Barbara Metzger (19 page)

Kelly helped himself to a glass of wine. “That’s as may be, but Lady Comstock only sees Her Grace for a few hours at night. I’m trailing after her all day, when I can keep up. This farm, that field, a sickly calf here, a mildewed row there. It’s more’n a body can bear, never sitting still less’n she’s at the accounts or in the library.”

“But she has no business doing anything but her embroidery and flower gardening. That’s why I hired a new bailiff.”

“I wrote you, Her Grace didn’t like the man.”

“So she didn’t like him. I—” St. Sevrin tossed back the contents of his glass. “My God, she fired him, didn’t she? Who the hell is running the place and making the improvements I requested? Did spring crops even get planted?” There went his hopes of keeping the Priory self-sufficient and solvent. Another chunk of investment money would have to be withdrawn to meet expenses.

“Now, I told you everything is aces, Yer Grace. I wouldn’t of left, otherwise. Her Grace has everything in hand. Them cottages are all repaired, with good families moving in to work the farms, that stream’s been rerouted so the bottom land don’t flood, new breeding herds are getting fat, and the school is half finished.” Kelly scratched his head. “Did I write you about the school? Not much for letters, don’t you know.”

“I’d never have guessed,” the duke answered dryly. “But Lady Lisanne can’t be running the estate. Those old tenant farmers won’t accept a woman in charge, especially not one who’s—”

“They don’t like it, but they listen. When she picks up a handful of dirt and tells them how much manure to put in the field, how much lime and how much ashes, they listen. And if she says they should plant wheat here and corn there and turnips in the lower acre, they do it. They know your man wanted to throw them all off the land and turn it over to sheepherding.”

“What, get rid of the farms? They’ve been there since the monks had the Priory. And what about the dairy cows? The Priory used to make a profit on the milk.”

“That’s what Her Grace said, before giving the new bailiff his walking papers.”

“And you say she’s doing all right?”

“Better’n all right, I’d guess. Everyone’s saying it’ll be the best harvest in memory if the weather holds.”

St. Sevrin poured out another glass of wine for himself and one for Kelly. Here he’d been spending hours poring over the agricultural journals, trying to learn a lifetime of responsible landlording in a month. He’d been corresponding with Coke about new methods and visiting the patent office for new tools. He was cluttering up his mind with boring claptrap, stuff his lady wife knew by instinct, or whatever.

The Priory didn’t need his sad lack of expertise. It had the baroness. The baroness’s money. The baroness’s skills. He may as well stay in London.

*

The Priory mightn’t need St. Sevrin’s help, but he found someone who did. A roistering night at Horse Guards with old Army comrades ended with a sobering message from the Peninsula. The sketchy information reported a devastating battle near Formieva, with many British deaths and casualties. Hardest hit was St. Sevrin’s old regiment, which had valiantly held the line under Lieutenant Trevor Roe after the commanding officers had fallen. Lieutenant Roe was not expected to survive the loss of his leg.

If he was being treated in the field hospital, he didn’t stand a chance. Sloane had enough experience to know the surgeons killed more soldiers than they saved. And any who did manage to recover from the savage amputations and bullet extractions were prey to blood poisoning from the filthy conditions and fevers from the infections. Then they had to face the weather-wracked hospital ships, when the generals chose to dispatch them, and the epidemic influenzas and dysentery. Major Lord Shearingham had gone through it all.

Trevor Roe wasn’t going to. They’d been friends since school days and had signed up together. Trev had been the one to pull Sloane out from under his horse after he’d gone down from the saber slash that opened his chest and side. Trev had dragged him off the field, dodging bullets and flying hooves, stuffing his own uniform jacket into the wound to stop the bleeding.

No, St. Sevrin wasn’t going to let his friend die in some stinking, fly-infested field hospital. He went to the docks to hire a yacht while Kelly purchased bandages, medicines, sheets, and blankets. None of the suitable craft were for lease, so the duke bought one, crew and all. This he could do. He went home to gather his own bags—and that jar of Lisanne’s salve he’d been using on his stallion’s cut leg. It worked for the horse.

*

It worked for Lieutenant Roe, and the three other wounded officers St. Sevrin managed to cram aboard his new vessel. Being warm and dry and tended around the clock with cooling drinks and nourishing broths had to speed their recovery also. Just being away from the contagion-ridden wards saved them from exposure to all manner of pestilences.

Lieutenant Roe’s family was renting a place near Brighton for the summer, so St. Sevrin had his crew sail straight there. The Viscount Roehampton was so grateful to Sloane for bringing his son home that he insisted St. Sevrin stay on. He even invited the other wounded lads to recuperate in Brighton’s healthful atmosphere, too, while Trevor finished his convalescence under his mother’s loving care. Unfortunately the Viscountess Roehampton cried every time she looked at her son’s crutches. Nor was she quite comfortable having five grown bachelors roistering under her roof, with the worst-reputed of them, St. Sevrin, being hale and hearty and a social pariah.

The other officers quickly removed to their own families or to the barracks in London. St. Sevrin was itching to leave, but Lord Roehampton, at his wife’s urging, decided to put a flea in Prinny’s ear about the duke’s noble generosity. And his abysmal reputation.

As a result, St. Sevrin was to be awarded a medal for service to the Crown at one of the prince’s extravagant, interminable dinners at his Oriental pavilion. Sloane couldn’t insult the monarchy by leaving beforetimes, and he couldn’t insult Trevor’s father by expressing his wish that the Regent had seen fit to spend the nation’s wealth on its loyal troops rather than on its overfed aristocrats. Bloody hell, he thought, a medal.

A medal wasn’t enough for the prince. He wanted St. Sevrin to take his rightful place in decent Society. It was time the duke gave up his wicked ways, demanded one of the most debauched rulers in British history. The drinking, gambling, whoring—all of which the Regent practiced daily—had to stop, at least until St. Sevrin was respectable enough for the queen’s drawing room. To attain such respectability, Prinny declared, St. Sevrin needed a wife. And not just any man’s wife, he tittered in his latest mistress’s married ear, but the Duchess of St. Sevrin herself. Prinny expected to meet the duke’s bride at the fall Season. Country girl or not, she was a baron’s daughter and could thus redeem the duke’s reputation.

“If she doesn’t pull a toad out of her pocket,” Sloane muttered between clenched jaws as he bowed himself out of the royal presence.

“Well, what have you got against bringing her to London, anyway?” Trevor wanted to know when St. Sevrin arrived home in an ugly mood that hadn’t been improved by enough bottles of ale to float an armada of grievances. Kelly’s grin wasn’t helping much, either, as he brushed off His Grace’s formal attire.

“She doesn’t want to come, that’s why.”

“So what? Hell, she’s your wife. She has to.”

Kelly laughed.

“You haven’t met Lisanne.”

“No, but I’d like to. Want to thank her for that stuff she sent with you. It helped a lot. Doctor here said it was one of the cleanest wounds he’d seen, fastest healing, too. Now all I have is pain in the leg I don’t have. It’s phantom pain, he says. Only imaginary.”

“Then you’ll really like my wife.”

This time Kelly cleared his throat.

“Oh, hell, it doesn’t matter. Prinny was three sheets to the wind himself. He won’t remember.”

*

But St. Sevrin’s cousin Humbert remembered. He’d also been in Brighton, hanging on the prince’s coattails. By chance or by design, he’d managed to meet Esmé and Nigel Findley, who usually traveled in very different social circles. Lisanne’s relatives were delighted to meet one of the prince’s cronies; Humbert was delighted to hear about his new cousin by marriage. He was even more pleased to pass on what his groom heard from Esmé’s maid.

The fall Season started with rumors flying about how Prinny was insisting St. Sevrin produce his bride, and how the duke was refusing because she was freakish. The prince wasn’t happy, and the duke wasn’t happy.

“Bloody hell. I should have run that bastard through ages ago.”

“Which bastard?”

“Findley. Nigel. Humbert. Prinny. All of them.”

Trevor looked over his shoulder to make sure no one in this alehouse heard his friend call the Prince of Wales a bastard or threaten his life. Then again, the tavern was such a low dive that half of its patrons were illegitimate. The other half would have killed their own mothers for the price of a bottle of Blue Ruin, much less the frivolous prince.

Sloane and Trevor were in London because Lieutenant Roe had been miserable in the bosom of his family. Their pity was smothering him, and his father’s offer of an allowance was demeaning. He was a grown man, not a boy. He wasn’t even the heir, just a second-rate second son. Trevor was depressed about his lost leg, his shattered career, and his bleak future. Even Whitehall, his last hope, had turned him down for a desk job. There were already too many crippled officers on the payroll.

That’s why the two ex-soldiers were in an alehouse: so Trevor could drink himself into oblivion.

They were in
this
rat hole of a pub because St. Sevrin couldn’t let his friend drink alone and the duke was playing least in sight. He and Trevor were staying at St. Sevrin House, which was looking more elegant every day under Kelly’s supervision. The two friends were looking more seedy and degenerate every night. At least in this part of town St. Sevrin wouldn’t be forced to defend his lady’s name with his fists.

Thunderation, her name was mentioned in the betting books. St. Sevrin had never cared what anyone said about him, but Lisanne was his wife, by Jupiter! There were too many wagging tongues for Sloane to challenge, so he just let fly at the first man he saw smirking or simpering about the duke’s fairy-tale match. His temper had seen him thrown out of White’s and Watier’s and Brooks’s. The prince’s disfavor, encouraged by Humbert, would keep him out. On the plus side, his left punch was getting stronger.

On the negative side, Trevor had started issuing challenges right and left in defense of the duchess. “Can’t fence, but I can still shoot straight.” He couldn’t even see straight, but that hadn’t stopped Lieutenant Roe. “M’best friend’s wife, don’t you know,” he slurred. “M’hostess. M’benefactress, ’cause it was her blunt that brought me home so cozily.”

So St. Sevrin landed Trevor a hard right to the jaw and carried him unconscious out of the Cocoa Tree to a hackney carriage, and to this gin mill the jarvey recommended.

Sloane pounded his bottle on the sticky, stained table. “It’s a damnable situation.”

“Right, when a man can’t leave his wife in the country when he wants.”

“No, not that situation. This one.” St. Sevrin waved his hand around the dingy, smoke-filled room. “Here I am, a rich man finally, and I can’t even drink in a decent club where the customers bathe occasionally.”

“Uh, Sherry, I don’t think it was a good idea to mention you were well-heeled. Not in a place like this.”

Luckily Trevor was handy with his crutches, and St. Sevrin had his pistol.

Confound it, this couldn’t go on. Sloane could turn tail and drag himself and Trevor off to Devon, but he wouldn’t give Humbert and the Findleys the satisfaction. He hadn’t backed down from a challenge yet. Furthermore, if he left he’d never be able to return, not while Prinny was Regent…or King. There was nothing for it but to send for the infuriating chit and hope for the best: hope she came, and hope she was wearing shoes. Besides, they were all out of that salve.

The duchess didn’t answer St. Sevrin’s summons to present herself in London. His aunt did, in person.

Lady Comstock marched right past the new butler, right past the new valet, and into her nephew’s new bedchamber, where he was nursing a hangover, which was nothing new.

“You look like you’ve been run over by a hay wagon,” she began, pulling back the drapes to flood the room with morning light.

“Several, thank you, Aunt Hattie,” Sloane corrected, wincing at the glare but dutifully reaching for his dressing gown. There would be no going back to sleep this morning. He opened the door and bellowed for coffee. And tea for the lady, he shouted as an afterthought. He came back and sat in the chair across from his aunt. “Where’s my wife?”

“Oh, so you remember you have a wife, do you?”

Sloane got up, went back to the door, and shouted for a bottle of brandy. He didn’t reply until after the servants had left. “Now, Aunt Hattie, you know very well that I recall my wife. Didn’t I send her that fan from Brighton? And what about the fancy lace headpiece from Portugal? I wrote and told you I was going to the Peninsula to fetch Trev, I know I did.”

Hattie raised her lorgnette at how much brandy was in his cup, how little coffee. “You think that’s enough? A trinket? A footnote to your letters? How did you get to be such a fool?”

“I believe I was born that way, Aunt. You know, male. So where is my bride, at your house? She’s in a pet over my lack of attention, is that it? Very well, I’ll go beg her pardon.”

“You don’t know the girl at all, do you?” His aunt shook her head. “More’s the pity.” She made him wait while she buttered a scone, the sight of which did nothing for St. Sevrin’s roiling stomach. “No, she’s not at my house. She’s not even at your house in Devon. She’s gone home to Neville Hall to live in her own house, alone except for a parcel of old servants. She left one of the tenants’ sons as overseer at the Priory and disappeared with her dog and her maid. She won’t receive visitors or answer letters.”