The Prince of Ravenscar (2 page)

“That is very kind of you to remark upon, dearest.” She studied his beloved face for a moment, so very beautiful he was, and she could see some of herself in him, the way his eyes shined when he was pleased, how he threw back his head when he laughed. Did he look at all like his father? She didn't know, she'd never seen a portrait of her husband as a young man. She supposed there was a portrait hanging at his ancestral home, Mount Burney. She'd sometimes wondered if the father had resembled the son when he'd been young, if he'd had Julian's habit of tilting his head when he listened, if he'd usually thought before he spoke, if he'd been as beautiful as his son. Such a pity Julian's father had been old, white-haired, but never stooped, no, the old duke had stood straight as a sapling until his death, and he'd had most of his own teeth when he'd breathed his last breath.

“Three years, Julian,” she said again. “I hope you have—”
Recovered from your grief
hung in the air, unspoken. “That is, how are you feeling, dearest?”

He grinned down at her. “I am fine, Mother. Three years is a long time, too long, truth be told. I am very glad to be home. No, I do not still mourn Lily, but I miss her. I suppose I always will.”

Corinne looked up when the drawing-room door opened. “Pouffer! There you are, tea and some black cake for my returned prodigal.”

“Yes, your grace,” Pouffer said, his old eyes on Julian, but he bowed grandly in both their general directions. He gave another wide grin to Julian, so happy he was to see him at last.

“Ah, Prince, I was remarking to Mrs. Trebah that you look as grand a gentleman as even the sternest critic could demand. She agrees, though she only saw the veriest glimpse of you.”

“Thank you, Pouffer.” Julian's earliest memory of the Ravenscar butler was from his third year of life—he'd rolled a ball against Baron Purley's feet, and Pouffer had bowed to the baron as grandly then as now, scooped Julian up, rubbed his head, stuck him under his arm, and carried him out, Julian yelling for his ball. Pouffer had little hair now, only a white tonsure circling his head. As for Mrs. Trebah, the Ravenscar housekeeper, she'd been here even longer than Pouffer, come when the old duke had been a mere seventy, five years before he'd married Julian's mother.

“Come and sit down, Julian.”

Julian hugged his mother once more and gladly accepted her fussing over him. She gently slipped a thick blue satin pillow behind his back, positioned the hassock directly in front of his wing chair, and even lifted his booted feet. He was laughing. “Enough, ma'am, I am not used to being so spoilt.”

“I am your mother, I will spoil you as much as I like. Now, while we wait for Pouffer to bring in sustenance, I will tell you we must leave for London very soon.”

He looked at her blankly. “London? But I just came from London.”

“You went to London? Already?”

“Well, yes, I had business with Harlan.”

“Ah, well, Mr. Whittaker and business, that is very different. No, dearest, I mean
London,
as in
the Season.
You did turn thirty-two last month—although you were not here to celebrate your birthday—and in my disappointment, I downed an entire bottle of champagne. I drank so many toasts to your beautiful self I was flat in my bed all the next day. It is past time you were wed again.”

The words burst out of her in a torrent. Julian raised a black brow at her as he pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket. “I have been home exactly ten minutes, Mother. Perhaps we can wait to leave for London? Perhaps in a day or two?” Past time for him to wed again? What was this?

He found himself looking around the vast drawing room, giving his mother time to marshal her arguments, always entertaining, always worth waiting for. “I like what you have done with this room, Mother, the blues and cream shades suit it nicely, and the Aubusson carpet is magnificent.”

“I am glad you admire the carpet, since you paid a substantial number of groats for it.”

“As for London, you're right, Mother, I was there only a few days. As you said, I spent most of my time with Harlan, reviewing all Ravenscar expenditures, tenant profits, repairs to be done, crops to be adjusted. You've done an excellent job, Mother.”

“Well, none of the stones are crumbling away, all our tenants are content—well, several of them would complain even if God himself were to take tea with them. Actually, since you wrote detailed instructions to me every single week, it required little thought on my part.” She paused for a moment, gave him a fat smile. “Did you not notice the score of palm trees—so very
tropical
they look, and so very distinctive—and the silver maple and oak trees I had planted along the drive? And now all the bare ground is covered with heath and daffodils. They have softened the landscape, which is what I wanted. I always thought Ravenscar looked so brutally stark.”

Actually, Julian had always liked the barren promontory that sloped down until the land fell away gently into the channel. “I must admit the new trees add interest. I suppose since there are no more enemies to invade our shores, Ravenscar has no more need to intimidate anyone, so the clumps of daffodils waving in the breeze add a nice romantic touch.” He paused, thought of Elena, and smiled.

“Ah, Pouffer, here you are at last. Bring on the black cakes for my beautiful son. He is fair to dwindling away before my eyes.”

When Pouffer grandly lifted the silver dome to uncover Mrs. Coltrak's black cakes, Julian's stomach growled.

He was drinking his second cup of tea when his mother said, “Lily died three years ago, and you left England, not, of course, to avoid scandal, since there wasn't any, but to leave the Langworths and their terrible grief, and their blame. It is behind you now, Julian.”

The gentleness dropped from her voice. She became brisk. “You are not getting any younger, dearest. I will remind you yet again that you are turned thirty-two years old. You really must have an heir.”

This was an interesting approach. “An heir? Why? Mother, I'm a duke's son, true, but I am only a second son, not a duke's heir. Why is it so important that I produce a male child?”

His very smart mother realized her logic wasn't sound and retrenched in an instant. “Well, what I really meant is that I have the fondest wish to be a grandmother.”

Now, that was a lie that didn't bear scrutiny. He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Shall you be called Grandmama, or perhaps Nana Corinne?”

She shuddered.

“Mama, I have no desire to return to London. Indeed, I have an overdue ship from Constantinople, the
Blue Star.
I must travel to Portsmouth.”

“Why? How can your being in Portsmouth hurry the ship up?”

She had a point.

She hurried on before he could muster another objection. “I miss all my particular friends, dearest. I miss attending balls and routs.” She closed her eyes. “And there are many new plays to be enjoyed on Drury Lane.”

And shopping,
he thought.

“And shopping, naturally. I do adore shopping on Bond Street, you know.”

She also adored shopping in Saint Austell, Julian thought, recalling the quantity of clothing bills that arrived punctually on Harlan's desk.

“And you need to visit your tailor. Your coat is very well indeed, for
Italian
society, but not exactly what you would want here in London, and your boots, well—”

Yes, he did need new boots, but—

She rose from the blue brocade settee opposite him, patted his shoulder, leaned down to kiss his cheek. “I truly wish to go. There has been so much rain here, and to be blunt about it, I am growing mold, not an elevating sight. It is time for a change of scene—specifically, it is time to visit London, for the Season this time, not for your wretched man of business.”

Julian felt the earth shifting beneath his boots, his
old
boots. At last he was home. He wanted to settle in, manage his property, play with his spaniels on the dog run that ended at the low cliff above the beach. He knew it was time to see if Richard Langworth and his father, Baron Purley, still blamed him for Lily's death. “You really don't need me, Mama. You could as easily travel to London, open the town house, and do whatever pleases you. Why do you want me along?”

She said, with a good deal of hauteur, “Do you forget you are my son, my
only
son, and I have not seen you for three—
three
—years? I wish all of society to gaze upon your exquisite self, admit there is no finer-looking a young man in all of England, and be jealous of me.”

What was going on here? He said slowly, “Don't forget the other Monroe lady, namely, Lorelei, your stepdaughter-in-law. She will doubtless be there. You know you would rather have your eyebrows plucked than have to deal with her.”

His mother had thick black brows like his, and he'd heard her shriek when her maid, known as Poor Barbie, had to pluck them every week and a half.

“I shall firmly plant myself above Lorelei this time; I shan't allow her to give me the headache with her obnoxious little observations on my looks and health and how you should never have been born and how your dear father turned into a pilchard-headed old moron when he turned seventy-five, and just look what came of it—namely, me—and would you look what I did—brought you into the world. And then, naturally, she will go on and on about you, her chins quivering all the while—a duke's son, even though you should never have been born in the first place, and you're obviously deficient, since you sprang from an old man's tired seed, and not the healthy, intelligent seed of a vigorous man, as your dear father was many decades ago. Worst, you indulge in trade, and what a horror that is.”

She paused to take a well-earned breath. She tapped her long fingers against her teacup and brightened. “If I recall, Lorelei had gained flesh when I last saw her, and I haven't, and I'll wager she still persists in wearing all that purple.” She gave a small shudder.

Julian said nothing.

She eyed him. “Devlin is always in London for the Season. I know his father is beginning to agitate for a daughter-in-law, since Devlin is now twenty-seven—can you believe that?—and he needs to get himself wed and set up his nursery.”

“Both Devlin and I are to be consigned to leg shackles?”

She ignored that. “Really, Julian, do not concern yourself about my dealing well with Lorelei. I shall give her my most regal nod and continue on my way.”

Julian gave it one more try. “As I said, you really don't need me with you, Mother.”

To his surprise, her small rounded chin began to tremble, and those beautiful dark eyes of hers sheened with tears.

“All right, I see you will have the truth out of me, Julian.”

Before he could find out this truth, Julian heard barking outside the drawing room and rose. “I have a surprise for you.” He opened the door and motioned to his valet, Pliny, to release the King Charles spaniels he'd brought back from Genoa.

Freed, the spaniels ran to him, yipping, leaping about, their long silky ears flopping up and down. They didn't jump on him, but they circled him, dancing, as he'd taught them.

He went down on his haunches and gathered them all to him. He said, pointing, “Mother, I would like you to meet Cletus, Beatrice, Oliver, and Hortense. They are a year old. You might think they all look the same, but their personalities are as different as ours. Since my estate room gives onto the dog run, that is where they'll spend most of their time.”

“Ah, that is fine, dearest. Goodness, they do leap about, don't they? Look at that one.”

“Cletus.”

“Why, I think he would like to meet me.”

Julian picked up an excited Cletus and carried him to his mother, the other three spaniels barking madly behind him. She petted his soft hair, received a dozen enthusiastic licks.

“Cletus,” she said. “I fancy you are a very well-behaved little fellow, are you not?”

Cletus wriggled free from Julian's hands, yipped and barked, and relieved himself on the Aubusson carpet.

Corinne said, “Yes, your estate room is an excellent place for these charming little dogs. Call for Pouffer, dearest, to clean up little Cletus's accident.”

Soon the four spaniels were racing after Pliny, barking, tails wagging, to visit their new home in the estate room, and Pouffer was directing a maid to clean up little Cletus's accident, after which he burned two feathers to eliminate any possible odors.

“Pliny is looking well,” Corinne said.

“As much as his poet's brooding soul allows,” Julian said. “He should have trod the boards, I've told him. He adores drama and being in the center of it. I'm pleased, though, he didn't cry when Cletus relieved himself on the carpet.” Pliny, a dapper little man of forty, blessed with a full head of white-blond hair, had been selling boots in Portsmouth and fair to starving when Julian had hired him away as his valet.
Eleven years,
he thought, he'd been so young. On the other hand, Pliny had been young as well.

His mother eyed him and spit it out. “We must go to London because there is a young lady for you to meet.”

“Ah, so this is the truth you must tell me?”

“Yes. You remember Bethanne Wilkie. She was my very best friend. She died two years ago.”

“I'm sorry, Mama. You wrote to me of her death. I remember her as a charming lady, always smiling.”

“Yes.” Corinne sighed. “I still miss her. Do you happen to remember her daughter?”

Julian recalled a skinny little girl with dark braids scraped back from her small face, tall, awkward, never saying a word in his presence. He remembered once when he'd been working at his desk, he'd happened to look up and see her peering at him from behind a curtain in the estate room.