A Rake by Any Other Name (2 page)

“He seems terribly…English.”

“Well, of course he does.” If that wasn't damning Lord Hartley with faint praise, she didn't know what was. “Because he is English, and so are you.”

“No, I'm not. I don't belong here, Mother. I can't fit into these ridiculous column dresses. Do you know I can't even stretch to my full stride when I go walking in that blasted blue thing?”

“Language, dear. Restrain yourself.”

“If only you knew how much I
am
restraining myself.” Sophie snorted. “I can't fit my mind into the narrow rules of this place. I shall run to madness if I try.”

Millicent sighed. It really was her fault. She should have guarded Sophie's attachments more closely as she was growing up in India. She ought not to have allowed her to mingle with so many people of different backgrounds. It had given her queer notions.

Millicent glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantel. She wished again that Henry hadn't insisted that they stay at Barrett House instead of in guest rooms at Somerfield Park. The pensioners' house was sitting empty, he'd argued, and they had much more privacy than if they'd taken up residence at the big house. Millicent would have traded her privacy all day to live in such a grand place as Somerfield Park, but her husband assured her that it wasn't good business to spend too much time with those with whom one is attempting to negotiate. “It's not too early for you to bathe and dress for dinner. Everything must be perfect this evening. If you would be taken for a lady, you must dress the part.”

“And have a father with deep pockets,” Sophie said tartly as she rose from the settee and stomped off to her room. “That seems to be counted a lady's best feature in this benighted country.”

***

Mr. Porter had already ordered the proper turn out Lord Hartley demanded, and the thorough airing of Barrett House had begun days ago. Fortunately, the inside of the place was in better shape than the outside. Of course, the patches of damp rot would take some carpentry and fresh paint to fix, but there was time for that. Now that the heir was back, things would turn around.

They simply had to.

Porter set off for Somerfield Park, trotting up the long lane leading out of the village as fast as his bowed legs would carry him. Chest heaving, he burst into the grand manor's kitchen with the news that Lord Hartley was taking tea at the village inn and would likely be home in less than an hour.

“Well, who don't know that?” Mrs. Culpepper didn't look up from the pot of stew she was stirring. “The kitchen boy from the Hound and Hare beat ye here by a good five minutes. Careful with that hen, Eliza,” she said to the girl who dipped a freshly killed chicken into a pot of boiling water to loosen the feathers. “That has to stretch for supper for all of us below stairs, mind. Won't do to have ye dropping it on the floor. That'd put Himself on a right proper tear and no mistake.”

“But does Himself—” Porter stopped and cleared this throat. It irked him that Mrs. Culpepper bestowed the honorific of “Himself” on Mr. Hightower. The fellow was the butler at Somerfield Park, not God Almighty. Porter was a butler too, albeit in a much smaller household, but no one ever called him “Himself.” “I mean, does
Mr. Hightower
—”

“He's alerted the Family to the news and is assembling the staff in the great hall as we speak. There's not much we can count on in this world, but one thing certain is that Himself will see everything done good and proper.” The cook wiped her hands on her apron and turned a kindly eye toward him. “Have ye had tea yet, Mr. Porter?”

“No, Mrs. Culpepper, that I haven't.”

“Well, then, sit ye down and I'll sort ye out.”

Porter watched as the round woman sliced bread and set out jams and a pot of clotted cream for him. While he sipped the aromatic blend and thanked her, he was pleasantly mindful that the
Mrs.
before Mrs. Culpepper's name was only a formality. There wasn't now, nor had there ever been, a
Mr.
Culpepper.

Not that Porter was likely to ratchet up his courage to do anything about it, of course, but still… It was enjoyable to contemplate such things while a man ate a woman's bread and drank her tea.

***

As the carriage approached, the last rays of sunlight glinted off the upper windows of Somerfield Park. If Richard half closed his eyes, the four-story Georgian manor seemed to twinkle like a jewel on its green, velvet lawn.

“There they are,” he said, “spilling out of Somerfield like bees from an upturned hive.”

It was tradition. When one of the family had been gone for an extended period of time, everyone came out to greet them. In deep blue Somerset livery, the servants lined up on the right side of the big double doors.

Richard frowned. There seemed to be less than half the usual number.

“Something amiss?” Seymour asked.

“No. It's fine. Everything will be all right.” If it wasn't, he'd have to make it so. And pretty quickly too. After all, Antonia and her family would be there tomorrow, and he needed to put his best foot forward.

Only three figures assembled to the left side of the door.

“One of my sisters seems to be absent. Probably Petra,” Richard said. “We never could keep her out of the haymow. She'd hide there from her governess all day, squirreled away with a few apples and a book.”

“A book? What a waste of a perfectly good haymow,” Seymour said dryly. “Perhaps someone should show Lady Petra what a roll in the hay is like
sans
reading material.”

Richard skewered his friend with a glare. “I wasn't joking about those shears.”

Secrets are the most delicious morsels, but only when one is gobbling them up. Keeping them down often gives one the most frightful indigestion.

—Phillippa, the Dowager Marchioness of Somerset

“Stand up straight, David,” Mr. Hightower said under his breath while the son of the house climbed down from the carriage to greet his mother and sisters.

Two
of
his
sisters, at least
, David thought.

David Abbot resisted the urge to shift his weight from one foot to the other. Someone was going to catch it because Lady Petra had gone missing again. He was bound and determined it wasn't going to be him this time.

Like the military man he'd once been, Mr. Hightower ordered in a rough whisper, “Eyes straight ahead.”

David straightened his spine and tried to watch from the corner of his eye as Lord Hartley leaned to kiss his mother's cheek. Her chin quivered, but she didn't dissolve into tears of joy over the return of her firstborn.

The Barretts weren't that sort of family. There was no excess, no superfluous displays of affection.

Lord Hartley's sisters were only a little more demonstrative. Lady Ella, the eldest and acknowledged blond beauty of the bunch, returned her brother's kiss on the cheek. The youngest, Lady Ariel, gave him a grin and a quick hug. But on the whole, the Barretts were like a flock of swans on the trout pond, long necks dipping in unison, moving in unhurried concert.

Nothing disturbed the tranquility and dignity of the Somerset name.

It was so different from David's distant memories of his own mother and her wild swings between tender overindulgence and foxed neglect. He gave himself a brisk shake and tucked the past back into the deepest corner of his mind. In many ways, his real life had begun when he came to Somerfield at the age of six to serve as his lordship's bootblack boy. Now some twenty-odd years later, David had worked his way up through the below stairs ranks to become a footman.

Not bad for a boy of no background from Brighton.

“It's so good to have you home, Hart,” Lady Somerset was saying. “At last.”

The big double doors carved with the marquessate's coat of arms opened behind them. David heard the squeak of a wheelchair, but on pain of another censure from Mr. Hightower, he didn't turn to look. Instead, a tingle of apprehension danced down his spine.

“Mr. Witherspoon,” Lord Hartley said. “I expected to see the doctor wheeling my father around, not his man of business.”

“We have much to discuss, my lord,” Mr. Witherspoon said. “And unfortunately, it cannot wait.”

David's belly tightened at that. Every day for the last month, he'd all but tiptoed around the great house. At any moment, he expected his lordship to recover well enough to tell someone what
really
happened the day he fell off the roof.

With a sick taste in his mouth, David wondered would happen to a boy from Brighton then.

***

“But what was Father doing on the roof in the first place?” Richard had been steered into the parlor by his mother and Mr. Witherspoon so they could talk without the household looking on. His father was there as well, but the marquess hadn't contributed a thing to the conversation. Richard poured a jigger of Scotch for himself and offered one to Mr. Witherspoon. The man of business declined with a shake of his head.

So, this is definitely not a social
call.

“Oh, you know how your father is,” Lady Somerset said. “He loves to look at the sea from the parapet.”

“But the leaves are out now. The ocean is only visible from Somerfield Park during winter, when the trees are bare.”

Lord Somerset smiled vacantly at him. Then he gazed down at his hands in his lap, examining the signet ring on his forefinger as if he'd never seen it before.

Richard's chest constricted and he was forced to look away. “What does Dr. Partridge say?”

“He's frankly baffled,” Lady Somerset said. “The doctor believes that your father's faculties may return. He may even walk again someday, but we have no way of knowing when. Dr. Partridge says we're to count ourselves fortunate your father survived the fall. He's at a loss to explain how he lived through it.”

“Oh, I can tell you that. He was saved by good gardening.”

Richard turned at the sound of his beloved grandmother's voice. Phillippa, the dowager marchioness, appeared at the doorway dressed in a rich gown at least twenty years out of date, with a rope of gray pearls at her wattled throat. She advanced into the parlor, her back ramrod straight, leaning only slightly on her ivory-headed cane. To the rest of the world, she was the indomitable dowager, but to Richard she was just plain Gran.

“Your father tumbled directly onto my lilac bush, the simply enormous one at the southeast corner of the house. It cushioned his fall.” Gran sank into a tufted wing chair as gracefully as her years allowed. “My son was spared. The lilacs, however, will never be the same. Isn't it a mercy that I didn't leave the thorny old gorse bush in that spot? Now don't just stand there, Richard. Come and give us a kiss. And bring me a whisky while you're about it.”

Richard was quick to obey. “Gran, your charm hasn't dulled one whit.”

“Perhaps not, but my joints aren't at all what they used to be.” She presented her papery cheek for him to kiss, took a quick sip of the amber liquor, and sighed. “Well, Mr. Witherspoon, have you told him yet?”

“There's more?” Richard's stomach swirled downward. It was the same sinking feeling he used to get before an exam for which he had not studied.

In measured tones, Mr. Witherspoon gave a chilling account of the estate's finances.

“I don't understand.” Richard paced the room, nervous energy crackling from him. His father had never failed to send sufficient funds while Richard was larking about the Continent with Seymour. There was never any hint of this kind of trouble. “How can the money be gone?”

Mr. Witherspoon spread his hands. “An unfortunate set of circumstances. As you know, we had hardly any summer last year, due to that volcanic eruption in the South Sea Islands. The ash cloud affected the climate worldwide, I collect.”

“Pity those islanders couldn't keep their ash in their own hemisphere. Beastly of them to spread the misery around,” the dowager said with a sniff.

“My lady,” Witherspoon said, “they can hardly be blamed for that.”

“Whyever not? Do we trouble them when we have more rain than expected?” The elder Lady Somerset banged the tip of her cane on the floor. “Indeed we do not. We slip on our Wellingtons and keep the mud to ourselves.”

Witherspoon's mouth opened and closed a few times, but he couldn't seem to find an answer for the dowager. He turned back to Richard. “At any rate, it actually snowed in July here. Crops failed. Lord Somerset's tenants couldn't pay even a fraction of the rents owed.”

“But none of them were evicted, surely,” Richard said.

“Of course not,” his mother put in. “We've always had a partnership with the families who farm the estate's lands. Some of them have been here for generations.”

“So your father decided to take what funds he held in reserve and invest in a whaling vessel. I advised against it, of course. Any maritime venture, of necessity, involves risk,” Mr. Witherspoon explained. “But if the ship had come in loaded with ambergris and oil, the Somerset balance sheet would have been the envy of the
ton
for soundness.”

“Unfortunately, the
Betsy
Ross
had the poor grace to sink off Nova Scotia in a squall.” Gran held up her glass in an unspoken request for another drink. “
Betsy
Ross
, indeed. Should have known we couldn't trust a Yank.”

“Nature and Americans, it seems, conspire against us.” Richard refilled his grandmother's jigger, watering the whisky this time. “What's been done?”

“We adopted alternative financing in order to help the tenants with the planting this year and keep up with other expenses. The estate is mortgaged to the rafters. So far, the crops look only fair. Even if the harvest is moderately acceptable, we will still be in dun territory and unable to meet our obligations next fall.”

“Intolerable.” The idea of being indebted and unable to pay was as abhorrent to Richard as contracting a case of the French pox. “Surely there must be some way of restructuring the debt.”

“There isn't,” Witherspoon said. “If we don't have an immediate infusion of cash, your creditors will be flocking to Somerfield Park within a couple of weeks to make an inventory of the artwork, the furnishings, your mother's jewelry…”

Lady Somerset made a small noise, a cross between a sob and a squeak. “It sounds as if not even the silver service is safe.”

Witherspoon nodded grimly.

She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. “Are we to be reduced to eating with our fingers?”

“Well, my dear, they
were
made before forks.” A second whisky on an empty stomach always made Gran uncharacteristically agreeable.

Hands fisted at his waist, Richard stood at the window. The grounds of Somerfield Park stretched to the forest on the horizon, spring green and fresh in the deepening twilight. For generations, his family had claimed this land. They'd carved it out of nothing during the time of the Conqueror. They'd held it through the vagaries of despotic kings and warring factions. The original castle had crumbled, and the current manor house was raised up, but no matter what, there had always been a Lord Somerset tramping over the meadows, hunting in the woods, and keeping watch to the east when the trees were bare and the sea foamed in angry gray swells.

He couldn't lose Somerfield Park.

“There must be an asset we haven't tapped yet.”

“Actually, there is,” Mr. Witherspoon said. “It's you, your lordship.”

“Me?”

“Your name, your title, your”—Witherspoon slipped a finger into his tight collar and gave it a tug before he continued—“your troth.”

“Now, wait a moment. Are you suggesting—”

“That you marry well. Exceedingly well. Yes, my lord,” Witherspoon said. “I'm not only suggesting it. I'm telling you it's the only thing that will answer.”

In silence, Richard's father sat in his wheelchair, running the tasseled ends of the lap rug through his fingers. No help would come from that quarter. Richard turned to his mother.

“My affections are already engaged,” he said. “I very nearly proposed to Lady Antonia Pruett in Paris.”

“How nearly?” Gran asked before his mother could reply.

“I asked for and received her father's permission.”

“But you have not asked her, and even if her father unwisely told her of your intentions, she'll have to consider them revoked,” Gran said sternly. “Lord Pruett will not be able to produce a sizeable enough dowry for our purposes. He's always been a wastrel, flush from winnings at the poque table one week, poor as a church mouse the next. You must write her this evening and cry off.”

“I wouldn't know where to send the letter,” Richard said. “She'll be here tomorrow, you see. I invited her and her parents to come stay.”

“But we have already—” His mother clapped a hand over her mouth.

“You recall I mentioned alternative financing,” Mr. Witherspoon said. “The gentleman from whom we borrowed funds to keep going is in residence at Barrett House now, along with his family.”

“I take it you use the word
gentleman
loosely.”

Witherspoon nodded sheepishly.

“Who is he?” Richard asked.

“Mr. Henry Goodnight.”

“A commoner?”

“Yes, but he's possessed of an absolute pasha's ransom in cash,” Gran said, lifting her empty jigger again.

Richard decided to ignore it.

“Please,” his mother said to Gran, “there's no need to be vulgar.”

“Oh, my dear, if we expect our darling Richard to marry a fortune with feet, we are well past the point of vulgarity and might as well accept it.” Gran stood and went for the whisky herself. “Remember the family motto:
Frangas
non
flectes
.”

“‘Thou may break but shall not bend me'? The motto doesn't fit this situation.” Richard raked a hand through his hair in frustration. “You're expecting me to do plenty of bending.”

The dowager waved his objection away. “Oh, well, it was a stupid motto in any case, picked by one of the bloodthirsty barbarians in our past. Pay it no heed.” She downed her third shot. “Perhaps it won't seem so bad if we think of this course of action as adventurous instead of desperate.”

“I'd rather we didn't think of it at all.” Richard all but growled. How dare they plot to part him from Antonia? “What do we know about this Mr. Goodnight, aside from the condition of his pockets?”

“At present, that is all that need concern us.” Mr. Witherspoon pressed doggedly on. “He was with the East India Company for most of his adult life, where he made an incredible fortune.”

“How nice for him.”

“For us as well, I should think,” Gran said as she returned to her comfortable chair with only a slight wobble in her step. “He has a daughter of marriageable age.”

“Of course he does.” The noose of family responsibility tightened around him. Richard plopped into the seat opposite his grandmother.

“An
only
daughter and no sons. Which means however untutored the young woman in question may be, she is well gilded. That compensates for a great deal in our present circumstances.” Gran stifled a soft belch from too much whisky in too short a time, though she'd deny to her last breath that a dowager marchioness was capable of such a thing. “Raw gold is still gold. We can work on polishing her up later.”