The Revenge of Lord Eberlin (5 page)

B
enedict Sibley was in fine spirits, having convinced himself that his mastery of the law had helped earn Count Eberlin a favorable ruling. However, Benedict Sibley was a middling solicitor and a fool: the judge had been bought, just like everything else in Tobin’s life. The victory was expected.

But Tobin was denied the small victory of seeing Lily Boudine’s face when the ruling was delivered; she was not in attendance.

Mr. Goodwin, Ashwood’s solicitor and a formidable opponent, had known he’d lost before the magistrate had even been seated. Still, he’d given a good fight, and when the inevitable had come, and the one hundred acres had been ruled as belonging to Tiber Park, Mr. Goodwin had sought at the very least to shame Tobin. He’d accused him of preying on an innocent woman and stealing the land from beneath her feet.

Tobin was beyond shame and had been for many years.

It was Sibley’s idea that they have a celebratory pint of ale at the Grousefeather, and Tobin obliged him. As they walked out of the common rooms where the hearing had been held, Tobin spotted the Ashwood coach, with its showy plumes and crest. He imagined Mr. Fish and Mr. Goodwin giving Lily the news, of how she would blink her big green eyes and her bottom lip would quiver. Good.

At the Grousefeather, Tobin nursed his pint along, saying little as Sibley talked about his lofty ambitions. A full-bosomed serving girl caught Tobin’s eye; she smiled at him and walked by their table with an exaggerated swing of her wide hips. Tobin supposed she’d had her fair share of gentlemen abovestairs; however, he would not be among them. He’d give Hadley Green nothing untoward to say of him. They would see that they could not destroy the Scotts, that he’d come back stronger than ever.

When Sibley turned his attention to two gentlemen who had overheard his bragging, Tobin left the tavern. He was untying his horse’s lead when he happened to see Mr. and Mrs. Morton. They saw him, too—then turned the other way and pretended they had not.

Tobin yanked the rein free.

He’d dined at their home, for God’s sake. Once word had circulated that Count Eberlin was at Tiber Park, the invitations had begun to flow. It had seemed that
everyone had wanted to get a look at him, to put themselves in his circle of acquaintances, and the Mortons—an influential family—had been among the first. He’d accepted their invitation, for he remembered they’d been in Hadley Green at the time of his father’s demise.

Tobin hadn’t known that his father had been all but forgotten until he’d arrived at the Mortons’ home in a brand-new barouche coach just delivered from London, expecting to see a house that, in his memory, was quite grand. He’d been disappointed to find it much smaller than that. He’d been shown into the house by a hired butler and invited to sit on furnishings he’d found quite pedestrian.

He remained standing.

The company was likewise pedestrian. There were no sea captains, no mercenaries, no wealthy traders. Just country folk who believed their pastoral lives were somehow interesting.

At some point during the main course, a guest had asked Tobin about his title. He’d said that it was a Danish title. The look on the guest’s face—Freestone or Firestone, something like that—had been quite puzzled. “I suppose it is inherited from your mother?”

Tobin had chuckled. “If I had inherited even a few farthings, I doubt I would have risked running the naval blockade. No, sir, I bought the title and the estate from a displaced Danish count. That is the only manner in which Tobin Scott could ever possess a title.” He’d chuckled again and drunk his wine.

The room had grown so quiet that he’d heard someone’s belly rumble. There was quite a lot of nervous shifting and looking about. Mr. Morton had peered closely at him. “Might I inquire, my lord . . . who was your father?”

“Joseph Scott, the wood-carver,” Tobin had said casually, as if it was common knowledge, as if they ought to have known—which, to his thinking, they should have.

Tobin didn’t know precisely what he’d expected, but as he looked around the dinner table, he was a bit nonplussed. Could they not see how he’d persevered? Did they not hold at least a bit of respect for his having pulled himself up and out of the abyss?

Apparently not. The dinner had grown increasingly uncomfortable. The people around him had made stilted conversation. He’d understood then that not one of them understood that he was, in fact, the oldest son of that condemned wood-carver.

Tobin had found that rather curious. He had a personal portrait of his father, done when his father had been a young man, and he thought that the resemblance between them was quite marked. Had the residents of Hadley Green completely forgotten Joseph Scott? Was he nothing but a footnote in the history of this village, the man who had carved a magnificent staircase at Ashwood that had cost him his life?

Tobin did not seek to hide his identity. If anyone cared to look, they’d find his given name was on any
legal document having to do with Tiber Park. If anyone had asked him if he was, in fact, the son of Joseph Scott, as had Mr. Greenhaven, the man he’d employed to be his groundskeeper, he would have told them that he was.

From that point in that interminable supper, Tobin had been counting the moments until he might leave, but in the course of the meal he’d had one of his spells.

These bloody spells—he’d never had one until that moment on the road to Hadley Green, but now they seemed to come on him with alarming regularity. That worried him greatly, particularly as they seemed to occur when there were people about and he was away from the comfort of his private estate. He feared some sort of fatal malady. Or worse, something so debilitating, so emasculating, that he would be nothing but a shell of a man, capable of lifting nothing heavier than a goblet . . . not unlike the men seated around that dinner table that night.

Tobin hadn’t mentioned the spells to anyone, not even to Charity, for fear that he would be perceived as weak. Or
sickly
—if that were the case, he’d just as soon be dead. But the spells came over him without warning, triggered by things that seemed so innocuous that he couldn’t help believing he’d been invaded by some demonic fever.

That evening, at the Mortons’ dinner table, he’d felt a growing discomfort. Someone made a jest that had prompted several people to laugh, and that was it. The
sound of adults laughing made Tobin suddenly flush, and his neckcloth felt as if it were tightening around his throat. His chest had tightened painfully; his hands had trembled so badly that he’d dropped his spoon into his soup bowl with a clatter.

It had horrified him. He’d had to excuse himself for a few moments, walking almost blindly outside onto the walk, gripping his fists so tightly against whatever invisible thing had him by the throat that his fingers still ached the next morning. He’d recovered within a few moments, thankfully, and explained it away by saying he’d swallowed wrong. But he’d spent the rest of the evening in mortal fear that it would happen again.

The Mortons had blamed his attack on the tepid soup, apparently believing he was the sort to lose his composure over an unsatisfactory meal. They’d exclaimed over him, threatened to dismiss the cook and, for all Tobin knew, spiked the poor woman’s head on the fence. They believed they’d all but poisoned Lord Eberlin, or poor Tobin Scott, the improbable new owner of the newly grand Tiber Park.

The son of a condemned thief.

Seeing the Mortons turn from him now—even after he’d extended the invitation to the winter ball he would host at Tiber Park—redoubled Tobin’s determination for revenge.

He’d extended the invitation to the ball to all of Hadley Green’s meager
bon ton.
He intended to give
them a fireworks display the likes of which they’d never seen, wanted them to see the palace he was making of Tiber Park; wanted them to know who was the son of Joseph Scott.

Mr. Morton turned and glanced back at Tobin. It appeared as if he was having second thoughts for his retreat, for he touched the brim of his hat with a nod. Tobin lifted a pair of fingers, acknowledging him. But the last-minute gesture did not appease him.

He moved around his horse to mount him, and in doing so, his gaze caught a flash of blue. He paused; that was Lily standing on the walk with her two agents. She saw him, too, and fixed him with a look so glowering that he nearly laughed. She was wearing a dark blue gown and spencer that hugged her tightly, and a hat set at a slight angle and with as much plumage as the bloody coach. Just looking at her, Tobin felt a tug of something in his chest. A tic of . . . lust? Or a spell? Whatever it was, he clenched his hand in a fist, nodded at her, and swung up on his horse.

Lily turned away from him and walked down the street, the two men casting dark gazes at him as they followed her.

Tobin touched his horse’s mane. It was black, as black as Lily’s hair. He thought of her skin, like cream, with rosy patches of anger in her cheeks. He thought of her blistering green eyes with long, dark lashes. He thought of her hair undone, flowing down her back, and the curve of her waist into her hip. He thought of
the pleasure he would feel if he had her in his bed—exquisite, wet, warm pleasure.

A swell of physical discomfort reminded Tobin of just how long it had been since he’d lain with a woman. But he wanted to keep his need boiling just beneath the surface—that gave him the power to do what he needed here.

Then discomfort extended up to his chest, tightening oddly and shooting painfully down his spine. These bloody thoughts of Lily Boudine were giving him one of his spells. His scalp was perspiring. He resisted the urge to take out his handkerchief and dab at his face, lest anyone notice. He grappled blindly for the reins of his horse and surreptitiously glanced about him to see if anyone saw him there, practically choking on his own innards, and his gaze landed on the village green. In a blinding flash of memory, Tobin could see his father hanging there, twisting helplessly at the end of a rope.

He quickly dropped his gaze and focused on the reins, wrapping them tightly around his hand. He remembered the night before his father hanged, the last time Tobin ever spoke to him. Tobin had sobbed with grief, had railed against the people of Ashwood, and most especially against Lily Boudine. His father had embraced him, had held him tight. “She is a mere girl, Tobin. You cannot lay my fate at her feet. Look to God, son. There is no satisfaction in hate or anger. This is God’s will, for whatever reason, and you must accept it.”

“Why aren’t you angry?” Tobin had demanded. “Why do you not speak out against them, against the lies?”

His father had smiled sadly and had run his hand over Tobin’s head. “It would serve no purpose. It would change nothing. The die has been cast and it is no one’s fault but my own.”

Tobin’s heart was pounding now, and he wheeled his horse about and galloped down High Street. He rode blindly, pushing the horse, heedless of the clouds darkening in a pale gray sky, heedless of anything but the need to be away from the village of Hadley Green and this bloody spell.

When he felt the constriction in his chest easing, he was in a clearing along that seldom-used road he’d adopted as his own. He reined his horse to a stop, flung himself off its back and marched forward, his stride long and determined, drawing deep breaths. He strode to a rock and sat heavily, his elbows on his knees, pushing his hands through his hair.
What was wrong with him?
Was it madness? Was it a malicious cancer of his brain or his heart? He’d never felt anything like it; it was as if he were crawling out of his skin, as if his veins were constricting, drawing up, and restricting the flow of blood through him.

He loosened the knot on his neckcloth, then straightened up to draw a deep breath—and looked right into the face of a little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.

She cocked her head curiously to one side, like a little sparrow. “Pardon, sir. Are you weeping?”

“Weeping!” he scoffed. “Do I look as if I am weeping?”

She studied him a moment, then shrugged.

Tobin drew a breath, released it slowly as he took her in. She looked to be about eight years old. She was wearing a pink and white frock, but the sash had come undone. Her hair had been put up at some point, but it was mussed and a portion of it had come down and hung carelessly over her shoulder. He recognized her as the ward of Lily Boudine’s cousin, Keira Hannigan.

“You look unwell,” she remarked. “Perhaps you should go to bed. That’s what I’m always made to do when I feel ill.”

“I am perfectly all right,” he said. “Why are you here? Are you alone?”

She nodded, but her gaze was fixed below his chin. “Your neckcloth has come undone.”

“So has your sash,” he pointed out, and the girl glanced down, looking surprised by the discovery.

“Look here, where do you live? It will be raining soon, and you have no coat.”

The weather seemed to have gone unnoticed by her; she looked up to the sky with a frown.

“Run along home,” he said, gesturing toward the woods. “Where is your house?”

“Ashwood,” she said. “I live with the countess. The
second
countess. The first countess was only a pretend one, but this one is a
real
countess, and she’s quite pretty and very kind. She hasn’t a
lot
of friends, not like the pretend countess.
She
had squads and squads of friends. I am going to live with her in Ireland. Lord Donnelly is coming for the horses and for me and he is going to take me all the way to Ireland. They mean to adopt me, you know.”

“That is happy news, indeed, but you’ll be no use to them if you are struck dead by cold. Run along home,” he repeated.

“Where do
you
live?” she asked, ignoring his advice.

“Tiber Park.” He looked up at the sky—the clouds were thickening and the girl was at least twenty minutes by foot from Ashwood. If she could be depended upon to walk a straight line. As much as Tobin despised the residents of Hadley Green, those feelings did not extend to children. That was the one part of him that hadn’t been entirely corrupted by the life he’d led thus far.