David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) (33 page)

David knelt before the silent child, whose lips were losing their blue color.

“You will note that my eyes are two different colors. This makes it difficult for you to know where to look, but because
I
can’t see that they don’t match, I will look at you as if you are a normal, sopping wet, shivering little boy. Would you like some tea?”

The child offered a ghost of a smile, a fey, charming quirking of the lips, and nodded. A glance at Banks the Elder resulted in a terse nod from the adult.

“P-Please, sir.”

“Sweet? With a drop of cream, I suspect?”

The child’s smile grew more enthusiastic. He was an elfin little fellow, with huge brown eyes and a mop of wet sable hair that needed a trim. His complexion was brown too, as if he spent long hours in the summer sun.

“Mr. Banks?” David asked, rising. “The same for you?”

“If you please. Danny, make your bow to his lordship.”

“Danny Banks,” the child piped, “at your service.” He bowed correctly and ruined the sober effect by beaming hugely at his accomplishment.

“David,” his host replied, “Viscount Fairly. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Master Banks.” David extended his hand, which the boy shook with appropriate manly vigor, though his little fingers were icy.

Mr. Banks did not comment on this exchange of courtesies. When David passed him his cup of tea, it nearly slipped from Banks’s grasp.

David took the little cup back and poured the contents into a heavier mug, which he then topped off. When he handed the tea to Banks, he cupped the man’s fingers around the hot mug before he let go.

He served the child in another mug, then poured his own tea into a mug, too.

Banks sipped his tea with desperate restraint. “Where is Let—Mrs. Banks?”

“I’ve sent for my coach,” David said. “I will take you to her, but first I must insist, for the sake of the child, that we get you both warm and dry.”

“You insist?” Banks snorted. “
You?
” He didn’t give up his tea for all his righteous indignation, and the child was discreetly pinching a biscuit from the tray.

“Mr. Banks, you are no doubt holding your unpleasant sentiments barely in check, and for that, I am appreciative. If we have adult matters to discuss, then we can do so when we have the necessary privacy.” David glanced meaningfully at the child, and Banks had the grace to nod once in understanding.

“Does my—does Mrs. Banks reside here?” The tone was marginally more civil.

“She does not,” David said as the boy tucked a second biscuit into his coat pocket. “She was a guest here briefly while recovering from a knife wound, because I am a physician and rendered her aid at the time.” Aid and a broken heart. “She has since returned to her own dwelling, where I understand she has continued a successful recuperation.”

Banks set his mug down with a clatter. “A knife wound? Letty was stabbed?”

“Is Aunt Letty all right?” the boy asked, his eyes filled with concern. “Papa? Is Aunt Letty going to die?”

“She will not,” David answered the child. “Though she did need a few stitches, but she was very brave about it. She is well, and you mustn’t fret about her.”

A discreet tap on the door summoned David, who conferred with a footman and then returned to his guests.

“These”—he held up a stack of boy’s clothing—“have been borrowed from the bootboy, though he’s a bit bigger than you, Danny.”

Danny took the dry clothes from David.

And now for the more stubborn fellow. “You are of a height with me,” David informed Banks. “I will offer you a change of clothing. Everything in your saddlebags will take a good while to dry, though I’m sure it’s being hung up in the kitchen as we speak.”

Banks glanced around the library, his gaze lighting on the little silver angel David had had cast from mended porcelain as part of a celestial pair. “My thanks. The loan of dry clothing would be appreciated.”

“The first bedroom upstairs on the right is available to you both,” David said, “and I’ve had a tray sent up, for the boy if not for you, Mr. Banks. Though as to that, if you’ve ridden any distance in this weather, your health is jeopardized as badly as the child’s. I humbly ask you to partake of some sustenance—you’ll need it for the coming discussion, if nothing else.”

Banks looked like he might take exception.

“It’s all right, Banks,” David said. “I don’t much want to like you either, but I can hardly fault a man for being concerned for Letty’s welfare, can I?”

Looking even more uncertain, Banks herded his son out the door and into the keeping of the footman. The library door closed behind him just as the child whispered to his papa.

“He’s a viscount, Papa! And he shook hands with
me
. Is a viscount like a duke?”

A lively child, for all that he’d been subdued in unfamiliar surroundings. David sat back and poured himself a second cup of tea, giving his guests time to get dry, and himself time to collect his reeling thoughts.

Some pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place, but others weren’t arranging themselves as neatly. Where did Mr. Banks fit, for example? Had the old vicar tattled on Letty to her brother? Banks was clearly aware that David had trifled with his sister. Was he also aware that others had more than trifled with her?

David finished his tea, though his fretting was not nearly done. What if this man wasn’t Letty’s brother? What if she’d had a husband after all? What if Mr. Banks, whoever he was, had come to offer Letty a miserable sanctuary in the judgmental arms of her family—the family about which David knew very little?

He changed into attire appropriate for a morning call, then rapped on the door of the guest room.

“Gentlemen? The horses have been put to. I’ll await you below.”

Five minutes later, Mister and Master Banks came down the stairs, the one a miniature of the other. The elder polished up quite nicely. He had the same dark, compelling eyes Letty had—a reassuring observation, that—and his features were beautifully designed, strong enough to be masculine, but not a one of them—not nose, eyes, lips, chin, jaw, eyebrows—was in any way disproportionate to the others. If the man had any charm, he’d be a lethal addition to the best ballrooms.

Provided, of course, he learned how to tie a cravat.

“Hold still.” David untied his guest’s neckcloth.

“Are you
dressing
me?”

“Somebody had better,” David muttered as he whipped the linen back into an elegant knot, “or Letty will have to fix it when she sees you. There.”

In no time, he and his guests were tucked into the carriage, snug and dry, the floor tiles giving off a pleasant heat.

“Am I to understand,” Banks said, staring out the window, “that Letty was at no time a member of your household?”

“She was a guest.” And the boy was listening to every word, even as he peered out the window, his nose pressed to the glass. “Further details should be requested directly of her.”

“I was told she was your housekeeper.”

Told by whom? Did Letty perpetrate that fiction? Told when? And how had Banks discerned Letty was
not
a housekeeper?

“Was she a guest in your household when she was stabbed?” Banks asked in the same toneless voice.” The child whipped around to look sharply at Mr. Banks.

“She was not. She was stabbed in defense of me, and I owe her my life.” In many ways, David owed her his life.

“She really is well?”

The question planted a seed of liking in David he did not want to feel for Banks, liking and sympathy.

“She lost a lot of blood, but she healed quickly and has been taking good care of herself. The wound may still pain her occasionally, and she will have weakness in her arm for a while yet, but she is substantially recovered.”

From the knife wound.

Banks asked no further questions, and because the distance between Letty’s house and David’s was only a mile, they soon found themselves turning onto her street.

“Before we go inside, Banks,” David said, taking his turn staring out the window, “you need to know I have offered for her, and I will offer for her again, but she will not have me.”

Banks brushed a hand over the child’s hair, which in ten minutes of travel had somehow regained a state of complete disarray. “She will not…?”

“Will not, and yes, I love her.” To say that felt good, also a bit pathetic.

Perhaps it was a measure of Banks’s preoccupation with David’s latest revelation that he allowed David to carry Danny up the steps to Letty’s door. David rapped loudly, and the door swung open to reveal Letty herself standing in the front entry.

“Daniel? Danny?
David?
What on earth…?”

“May we come in?” The sight of her, the simple, lovely, soul-gratifying sight of her, set something back to rights in David’s chest. She was still in need of more weight, but she looked… so very, very dear.

“Come in.” Letty stepped aside and shooed at them. “Please, yes, all of you come in. Danny!” David relinquished the child into Letty’s arms, and she held the boy tightly for long moments before she set him on his feet. “Oh, Danny, how you’ve grown, and how very good it is to see you!”

“We came on Zubbie,” Danny informed her. “And it was cold and wet, but Zubbie likes to play in the puddles.”

Letty beamed at the child, her smile unlike any she’d ever bestowed on David—or the patrons of The Pleasure House. “He does, doesn’t he? He’s a very naughty boy sometimes, but he has a good heart, and he brought you all the way here from Little Weldon, didn’t he?”

“I never fell off once.” Danny beamed back at her, the sight doing queer things to David’s insides.

“And Daniel.” Letty held out her arms to Mr. Banks, who enfolded her in a quiet, snug embrace.

Daniel?
The name registered in David’s mind with a shock, and it wasn’t until then that he realized Letty’s
brother
was the vicar.
Vicar
Daniel
, to distinguish him from his father, likely, who would have been Vicar Banks.

The child looked like both Letty and her brother, which told David nothing. But the sober regard in Banks’s eyes, and the light of battle dawning in Letty’s, suggested that some truths were about to be aired.

“Letty? Might I suggest that Danny make his way to the kitchen for a cup of chocolate while Mr. Banks and I join you in the family parlor?”

The child commenced dancing in place. “Oooh, chocolate. May I? Papa? Aunt Letty? Mister Viscount? Please?” Despite the situation, all three adults smiled at Danny’s misconstruction of the title, and he was sent off to the kitchen.

David didn’t trust himself even to put a hand on Letty’s arm, but he was standing close enough to catch a whiff of her rose scent. “I’ll excuse myself if you prefer, Letty, and wait in the front parlor. You should know the gentlemen are welcome to bide with me if you’re not up to guests.”

Banks made no reply, while Letty patted David’s lapel. A single, presuming, familiar gesture, which Banks also observed—and did not comment on.

“His lordship is my friend,” Letty informed her brother. “What we have to discuss affects him too. He will join us.”

David felt no sense of victory, for Letty’s decision turned Banks’s expression unreadable, and “what we have to discuss” might not be what David sought to discuss. And yet, a declaration of friendship was a far cry from a solitary tray in the front parlor.

“Shall we wait for tea?” Letty asked when she’d taken a seat in one of the rocking chairs in her small parlor.

“I’ve had my fill for the present,” Banks replied. “Lord Fairly was most gracious.” The vicar made “gracious” sound like a one-way ticket to the ninth circle of hell.

“So you went to his lordship’s house, looking for me?”

“Where else was I to look for you? I’m told things that aren’t true, and then I receive correspondence that I cannot fathom. I wanted to come sooner, but the rain arrived in a deluge, and then I had to get here, hang the floods—”

“Perhaps,” David interrupted, “you could tell us about that correspondence? And, Letty, may we sit?”

“Please.” Her tone told him she would not resent his efforts to steer the conversation; her eyes told him—lovely woman—that she’d missed him and worried for him. David took the other rocking chair, leaving Banks the small settee, onto which he dropped with a weary sigh.

“Olivia—my wife—has been called to her mother’s sickbed—possibly her deathbed, though I’ve had little news yet on that score. In Olivia’s absence, the church has received two letters addressed to the Ladies’ Charitable Guild, which organization my wife founded and directs. The first epistle, Letty, was from you, and included an astonishingly sizable bank draft.”

Banks paused, while from the direction of the kitchen, a child’s laughter rang through the house.

“Imagine my surprise,” Banks said softly, “when I went to the banker over in Great Weldon and found that the Ladies’ Charitable Guild is wealthy enough that I could soon retire on its assets. All these years, I have counted among my blessings a wife who is clever with figures, one whom I’ve allowed to copy my signature on any bank drafts, sparing me—she said—tedious bookkeeping, so I might have more time for the Lord’s work.” He paused again, looking at his hands as if expecting to see them filled with pieces of silver.