The Summer of You (5 page)

“Why ever not?”

“You saw the contents of his pockets! This one’s easy pickings for any rabble-rouser, not just highwaymen.”

“Where do you propose to take him?” Byrne asked. “Not my house—what if someone comes looking for him? I’ll not be responsible for kidnapping a Marquis.” A drunken, annoying one at that.

“Who’ll come looking for him? There’re none named Vessey that lives round here,” Dobbs argued, finally getting the lad somewhat on his feet.

“Do you see a coach or a horse?” Byrne countered, knowing full well the courtyard was empty except for his carriage. “That means he walked here and must be staying locally with friends. They shall come looking for him.” Byrne’s mouth pressed into a line, deciding on what action to take. “We should inform the Johnstons, let them put him up in the private dining room.”

Dobbs merely snickered and stumbled forward with his load. “You see the way this one was looking at the lady of the house? Johnston will likely put him right back where we found him. If the lad has friends, the Johnstons will point them in your direction, and they’ll come thanking you.” Dobbs stopped, took a steadying breath. Then he looked Byrne dead in the eyes with the spaniel-like expression that had swayed Byrne into hiring him in the first place, all those years ago. “Come on, sir. We’ve all been young and stupid. Have a heart.”

Byrne sighed and gave his body man and the mud-covered weight that he carried against his side a long, appraising look.

“Fine,” he finally said, turning again to step into the carriage. He pulled himself up onto the step, then shot a glance over his shoulder. “But you get to clean the mud off these seats.”

IT was approximately five minutes after Jason left that Jane’s anger had been choked down far enough to allow her to receive guests.

It was nearly seven o’clock in the evening when the last guest left them to their supper and allowed Jane’s anger to burst back again.

It was exactly three in the morning when Jane’s anger turned to worry.

Finally, Jason came stumbling into the breakfast room at ten o’clock, as the servants were just finishing clearing away the remains of a mostly uneaten buffet, looking as if he had been trampled by His Majesty’s mounted regiment. When she saw him, Jane—in deference to her lack of sleep and frazzled mind and having gone over every iteration of what could possibly have occurred to her only brother in the hours since they last saw each other—lost any composure she might have had claim to.

She started crying.

“Where have you been?” she wailed, an alarming amount of liquid streaming from her eyes and nose. Jason looked at her, shock in his bloodshot eyes. Then, any sentimentality left his face as it resumed its affectedly casual sneer.

“Cease caterwauling, woman, I’m fine,” Jason said, as he gingerly dumped himself into a chair. “Coffee, please,” he requested of the footman who came and placed a napkin on his lap.

Jane took a moment to recover. A few deep, calming breaths turned her pale complexion back to its normal shade. As she did, she looked over her brother. He was dirty, and grungy, and missing a sock, but otherwise, he seemed to be whole. No jagged cuts or blood-stains slashed his clothing. As he sat down, he even removed some articles from his pockets and laid them aside, his gold pocket watch and silver card case among them.

“You weren’t robbed,” Jane said, her voice clear, a small sniff the only trace of her slight hysterics.

“Of course I wasn’t robbed—this is Reston,” he shot her a look of naked disbelief. Then, “Don’t look at me like that. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

And that is when Jane stood up, walked round to her brother, balled her hand up into a sadly undersized fist, and walloped him on the shoulder.

“Ow!” he said, rubbing the offended shoulder tenderly.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through, you idiot,” Jane replied. “The Wiltons, the Morgans, the Cutlers! Oh my God, the Cutlers!”

Indeed, Lady Jane had certainly spent the better part of yesterday enduring the trials of Hercules. The speed and order of the onslaught had been ruthless. The Wiltons, as suspected, were the first family ushered in the door. Only, instead of two daughters, Lady Wilton only brought one.

“Penelope was married a few years back, my dear. How kind of you to ask after her. She lives in Manchester, her husband a solicitor. She has two little girls, one just a babe still,” Lady Wilton said, all in one great string of breath. “I’ll write her that you inquired. She’ll be so touched. But la! Penelope was your brother’s childhood companion. You were greater friends with my Victoria all those years ago. Isn’t she looking well! And all grown up, the both of you.”

Jane had thought Victoria had grown up very nicely, and granted, her mother made it difficult for either of them to get a word in edgewise, but so far, her conversation did not resemble that of the annoying girl who had shadowed her for entire summers.

That is, until Victoria said, “Speaking of your brother, I . . . I understand he has come to stay as well? How is Ja—er, the Marquis?”

No, Victoria hadn’t changed one bit.

But before Jane could reply, she was regaled with every bit of gossip from the last five years within a fifty-mile radius. How the village was lobbying the Morgans to allow a cattle bypass road to be plowed through their land. That the widow Lowe had passed, quite peacefully, in her sleep, leaving her house to a nephew—an unsociable fellow, says he’s up from London but never comes to any of the assemblies or society meetings. That Dr. Lawford had taken on a new partner in his practice. And oh! How the Fredericksons’ boy ran off with the Crandells’ girl—everyone was in such an uproar because she had only just turned fifteen.

“I swear to you, Lady Jane, it’s the most scandalous thing to have happened in Reston since you ran round the square naked as a jay-bird when you were but five!” Lady Wilton laughed. Jane forced herself to smile serenely. She hated that story and only had a vague recollection of actually doing it. But she knew that in Reston, it was the first thing anyone ever said about her. She could have all the Town polish in the world; it wouldn’t matter. Here, she would always be five and naked.

The Wiltons didn’t visit for so long. They had the good grace to leave after a prescribed half hour, issuing a pointed invitation for her and Jason to make a call. Not so of Mrs. Morgan and her two young daughters. They had been in the following carriage, coming up the drive, and once the Wiltons left, felt free to succeed them in conversation. Mr. Morgan was a gentleman farmer and had one of the largest farms in the area, and as such, Jane learned from Mrs. Morgan the vagaries of the weather of the past five years and its effect on the crops, and of course, a great deal more detail about that cattle bypass road, and whether or not it was a good idea. “Well, I just don’t know what to do—I daresay Mr. Morgan is as fired up about it as your mother was that time you ran through the village square naked.”

After that, the Lennoxes and the Vespers invaded. Then—Mrs. Cutler, with her seven children, all under the age of ten, entered the house. While the young ones ran about, nearly destroying a few of her mother’s very favorite smoked glass vases, Mrs. Cutler would sigh and remark that it was lucky they had recently moved from the village proper to a small stretch of land on the outskirts. It would give the children somewhere to run. “Oh, children can get rambunctious, as I’m sure you know—we were all five and running around naked once.”

For every question she was asked about Town, Jane received a dozen essays on what life had been like in Reston. Someone would ask her if her dress was watered silk, and before she could answer, she would get a list of various young ladies’ wardrobes for the summer. If someone asked her about the safety of London for a young woman such as herself, she would immediately be told of the rash of highwayman robberies that had occurred over the winter and spring. And of course, anytime she tried to act as hostess, with the grace and discretion generations of bloodlines and decades of education imbued her with, someone with a twinkle in their eye and too pointed a memory for their own good would bring up the time she was five and . . .

There really was no hope for it.

She was invited, and expected, to return calls to everyone. To host a dinner, or, she shuddered at the thought, a ball. And so, by the time that last person finally left her in peace, all Jane wanted to do was scream.

“But of course I couldn’t, because it would upset Father greatly,” Jane told her brother, who was too struck to even look her in the eye. And she was particularly difficult to avoid, as she had, in the course of her speech, come to lean over him. “You are lucky that Nancy already took him out for his morning stroll, and he hasn’t seen you in this state.”

Jason had the grace to look chagrined, but only long enough until he could cover the lower half of his face with the coffee cup.

“What did you do to get you into this state, anyway?” Jane asked.

“. . . ihadapintdownthub,” was the mumbled reply, as Jason took a great gulp of the black liquid.

“I beg your pardon?” Jane asked archly.

“I said, I . . . had a pint—or two—down at the pub. The Oddsfellow Arms.”

Jane blinked at him.

“That’s all? You went to the Oddsfellow Arms for a pint.”

Jason nodded, cupping the coffee to him, paying suspiciously close attention to it.

“And it took you till morning to drink it?” Jane continued drily.

Jason looked up at his hovering sister, peevish. “No, I . . . I might have had more than one. I’m not allowed to have a drink now? Is that one of your confining house rules?”

Jane took a deep, calming breath. “Believe it or not, Jase, I didn’t drag you all the way out to Reston to confine you. You insisted on dragging me.” A long look held between brother and sister, and Jane finally sat down in the chair next to Jason. She allowed a cup of tea to be placed in front of her—not the best tea, mind, but the Cottage’s stores had not had much time to be stocked with their preferences. She breathed in its soothing vapors, slowing her pulse, cooling her head.

God, but she was tired.

“So you were at the Oddsfellow Arms? You put up there for the night?” she asked finally, all the fight leaving her exhausted body.

Apparently all the fight had left Jason, too, as he answered plainly, without rancor or guile, “No. Fellow patron took me home. I slept on old widow Lowe’s sofa.”

Jane shot her brother the arched brows of her surprise.

“Widow Lowe’s house? Why on earth were you there?”

Jason shrugged. “That’s where the fellow lived. Honestly, Jane, I don’t remember much—just that I have a splitting head.”

“The nephew? The one who inherited widow Lowe’s house when she died?”

“God, Jane—probably, I just don’t know.”

“The one everyone says is a disagreeable hermit?”

Jason stood up from the table on a great, labored sigh and proceeded to down the last of his coffee. “Sounds like him—look,” he said as he exited the breakfast room, forcing Jane to trot after him for the rest of the story, “I remember having a few more than I ought—then I went out of the pub, saw their carriage, and I must have asked for a ride home, but I was woken up this morning on that horrid sofa by a man who can only be described as grouchy, throwing my boots at me.”

“Well, did you at least get his name?” Jane persisted.

Jason stopped at the base of the stairs, turned on his sister. “Why do you care about a disagreeable hermit? What sort of mischief are you up to now?”

“Not mischief—manners,” Jane countered with a superior glare. “Because of your drunken foolishness, I now have to thank the disagreeable hermit for being so agreeable to you.”

And so, when Jason simply snorted at his sister’s attempts at manners and tripped his way up the stairs, intent upon sleeping Town hours, Jane turned in a huff and went to the kitchen to arrange a basket.

Then she went to the drawing room—where she sat at her mother’s escritoire, intending to write the disagreeable hermit a short note, and send it off with a footman. After all, a disagreeable hermit would likely rather be sent thanks than receive people. A consideration she herself had not been paid yesterday by the good people of Reston.

At that moment, Jane glanced up at the window looking out on the drive. Lo and behold, in the distance, there was the glint of movement—horses’ hooves and carriage wheels. Stage two of the genteel invasion.

A decision was made. In that moment, Jane could not blame her brother for his escape the previous day. Because she was about to do the same thing.

“Thank you,” she said to the waiting footman, who was holding the basket of Cook’s best scones, preserves, and a rounder of meat, waiting only for the deposit of the note. “You may leave that with me; I shall deliver it myself.”

And so, that was how Lady Jane Cummings decided to discreetly use the kitchen door, exit down the path in the woods that ran next to the lakefront, and stroll.

She breathed in the mint air; allowed her skirts to rumple a bit with the mud of the mile-long path; let the sounds of the clear, cool water pushing with lazy waves soothe her distracted mind. Then she gathered up her best Lady Jane of Society Fame smile, straightened her back, and emerged into the sunny clearing where the widow Lowe’s house stood.

And she came upon, much to her surprise, Mr. Byrne Worth.

Stark naked.