Folly's Reward (15 page)

Two stout footmen would guard him with their lives from any intruder. Prudence had objected that these were tasks for her, but Hal had insisted she sit down, and finally ordered her to stay in the parlor.

“For God’s sake! Look at you! You’re shaking like a leaf. Go and sit down and drink up your sweet tea like the douce, well-mannered Scots lady that you are, before you faint. Bobby will be fine. I’ll have him fed and changed and tucked into a clean bed. No one can find or harm us here. Jervin is the Duke of Aberney’s son.”

Beneath the humor, a note of distinctly imperious rage rang in his voice. Prudence felt it best to obey.

She glanced up from her tea to find Lord Jervin staring down at her. The considerable intelligence in his brown eyes was instantly veiled as he resumed a vacuous expression.

“You are very kind to assist us, my lord,” she said tentatively.

How on earth did one address a duke’s son who had just taken in several filthy and importunate strangers from the street? Of course, one of them wasn’t a stranger. Lord Jervin obviously knew Hal.

“More the thing, Miss Drake?” he asked. “Nothing like strong, sweet tea when you’ve had a shock. Except for brandy, of course, but my brandy’s no liquor for females. Feeling better, are you?”

“Yes, thank you, my lord.”

“Don’t suppose you’d feel like filling in a chap on the goings-on, would you? I suppose this is one of Acton’s mad starts. He’s had me set my footmen to guard the doors and windows, for heaven’s sake. And you are most uncomfortably covered in mud.”

Prudence felt suddenly faint. Was she about to learn who Hal really was?

“Acton?”

“Harry Acton, the fellow who brought you here. Oh, good Lord! You didn’t know his name, did you? Have I put my foot in it? Well, I suppose it’s too late now, and the cat is out of the bag. How long have you been acquainted?”

Prudence began to count back to that beach in Argyle. It seemed another lifetime. She shook her head. How much would Hal want her to tell this man?

“Hal is a friend of yours, my lord?”

“Oh, yes! Old drinking cronies. Harry Acton and I go back a long way, assure you. Both Magdalen men.”

Prudence had never heard the English pronunciation of this Oxford college.

“Maudlin men?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“Then he was often foxed?”

Lord Jervin began to look a little confused. “No more than the rest of us, though we were all three sheets to the wind upon occasion, of course. But Harry can usually hold his liquor like a lord.”

“Is Harry Acton a lord?”

The name sounded odd on her tongue.
Harry Acton
.

“Good heavens, no! Son of one, of course. Not that his father wouldn’t have liked it, if Harry had been the eldest son and Lord Lenwood, instead of Richard.”

Prudence was instantly lost. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know any of these people. Who is Lord Lenwood?”

Lord Jervin gave her a glance oddly filled with compassion.

“So Harry’s not owned up, then? Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Now you know his real name, it’s bound to come out. My dear Miss Drake, my disreputable friend, now consoling little Lord Dunraven in my kitchen, is the Honorable Henry Acton, second son of the Earl of Acton—family name is the same as the name of the earldom, don’t you know.”

“And Lord Lenwood?”

“Viscount Lenwood is Harry’s older brother, Richard, who’s the heir and has the courtesy title. The family’s got damned great estates throughout England. So what the devil is Harry playing at now, turning up on my doorstep dressed like a navvy?”

Prudence felt as if the floor were moving under her feet—as if the exquisite Aubusson carpet might rise into the air at any moment like the magic carpet of the
Arabian Nights
and carry her off to Baghdad.

Oh, God! What had Admiral Rafter done with that coded note she had found?

“Hal is an earl’s son?” Her voice seemed barely more than a whisper.

Lord Jervin stood up and came over to her. He took the cup from her shaking fingers.

“See here, now, Miss Drake. Buck up! It’s not a disaster, is it? Perfectly respectable family, all the best connections. His mother, Lady Acton, was Lady Felicity Roseleigh before her marriage—one of the famous Roseleigh roses immortalized by Gainsborough, the beautiful daughters of the late Duke of Bydover.”

Hal’s mother is a duke’s daughter? His father is an earl? His brother is Lord Lenwood?

Prudence gathered her courage and looked directly into Jervin’s eyes.

“Is there someone in the family called Helena?”

The humor dropped from Lord Jervin’s face, and Prudence caught a glimpse of a very real discomfort.

“Oh, God! He’s not over that yet, then? He told you about that, too?”

Her heart beat heavily in her breast. Was Helena a fiancée, or a sweetheart, or a wife?

“He has dreams about her. You must tell me, Lord Jervin. What is Hal—Mr. Acton—not over?”

Jervin obviously struggled for a moment with his own conscience before he answered. When it came, his reply was edged with both disapproval and concern.

“His damned unprincipled feelings, of course! He got himself completely foxed one night, and it came out that he’d developed a passion for her that was driving him crazy. I was afraid for a moment that he’d blow out his brains over it. Harry met Helena at Richard’s home, Acton Mead. As far as I know, he’s been desperately in love with her ever since.”

Prudence was amazed that she could still speak, when it seemed that her mouth had filled with ashes.

“Why unprincipled?”

“I hear tell she’s a real beauty, diamond of the first water and all that. She married just last autumn, and it was a love match that scandalized the family. She’s already expecting the next heir. Harry fell in love with his sister-in-law, for God’s sake! Helena is Lady Lenwood—his brother Richard’s wife.”

* * *

Bobby was finally tucked up in a bed, where in spite of his protestations that it was the middle of the day and he wasn’t at all tired, he fell asleep.

The Honorable Henry Acton looked down at the child’s sleeping face and felt a painful stirring of love at the sight of the round forehead and plump cheeks.

He had three younger sisters—Eleanor, Joanna, and little Milly—all older than Bobby, of course. And two brothers: golden, beautiful Richard, who had risked his life and his sanity in the fight against the French in the Peninsula, and young John, who had once almost died of poison, because Harry had not been smart enough to prevent it.

Richard, the man Harry loved and admired more than any other in the world, was married to Helena. Loving, noble, beautiful Helena. Helena had never looked at another man since the day Richard had ridden into her garden and asked her to marry him. She was entirely absorbed in her husband—and the child she was going to bear him in July, next heir in line to the earldom.

Partly thanks to Harry, husband and wife were now deeply in love, and happy.

Yet it had not been plain sailing when they were first married. Nothing in Harry’s life had been more difficult than to watch over Helena after his brother had been forced to abandon her.

He closed his eyes, clearly remembering the pain of those feelings. So he had left the country at the earliest opportunity. Harry was truly proud to know that Helena could never have guessed for one minute how he felt. And neither, thank God, had Richard.

* * *

Harry went back into the parlor to find Jervin sitting there alone. The son of the Duke of Aberney looked up and flushed when his guest came in.

“Miss Drake has gone to lie down. Is the child all right?”

“He’s fine. Children get over shock with enviable ease, it would seem.”

“Do you want to tell me what the devil’s going on, Acton?”

Harry grinned. “No, I don’t. Though I’m grateful for your beneficent shelter. Suffice it to say the child has a powerful guardian, who wishes to lay hands on him for possibly nefarious purposes. Until I can get to the truth of the matter, I intend to shield him and his governess, and I shall certainly prevent Lord Dunraven being snatched in the street.”

Lord Jervin laughed, a little unpleasantly.

“His governess? The child told me you had asked her to marry you. What mad start is this? Have I interrupted an attempted seduction? She hardly seems the type. To offer marriage in order to get a respectable girl into your bed seems damned underhanded to me.”

Harry recoiled as if he’d been struck. But he met Lord Jervin’s gaze until the duke’s son was forced to look away.

“That’s the kind of behavior you believe you can expect from me, Jervin?”

“Actually, no. For God’s sake, Harry, I thought I knew you. I didn’t think you capable of such a dishonorable action.”

Harry’s voice acquired a sarcastic bite that Prudence would hardly have recognized.

“Until now? Good Lord, you don’t put much faith in my character, do you? What in God’s name would make you leap to the conclusion that I would propose only in order to ravish her?”

“What else was I to think after what you told me—an undying passion for your own brother’s wife, for God’s sake?”

“So you have decided that your duty must be to protect the innocent Miss Drake, whatever your loyalty to a friend? Obviously, if that friend has dishonorable intentions, you would follow a course to thoroughly scuttle them. But why is it any business of yours?”

Lord Jervin looked defensive. “Why not? Anyway, why shouldn’t the child tell me?”

Harry dropped into a chair and began to laugh.

“Why not, indeed?” he said at last. “But how deuced unfortunate that I chose to get so devilish foxed that night, and spill my cursed unsavory guts to my rattle-brained friend!”

Jervin was looking extremely uncomfortable. He ran his hand back through his hair leaving it standing in tufts.

“Is it?”

“Unfortunate enough that I am tempted to call you out. Did you see it your duty to tell Prudence?”

The duke’s son was now a deep red. “Should I have done?”

“I trust not. But I might still demand satisfaction, I think. For your damned judgmental and unnecessary remarks, if for nothing else.”

Jervin paled. “By God, you know I’m no match for you with a pistol, Harry. It would be murder.”

Harry flung himself back on the chaise longue and deliberately tossed his booted feet up onto the delicate upholstery of the arm.

“Murder? Why does that word carry so much appeal right now, I wonder? For I intend to marry Prudence Drake, whatever the world or my father may say about it. So I wish you would keep your bloody uncalled-for aspersions to yourself. But first I must take her to Acton Mead, where my brother’s heartbreakingly lovely wife will greet me with a tender kiss and tease me for being away so long. I am, after all, her dearest brother. The visit is going to be devilish uncomfortable, don’t you think?”

Lord Jervin seemed bereft for a moment. “You will take Miss Drake to Helena’s house? Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because it’s the only place I can think of where she’ll be safe. King’s Acton is too far, and anyway, I doubt if the earl and my mother are in residence right now. Lady Acton is probably in London, in fact. I cannot leave Bobby and Prudence to the untender mercies of my father’s staff. Neither can I allow her to go alone into Wiltshire to her relatives. The man we are fleeing has powerful connections. If he knows about Prudence, then he knows about her family. Do you think a country squire could protect her and the child?”

“You really believe little Lord Dunraven is in mortal danger?”

Harry sat up, ignoring the mud he had left on the couch.

“I don’t know what to believe. It seems too fantastic, of course, but Prudence believes it, and that’s all that counts. So I would be very grateful, dear fellow, if—instead of undermining her faith in me with your dark suspicions and gallant concern—you would lend me a carriage, some horses, and an armed guard, and help me convince Miss Drake that Acton Mead is her best hope.”

“What if I don’t feel like cooperating?”

Harry stood up and looked darkly at his friend. “Then I shall slaughter you right now with the poker.”

“Oh, dear God! Listen, Harry, you know I’d do anything reasonable to help you. But you can’t marry some unknown Scottish governess, especially when you’re nursing an unrequited love for someone else. And I’m damned if I’ll stand by and let you ruin her.”

“I do not intend to ruin her,” Harry said with deliberate emphasis. “If that were my goal, I would have done it by now, for God’s sake.”

“But you can’t possibly marry her. As the second son, you need to marry money and connections. Anyway, your father would have a fit.”

Harry pointedly ignored this exactly accurate opinion about Lord Acton.

“And a change of clothes and a decent haircut and shave wouldn’t come amiss. So I wish to borrow your man for a barbering. Meanwhile, could you send a fellow over to my old lodgings for a brace of pistols and some decent apparel? I’ve been living in these damnable rags since I came back from France.”

“France?” Lord Jervin queried. “By God, didn’t you know? Boney’s back in Paris. We’ll be at war again before the month’s out. Why on earth did you go to France?”

A look of genuine consternation crept over Harry’s face.

“Good God,” he said after a moment. “I have no idea. And that is the whole and unvarnished truth, at least.”

“I refuse,” Prudence said.

“I don’t accept your refusal. If necessary, I shall take Bobby to safety, and bring you along in bonds behind him. Lord Belham wants only the child, but he might be prepared to hurt you in order to get to him. We’re going to Acton Mead, angel, and you cannot prevent it.”

Prudence looked down and bit her lip. She had surprised herself by falling asleep in one of Lord Jervin’s guest bedchambers, then woken to find her bags neatly stacked at the foot of the bed, while a flustered maid hovered with jugs of hot water.

So she had bathed and changed, and come downstairs to find a tall, dark stranger waiting for her in the parlor.