Barbara Metzger (21 page)

He did not stop at his own home to rest, to eat, to change his foul clothes, or to shave. He did not stop when Griffith tried to shut the front door in his savage face.

Bren jumped up from the parlor. “What happened to you, Forrest, and where the deuce have you been? I’ve been frantic.”

Forrest looked toward the couch, where a blushing Winifred was attempting to repin her hair. “So I see,” he said dryly.

Brennan bent to retrieve a missing hairpin. “It, ah, ain’t what you think, Forrest. Chaperoned and all, don’t you know.” He jerked his head toward the general, half asleep in the corner.

Forrest knew the slowtop’s goose was cooked. He did not care. “Where’s Sydney?”

“She’s out making calls. But don’t worry,” he added when he saw his brother’s face go even more rigid, “she’s got both of the twins with her.”

Boiling in oil was too good for them. Being stretched on the rack was—

The general pounded on his chair. When he had Lord Mayne’s attention he raised his trembling hand and pointed toward the rear of the house.

“Thank you, sir,” Forrest said, bowing smartly. Only Mrs. Minch was in the kitchen, scouring a pot. She took one look at his lordship’s stormy face and nodded toward the back door. Then she grabbed up the bottle of cooking wine and locked herself in the pantry.

In the rear courtyard, where a tiny walled garden used to be, was a gathering of liveried servants, footmen, and grooms. Forrest did not see them. Willy and Wally sat on one side of an old trestle table in their shirt-sleeves; he barely registered their presence. He had eyes only for Sydney, eyes that narrowed to hardened slits when he got a good look at her.

Miss Lattimore was wearing her stable boy’s outfit, wide smock, breeches, knitted hat. She was sitting on a barrel, smiling, laughing ... and counting the stacks of coins and bills in front of her on an overturned crate.

The viscount roared and lunged for her, knocking aside the table, the crate, and the barrel. He yanked her up by the collar other loose shirt and shook her like a rat.

Wally jumped to his feet, forming his huge hands into fists. Willy grabbed a loose tree branch.

“You stay back, both of you, and wait your turn,” Forrest raged, still dangling Sydney in the air. “I’m looking forward to you for dessert. And don’t worry, I’m not going to kill the little snirp. I’ll leave that to the hangman.”

They grinned and righted the table, leaving Sydney to her fate. She kicked out, trying to get free. “Put me down, you barbarian!” she screamed.

He did, only to clamp her shoulders in a viselike grip and shake her some more. “What... in bloody hell ... do you think ... you are doing?”

Sydney aimed her wooden-soled work boot at his shin, but missed. He squeezed harder. She would have marks for weeks, as if he cared. He hadn’t even come to see her when she was ill. She tried to kick him again. “For your information, you brute, the boys and I have found a new source of income. We’re taking on all comers at arm-wrestling. I am the bank.”

His arms fell. “You’re the ...”

“The odds-maker and scorekeeper and timer. And I am quite good at it, too. And you can just stop breathing fire at me, my lord bully, because I never left these premises, and all of these men are friends. Besides, I had to find something to do when I looked too horrid to go to parties with my nose all red, and
no one
came to visit.”

Her nose was indeed pinkish and puffy. She was indignant that he stayed away, an astounding enough discovery. “Did you really miss me?” he asked, and stepped back from another swipe of her boot.

“Then you weren’t out on Hounslow Heath?”

“Of course not, there’s a band of robbers out— why you, you dastard! You thought I was holding up carriages! You thought I would
steal
for money! You, you ...” She couldn’t think of words bad enough.

The viscount held up his hands. “Well, you kept thinking I was a loan merchant and a rake.”

“You were, and you are!” she yelled, trying one last kick. This one connected quite nicely with his kneecap. She limped into the house while Willy tipped up the barrel and Wally helped the viscount to it.

“So what’ll it be, gov, apple dumplings or rum pudding?” Willy asked, enjoying himself immensely.

Forrest grimaced. “Humble pie, I suppose.”

Only one of the other men snickered. The rest were in sympathy for the toff who’d been rolled, horse, boots, and saddle, by a slip of a girl. The brotherhood of man went deeper than class lines.

Wally scratched his head. “You insulted her good this time, gov. She won’t be getting over this one half quick.”

One of the other footmen called out, “Aw, some posies’re all it’d take. You can see she’s daft for ‘im.”

“Nah,” a groom disagreed, spitting tobacco to the side, “she’s got half the swells in London sendin’ her boo-kets. Ain’t I delivered a dozen here myself? It’ll take a lot more’n that to win ‘er back.”

“G’wan, wotta you know? You ain’t had a pretty gal smile at you in dog’s years. A little slap and tickle, that’s all it takes to get ‘em eatin’ out o’ your hands like birds.”

“You English, what do you know about
amour’!”
the French valet from across the street put in. “It is the sweet words, the pretty compliments a mademoiselle craves.”

“But Mischief ain’t like other girls.”

“What did you say?” Now the viscount was willing to allow a ragtag group of servants to discuss his personal life. At least until his knee stopped throbbing enough for him to walk away without falling on his face. In his current disheveled state, most of the men did not even recognize him. “What did you call her?” he demanded.

Willy answered. “You wouldn’t want anybody here using her real name, would you? And we couldn’t go calling the bet-recorder ‘my lady,’ could we? ‘Sides, Mischief seemed to fit.”

“You don’t have to worry, gov,” Wally added, “no one here’ll squeak beef on her neither, not if they know what’s good for them.”

The other men were quick to swear their mummers were dubbed. A little gossip in the tap room wasn’t worth facing the Minch brothers. ‘Sides, Mischief was a real goer, a prime ‘un. They wished her the best. If this rumpled cove with the beard-shadowed face was the best, well, she wasn’t like other fillies.

Only one of the workingmen in the courtyard did not pledge his silence. This fellow, the same one who snickered before, was edging his way to the rear gate before the viscount took a closer look at the company. Willy saw the bloke creeping away and stopped him with a “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

Wally snagged the little man by the muffler he had wound around his head and neck. The runt made a dash for the gate, leaving his scarf in Wally’s hands, but Willy tackled him, sat on him, and punched those rabbity teeth, and a few others, back down his throat.

“That was just in case you thought of talking to anybody about any of this,” Willy warned. “And it looks better, too.”

He tossed Randy over the garden wall like a jar of slops, then wiped his hands.

“Who was that?” Lord Mayne asked.

“Just the driver for that old bat who comes every once in a while. He won’t be bothering no one hereabouts again, that’s for sure.”

The other men lost interest as soon as the squatty fellow went down. They were back to discussing the gentry cove’s chances with Mischief and placing bets on the outcome. It was just like White’s, Forrest realized, for speculating on another’s privacy and gambling on someone else’s misfortune. As the debate went on as if he weren’t there, Forrest also decided that clothes definitely made the man; he was certainly not getting his usual respect, here in this disheveled rig.

“Oi still say if she wants ‘im, it don’t matter what ‘e does. And if she don’t want ‘im, it still don’t matter what ‘e does.”

“Nah, Missy’s got bottom, she’ll give a chap a chance to prove hisself. She won’t be fooled by no pretty words ‘n trinkets. Man’s sincere, she’ll know.”

“Pshaw, they ain’t mind readers, you looby. Gent’s got to prove hisself, all right. An’ the only way a female’s ever been convinced is with a ring.”

A hush fell over the enclosed space. Those were serious words, fighting words, church words almost. It was one thing to tease a man when he was bowed and bloodied, but a life sentence? It was bad luck even to talk about. Half the men spit over their right shoulders. The French valet crossed himself. The viscount groaned.

Willy and Wally looked at him and grinned. The viscount did not have to be a mind reader, either, to know what they were thinking. He groaned again. Wouldn’t Sydney make one hell of a duchess?

Chapter 22

The Duchess Decides

Surrender did not come easily to an ex-navy officer. Faced with overwhelming odds, though, the viscount gave up. He did what any brave man would when conditions got so far beyond his control; he sent for his mother. On Bren’s behalf.

Now, Lady Mayne may have had the finest network of information gathering outside the War Office, but she was itching for first-hand reconnaissance. She heard all about the encroaching females who were hovering on the edge of scandal, clinging to respectability by her son’s fingers and her own name as social passport. She would have believed any tales of Brennan’s havey-cavey doings, but Forrest’s? Schoolroom chits no better than they ought to be? This she had to see for herself. And she would have done just that, showed up in London bag and baggage two weeks ago ... if it weren’t for that jackass of a duke she was married to.

He never came to her except for Christmas, and she wouldn’t go to him except for coronations. He hated her devotion to her dogs; she hated his absorption in politics. Neither would budge. Now there were higher ideals that could not wait for a royal summons. Now mother love had to supplant pride. Now she was too eager to interfere in her sons’ lives to let that whopstraw get in her way.

Her Grace traveled in state. Two coaches carried her, her dogs, her dresser, and a maid. Three more coaches bore every insult she could heap on His Grace’s household: her own sheets, towels, and pillows, prepared dishes from her own kitchens, her own butler and footmen, her own houseplants. The fourgon followed with her wardrobe, although she had every intention of charging a fortune in modistes’ bills to the twiddlepoop while she was in town.

Lady Mayne planned her journey to a nicety, timing her arrival to coincide with the duke’s after-luncheon rest period. The hour of silence was considered sacrosanct in his household, she knew, interrupted on pain of dismissal or dishware. The duke was accustomed to retreat to his study, where he reviewed the morning’s meetings and speeches, prepared for the afternoon session, and sometimes took a nap, the old rasher of wind.

Hamilton Mainwaring, Duke of Mayne, was dreaming of the brilliant speech he would give, if he ever kept a secretary long enough to write it. That’s when his wife descended on Mainwaring House with her dogs, servants, and trunks. There were servants carrying trunks, servants carrying dogs, servants directing other servants. And more dogs. The duchess couldn’t very well leave any home, certainly not Pennyfeather’s new puppies. They were all in the hall, yipping and yapping and tripping over each other and the London staff.

The duke’s bellow of outrage warmed the cockles of his lady’s heart; the sound of crockery smashing was worth every jolt and rattle of the last hurried miles. His thundering footsteps down the hall brought a smile to her lips as she gaily called out, “Hello, darling, I’m home. Aren’t you pleased?”

* * * *

Hostilities recommenced after tea, when the duke realized his Sondra’s visit was not a concession, just a tactical maneuver. He discovered quickly enough that she had not concluded at long last that her place was by her husband’s side. She was not staying in London to be his hostess and helpmate, and everything from the dust on the chandeliers to the war with Napoleon was All His Fault.

Brennan recalled a previous engagement. Forrest had calculated his mother’s timing even closer than she had. He was out for the day, dining at his club, promised for the evening. No matter, Lady Mayne had not come to see him anyway.

“Then what the devil
are
you here for, madam, if a poor husband may be permitted to ask?”

Lady Mayne made sure the tea things were wheeled out before she told him. She was partial to the Wedgwood. “I am here, husband, because you have made micefeet of my sons’ lives.”

“I have?” he blustered. “I have, when it’s you who keeps them tied to your apron strings? You have Forrest hopping back and forth like some deuced yo-yo, and you won’t let Brennan take the colors like every lad dreams of doing. And
I
am ruining their lives?”

“Yes, you. You live here, don’t you? You have eyes to see what is around you, ears to hear that the Mainwaring name is on everybody’s lips. And what have you done? Nothing. You are letting your own sons fall into the clutches of penniless nobodies, underbred adventuresses, fortune-hunting hoydens!”

“Well, they ain’t nobodies, for one thing. General Lattimore’s a fine man, well respected and all that.”

“He was a vile-tempered, hard-drinking curmudgeon twenty years ago. I don’t fancy he’s changed.”

The duke cleared his throat. “You can’t say they have no breeding either, no matter if it is your hobbyhorse. They are Windhams on the mother’s side. Nothing to be ashamed of there.”

“Just long noses and a tendency to die early! Thin blood they have, all of them. I met the mother, and a weak, puny thing she was. I was not surprised she cocked up her heels so young. No stamina.”

The duke rather thought he recalled Mrs. Lattimore had died in a carriage accident; he was too cagey a fish to be drawn to that fly, though, and too relieved. “So you really do know the family. I couldn’t imagine why the boy put it about that you had an interest there.”

The duchess pursed her lips. “Couldn’t you? He was thinking with his inexpressibles, that’s why. The little climbers must have put him up to it, to smooth their way up the social ladder. I met the mother once, as I said. Elizabeth Windham was much younger, don’t you know, and we were traveling then. My cousin Trevor was bowled over by her. She had that fragile beauty men seem to admire. But Elizabeth tossed him over for a uniform, ran off with young Lattimore and broke my cousin’s heart. He died soon after, so I ain’t likely to take her chicks under my wing.”