Carla Kelly (24 page)

Finally Yore had to admit defeat. He pushed back his plate and shook his head regretfully when cook—not unmindful of the preference of soldiers—whisked out a currant duff.

“You could wrap a slice in cloth, sir,” Yore suggested to the cook, who nodded. “I could take it with me.”

“Do you have any family here?” the duke asked when Yore leaned back in his chair. “Come to think of it, Private, what are you doing in London? I thought you were Norfolk-born and -bred.”

“That I am, sir.” He frowned and regarded the distant wall. “A mob of us were invalided home. We got as far as London before one of the aides robbed me. I didn’t have no choice but to beg, sir, and I am no closer to Norfolk.”

There was nothing to say to that artless disclosure. The duke sat in silent contemplation of that same back wall until the private sighed and recalled him to the present.

“What of Sergeant Quill?” the duke asked.

“Dead of fever. He never left Brussels, sir.” The private hesitated.

“Go on, Yore, say what you’re thinking.”

“Sergeant Quill told me you would come for us.”

The duke resumed his contemplation of the wall as his insides writhed. “What of Allenby? Wasn’t he a Devonshire man?”

Yore nodded. “That he was, sir. The last I heard, he made it back to Pytch, and his wife was supporting them with laundry while he continued to heal.” Yore glanced at the clock. “I have taken up a good portion of your evening, sir.”

“Where do you sleep, Yore?”

The private shrugged. “Right now it’s a place with five others, each of us paying what we can. Better than the workhouse, so I am told.”

“More like,” agreed the duke, falling into Kentish talk. He leaned back, crossed his legs, and took a long look at Yore. The man was thin, his eyes tired, but the duke liked what he saw. There was the same air of calm dependability about Yore that he remembered from the frantic afternoon two years ago when they stood back to back in their decimated square and kept each other alive.

“Yore, as I recall, you were a bit of a genius with weapons.”

Yore grinned for the first time, and it cast ten years off his back. “Well, mayhap I was middling good, sir.”

“You were very good, if memory serves me.” The duke leaned forward and placed his hands palm down on the table. “Yore, I have a gun collection at the family estate in Yorkshire. Well, I say it is mine, but it goes back to the First Duke of Knaresborough. No one has even done it justice over the years. I am wondering—would you like to bring that collection up to snuff and maintain it?”

Yore was silent, his mouth open, as he stared at the duke.

“I mean, plenty of visitors come to Knare each year. They admire the old part of the house, envy my trout streams, and ogle the formal gardens. I would like to really give them something out of the ordinary to stare at. Yore, the job is yours, if you want it.”

Yore began to breathe again, but he was still silent.

“There’s a tidy apartment off the armory, probably full of cobwebs and mouse nests right now, but it wouldn’t take much to make it habitable. A cat would tickle the mice. Your board would be included, of course, and there would be a stipend for all else. Yore?”

Yore stuck out his hand and the men shook on it, neither trusting himself to speak.

The duke broke the silence. He pulled out his watch and studied the face carefully until it swam into focus again. “Yore, it’s too late for you to go anywhere tonight. There is a spare bed down here. We can go around tomorrow for any of your possessions. I’d like to start out tomorrow for Knare, if that would suit you.”

The private grinned. “I don’t know as the other five will miss me much, Major. We can let them have my blanket. There is only my cup,” he said, nodding his head toward the tin cup that used to swing from his knapsack through quick marches across the map of Europe.

The duke picked it up. “I’d like to keep this, Yore, if you don’t mind.”

The private nodded, mystified by the request but too polite to ask why.

I will put it on the mantelpiece at Knare, right up there with the Sevres and the Ming, thought the duke, and it will remind me. I will look at it each day for the rest of my life and let it remind me how close I came to forgetting that I was a civilized man.

The private struggled to his feet.

Luster hurried to his side. “Mr. Yore, I have taken the liberty,” he began. “There is a bath for you down the hall, and I remembered some clothing that the duke has outgrown.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” protested the private. “You’ve done enough.”

The duke took Yore by the hand and nodded, with raised eyebrows, toward the butler. “I never argue with him, man, because he always gets his way. Off you go now. We’re leaving early in the morning. Pytch, did you say? I can locate Private Allenby in Pytch?”

“I think so, sir,” were the private’s last words as Luster led him toward the door.

When Yore had regained his crutch again and was navigating on his own, Luster looked back at the duke. “Sir, do you know, I have been considering your question about obliging relatives.”

“And?”

“It may not be so important. After all, your grace, you are the duke. If you can’t do what you want, sir, who can?”

“Who, indeed?” Nez murmured. He watched Luster and Yore make their way down the hall as he fingered the tin cup. “I have begun, Libby,” he whispered softly.

Tomorrow they would be on their way to Knare. The duke rubbed the cup against his cheek. I have not been home in so long, he thought. Already he saw the rolling hills and busy streams of his childhood. Knare was in need of repair. He would spend the next month seeing to its renovation and making it snug for winter.

Maybe by the time the leaves began to turn, he would have accumulated the courage to go calling in Kent again, bound this time on a different mission.

If he could wait that long . . .

18

ANTHONY COOK did not write. During that first week in the rented house off Marine Parade, Libby had not expected to hear from him. The squire will take all his time, and then there are his other patients, she reasoned as she sat in her room and watched the sun glinting off the sea. She wished herself in Holyoke.

Candlow wrote once, a letter that looked as though it had been labored over at length. He informed them that Aunt Crabtree had fled to London at Lydia’s request. (“I anticipate a precarious outcome,” he added.) Another paragraph allowed that the squire was much improved and that the Wilcoxes had restored order to the house. “Jim Wilcox is painting the trim on the windows now. I know that his next task is to plant saplings along the lane to the road, for I heard Dr. Cook asking him about that. I would say more, but surely you will hear from the doctor soon and he can tell you better than I how things are going.”

Libby waited for the promised letter, but it never came. She knew the mail was delivered each morning around ten o’clock, and always managed to find a reason to be in the hall then, to appear only slightly interested while Uncles Ames looked with maddening slowness at each letter. There was an occasional letter for her mother, but usually Uncle Ames pocketed them all. Libby tried not to show her chagrin, but soon the footman was casting her sympathetic glances and then going about his duties with an equally long face.

From the evening of their arrival in Brighton, Libby had said little about the events that had brought them, beyond the obvious necessity of explaining to Mama how Joseph had come by his interesting scar. She had told the whole story, and Mama had cried, sniffled and gasped “Poor man, poor boy!” as Libby spun the narrative.

After careful consideration, there seemed no point in elaborating on Dr. Cook’s surprising offer of marriage and her equally impulsive agreement. With each day that passed without a letter, Libby could only be grateful that she had said nothing.

It became easier and easier to stay in her room—looking out over the treetops to the sea—than to bother to promenade about. She didn’t even require a novel to entertain her. It was far more pleasant to doze and gaze at the water and compose dozens of letters in her mind that she never put on paper.

She came to hate the badly spelled letters that flowed out of London from Lydia, letters almost incoherent with news of military reviews and balloon ascensions and picnics al fresco. Lydia begged Aunt Ames to come to London to help her select the material for her wedding dress and guide the hands of the modiste who would be entrusted with that exalted task. “I depend upon you, Aunt Ames,” she had written in the last letter, each word heavily underscored.

“Well, I will not go,” Mama said at luncheon as she read the letter over again. “She can be guided in these matters by the Earl of Devere’s mother.” Mother glanced at Libby. “I wish you would eat something, dear. You grow more peckish by the minute, and I fear a deep decline,” she teased, waving the letter at her like a fan. “And then we would have to send for Dr. Cook to bumble his way to the diagnosis.”

Libby burst into tears and ran from the room, slamming the dining-room door on Mama’s gasp of amazement and Uncle Ames’ “’Pon my word.” She locked her door, drew herself into a little ball, and gave herself over to mutiny and misery of the worst sort.

Mama knocked on the door. Libby blew her nose and opened it, averting her eyes from Mama’s white face. She waited, miserable, for Mama to scold her for her rudeness.

Mama did nothing of the sort. She settled herself into the window seat that Libby had vacated, and calmly took up the knitting that she had brought with her.

“When you feel like talking, my dear, I feel like listening,” was all she said.

In another moment, Libby was on her knees beside her mother, sobbing out the whole story of the chocolate merchant and his impertinent offer, and Dr. Cook’s impulsive proposal and his sudden reluctance to have her around. Mama heard it all, interjecting no more than an occasional “Oh, my” into the narrative, her hand resting on Libby’s head.

“I wasn’t going to tell you, Mama,” Libby sobbed, “for I knew how deeply wounded you would be over this matter with the duke.”

Mrs. Ames stroked her daughter’s hair. “I knew, Libby, I knew,” she soothed, “or at least I suspected. Trust Lydia to write pages and pages with the funny tale that the duke had planned to offer for you, and didn’t I think that droll?” She pulled her daughter closer. “Well, I did not! I know you are not one to kiss and tease. Your heart must surely have been engaged in the matter, too. I am sorry that it came to what it did.” She sighed. “If your Papa and I had been wiser . . .” She kissed Libby. “If we had been wiser, you never would have been born, so cheer up.”

Finally there were no more tears to cry. Libby leaned against her mother’s leg and waited for some reassurance, some further relief for her mangled emotions. From La Coruna to Salamanca, from Badajoz to Vitoria, Mama had been the regimental mainstay in matters of the heart, a regular font of wisdom. Long after she should have been asleep, Libby remembered Mama dispensing good advice to the men of her husband’s command, counseling the lovelorn. Now it was her turn to benefit from this sagacity. Libby waited.

Mama said nothing. Libby raised her face finally from her mother’s skirts to observe her gazing out to sea, her eyes soft as she turned the wedding ring on her finger around and around.

Libby plumped herself down across from her mother in the window seat. “Mama, have you listened to a word I have said?” she accused, exasperation just barely edging out amusement.

“I have heard enough, my darling,” Mama said quickly, her eyes no less dreamy. “I only wish I had some good advice for you.”

Libby stared at her in disbelief. “Mama, you gave advice all across Spain. Have you none for me?”

Mama shook her head and picked up her knitting again.

“At least tell me how to know if I am in love,” begged Libby, “Lydia seems so sure about Eustace, but I cannot tell. And who am I in love with, for goodness’ sake?”

“Lydia is a pea goose,” Mama said decisively. “I love her dearly, and so do you, but she hasn’t a clue as to why Eustace was suddenly so enamored of her. Perhaps by the time she realizes he married her for the Ames fortune, she will have a quiverful of children to console her.”

“Mama, that is no answer. Who am I in love with?” Libby insisted.

Mama only looked her daughter full in the face and smiled in a way that Libby considered entirely unacceptable. “My dear, you’ll know.” She looked at the ocean again, her eyes far away. “When you find that you can’t bear one more minute without him . . .” She laughed. “Or when you discover that if he does not go away soon, you will spit nails . . .”

“Mama,” Libby wailed, and laughed despite herself. “You are no help.”

“No, I am not, am I?” said Mama agreeably. “Men can be fearsomely irritating, my dear, totally without wisdom, creatures of random impulse, as I fear your chocolate merchant was. Libby, he probably regrets every word he spoke to you that morning.”

Mrs. Ames shook her head. “As for Dr. Cook, I do not know, Libby. He is most definitely a wild card. Somehow I never thought of our fubsy doctor as someone who would be essential to your happiness. Still, stranger things have happened, I suppose . . .”

Mama put her hand to her mouth to smother a laugh that would not be stopped.

Libby joined in, immeasurably refreshed, and put one ghost to bed. She took her mother’s hands and said with mock seriousness, “If I should chance to receive a better offer from the duke, I will consider it. At the very least, I will hold out for a manor in the Cotswolds.”

“You do that, my dear,” said her mama, her voice equally droll. And then she was suddenly serious. “I wish that circumstances were different for you, but this is real life.” She kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Poor honey! You have had all the real life you can stand for a while, I suspect.”

Libby nodded, lapping up her mother’s sympathy like a kitten its cream.

“I will go your Dr. Cook’s prescription one better. Tomorrow you must venture to the circulating library and get us several good novels. Let us consider them serious research into how others solve problems of the heart.”

“And we will wallow on your bed in our shimmies and eat macaroons while we read. I think I will be cured, Mama,” Libby said.

Mama’s regimen proved to be remarkably efficacious, except that Joseph took exception to it several weeks later and exclaimed over breakfast, in a much-ill-used tone, that it would not do at all.

“Libby, you must walk with me along the Promenade today,” he insisted. “There are fine horses at the Pavilion mews, and you must see them.”

“My dear, do you think the gypsies have been here?” she teased.

Joseph frowned at her. “I seriously doubt it, Libby.” He looked at her and grinned. “You are joking me, aren’t you?”

“Of course!”

“Well, sometimes I cannot tell,” he said. “Let us leave immediately after breakfast.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to withdraw from the expedition that morning because she could not miss the mail delivery. She dismissed the idea. It had been over a month now and nothing had come from Holyoke. Quite wisely, the doctor had reconsidered and had decided to look elsewhere. There was no sense in lagging back anymore.

“Very well, brother, lead on,” she said.

“Bravo,” Mama exclaimed, and touched her hand. “Let me loan you a new bonnet that Uncle Ames insisted I buy. How free he is with others’ blunt.”

Libby and Joseph ventured along the Promenade to the mews, where Libby stood in polite boredom while Joseph leaned on the fence, adoring the horses from a distance, pointing out their excellence, and wishing himself closer.

The breeze blew her bonnet back from her face and she raised her chin, enjoying the feeling of the hot sun on her skin. The air smelled of tar and saltwater and sand, mingled with the roasting meat and pasties from the vendors that hawked their wares along the oceanfront.

When she tired of the view, she watched her brother. His wound had healed beautifully, the scar a red line still, but thin and fading. Soon it would be a white scar scarcely noticeable, a testimony to the ability of his surgeon. And Mama still laughs when I mention Anthony Cook’s name, she thought. I wish she knew him as well as I know him.

The thought made her blush, for no reason she could discern, particularly since she had given him up for lost. She was comparing the merits of his kiss in the Caseys’ cottage to the duke’s kiss in the orchard, when Joseph tugged at her arm and reminded her that the horses had moved off and, besides, he was hungry.

They returned arm in arm to the quiet house on the Marine Parade, chased each other up the stairs, and burst into the sitting room to find Mama serving tea to Anthony Cook.

A twinkle in her eyes, Mama glanced up from the cup she held, checking the flow of tea in midstream. “My dear, must you burst into a room that way? One would think you were being chased by Cossacks, and we know that this is not the case.”

While Libby stood still in shocked amazement, Joseph sat down beside Anthony, who took the boy’s face in his hands, murmuring, “The lengths I will go to follow up on a patient’s progress. Hold still, lad.” He turned Joseph’s head more to the light and examined his handiwork with a smile of satisfaction. “Excellent, excellent,” he said. “These buried sutures are entirely satisfactory,” he told Joseph, who looked at him, a question in his eyes. “Never mind, laddy, so glad you don’t remember it. Who removed your stitches?”

“Mama was bound and determined to take me to Dr. Pearman, but Libby beat her to it,” he said. “It didn’t even hurt, and we must have saved any number of shillings.”

The doctor looked over the tops of his spectacles to Libby, who still stood by the door, too shy to move. “She will likely put me out of business if such quackery is allowed to run rampant. Cat got your tongue, ma’am?”

“No . . . no,” she stammered, and came closer, offering her hand, which the doctor held in his own until Mama coughed. “How do you do, sir?”

She could see how he did, and she was pleased. Of course, it was difficult to cast a critical eye over the entire doctor, especially when he stood so close, but she could plainly tell that he had been spending less time at the dinner table. With less overhang in the front, he seemed taller and more commanding, more like the squire. His spectacles still slid down his nose as he looked at her, a slight smile on his face, and his hair was as thick and curly as ever.

“Actually, I do very well, thank you. Father is much better, too. I don’t sleep longer than I ever did at nights, but at least Farrell Frink has not fallen down any more wells, and babies have been kindlier, of late. Sit down and take off that hat so I can see how you do.”

She did as he said without question and sat, scooting Joseph closer to the doctor until her brother got up and moved to Mother’s side. They drank tea together in perfect accord as Anthony told them all the Holyoke gossip he was privy to, mentioning that Eustace and Lydia had returned to Holyoke Green long enough to look over the local church and find it wanting.

“I always thought it a charming place, myself,” said the doctor as he shook his head over the sweets Mama offered him. “I think Lydia has her eye on an abbey for her nuptials, or Canterbury Cathedral at least.”

Mama snorted in decided unladylike fashion and said something that no one could quite hear.

“Did . . . did the duke accompany them?” Libby asked, keeping her voice as offhand as possible.

“No, he did not,” the doctor replied. “I asked Lydia about the duke, and she said that since their return to London, no one has seen much of him. He does not go to the parties and routs and appears to have abandoned Eustace.”

“How strange,” said Libby. “I thought they were best friends. Oh, I do not hope he has resumed drinking.”

“That is my thought, too, Elizabeth. I asked Lydia about that and she gave me a blank stare. She thinks he may have rusticated to the family estate in Yorkshire.”

There was no way to keep the duke part of the conversation. Libby nibbled on a biscuit as the subject passed to Uncle Ames’ gout. “If you have been physicking him, I wish you well,” the doctor declared. He reached in his pocket for a packet of salts and noticed the humor in her eyes. “I will not spread them around the room this time, my dear. I trust the canary recovered.”