together, hunting, debating, and sharing your port, discussing anything and everything in the world.”

  And Ari had been thankful they had often allowed her to retire with them to the library after dinner, to hear and—every once in a while—participate in those same discussions.

  “I have changed my mind.”

  “Where is your loyalty?”

  “I have none where you are concerned.”

  She was not interested in Dexter, at least not romantically, and couldn’t be interested in any man until she could get over her feelings for Jared. She was running out of excuses, however, and if she was not careful, her scheming father would have her married off to Dexter before she could say “special license.” The earl had made a point of saying at dinner last night that he would soon need to consider marriage and an heir.

  She pulled the last straw from her veritable bonnet, lousy as it was, and hoped it did not backfire. “What of Baron Dalton? He seems to have gotten the idea that he is your favored suitor.”

  Her father laughed so hard, his paunch jiggled beneath his cloth napkin. “Oh Ari, you are so naïve. I told all of your suitors they were favored, my dear.” He winked. “Keeps them in the hunt.”

  “Oh Papa! You didn’t.”

  “And if Dexter does not come up to scratch, the nod will no doubt fall to Dalton.” The smile vanished. “One way or the other, my dear, I will have you married—and soon.”

  ****

  Things had not gone right since Jared fell in the ancient fountain the weekend before, and he was beginning to think he would never get back to the future. He and Bullen’s plan to visit all his tenants had met with one delay after another. Everywhere they rode, a tenant was in desperate need of a new roof, a new barn, a new fence, new irrigation ditching, something.

  He had suspected more than once Bullen only stopped at the needy ones, but Jared had insisted on visiting all his tenants, and so he had. Each and every one made him feel guiltier for the dire straits in which Seven had left them.