The Toplofty Lord Thorpe (7 page)

Julian, wondering silently which of the poor creatures she meant, suggested smoothly, “Monkey stew?”

“Oh, fie on you both!” Lucy exclaimed, putting an arm around Mr. Romano's heaving shoulders. “Not only are you refusing to give aid to one of
God's creatures, but Mr. Romano here says Bartholomew is very talented. Mr. Romano, have Bartholomew show us one of his tricks.”

The old Gypsy may have been too overcome to put his pet through his party tricks, but Bartholomew was not without some little initiative of his own. The little brown monkey, who had been looking up at the people standing about him and measuring them with his brown-bean monkey eyes, made an independent decision. He scampered over to where Dexter stood looking belligerent and bit the man firmly on the shinbone.

“
Ouch!
Get that mangy beast away from me! Lucy, this is all your fault. I'll probably go mad and die—the creature is rabid!”

But Lucy was already cradling the monkey to her protectively, since the astute Bartholomew had, once he released Dexter's leg, immediately clambered up her skirts and clung to her as if his life were in danger—which, looking at Dexter's expression, it quite possibly was.

It was then, after looking at Lucy's angry face, and likewise taking in Dexter's obvious disenchantment with her, that Lord Thorpe decided that adopting Bartholomew might be just the thing to add a little bit of cachet to his small house party.

“Oh, thank you, Julian!” Lucy cried when he gave voice to his opinion. “He won't be any trouble; no trouble at all. I'll keep him with me at all times, and he can entertain us with his little tricks, can't he, Mr. Romano?”

Mr. Romano, already biting down on one of the gold pieces Julian had produced from his purse, vigorously nodded his head in agreement, not bothering to mention that, besides tipping his hat politely at a given signal, Bartholomew's major talent had been taught to him by his last owner, a petty thief who was just now a guest in Newgate prison.

Dexter wasn't the only one to express displeasure over the addition of Bartholomew to their little group. Rachel limited herself to a quiet “tsk, tsk,” which Deirdre commented was a mild-enough censure, considering the elder Miss Gladwin wasn't the one who would most probably be assigned the chore of cleaning up after what were bound to be Bartholomew's primitive toilet habits.

“Oh,” Dexter drawled artlessly, always happy to stick a needle where it was most likely to prick a sore spot, “I would have thought such
duties
would fall to his lordship's secretary. Parker, my good fellow, you're so good at tidying up after things. Surely you will volunteer your expertise?”

The secretary's pale eyes narrowed for a moment, then reassumed their blank expression. “I serve the earl as he requires, Dexter. But the monkey is not his, not that I haven't been sweeping up after one of his lordship's more trying hangers-on for years,” he ended, taking no little satisfaction at the sight of his young cousin's suddenly mottled complexion.

“That will be enough,” Lord Thorpe put in dangerously as Dexter's mouth opened to retort to Parker's clear insult. “Miss Gladwin, your arm if you
please?” he prodded, turning to Rachel, instinctively seeking out the only person he felt he could rely upon to understand that he wished all of them shed of the place immediately.

As Lucy watched Julian and Rachel making their way back to the coaches, laughing and talking most companionably, she felt a niggling stab of jealousy. Rachel was at least fifteen years Julian's senior. Surely he couldn't be looking at her in a romantic way. Could he?

Poking out her tongue at Dexter, she allowed Parker to escort her to her aunt's coach, leaving Deirdre to fend off Dexter's ridiculous spate of flattery as best she could.

Lord Thorpe's coachman, watching the entire scene with the interest of a longtime servant of the family, could only wonder what else could happen. A bloomin' monkey at Hillcrest? Wait till the old lady hears about this one—there'll be the devil to pay, and no mistake!

W
HEN
J
ENNIE FINISHED
reading, she looked over to where her husband sat, smiling in bemusement as he shook his head. “Who's a ‘dear' do you think, love—Thorpe or the monkey!”

But Jennie wasn't laughing. “This is serious, Kit. You read the stories in the newspapers. Lucy's reputation will be completely destroyed, if it hasn't been already. We have to get her away from him—today if possible!”

“I don't think Wellington can spare a regiment, kitten, and that's what it would take to prize her loose. Relax, Rachel is with her.” Kit could see one of Jennie's attacks of protectiveness coming on, and he wished to avoid it at all costs.

“But Lucy says something about murder,” Jennie protested, rereading part of the letter. “Do you think she may be right?”

The Earl of Bourne drew his wife down onto his knees and kissed away the worry lines that creased her pale brow. “Lucy has never got the straight of anything in her life,” he stated with gentle conviction. “Besides, like she says, Lord Thorpe is ‘such a dear.' Surely she can't be in any danger. Now, give me a kiss, kitten—your wriggling about has quite taken my mind off any other subject.”

“What? Here in the morning room where anyone might discover us!” Jennie teased, nibbling his earlobe.

Kit leaned her back so that he could leer good-naturedly into her smiling face. “Did you think Lord Thorpe was the only one capable of stirring up a bit of scandal? Ah, woman, how little you know me.”

Lucy's letter slipped from Jennie's lap, to float unnoticed to the floor.

 

L
UCY WAS TOTALLY
enthralled by Hillcrest. Expecting an ancient, moldering pile dating from the thirteenth century and added onto willy-nilly over the years until it sprawled inelegantly in all directions, she was mightily surprised to find that the residence was no more than twenty years old and, if not modest in size, comfortably large without being intimidating.

Raleigh, Julian's majordomo, had told her that the old residence, situated a scant mile away on the other side of the park, had succumbed to fire, with only some carefully landscaped stone ruins remaining to mark the spot. The new Hillcrest, built by Julian's father, had been planned to sit closer to the large pond that lay to the left of it, the late earl having thought it prudent to be closer to an ample supply of water if ever fire dared to strike again.

The fire had destroyed more than the ancestral Rutherford home; it had taken generations of badly painted portraits of past earls and their families, as well as nearly every stick of furniture that had been amassed over the years.

This, Lucy reflected happily as she stood in the bright, airy morning room, could only be deemed a blessing, as she had little love of the heavy Tudor
pieces, dusty tapestries, and stained suits of armor an ancient domicile would be apt to hold.

The late-Georgian furnishings went well with the decorative ivory stuccoed walls, and the muted greens, blues, and rose pinks of the upholstery and Aubusson carpets found throughout the public rooms were just the sort she would have chosen if she had been given a hand in the decorating.

Yet there was something, some indefinable something, missing. Nibbling on the tip of one finger, she inspected the room once more, finally realizing what was wrong. This room, just like all the others, were perfect.
Too
perfect. The flowers, standing tall in their vases as if they knew they would be banished posthaste if they dared to droop the teeniest little bit, were arranged just a tad too perfectly. The beautiful furniture looked as if a mathematician had placed each piece precisely, making up visual squares, right angles, and perfect triangles staked out on the floor.

Lucy longed to tilt the rose satin heart-backed chair so that it sat more cozily near the matching sofa, while her fingers itched to gather up the carefully displayed embroidered pillows adorning that same sofa and scatter them about more invitingly. And the flowers—why, all they needed was a bit of—

“Good morning, Lucy,” came a voice from the doorway.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, whirling about to see the earl entering the room, his well-formed body clad to perfection in “a-gentleman-at-his-ease-in-the-country”
buckskins and hacking jacket. “Julian, you startled me for a moment.”

He bowed slightly, a smile touching his lips as he took in her flustered look. “Forgive me, please. Next time I shall have Raleigh announce my arrival with a fanfare of trumpets.”

Lucy was taken aback for a moment, but then burst into delighted laughter. “Oh, Julian, how wonderful! You have made a joke.”

A shattered look came into his eyes. “Is that so surprising?”

Lucy realized at once and mentally kicked herself for drawing the earl's attention to what she had seen as his gradual “thawing” ever since they left London. “Of course I'm not surprised,” she improvised hastily. “You have ever been known for your wit.” That the renowned Rutherford wit was reputed to be sarcastic rather than rollicking, she declined to think about just then, quickly changing the subject. “I see you are dressed to ride out. I hope you don't mind, but I've asked Raleigh to arrange for a mount for me as well.”

“As to that, Lucy,” Julian said, smoothly announcing a conclusion that had been reached only after spending a sleepless night of rare inspection of his own motives, “I have decided that you should not take any active part in this…er…investigation. If it is all a hum, you will be needlessly exposing yourself to gossip, whereas, if it is indeed as you believe, a plot against my name and life, I cannot find it in myself to expose you to danger. Therefore, I have con
cluded that yours is to be a minor part—for the most part already played. Escorting you and your aunt to Hillcrest for a house party did make me feel less like I was skulking away from London with my tail between my legs like some guilty cur.”

“But you can't mean that!” Lucy implored hastily. “I mean, I guess you do mean it, but you can't have thought…I mean, you can't have been thinking clearly…I mean… Oh, drat it all Julian, don't fob me off like this. Please, I want to help.”

Looking down at the hand Lucy had impulsively pressed on his forearm, Julian—with no little effort on his part—moved to gently disengage himself from her imploring grasp. “I mean every word, Lucy,” he said in purposely frigid tones, feeling like he had just torn the wings from a beautiful butterfly. “Besides, I fail to see how I should be in need of petticoat protection—or interference. Dexter, damned loose fish that he may be, has volunteered his services. If he doesn't shoot himself in the foot with that gun I saw him playing with last night, I believe we shall manage to muddle through this tolerably well.”

Lucy's blue eyes were bright with unshed tears as she searched his face for some hint of softness and found none. He had climbed back within his shell, she knew, her heart sinking, and there seemed to be no reaching him. Well, if he thought she was just going to sit around the house tending to her knitting, or whatever it was women did in the country, he had another thought or two coming! “You'll make a sad hash of it, Julian,” she warned him tightly.

“Your assumptions do not interest me, Miss Gladwin,” Julian said dismissively, making a show of lifting a bit of lint from his sleeve.

Miss Gladwin! Lucy repeated in her head, grimacing. How low I have sunk! If I didn't adore the man so entirely I'd go over to him and box his ruddy ears! Aloud, she taunted, “You placed considerable credence in my assumptions when your so-called friends cut you adrift in London. You listened to me then.”

“I was temporarily overset,” he reminded her, refraining from adding that he had also been three-parts drunk. “This is not open for debate in any case. You may stay or go as you choose—I understand your cousin, Lady Bourne, resides close by—but I cannot countenance your direct involvement in my predicament past the point which you are now. It just wouldn't be proper.”

“
Proper!
He dares to speak to me of propriety,” she informed the flowers, which were her only other audience. “He, who invaded my home not three days past, dirty, unshaven, and the worse for liquor, begging—yes,
groveling
—as he searched for a single kind word. Oh,” she intoned heavily, eyeing the earl disdainfully through slitted eyes, “how soon he forgets. Well, let's just see how well he goes on with the villagers using the high-and-mighty Thorpe manner. Go on, Julian, mount your stallion and ride out to have converse with the lowly peasants. See if they will talk to you, you with your oh-so-open, oh-so-easy air of friendliness. But I warn you, Lord Thorpe—
guard your back!” she ended dramatically before flouncing out of the room, stopping only long enough to cock the rose heart-backed chair at an angle.

Julian watched her go, admiring her pluck even as he longed to turn her over his knee and give her a good spanking. Why couldn't she see things his way? He knew he had come to his senses too late to undo the damage done her reputation by publicly championing him at the Selbridges' ball, but no one would know she was with him at Hillcrest if he could just unstick her from the place before news of her residence became common knowledge.

He almost wished he had taken her advice and put a notice in the columns that he was giving a small house party and including a list of guests, but as befuddled as his mind had been at the time, he at least had not been paper-skulled enough to follow that particular suggestion.

Why hadn't Rachel Gladwin used more sense? he questioned, ready to blame that poor lady for his lapse. She had seemed a woman of some intelligence. He walked over to the rose heart-backed chair and replaced it to its former position. “Why are you so willing to place the blame everywhere but where it should be—squarely on your own shoulders?” he asked himself aloud, sitting down heavily. “You wanted her here, and you know it.”

A small smile stole about the corners of his mouth as he thought back to the hours he and Lucy had spent in happy companionship riding together along the road on their way to Hillcrest. She was a great gun,
as Dexter would have termed her, and no mistake. A little wild in her actions, he temporized, remembering Lucy as she cradled Bartholomew to her breast and calmly introduced the monkey to the rest of their little traveling party as if it were something she did every day, but hadn't he always known that about her? Hadn't her very unconventionality been what had always attracted and repelled him in the past? And was it possible, he thought, sitting up suddenly, that it was her very attraction that had so repelled him?

He shook his head to clear it of these unwanted thoughts. He was an engaged man, he told himself, and had been before Lucy had first barreled into his line of vision three years ago and first set his blood to boiling. She had been an impossible female, always about when he was trying so hard to avoid her, always underfoot, flaunting her small but enticing figure, smiling her “come-hither” smile, eating him with her eyes, teasing him with her—

He jerked to his feet as a sudden thought hit him. He
wasn't
an engaged man! He hadn't been since Cynthia, bless her avaricious heart, had dumped him so royally at that same Selbridge ball!

Julian fairly trotted from the morning room, his haste causing his hip to catch on the rose heart-backed chair and nudge it slightly sideways. “Lucy!” he called up the stairway leading to the bedrooms. “Care to ride out with a bloody fool?”

 

D
EXTER DID NOT SEEM TO BE
best pleased to be relegated to the rear of the small riding party, with only
a dour-faced groom as his companion, as Lucy and Julian rode side by side, the former exclaiming delightedly over the bits of scenery the latter was taking great pains to point out. “Thought we were ferreting out clues, coz,” he called to the earl testily, “not going on a bloody tour of the flora and fauna. Where are we bound, anyway?”