The Handbook to Handling His Lordship
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For Kelly-Leigh Proellocks, who suggested the name “Nathaniel”
For Elizabeth Butler, who gave me “Stokes”
And for Christina, who came up with “Westfall”
Congratulations, ladies—you made a hero!
Contents
Chapter One
The idiotic ways in which people deluded themselves, against all better reason and judgment, had long since ceased to surprise Nathaniel Stokes.
He, for instance, did not view a well-documented meeting in the middle of Hyde Park at the height of visiting hours as discreet. Neither would he have thought that wearing an enormous yellow hat and an unseasonably heavy cloak lent itself to being unnoticed, but then he hadn’t arranged the rendezvous. That honor belonged to the elongated face and plucked triangular eyebrows beneath the hat. And the black-gloved fingers sticking out from the enormous black coach’s window and beckoning him closer, spiderlike. Ah, very subtle.
Of course he’d taken his own precautions in order to ensure that the residents of London in general, and Mayfair in particular, saw the portrait of him that he intended. Therefore, as he swung down from Blue, his dark gray gelding, he adjusted the pair of glass-lensed spectacles that bridged his nose and pulled his ebony cane from its well-fashioned holster in his saddle.
He needed neither, but required both. Or rather, his particular brand of hobby required, he’d learned from careful observation, a certain air of both absentmindedness and trustworthy gravitas. Spectacles did that with a minimum of discomfort, while the cane made him look harmless—especially when accompanied by the slight limp that tucking a button into the bottom of his left boot elicited. No one else needed to know about the razor-sharp rapier tucked inside the ebony wood—but
he
knew about it. And how to use it.
“Lord Westfall,” the female beneath the hat whispered, ducking back into the shadowed recesses of the coach, “do join me.”
And then there was the largest part of his disguise. Nate found it ironic that Mayfair’s blue bloods had found him worthy of hearing their darkest secrets only after he’d become the Earl of Westfall—not because the title wasn’t legitimately his, as an army of solicitors had deemed it to be—but because of all the disguises he’d ever worn, this one of aristocrat had the illest fit. And it also seemed to be the only one he couldn’t take off and set into the wardrobe at the end of the day.
Favoring his left leg, he stepped up into the carriage and pulled the door shut behind him. “Are you certain your reputation is safe with me, Lady Allister?” he asked with a smile, removing the dark blue beaver hat from his head and setting it on the posh leather seat beside him.
The dowager viscountess giggled, color touching her pale cheeks. “At my age I shall risk it,” she returned, still using the same conspiratorial whisper she’d assumed for each of their half-dozen conversations. “Were you successful?”
Nate nodded, reaching into the wrong coat pocket and then the correct one to pull out an old, gold-rimmed ivory brooch. The carving was rather delicate, the silhouette of a young lady with an elongated face and high-piled, curling hair. “I leave it to you to decide if you wish to know where it was located,” he said, handing it into Lady Allister’s black-gloved fingers.
“Oh, dear,” she said, gazing at the small thing before she curled her fingers around it and clutched it to her bosom. “I hate to be sentimental, but it is the only image I have remaining of my younger self. The fire took the portrait my father had commissioned. By Gainsborough himself, you know.”
“It’s a lovely piece. The craftsmanship, and the subject, are remarkable.” That seemed to be what she wished to hear, anyway. As he’d spent the past week looking at half a hundred of the things as he trailed one small brooch across central England, he wasn’t certain how qualified he was to judge at the moment.
Light blue eyes lifted to meet his. “I will only ask this: Was it sold from my son’s possession, or stolen?”
He’d discovered the answer to that question early on. Gambling debts and an overreaching lifestyle had rendered the current Viscount Allister with a less than desirable quantity of funds. As he looked at the damp eyes of Allister’s doting mother, he settled his expression into a frown. “Stolen, I’m afraid. A group of young brigands who’ve already been seen to justice for other crimes.”
The woman’s shoulders lowered. “It’s as he said, then.” She cleared her throat. “And your fee, Westfall? You have certainly earned one.”
“Twenty-five pounds, as we agreed, my lady.”
“In exchange for your efforts and your discretion.”
And there the word was again, as rarely as it was actually spoken aloud. He couldn’t imagine anyone else would care a fig whether Lord Allister had sold his mother’s brooch or not, but she’d convinced herself that her entire family’s reputation rested on his silence. So be it. “Of course.”
She handed the coins into his hand, briefly gripping his fingers as she did so. “Thank you, Lord Westfall.”
Nate opened the coach’s door. “And thank you, Lady Allister.” Then he grimaced for effect. “Ah, my hat.” Reaching back, he retrieved the last bit of his disguise and descended to the ground.
He stepped back as the coach rolled away. The first time a peer had asked him to find something, he’d made the mistake of attempting to perform the deed gratis. After that had nearly sparked a duel with the fellow, he’d realized his error. If he didn’t ask a fee, that meant a client—as he’d come to call them—owed him a favor. It meant that, however trivial the deed or misdeed, he held a piece of their privacy, their reputation, over them. Payment for services rendered made them even. And so whether he required the additional income or not, or whether the fee matched the efforts he’d made or the expense he’d truly gone to, he named a nominal price and they paid it. And the dearer the secret they felt the need to protect, the larger the price they demanded he ask.
Pocketing the blunt, he stowed his cane and swung back up on Blue. Whether the dowager viscountess believed his talk of the brooch’s travels or not, he’d said what she wanted to hear. Sometimes that seemed to be of more import to his clients than the recovery of the missing item. It meant more lies heaped upon his head, but after the life he’d lived and some of the tales he’d told as a consequence, some of the truths he’d told that cost men’s lives, improving the character of someone’s son or cousin or uncle hardly made a dent.
The front door of Teryl House opened as he climbed the top step. “Welcome home, my lord,” Garvey said with a nod, stepping aside to allow him entry. “You have a letter on the hall table, and a caller in the morning room.”
Nate retrieved the missive and broke the wax seal. “Who’s here?” he asked the butler as he unfolded the note to read through it. Evidently his younger brother had earned an enforced holiday from Oxford, the idiot. He barely glanced at the details; it wouldn’t be the truth, anyway.
That,
he would have to learn from Laurie face-to-face.
“He didn’t say, my lord.”
Ah, another one of those
. Nodding, Nate shoved the letter into a pocket. “Send in some tea, will you? And we’ll need a guest room made ready. Laurence is coming down early for the Season.”
“Very good, my lord. It will be splendid to have Master Laurence about again. He’s quite … lively.”
Nate wasn’t certain that he would have used the same adjectives, but he had no intention of bantering with Garvey over whether
lively
and
splendid
or
bothersome
and
complicated
were the more appropriate terms. “Yes, it will,” he said aloud, and finished removing his gloves and hat to hand them over to the waiting butler.
Generally he preferred to know with whom he was conversing in advance of a meeting, but in all practicality such a thing was a luxury. And he did enjoy the process of discovery, after all. With that in mind he resettled his spectacles, tapped his cane on the floor, and pushed open the morning room door.
His caller stood before the front window, his gaze on the street beyond. With a swiftness bred from equal parts practice and necessity, Nate tallied him up—highly polished Hessian boots, a dark green coat of superfine and not a wrinkle or crease across the square shoulders, a large signet ring on his right hand, the stance of folded arms and braced feet. Neatly cut blond hair and the closest shave a face could have. A man accustomed to people looking at him, and one with money enough to appear in the manner he wished.
“Good afternoon,” Nate said aloud, pulling the door closed behind him.
The figure turned around, lidded dark eyes regarding him with the same thoroughness he’d just used on his visitor. “I’ve heard some things about you, Westfall,” the fellow finally said, in an accent that bespoke southwestern England. “Are they true?”
“That’s a rather broad canvas,” Nate returned in his best tone of cool, slightly distracted indifference. “Would you care to elaborate?”
“Certainly. Who am I?”
Ah, a test.
At best he had only a passing acquaintance with his new peers. Given his visitor’s age, attire, and speech patterns, though, he would put the man as either Viscount Delshire or, taking into account his visitor’s obvious arrogance, the Marquis of Ebberling. Considering the way the fellow had arrived at the house without giving a name, however, coupled with the suspicion with which most of his clients regarded his powers of deduction, Nate only squinted one eye and adjusted his spectacles. “Have you lost your memory then, sir? I’m acquainted with several competent physicians. I have a penchant for finding things, but a person’s memories … Hm. That would be an interesting endeavor. Fascinating, even.”
“Never mind that. I’m Ebberling—the Marquis of—and I wish to engage your … services.”
On occasion, Nate thought in passing as the tea arrived and he gestured Lord Ebberling to a chair, it would be pleasant to be surprised. The nice sort of surprise, though; not the firing-of-a-pistol-in-his-direction kind. Once the footman left, he poured himself a cup and dumped two sugars into the mix. “What is it you’ve lost, then, Ebberling?” he asked, noting that the marquis sat squarely in the center of the comfortable chair, his weight balanced and not an ounce of slouch in his posture.
Considering that he’d once avoided being shot because he’d noticed that his dinner companion kept one leg around the side of his chair rather than on the floor in front of him, Nate took account of everything. And from what he could tell, the marquis had lost something valuable. Vital, even. And he wasn’t happy about going anywhere for assistance in locating it.
“What assurances do I have of your discretion, Westfall?” Lord Ebberling asked, ignoring the tea.
“I like finding things. The what and why of the task don’t actually concern me. And since I wish to continue in my hobby of finding things, I have no intention of betraying the confidence of anyone who hires me. Does that suffice?”