The Ruin Of A Rogue (9 page)

Chapter 8

“G
ood morning, my lord!”

Marcus groaned. “For the last time, Travis, could you try not to sound so damn cheerful in the early morning.”

His headache was among the worst he ever suffered. He should know better than to drink gin. What else was there to do of an evening? Most of his London acquaintances were interested only in play. And Marcus couldn’t join them and risk his rapidly dwindling funds. The hostesses of London were not impressed by him, despite his title. So he sought quiet corners of seedy taverns and prayed for a miracle in his cups.

Damn England, damn the English, and triple damn to Lady Luck.

And all he had to look forward to was another day touring the moldy backwaters of London in company with a cantankerous heiress. If he had any other option he’d drop her fast. But he had too much time and money invested and no reasonable alternative when he had mouths to feed, his own and that of the incorrigible Travis, who stowed an enormous amount of food in his lanky frame. He wondered if his valet had a tapeworm.

He accepted the cup of tea and a couple of letters from Travis with singular lack of enthusiasm. The one on top was in the neat, well-trained penmanship he’d learned to know and dread. He’d almost lost his temper yesterday, a huge mistake. Marcus was not given to anger. It was another emotion he had never been in a position to afford. A cool head was vital to his well-being. But Anne Brotherton made him crazy like no other woman—or man—he’d ever met. How could a girl, pretty and agreeable when pleased, turn into such a witch, with little or no warning? She’d nearly found her pampered little bottom parked in the gutter outside Westminster Palace.

Better find out what treat she’d planned for him today. Hm. A reading of French comedy by Monsieur le Texier, whoever the hell he was. He felt the hair at the back of his neck bristle, usually an augury of bad news. “Do you have yesterday’s
Morning Post
?” he asked.

Travis produced the paper and it didn’t take long to find the announcement of the remarkable recitation by the famed performer late of Paris. And the fact that Monsieur charged half a guinea per person for the pleasure of hearing him perform Molière solo. Marcus had seen the best French actors at the Comédie Française and he was not impressed.

“Hand me that other letter,” he said.

Via the Salisbury mail. Intriguing. Marcus had almost forgotten his inquiry to his great-uncle about the purported treasure his father had left for him. With the closest thing to a prayer since his distant childhood at his mother’s knees, he removed the seal. A quick glance told him the letter wasn’t from Mr. Hooke but one Joseph Oakley.

We have been trying to find you for some months, not knowing you were in England. Your letter to Mr. Hooke gave us your direction.

Incredulously, Marcus read that his uncle had died and left him his estate.

Hinton Manor is in a poor state, your uncle having much neglected the place in recent years due to poor health. You will no doubt wish to dispose of the property for what little it is worth.

“Travis,” he said with jubilation, “pack up everything. We’re going to Wiltshire.”

“What about Miss Brotherton, sir?”

“She can go hang,” he said with a lighter heart than he’d felt in months. “I’m a man of property now.”

Travis appeared unconvinced and with reason, though he knew nothing of Hinton Manor. Marcus didn’t know much more. He remembered an old house, dark and gloomy. At the age of eleven he hadn’t been in a position to judge its condition, but he wasn’t surprised to hear it was in disrepair. He didn’t know how many acres of land went with the manor house. Still, assuming it wasn’t mortgaged, it should sell for enough to relieve him of his current embarrassment.

“How long will we be out of town?” Travis had no sympathy at all for the misery Marcus had endured of late. “It isn’t wise to leave a lady for too long when one is courting.”

“Are you an expert in the art of wooing?” Marcus asked, rather unkindly given the valet’s plain features and unwed state.

“No, sir.”

“Then keep your advice to yourself.”

“Very good, my lord.” Marcus sent him a threatening look at the use of the honorific. “But I do trust,
my lord
, that you intend to take a mannerly leave of Miss Brotherton. You wouldn’t wish to upset the young lady.”

Actually Marcus wouldn’t mind tossing her out of a window. Failing that, he’d enjoy telling her that he was leaving, forever he hoped. So two hours later saw him announced to Lady Windermere.

“I daresay Anne will be down in a little while,” she said. “I hear you’re taking her to hear some French poetry. Or maybe it’s German drama. I know it sounds quite dreary.” She waved languidly from her chaise longue where she was draped in the latest fashion for Grecian-inspired muslins, most unsuitable for London winters.

Marcus hadn’t paid much attention to Anne’s hostess before. In contrast to her ghastly taste in furniture and pictures, her personal adornment was perfect, artfully chosen to display her blond prettiness.

“She always chooses the most unexpected places to visit,” he said noncommittally, not wishing to spill the beans and miss the moment when Anne learned that today’s treat was off.

“Indeed. I don’t know how she comes up with them. But Anne is very resourceful and you, Lord Lithgow, so
very
kind. I know she is
very
grateful for your devotion to her amusement.” Marcus had the feeling the lady was laughing at him. He could hardly blame her, given the absurdities he’d been reduced to in pursuit of her wealthy friend. He suddenly despised himself. Not for hunting a fortune but for being prepared to humiliate himself doing it.

As a rule Anne Brotherton kept him waiting for a minimum of twenty minutes while he fretted about the horses. Today he’d come on foot so of course she breezed in promptly.

“Lord Lithgow,” she said, offering him her hand. “I cannot tell you how much I look forward to Monsieur le Texier’s recitation. I do hope you were able to obtain tickets!”

“I come with bad news. Our expedition will have to be postponed.”

She gave a huff of annoyance and her mouth set into her discontented look. Lady Windermere, with better manners, asked if anything was amiss.

“My great-uncle has died.”

Miss Brotherton had the grace to look abashed. “I am sorry. My condolences on your loss.”

“As to that, I hadn’t seen him in several years. But I must leave for Wiltshire at once.”

“Will you be in time for the funeral?”

“Mr. Hooke died some months ago. The executor was uncertain of my whereabouts and only now have I learned that I am the heir to his estate. So my tidings today are good, except for the very great sadness of being deprived of your company. I don’t know when I shall return to London. I trust it won’t be too long.”

He gave her his most languishing look and hoped she would be devastated by his desertion. Instead she looked alert as a pointer. “Mr. Hooke? Mr. Hooke of Wiltshire?”

“Yes. Of Hinton Manor. Have you heard of him? I doubt he left the place in years. He was a gentleman of great obscurity.”

“I read an account of a Mr. Hooke of Wiltshire who found two Roman villas on his land. Could it be the same man? It’s not such a common name. You should have told me you were related.”

Marcus searched his memory. No such excavations had been in progress during his brief sojourn at Hinton. “It’s possible,” he said. “My uncle had scholarly inclinations.”

“Lord Lithgow, you are a lucky man. I would so like to see Mr. Hooke’s discoveries.”

“If they exist,” he said, “and if I decide to keep the estate, I should be happy to show them to you.”

Never in a thousand years
, he swore. Now he had something Anne Brotherton wanted and he’d take the greatest pleasure in denying her.

Chapter 9

M
arcus knew little of Hinton Manor. As his post chaise slowed down to take the winding lane toward the sizable brook and a lengthy drive that separated his uncle’s house from the nearby village of Hinton, he recalled the former brief visit. Abandoned by his father after only a day, he’d soon afterward been sent to school by Uncle Josiah Hooke. He had never returned.

“Nearly here, Travis.”

“I confess, sir, that it will be a relief to be still.” The valet had suffered silently but obviously each time the chaise hit a bad patch of road.

The alteration in the sound of the wheels told Marcus they crossed the bridge. Soon the house would be visible. Despite a light rain, he lifted the window flap and stuck out his head in time to see the worn sandstone building loom out of the mist.

Following a few weeks’ stay in the splendid surroundings of Castleton House, Hinton had seemed unimpressive to the eleven-year-old boy. But the adult Marcus, who had stayed in palaces and hovels, now saw a modest but solid manor house, a couple of centuries old, nicely proportioned, with rows of tall mullioned windows on the first two floors topped by three gables. The drive was weedy and lined with shrubbery that looked close to expiring, but that might be the season. Marcus knew nothing of gardening. Neither was he in a position to assess the condition of the stonework.

Not so bad.
And then, as the carriage drew to a halt before a battered front door set in a rather handsome stone arch,
Mine.

It was a startling thought. In all his twenty-eight years, he had never owned anything more substantial than the clothes on his back and in his trunk—and not always the latter when things went awry. Without waiting for the steps to be let down, he jumped onto rough, moss-covered flagstones. This piece of the earth, crowned with a confection of stone and glass and slate, belonged to him and no other. In the twenty years since he and his father left his mother’s cottage, he’d never had a place to truly call his own, a home instead of temporary dwellings in a dozen countries where he’d unpacked his bags but never felt any connection. His eyes blurred in the afternoon drizzle and his boots felt rooted to the ground. Blinking, he scanned the façade, scarcely noticing cracked panes of glass, chipped and loose stonework, a bird’s nest clinging to the eaves beneath a broken slate. This was his house and it was damn fine.

The door opened with a creak.

“Lord Lithgow?” A short, stout bewhiskered man, whose clothing and demeanor proclaimed the country attorney, greeted him with a bow that made his old-fashioned periwig quiver.

“Oakley, I take. Good of you to be here. I trust you haven’t waited too long.”

“Not at all, my lord. You made good time.”

“Will you have the servants bring in my bags while I pay the post boy?”

Oakley’s chin quivered. “As to that, we have a difficulty I will explain inside. Can your own man handle the matter?”

Travis clambered out looking green.

Marcus rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Even if he wasn’t carriage sick, he’s not strong enough to manage the trunk. Give me a hand with it, will you, Oakley. Travis, you bring in the hand luggage.”

With some huffing and puffing on the part of the solicitor, the trunk was deposited in the hall, throwing up a cloud of dust. Marcus looked around at the scarcely remembered interior of his new possession. Ignoring the muddy floor, ponderous unpolished furniture, and faint odor of mold, he saw lovely carved paneling in dark wood and a low strapwork ceiling aged from white to a rich chalky color like the foam on a tankard of ale. Beneath a patina of neglect he sensed the presence of generations of Hookes, witnessed by the solid oak staircase whose broad, shallow steps were worn at the center by the passage of a thousand feet.

As his chest tightened with excitement, a chunk of the ceiling fell onto his head.

“I told you the house was in poor repair,” Oakley said apologetically, brushing scraps of plaster from Marcus’s shoulders. “If you care to come into Mr. Hooke’s study I will tell you how things stand.”

In an office only marginally less filthy than the hall but warmed by a small fire, Marcus did his best to follow the estate accounts presented by Oakley. “If I understand correctly,” he said, “the revenue from the tenants comes to a little under eleven hundred pounds a year. A decent income for a gentleman, if not lavish.”

“Indeed. But Mr. Hooke neglected the land in recent years.”

“How did he spend his income? Was he given to personal extravagance?”

“Certainly not. He was a gentleman of frugal habits.”

“So there must be an accumulation of monies.”

Oakley sighed. “There was indeed, and a nice sum in the funds, but he left it all to the Countess of Sandford’s evangelical sect. In recent years Mr. Hooke became an ardent adherent.”

“Was it much?”

“The clergy of the congregation received some fifteen thousand pounds by Mr. Hooke’s will. Why he decided to leave Hinton Manor and its land to you I cannot say. Perhaps in the end blood was thicker than water.” Oakley spoke with approval of such a sentiment.

“Let me get this clear. There is no ready money.”

“Quarter day has come and gone since Mr. Hooke’s death. The Michaelmas rents are on hand.”

“More than two hundred and fifty pounds,” Marcus said. Better than nothing and there’d be another quarter soon.

“Not as much. Floods last year reduced the arable acreage, necessitating a reduction in rents. And the servants needed wages and board.” Oakley shuffled through some paper. “One hundred and eighty-five pounds remains. Just enough to put the house into fair enough condition to sell it for more than a song.”

Marcus’s half-formed vision of settling here and becoming a country gentleman suffered a fatal blow. Still, he had expected a pig in a poke. Whatever sum the estate could be sold for put him ahead of where he was. And yet . . . “Supposing I keep the place. What would it take to return the estate to productivity?”

Oakley hemmed and hawed and made calculations modified by lawyerly hedging. Finally he named a sum that might as well have been the income of a prince for all the chance Marcus had of laying hands on it. “If you remained here and did much of the work yourself, it might be managed for less. But I doubt you wish to become a gentleman farmer.”

“I’ll think about it. I shall stay for the moment and assess the situation. In the meantime, where are the servants? How many do we have?”

Oakley shook his head mournfully. “After Mr. Hooke’s death, not knowing how long it would take to find you, I reduced his household to a minimum.”

“By a minimum, I assume you mean more than none.”

“The housekeeper, one indoor manservant, and two maids were kept on. Country folk are much given to superstition, and a month or so ago they decided the house was haunted and left.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I fear so. Only old Jasper, the stableman, agreed to stay. He has quarters in the stable block and has served as caretaker for the house. He’s a stubborn fellow, not likely to be frightened by specters, but he’s nowhere to be found. When I arrived today I had to stable my own horse and light the fire.”

If Marcus had any sense, he’d take the one hundred and eighty-five pounds—three times his present worth—and return to London to wait out his luck. He hadn’t tested it since Oakley’s letter arrived, hadn’t even thought of it. But it might augur a change of fortune. The alternative was to remain in a falling-down house with whatever ghost the servants had fled.

His gamester’s instinct, unreliable as it had become, urged him to stay. He envisioned the office cleaned and tidied, the film of dust on the windows removed to admit the gray afternoon light, warmed by a blazing fire. A cozy spot to read, or to study the business of managing his property with real intentions, instead of the lie he’d fed Miss Brotherton. And he had a servant. Finally Travis could make himself useful and repay the debt he insisted he owed.

“My valet and I will make do for now. Perhaps when the house is inhabited the local people will see reason. Show me the rest of it.”

W
hen Oakley left, Marcus found Travis in the master’s chamber, putting fresh linens on the bed. “How are we to get the trunk upstairs, sir? I need to unpack your clothes so that you can dress for dinner.”

“I assume someone named old Jasper will appear at some point and help me carry it. Dressing for dinner is the least of my concerns. I’d prefer it if you set yourself to ridding the house of some of the grime. I have reason to believe it hasn’t been cleaned for over a month and, if I’m any judge of matters, for much longer.”

“Surely there are maids.”

“Not one. You are the only indoor servant at Hinton Manor.”

Travis’s Adam’s apple wobbled. “No staff? In a house of this size?”

Marcus smiled and crossed his fingers behind his back. He wasn’t about to mention ghosts to Travis and his shaky nerves. “We’ll hire more soon. In the meantime I’m putting you in charge of cleaning.”

“Me? I am a valet. The purview of a gentleman’s personal servant is a gentleman’s person.”

“My person is going to be busy with matters other than adornment. You kept the rooms in St. James’s neat.”

“And I shall do the same for your rooms here. I cannot be responsible for other parts of the house. It would not be correct.”

Since the man received no pay, Marcus was arguing from a position of weakness. He could dismiss him but that hadn’t worked in the past. “I don’t suppose you can cook.” Travis dignified the question with another horrified stare. “In that case, if we are not to starve, I’d better find the kitchen.”

It was better than he had dared hope, given the state of the house. Old Jasper might live in the stables but he used the domestic offices of the manor. The brisk fire heated a small range and oven, as well as an open grate over which hung a rusty spit that Marcus had no intention of using. No roast meats on the menu until he acquired a cook. Hot water was piped in from a copper boiler in a well-equipped scullery. Best of all, the larder was stocked with staple foods, eggs, milk, and half a flitch of bacon. Tonight, at least, they need not go hungry.

The floors, on the other hand, offended a soul he never regarded as fastidious. Discovering a broom and a tub of fuller’s earth, he’d made progress loosening a thick layer of greasy dirt from the flagstones when the back door opened, letting in a blast of chill wind and rain that sent the dust pile flying.

“And who might you be?” The belligerent question was spit from the gap-toothed mouth in a face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut shell.

“Old Jasper, I presume,” said Marcus, looking with disfavor at the damp filthy coat and shapeless hat, pulled low over the ears, of his new servant. On the other hand he
was
a servant, perhaps a more willing one than the fussy valet upstairs. “I’m Lithgow, your new master, and I’m doing your job.”

Jasper plunked a large loaf of bread on the table. His vehement denial knocked off the hat to reveal straggling gray locks. “I’m an outdoor man,” he said, continuing to shake his head. “Stables and garden only.”

“Sweeping floors is a much cleaner task than mucking out stalls,” Marcus said, holding out the broom. “It will make a nice change for you.”

Jasper folded his arms. “Master always said you were a cozening rascal.”

“I do not believe an insult is a good way to begin an acquaintance. Besides, I’m a reformed character.”

“Fair words butter no parsnips.”

“True, alas. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

“Handsome is as handsome does. Master said there was never a prettier man than Lewis Lithgow, nor one more rebukeful.”

“There he was right, I grant, but I think you have me confused with my father. I am Marcus Lithgow, now rejoicing in the title of viscount.”

Jasper muttered something to the effect that he didn’t hold with lords.

“Splendid. You may address me as sir. I wish you could persuade Travis to my way of thinking. Speaking of which, despite your disinclination for indoor work, could you bring yourself to help me carry a trunk upstairs?”

Having servants was just one long negotiation. Lewis Lithgow had always said he who traveled alone traveled fastest and Marcus tended to agree. It was also how he knew how to cook. During the years Lewis had dragged his only son from pillar to post, Marcus had fulfilled the duties of man-of-all-work instead of studying his Latin grammar, like other boys of his age and class.

With a good deal of panting and swearing, during which Marcus added some colorful country terms to his vocabulary, the trunk was delivered to Travis, who had deigned to dust the master bedchamber and dressing room. Marcus also learned that the manor boasted a vegetable garden, a stable containing a pony and gig but no carriage horses, a small home farm with chickens, a breeding sow, a couple of pigs almost ready for slaughter, and a milch cow.

“Good Lord, Jasper! You look after all of those by yourself? I take back any aspersions I may have cast on your readiness to work.”

Jasper seemed pleased. “I can cook a pease pudding with bacon and a cabbage soup,” he volunteered.