Barbara Metzger (8 page)

“This is what comes from letting you go off to the navy. You did not learn violence with your mother’s milk! It’s all that man’s fault, I swear. There has never been so much as a soldier in my family. The Mainwarings were ever a belligerent lot, so proud of tracing their roots to William the Conqueror. Merciful heavens, who wants to be related to a bloodthirsty conqueror? And all of those kings’ men and cavalry officers your father’s always nattering on about, that’s where you got this streak of brutality. And you are supposed to be the sane and sober one, the heir. Heir to your father’s lackwits, I’d say. A diplomat, he calls himself. Hah! If he was ever around to teach his sons diplomacy, they wouldn’t behave like barroom brawlers and look like spoiled cabbages!”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Forrest teased, trying to coax her into better humor. His mother hadn’t been in a rant like this since last Christmas, when the governor came down to visit. “I am pleased to be home, too.”

Brennan was grinning as best he could around the sticking plaster, since it was his brother under fire. Then the duchess turned that fond maternal eye, and scathing tongue, in his direction.

“You!” she screamed as if a slimy toad had arrived in her entry hall. “You are nothing but a womanizer. A drunkard. A gambler. Up to every tomfoolery it has been mankind’s sin to invent! You are even more harebrained than your brother, associating with such riffraff. You”—her voice rose an octave—”inherited your father’s dissipations.”

Bren tried to reason with the duchess; Forrest could have told his brother he was making a mistake, but he’d suffered enough pulling Bren’s chestnuts out of the fire. Let the stripling dig himself in deeper. “Cut line, Mother,” Brennan started. “You know the governor ain’t in the petticoat line, never has been. And he don’t play more than a hand or two of whist or drink overmuch. Gout won’t let him. Besides, this last scrape wasn’t all my fault.”

“Of course not, you’re too stupid to get into so much trouble on your own! I know exactly who is to blame. When I get my hands on that—”

“As a matter of fact, Mother, none of it would have happened if you had let me join the army as I wanted.”

“Are you saying it is
my
fault?”

Forrest moved to stand in front of the buhl table; he’d always admired that Sevres vase on it.

“Of course not, Mother. It’s just that, well, London’s full of chances to drink and gamble and, yes, meet that kind of woman. There’s nothing much else to do.”

“My dogs have better sense. You are supposed to spend your time in town at parties and museums and plays and picnics, meeting the
right
kind of woman. And as for the army, you lobcock, you can’t even keep yourself in one piece in London! Imagine what might happen to you in Spain. Go to your room.”

“Go to my room? You cannot send me to the nursery like a child, Mother. I am twenty-two.”

“And you can come down to dinner when you act it.”

Bren wasn’t in shape to put on the formal clothes the duchess required at her table, nor make the long trek up and down the arched stairways. Still, to be dismissed like a schoolboy in short pants rankled. “But, Mother ...”

The duchess picked up a potted fern from the side table. Bren left.

Lady Mayne turned to her eldest. “I’m going, I’m going,” he surrendered, starting for the stairs to help Brennan.

“And I,” she pronounced, still holding the plant, “am going to the greenhouse.”

Forrest spun around and dashed down the hall after her. “Not the greenhouse, Mother! Not all that glass!”

* * * *

A few hours later the duchess relented. Maybe she had been too hard on Forrest. He had brought Brennan home, after all. She decided to forgive him and listen to the whole story, perhaps hearing some news of the duke. She would even bring Forrest a cup of one of her special brews of tea. The poor boy looked like he needed it.

When the duchess knocked on Forrest’s door and received no answer, she thought he might be sleeping. She turned the handle and tiptoed in to check. The bed was empty, so he must be feeling better. She’d just go along to Brennan’s room to see how he was faring.

On her way out, the duchess chanced to catch sight of a foul piece of linen on her son’s otherwise immaculate dresser. She knew that new valet of his was a slacker! Not in her house, Lady Mayne swore, yanking on the bellpull. She went to pick up the offending cloth, to demand its immediate removal, and that of the person responsible. Sweet mercy, the linen was bloodstained, and wrapped around ...

If Forrest thought going down to Sussex would have stopped the talk in London, he was wrong. The duchess’s shriek could have been heard in Hyde Park. If he thought his injuries would heal quicker in the country, he was wrong. Flying up those stairs did not do his ribs any good. Taking a flying teacup on the ear did not do his face any good. Listening to his mother berate him in front of his valet, the butler, two footmen, a housemaid, and his grinning brother did not do his composure any good.

And that was
after
the duchess realized the bundle was a woman’s hair and not a Pekingese pelt.

“Well, old boy,” the viscount told Nelson in the cold dower house library, “it’s just you and me again.” And a bottle of Madeira. “You’re the wastrel and I’m the womanizer. No, I’m the ruffian and the rake. You’re just the rat catcher.”

Tarnation, how could his own mother think he’d ever take up the life of a libertine? Gads, that’s the last vice he’d pick. Of course, he’d never met a woman like Mischief before. She was an exasperating little chit, he recalled with a smile, but pluck to the backbone and loyal to a fault. And a beauty. He’d like to get a look at the sister, Forrest mused. Maybe he would, if Scoville dropped the handkerchief. Forrest didn’t travel in the same circles as the baron, but sooner or later he would meet the peer’s bride.

He doubted he would ever meet Miss Sydney again. She’d move heaven and earth to get the money back to Mainwaring House, he was sure, but he wouldn’t be there. And he never went to debutante balls or such, so that was that.

He shut the book on Miss Sydney Lattimore and he shut his eyes, but he couldn’t get those silly coppery curls out of his mind, or her quicksilver dimples or the way she nibbled on her lip before saying something outrageous. Zeus, she was always saying something outrageous. Forrest poured out another glass of wine and spilled some in a dish for Nelson. The viscount didn’t like to drink alone.

What was going to happen to the widgeon? he pondered. She’d make micefeet of her Season for certain, landing in some scandalbroth or other. It would be a miracle, in fact, if Sydney’s rackety ways didn’t scare off that fop Scoville. On the other hand, maybe there was an intelligent
parti
not looking to rivet himself to a milk-and-water miss. He’d snap up Sydney Lattimore before she could say “I have a plan,” debts and dowry or not.

What a dance she’d lead the poor sod. Forrest took another sip. Nelson belched. “You’re right. We’re a lot better off out of it,” he told the hound. “We’ll never see her after this anyway.”

Wrong again.

Chapter 8

By-blows and Blackmail

Viscount Mayne had also been wrong when he called the Ottos bastards. Only one was. The other was his legitimate half-brother. Otto Chester, the ivory tuner, was actually the natural son of one Lord Winchester Whitlaw and his cook at the time, Mrs. Bella Boggs. No one knew the whereabouts of Mr. Boggs. Lady Whitlaw was less than pleased. Since his wife held both the reins and the purse-strings in that marriage, Lord Whitlaw watched as Bella was tossed out in the cold on her
enceinte
ear. Before she got
too
cold, though, Lord Whitlaw sent her to his Irish estate, where Lady Whitelaw never visited. Before Bella grew too big with child, Whitlaw married her off to Padraic O’Toole, his Irish estate manager.

The infant was named Chester O’Toole. He took after his father, being pale and thin and feckless. He also inherited his father’s left-handedness, to Paddy O’Toole’s bile at the continual reminder. The boy was sent to England at his father’s expense, to receive an education befitting the son of a lord. Being weak and puny and a bastard, he quickly learned cowardice and subterfuge.

Randy O’Toole was Chester’s legitimate half-brother, born on the right side of the blanket. Presently using the name of Otto Randall, financial consultant, Randy was also presently bound and gagged in his side office, next to Chester.

The younger O’Toole resembled
his
father, with the same red hair, stocky stature, and vile temper. (The Duchess of Mayne would have been pleased with this true breeding of bloodlines.) Randy was also well educated at Lord Whitlaw’s—unwitting—expense, thanks to Paddy’s fancy work with the estate books. Randy turned out to have his sire’s flair for figures. The crookeder the better.

Bella never had life so good, there in Ireland. For the first time in her life she did not have to work. Indeed, as the manager’s wife, she could lord it over the lesser employees and socialize far above her station. She had two sons with futures, a husband who provided well, a cozy kitchen all her own. And she owed everything to Lord Whitlaw.

So grateful was Bella, in fact, that she bore his lordship another child, another colorless, stringy left-hander. This child was a girl, who now plied a trade on the streets of Dublin, lest her mother’s heritage be forsaken.

Paddy was furious, but what could he do? His job paid too well to leave and his wife was too well liked by the boss to beat. Paddy took to drink. He also took more and more money out of Lord Whitlaw’s share of the estate and added it to his own account. Bella was better off, but not feeling as well blessed, with a surly, jug-bitten Irishman at her hearth.

Life went on. The children grew to young men and fallen woman. Bella grew stouter on her own cooking and Paddy grew meaner and the estate grew poorer, all of which may have contributed to his lordship’s less frequent visits.

When he did chance to come north one fall for the hunting, Paddy followed him closer than his shadow, waiting for Whitlaw to come near Bella. More for loyalty’s sake and the comfort of familiarity than anything else, Whitlaw did approach O’Toole’s wife. In the stables, in the back parlor, on the kitchen table. That last was too much for Paddy. He challenged Lord Whitlaw to a duel.

Whitlaw refused. A gentleman did not duel with his social inferiors. Especially not if they were better shots. Then bare fists, Paddy insisted. Whitlaw turned craven—not a far turn at that—and threatened to call in the sheriff.

Now
what could Paddy do? The estate was bled dry and Bella was free to anyone who wanted the immoral sow, for all Paddy cared. He shot Lord Whitlaw.

* * * *

Paddy hung, of course. No low Irish land agent could get away with the hot-blooded murder of an English lord. Bella and the boys fled to England with the money before anyone thought to look into the estate books. O’Toole not being a good name to bear right then, neither in Ireland nor England, Bella took back her maiden name, Bumpers. The boys became Otto Chester and Otto Randall, since Bella determined that no one would suspect them of being brothers if they had the same first name. Also, it was easier to remember.

Bella used Lord Whitlaw’s—unknown—bequest to establish herself as a respectable widow in Chelsea. Her sons went into business, 0. Randall and Associates, Financial Consultants. Cardsharps and loansharks, limited.

* * * *

Among certain circles, Lord Forrest Mayne was considered to be of careful intellect, a thoughtful man who brought his not inconsiderable powers of ratiocination to bear before forming a judgment. Among other circles he was simply called a “knowing ‘un,” and respected as such. One could only wonder what was going on in his mind for this downy cove to make so many false assumptions. He’d thought to bask under his mother’s solace; he really should have known better. He concluded she was the most unnatural parent a grown man could have; he hadn’t met Bella Bumpers. At least the duchess never kicked him while he was trussed up like a Christmas goose.

* * * *

“My babies,” Bella wailed when she entered the office on Fleet Street and found her sons tied and gagged. “My precious boys! How did this happen? How many cutthroats jumped on you?”

She got Chester’s neckcloth out of his mouth first. “Mayne,” he gasped.

“Mayne?” Bella’s face turned red and her nostrils flared. Her chest swelled like a pouter pigeon’s. Then she started kicking at Chester and beating him about the head with her reticule, which contained, as usual, a small pistol.

“Bud, Ma,” Chester whimpered, trying to drag himself out of her way.

“Don’t you ‘ma’ me, you gutless clunch. I don’t want to be your ma anymore. I
never
wanted to be your ma. I even changed my name so I could pretend I wasn’t your ma. I told you and told you to leave the little lordlings be. Pick on country grape-seeds, I said, new-blooming tulips, or raw army recruits. So what pigeon do you find to pluck, huh? Young Mainwaring, that’s who! With big brother right here to protect him, like any jackstraw could have told you!

“And you,” she screeched, aiming her next kicks at Randall, “you couldn’t leave well enough alone. No, you had to set your bully-boy on the sprig. Where is that dung heap anyway? I’ll tear him limb from limb for this!”

Bella hadn’t taken the gag from Randy, so Chester tried to answer: “Mayne had him pred-ganged.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Bella’s beady little eyes narrowed.

“I fing my node id broke.”

“Oh, yeah?” She screwed his head around toward a better angle, squinting at the questionable fixture. “Yeah, it is.” She put her knee on Chester’s chest and wrapped her fat fingers around his nose. Then she yanked. “Now it ain’t. Bad enough you look like some corpse without you sniffing at your ear for the rest of your life.”

While Chester was unconscious, she untied Randall, after getting in a few more kicks. “So what did he do to you, fleabrain?”

Randy wouldn’t say. He just shook his head.