Barbara Metzger (37 page)

“My grandparents sent me away with a parting gift,” Hugo answered. “They did not wish to be bothered having to remember me at Christmas or the New Year or my birthday in January. I would not gamble with that money.”

“And I know where Aunt Lissie—our mother—keeps the peppermint drops,” Billy chimed in, holding up a paper sack, “so I won’t get sick. Hugo says I can sit up with the driver if I feel like casting up my accounts. I won’t fall off, either.”

“And the dogs will be a great help in finding Willy and Kendall,” Hugo added. “They are scent hounds, you know.”

“And they miss everyone, too,” Billy said.

Hugo nodded. “They don’t want to stay here when everyone else is gone.”

Two of the pups were shredding the glove of Kendall’s that Hugo had thought to bring, to start them on a hunt. A third mongrel was chewing the fringe off the hall Turkey runner, and the last one was leaping on Billy, trying to get the peppermints.

Mr. Canover wanted to go after his lost love—but like this? If it was the only way he could leave in good conscience, and the only way these two scapegrace boys would be safe, then yes. “Very well. I will take you to Oxford. It might be an educational opportunity at that. You can see the college your father attended, and so might aspire to those lofty towers of erudition and academia yourself.”

“What does he mean?” Billy asked his brother.

“He means we can go.”

So they left, after packing hampers with food and medicines and more warm clothes than Wellington’s army possessed, and hot bricks and warm cider. They took the carriage Lady Eleanor had left behind, but with extra grooms and guards.

Claymore stared after the departing coach, shaking his gray head. “His lordship will dismiss me for certain after this,” he said with a sigh. “He’ll make me retire to some dreadful little cottage in the country, where I shall raise roses.” He sighed again. “Roses make me sneeze.”

Aunt Reggie’s turban had fallen off, leaving the gray roots showing in her dyed red hair. She looked at Claymore, then at the street where everyone had gone. “What say you, old man; shall we follow them?”

“Follow? Us?”

“That’s right. Why should we miss all the fun?”

“But your health…?”

“Pshaw. You could not kill me with a stick. A little of my nephew’s brandy will have me right as rain in no time.”

“But your reputation, my lady.”

“It’s my niece’s reputation that is at stake here, and that sweet little Miss Bourke’s. Besides, after three husbands and more years in my dish than I care to count, I am not going to start worrying over what people will say if they see me with a butler. Gammon. I have lived too long for that, and so
have
you, old friend. Come on now, fetch the brandy and blankets and some hot bricks, unless you’re intending to keep me warm through the night.”

They started out on the journey right after Lady Winchwood waved her vinaigrette under Claymore’s nose.

* * *

No one in the neighborhood could miss all the commotion at Rothmore House. Draperies twitched and faces appeared at windows as coach after curricle after hired conveyance was packed and driven off. It must have something to do with the missing boys, the observers speculated as they took another tour of the gated garden in the square, hoping for more activity.

Some of the servants wagered on the children’s return, while some bet on Lady Eleanor’s chances of landing the duke this time around. A few put their money on Regina, Lady Winchwood, to snabble her fourth husband.

One observer was not interested in butlers or tutors or missing brats. He was interested in revenge. All doors had been shut to Sir George Ganyon. He could not go to his clubs, where he was a laughingstock, thrown out of Almack’s with punch and a floating flower dripping down him. Everyone knew he had grievously offended Rockford and had left his rooms at the Albany to avoid a challenge.

A man could survive many labels: miser, womanizer, fool, drunk. He could not live among his fellows as a coward. Ganyon was considered lily-livered for not meeting Rockford, although everyone acknowledged that a duel with the earl, pistols or swords, illegal or not, was as good as a death sentence. The baronet was also deemed a cur for his suspected assault on Rockford’s wife, although she had been neither wife nor peeress when he committed the offense. He’d compounded his sins by slandering the countess, and was now considered a danger to gentlewomen everywhere. No gentleman would give his daughter’s hand to a craven brute, no cit would want his daughter wearing Ganyon’s tarnished title. So Sir George would have no heir, no sons to help on the estate, no housekeeper, and no bedmate for the winter—if he dared return to his home in the country. He might, if Rockford stayed in the city, as was his wont.

No one in London would acknowledge Sir George any longer, although they could not help recognize the scars from the sugar tongs put on his cheek by that Henning bitch. Rather than sitting in the mean rooms he’d rented, the baronet had been sitting in his coach across the street from Rothmore House. He’d been watching the house, waiting for a chance to get back at the earl and his wife for all the trouble they had caused him.

“What do you think is happening that they’re all leaving?” his driver asked. Fred Nivens had a broken nose, three missing teeth, and a jaw that would never shut right again, thanks to the earl. He also had a thirst for revenge. He was all for burning down Rothmore House and everyone inside. Only now there was no one left inside except the servants. There was no fun in that.

“They must have figured out where the brats got to.”

“Who cares?”

Sir George did. He wished he had found the urchins first. According to the rumors in the pubs, the earl would have paid anything to get them back, and the jumped-up countess would have been repaid when they were sold as chimney sweeps or cabin boys. Ganyon could have had the money and the satisfaction at the same time.

He took another swig from the flask he held, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. If he had the brats, he could have offered Alissa a trade: the sprigs for the sister. That would have been an interesting choice to hand the jade who had rejected his proposal, his proposition, and his honorable offer to take the sister off her hands. Sir George licked his fleshy lips, imagining the wench’s suffering if faced with that dilemma.

Without the Henning boys, though, Sir George had nothing, not even a chance to get even…unless he followed them.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

In another carriage, in the meantime, the reasons for the cavalcade leaving London were on their way back.

The journey had started out fine for the Henning boys. No one saw them slip from the kitchen door with a bundle of food, and no one saw Kendall boost his little brother into the luggage boot of the hired coach. Lawrence Canover had few belongings, so they had ample room. Having stayed up half the night, worrying and planning, both fell asleep as the carriage left town and took the northwest road. While his brother slept on, Kendall peeked out at the first stop, then got down to find a likely groom to carry a note to their mother. The groom drove a hard bargain, though, to carry the message, and the boys were left with little food and less money.

They were cold, besides. And bored. And cramped, now that they were fully awake. And Willy needed to relieve himself. “I miss Mama,” he said.

“So do I.”

“Do you think she got our message yet?”

“I don’t know. That rider had a mean smile. Maybe he took the letter and ripped it up.”

“She’ll worry, when she remembers to look for us.”

“She might cry.”

Tears formed in Willy’s green eyes. Kendall pretended it was too dark to see, and the noise of the wheels was too loud to hear his brother’s sniffles.

At the next stop, which seemed like ages later, Kendall heard the driver tell Lawrence that they were almost halfway to Oxford. Only halfway? Their jug of cider was gone, and their last apple. And Willy had to relieve himself. But what if the driver was in a hurry and left without them while they were in the bushes?

“We’d better talk to Lawrence.”

So they walked into the inn, Kendall holding on to the back of Willy’s collar. Young Mr. Canover was sitting at a table there, counting out the coins the earl had given him—into the hands of a serving girl who could have used her ample bosom for a shelf. Instead she was using it as a deposit bank, stuffing the coins down the front of her gown. Lawrence’s eyes followed every ha’penny piece.

“Hallo, Lawrence,” Kendall called when they were halfway through the room. “We decided that we want to go home.”

Lawrence dragged his eyes away from the vault he fully expected to visit before his driver finished his meal. When he caught sight of the boys, he leaped to his feet, dropping the rest of his purse. “He’ll kill me!” was all he said, head swiveling from side to side in search of the earl, or a back way out of the inn.

“Not if you take us home,” Willy offered.

Then Lawrence cursed like the army trooper he aspired to become, after he became a rake and a womanizer. The serving girl, laughing, went off with his money. “Come find me when you tuck your little brothers in their beds tonight. Although the older one might be ready for a little—”

Lawrence hauled the boys out of the inn. Tonight? They were not staying another minute, if he had his way. Unfortunately, the hired driver did not see the need to rush back to London.

“I got my orders, I do. I take you straight to your school in Oxford, with no side trips; that’s what the governor said. And what he’s payin’ me for. I ain’t takin’ you nowheres else, nor the kiddies, neither.”

“But they are the earl’s sons! He’ll want them back.”

“Thought you called ’em Hennings.”

Lawrence almost pulled the hair out of his head. “Lord Rockford married their mother. They are his. I swear it!”

“Like you swore you was just askin’ that trollop for another glass of ale?”

“But we can’t leave them here. The earl will have my head on a plate as is, if my brother does not shoot me first. And Lady Rockford will be distraught. You don’t want any countess going into a decline, do you?”

Willy was eating an apple tart. Kendall was watching anxiously. The driver scratched his head. “Well, I suppose we can take ’em along to Oxford. Then I can drive the bantlings back to town tonight. Goin’ there anyway, I am.”

That was the best Lawrence could do. After a humiliating conversation with the barmaid, he got his money back, enough to bribe the driver to let the boys meet their cousins. They had come all this way, he told the jarvey, and it would be a
shame
for them to leave without seeing the duke’s sons.

Earl’s sons, duke’s sons, it was all the same to the driver, but he waited while Lawrence explained to his headmaster about the need to find two university scholars to take charge of their young cousins. The headmaster saw prospective students and sought the earl’s favor, if not the duke’s, so he sent a note to a colleague of his. Within minutes, it seemed, the Duke of Hysmith’s sons appeared; Magnus, the Marquis of Henfield, the heir, and Lord Bertram Henning, the spare.

Both of the young men had their father’s somewhat stocky build, but neither had his superior air. In fact, they thought their little cousins were game ’uns, full of pluck. They remembered their uncle William, who had been an idol to them when they were no older than Will, and were prepared to befriend his children.

Lawrence happily surrendered the Henning boys into their cousins’ care, who instantly decided that the lads could not be entrusted to a mere hired coachman. They would accompany Lady Rockford’s sons back to London—and get a look at their estranged aunt, besides. Their father would not be pleased with the families’ mingling, nor would he approve their absence from school, but he’d never find out, they told themselves. The little Hennings would never cry rope on their magnificent new cousins, and the driver would only report to Rockford. They were safe.

And they were on their way to London, where one of their friends kept a handy flat and an openhanded opera dancer.

*

Alissa could not get Jake to drive any faster. Then, when he did, one of the wheels hit a rut, and they had to crawl to the nearest inn to have the wheel straightened. The wheelwright had to be awakened and offered a generous bonus to work at night. The moon was covered now, with rain on the way. The temperature was dropping too, so the precipitation might fall as sleet, Jake warned. They might not be able to go on tonight.

Alissa could not, would not accept that. She would hire postilions to carry lanterns. She would hire a horse to ride. She would walk to Oxford if need be. Jake shook his head and told her he would talk to her after supper, after the wheel was repaired.

The food was well prepared and ample, the inn’s best in honor of their titled guest, but Alissa could not eat. How could she, when her boys might be hungry? She had never been apart from them for an entire day before, much less a night. She kept going to the window of the private parlor Jake had taken for her and Aminta’s use, wiping her hand across the fogged glass, trying to see out into the dark night.

Amy had hardly eaten all day and was hungry, so she sampled the innkeeper’s wife’s cooking: the pigeon pie and the turbot in oyster sauce, the loin chops and the steamed pudding. Then she excused herself to use the necessary at the rear of the building.