Hadrian (25 page)

Hadrian urged his horse forward, because Fen was embarrassed to have taken steps to assure a friend a good night’s sleep.

“Then I must thank you. I was barely on my feet by the time I found my bed. St. Just doesn’t stand on ceremony. Come along and I’ll introduce you, assuming he’s kept to his usual habit of rising with the sun.”

Fenwick’s gaze traveled back in the direction of Blessings. “He’s an earl. You can introduce us at church after I’ve had a decent breakfast and donned my Sunday best.”

“You’ll hide,” Hadrian countered. For God’s sake, Fenwick’s uncle was an earl. “You want to meet him just so you can ask him about how he trains horses.”

“I do?”

He did, and they both knew it. They were dismounting in the Landover stable yard when a voice sang out from the barn.

“Where have you been, Hadrian Bothwell, that you come stumbling home, peaked and wan at the crack of doom? If this is country living in Cumberland, I’ll have to visit more often.”

“St. Just, welcome to Landover.” Hadrian extended a hand to a dark-haired, green-eyed broadsword of a man, only to be pulled into a rough embrace.

“Emmie sends her love,” St. Just growled, walloping Hadrian between the shoulder blades. “As does Winnie, to you and to Caesar. She says Scout sends his love too.”

The chestnut horse pricked his ears at the sound of his name, and St. Just turned to inspect the beast—while Fenwick took a small eternity to run his stirrups up their leathers.

“Caesar’s in good shape,” St. Just said. “You’ve kept the muscle on him, and his coat is blooming too. Well done, Bothwell, and who is this sturdy fellow?”

Fenwick declined to capitalize on the opening, so Hadrian answered St. Just’s question.

“Handy belongs to Mr. Ashton Fenwick, steward over at Blessings and my host for the past week’s haying.”

“Haying.” St. Just grimaced. “Makes me itch in unmentionable places just to hear the word. Fenwick, Devlin St. Just, at your service—or Rosecroft if we’re doing the pretty. This one has an Iberian ancestor grazing on the family tree, doesn’t he? Maybe by way of the Dutch trotters.”

As they walked toward the house, Fenwick almost shyly joined the discussion of horses, but was soon trading opinions with St. Just on the merits of shallow versus deep shoulder angles.

“Have you broken your fast, St. Just? Fenwick and I are off to services when we’ve eaten and seen me put to rights.”

“You’ve put on muscle,” St. Just said as they crossed the Landover terrace. “Fenwick must be hitching you to the plough, and your staff is seeing to your victualing.”

“He puts his own shoulder to the plough,” Fenwick volunteered. “You’d think the church would spoil a man for hard work, but this one doesn’t know when to quit.”

St. Just slung an arm over Hadrian’s shoulders, the gesture surprisingly endearing, considering all present were sober. “You aren’t pining for your congregation over in Rosecroft village?”

“I am not.” Not in the smallest degree, not a one of them. Hadrian wasn’t even missing Harold too terribly much. “How is your countess?”

“Emmie is doing splendidly, which leaves an expectant father rather without dragons to slay. She shooed me off, claiming I scowl too much, and our first born will pick up the habit from me prior to birth.”

Their first born would likely canter out of the womb. “Feeling
de trop
?”

“Abysmally.” St. Just’s smile was lopsided. “Emmie needs to have Winnie all to herself for a bit before the baby comes, and they’ve been patient with me. You are the first stop on a jaunt south.”

“Their Graces need to see you?” For St. Just was the oldest of a ducal brood of ten, and illegitimacy meant, if anything, St. Just endured an extra helping of fretting from the duke and duchess.

“I need to see my parents, and my brothers and sisters, and I’ve nephews and nieces to spoil. Life has become complicated.”

Fen remained silent throughout this exchange and nearly so at breakfast, though the earl ambushed him nonetheless between sips of tea.

“Mr. Fenwick, you do not appear cheered by the prospect of morning services.”

Something about Ashton Fenwick was never entirely cheerful, but Fen had waited up for Hadrian the previous night and looked like his slumbers had not been peaceful.

“If you’d rather retire from the field, Fen, St. Just is a newly minted earl. We can tuck Avie’s hand on his arm and make a point quite nicely.”

“I was trying to think of a way to suggest you put his lordship to that very use,” Fen replied, “without revealing my appalling lack of Christian virtue.”

“Avie would be Lady Avis Portmaine, of hallowed fame in Bothwell’s letters?”

Hallowed fame was better than some of the characterizations St. Just might have trotted out.

Fen smeared half the jam pot onto his buttered toast. “Been writing the lady’s praises, Vicar?”

“I will resort to violence if you insist on addressing me thus much longer.” Hadrian topped off tea cups all round, though in the space of a glance, an alliance formed between Fen and St. Just that promised much misery for Hadrian’s dignity.

“I don’t use the title,” St. Just said, “except on rare occasions, such as the need to impress Bothwell’s neighbors. If I’m off to curvet about the churchyard, I’m faced with a dilemma. My horse can’t be left to idle all day, or he’ll stiffen up. After our jaunt through the hills, somebody who’s up to his weight has to at least hack him out, or I’ll be a week working out the kinks.”

And so the mighty Fenwick was reduced to the status of excited new recruit given his first battle mount. “Think you can handle a St. Just horse, Fen?”

Fen drained his tea cup with unceremonious haste. “If he’s anything like Bothwell’s chestnut, then I’m your man.”

St. Just picked up Fenwick’s half-eaten toast. “Another sinner gallops astray. Apologies to your Maker, Bothwell.”

“Apologize to your own Maker,” Hadrian rejoined. “Give me a few minutes to get into decent linen, and I’ll meet you out front.”

“I’ll be in the stables, introducing Mr. Fenwick to Apollo. Ethelred came with us on a leading line, but he’s a less steady fellow altogether.”

“Fen, to my friends,” Fenwick said as he got to his feet. “You will please tell me about this Apollo beast, lest I disgrace myself before we’re beyond the stable yard.”

They disappeared, both lost in a discussion of stiffness to the left and a tendency to drag on the reins when bored, while Hadrian considered that he was having his first house guest, and St. Just was somebody he truly welcomed as a friend.

At least, when Hadrian had proposed to Emmie, the lasting effect on his relationship with St. Just had been the winner’s sympathy and respect for the loser. And how fortunate that Hadrian
had
lost. Emmie was deliriously happy with her growling earl, and Hadrian intended to be just as blissful with his Avie.

Provided she accepted his proposal.

Emmie St. Just, though far gone with child, had practically led Apollo out and boosted her husband into the saddle, so insistent had she been that St. Just make his bow before Their Graces and look in on their dear friend Mr. Bothwell.

St. Just had battled old feelings, of being the odd man out, the marginalized sibling who’d joined the family late and awkwardly, until he’d confided these sentiments to his wife and been roundly—affectionately—scolded for “goose-ishness.”

Emmie and Winnie had been right: Somebody had to look in on Bothwell and ensure that having mustered out of the clergy, he was bearing up under the strain of life as a civilian sinner.

Now that Fenwick was off on his pony ride and the coach rolling toward Blessings, St. Just expected a report, for Emmie would expect a report, and little Winnie would too.

“You wrote that Lady Avis was the victim of an assault,” St. Just said, “but that happened years ago, before you even finished at university.”

Bothwell made a study of the lovely Cumbrian countryside, and a small part of St. Just was relieved that Emmie wasn’t there to admire their friend in his Sunday finest. He’d not only put on muscle, he’d also put something
off
too—something churchy and foreign to Bothwell’s true nature.

“Lady Avis was brutally attacked by the fiancé she was intent on jilting,” Bothwell said. “Some in the shire took the position Collins was merely anticipating vows and Avis put a vile name on his attentions to see him run off in disgrace.”

“A costly tactic on her part, when sending a note would have sufficed, or sending a brother or two.”

“You’re right. If she wanted to break things off, she had better options. I’m the one who found her, St. Just, after she was raped.”

St. Just had seen rape aplenty in the wake of broken sieges. The screams of the violated were in some ways more traumatizing than the screams of the dying, and nothing in the theological curriculum at Oxford would have prepared Bothwell for either.

“What else can you tell me that you didn’t put in your dispatches?”

“Collins is somewhere on English soil, though we’re fairly certain he disembarked in Portsmouth.”

“Fairly certain?”

“He’s evil,” Bothwell said, resuming his study of the green, rolling landscape. “I went into the church knowing evil exists mostly because of Hart Collins. He sensed Avie was having second thoughts about marrying him, knew his future was slipping away, and did what he expected would guarantee him her settlements, regardless of the cost to her. As young as she was, if he’d turned up sweet, brought her some damned flowers, promised to honeymoon in the south, she would likely have come to heel.”

“Evil, ruthless and stupid. Not a good combination. The lady welcomes your suit?”

Now Bothwell fussed at the lace of his cravat—a wardrobe affectation St. Just recalled seeing on him in Rosecroft village. “She does not welcome my suit, though she’s receptive to my company under some circumstances.”

“Bothwell.” St. Just kept his tone gentle, for rejected proposals were a sorry habit in this otherwise intelligent man. “Not again?”

“Fenwick says practice makes perfect.”

Confession might be good for the sinner’s soul, but the unburdening was hell on the confessor.

“Emmie worries about you, and thus I must trouble myself with your welfare as well—you have no say in the matter. Have you been indiscriminately offering your hand to the fair damsels of the shire?”

“Before offering for Emmie either time, there was Rue’s older sister,” Bothwell said, and he was not proud of his recitation. “I tried walking out with Mary, but she laughed at my proposal and informed me I would do for her younger sister, who was admittedly pretty and agreeable. I had little say in that matter, either.”

“Bad things come in threes,” St. Just muttered, though failed proposals qualified as something more than bad luck. “Will your Lady Avis have you?’

“Have me, yes. As for marrying me—I’m permitted to offer her arguments on the merits of my suit.” The coach bumped and swayed along the rutted country lane while Bothwell aimed a fatuous smile at his boots.

“Arguments? Am I to conclude you offered these
arguments
to my countess?”

“You are not. Emmie never saw me as a man, St. Just. I was only a means of ensuring she and Winnie did not part, and a way for her to deny you what you needed.”

“Needed?’

“You needed Emmie and she needed you, and all’s well.”

A report after a fashion, and St. Just was pleased with Bothwell’s summary—also with that love-drunk smile. “Does Lady Avis need you?”

“Not for the right reasons. Maybe need is too strong a word.”

St. Just had several younger brothers—also half a regiment of younger sisters and female cousins.

“Bothwell, if Lady Avis needs you in any capacity, you make do, and improvise, and adjust—you
argue
, if need be. Faint heart never won fair maid, and neither did sitting on your arse waiting for perfect conditions before you join battle.”

“Marriage has turned you up romantic, St. Just.”

Marriage had made him happy. “Who’s the English rose?”

Bothwell peered out St. Just’s side of the coach as a tidy blond woman disappeared back into the house, leaving a pretty dark-haired lady standing on the Blessings front porch.

“The blonde is Lily Prentiss,” Bothwell said, his tone unenthusiastic. “Lady’s companion and general conscience. She hates Fen and is mightily loyal to Avie.”

“Avie?”

“Lady Avis. We’ve known each other since childhood, and one develops a certain informality.”

A certain tendency to smile at one’s boots, too.

“Don’t poker up. Am I to charm the companion or put her in her place?” Though what sort of companion abandoned her employer right as guests arrived?

“If your lordship charms her, she will be put in her place.”

“My lordship,” St. Just muttered. “Famous. Your saint-ship can see to it we’re not invited anywhere after services, because my lordship’s arse is tired from my journey.”

Then too, St. Just did not want to be hurried from the company of the woman who had inspired Hadrian Bothwell, former Kissing Vicar of Rosecroft village, not only to propose—Bothwell excelled at offers of marriage—but also to offer the lady his heart.