The Unscrupulous Uncle (3 page)

“Welcome home, my lord,” said Wendell when Damon appeared at the door.

“You look well,” he replied, though he was shocked at how much older the butler appeared. Doing a quick calculation, he realized that the man was now in his late sixties. Could he still perform his duties? And what of the rest of the staff? Both the housekeeper and the head groom had been the same age as the butler.

But he could hardly pension off everyone the moment he returned. And Hermione would have her own ideas about servants. Tucker was right. There would have to be changes.

“Robbie will bring up hot water. He is new since you were last here.” Wendell gestured to a liveried lad, who looked sixteen.

“But well trained, I am sure.”

“Your luggage—”

“Will be along shortly. Send Tucker up when he arrives. And a bath.”

Damon headed for his room but halted at the split in the stairs to gaze at his father’s portrait. The eighth earl looked little like his son, a shock of black hair topping a long face. Only his tawny eyes glowed with kinship, even more alike now that Damon had banished all gaiety from his own. That feline stare seemed accusatory today, and Damon’s cheeks burned.

His father’s teachings had always centered on the duty he owed to his title. Damon had been an only child, the next in line a third cousin who lived in America. Thus Damon must guard against all peril lest the earldom pass to unworthy hands. He had lived with that reality from birth, and it had fueled his father’s opposition to buying colors. Damon’s dereliction of duty had meant a painful parting despite the conciliatory words. If the eighth earl had lived, Damon’s safe return would have brushed all that aside. Instead, pain clouded his memories.

“Forgive me, Papa,” he mouthed silently. “Your fears were well founded, yet my own point was also valid. If I had stayed, Peter would still have gone and would still have died, and I would have lived forever with the conviction that I could have saved him had I been there.” He laughed mirthlessly. “But how stupid that is! I would not have known. Had I stayed, I would have been on the yacht that day. Perhaps fate protected me by sending me to war. But enough of the past. I am alive so everything will be all right. And I will marry soon, probably at midsummer. You would have liked her, Papa, for she is very like Mama – golden, beautiful, and loving.”

His sire’s expression remained stony. Nothing had really changed. And why was he talking to a portrait? He was becoming eccentric. Already he spoke with too many ghosts. It was nearly as bad as talking to trees, which absurdity had got the King locked in a padded room.

Damon quickly mounted the rest of the stairs and was turning left when movement drew his attention to the right. Robbie was entering his father’s room. His room now, Damon admitted as the finality of his position registered. He must step into his sire’s shoes, and taking over the earl’s suite was the opening move. Yet it seemed almost blasphemous.

Drawing in a deep breath, he marched down the right-hand corridor.

 * * * *

Damon sat at his father’s desk, listening to the steward’s droning voice. The library looked strange from this perspective. Instead of his usual sight of the fourth and sixth earls – whose frowning countenances had added the disapproval of all his ancestors to his father’s lectures – he now saw books, globes, and a view of the formal gardens and lake. He thrust down the thought that the hill beyond the lake shielded his eyes from the Bristol Channel, wherein lay the bones of his family.

Hastings was detailing estate problems – and there were plenty. The disasters that had summoned him from London were merely the most pressing. “Devlin is not alone in either village unrest or in losing cattle. You should discuss the situation with other landowners, starting with Lord Braxton. He lost his entire dairy herd.”

“I had not planned to call,” protested Damon, wanting to never set foot there again. If the ghosts at Devlin had nearly broken him, those at Ridgway House were guaranteed to do so. “There is no one there I know.”

“Not even Miss Catherine?” asked the steward in amazement, before recalling his place and snapping his mouth closed. “Forgive me, my lord. I understood that the previous baron’s family was close to your own, but she is considerably younger than you.”

“I thought she married seven years ago.” Shock nearly paralyzed Damon’s voice.

“Married? I heard of no such plans, but then I was new to this position when you left, and met the previous baron only once before his own death. We did not discuss his family.”

“You are sure that she is still there?”

“Yes, though she does not go about in society.”

Damon returned to the business at hand, but his mind raced. What could have happened? He could not imagine her crying off. Had her beau died before her mourning period ended? Yet surely she would have looked about for another suitor. She would never wear the willow.

He fought past the haze that had engulfed his brain after Peter’s death, forcing himself to remember. The pain had not even begun to dull when word reached him that his parents and Peter’s had been lost in a sailing accident. It had been the last straw for his reason. He had no memory of the days that had followed and had never asked Tucker for the details, but a fortnight later he was on a ship headed for England, with a broken arm and the sort of bruises one acquired in a fight. Also aboard were the army’s top officers.

Sir Arthur Wellesley had trounced the French at Vimeiro, capturing their entire force. It should have freed Portugal and driven the invaders from much of Spain, but the arrival of his superiors – Sir Harry Burrand and Sir Hew Dalrymple – guaranteed a protracted struggle. In a move of utter stupidity, the two had negotiated the Convention of Cintra, allowing the French Army to return intact to France, where it was immediately reposted to the Peninsula. Burrand, Dalrymple, and Wellesley were recalled to face courts-martial, but the damage had been done.

Aboard ship, Damon was only peripherally aware of their presence. Still in a fog of grief and despair, his thoughts had focused on the substantial legal business engendered by his accession and on Catherine, whose situation was uncertain after the loss of her family. But he never traveled beyond London, getting caught up in the courts-martial proceedings. Though only a low-ranking officer, he had fought under Wellesley, receiving a field promotion for his efforts. His convenient presence in London demanded that he be called as a witness. By the time Wellesley was exonerated, there was no reason to go home, for Damon had encountered the new Lord Braxton at Brooks’s.

They’d exchanged condolences on family tragedy and congratulations on their respective accessions.

“What will Miss Catherine do now?” Damon asked. “Peter was worried about her future.”

“And with good reason,” agreed Lord Braxton. “But you need not concern yourself, my lord. She will be wed next summer. The betrothal was arranged a sennight before my brother died.”

This was news to Damon, though Peter could not have heard before Vimeiro, and Damon would have seen none of his friend’s letters afterward. “Who is the gentleman?”

“I doubt you know Roderick, my lord. He is a younger son of Sir Arthur Graham, who visited Somerset on business after you had left for Portugal. I met him at the funeral. He seems to be all that is proper, and my brother had already agreed to the connection. He is at home in Yorkshire now, for Catherine is still devastated by the loss of her family.”

“Of course,” agreed Damon, recognizing the understatement.

Now he nodded at whatever Hastings was suggesting. What had happened? And why was she avoiding society? There was only one way to find out – call at Ridgway House and ask her.

Promise me, Damon. If anything happens to me, you will look after Catherine.
But he had not. He had failed to carry out a sacred vow. By ignoring Devlin Court, he had not learned that Catherine’s future remained unsettled. Guilt flogged him, joining the ghosts that already berated him.

I’m sorry, Peter! Somehow, I will make up for my negligence.

 * * * *

 “Peckland claims that Mrs. Newman has a putrid sore throat,” groused Lady Braxton, biting into a scone. “I don’t know why he has to bother me with tenant problems. Handling such things is his job.”

Catherine mentally shrugged. Her aunt had never grasped that the lady of the manor was expected to look after the welfare of the tenants. Peckland usually brought problems to Catherine. Why not this time?

Lady Braxton finished her scone and sighed. “You will have to see the woman, I suppose. Take her a basket.”

“Gladly.”

“But don’t give her anything valuable. It only encourages excess sensibility. Peasants should never succumb to so trifling an ailment. They are too lazy already.”

Biting back a scathing rejoinder, Catherine left to execute this latest commission. It did no good to brangle with relatives who could so easily make her life miserable. But there were times that silence was difficult.

Lady Braxton’s contempt was nothing new. Nor was it unusual for someone in her position. Her father was a prosperous farmer who had been thrilled when Eugenia caught the eye of a baron’s younger son. But once she was wed, the girl ignored her family. Hortense and Drucilla had never even met their maternal grandparents, despite living barely twenty miles away. And Eugenia’s antagonism had worsened once death had elevated her husband to the peerage. Her background also colored her attitude toward Catherine, for she resented the aristocratic blood flowing through her niece’s veins.

Lady Braxton’s current ill temper dated to Sir Mortimer’s dinner party. Catherine had not attended, of course, but Dru’s description of the house guests matched Eugenia’s assessment – except that Lord Grey was in his late forties. Yet the evening had ended like so many others. The gentlemen pointedly avoided the Braxton sisters. Nor were they interested in attending a picnic, however well planned, claiming that business necessitated an immediate return to town. Word that they had not departed until three days later further infuriated the baroness. She had stormed about like a stoat with a sore paw ever since.

Hortense followed her mother’s lead, railing at spiteful gossip, for only a jealous rival could have prompted the cut she received before Lord Grey even made her acquaintance. Catherine made no comment, though she was mortified on behalf of her family. School friends whose older brothers were considered catches had repeated tales of matchmaking mothers and the stratagems they employed. The lower their own social status, the more blatant their lures. She could only conclude that her aunt was worse than the most encroaching mushroom, throwing her daughters at gentlemen with no regard to convention or even good taste. The Braxton ancestors must be turning in their graves at how far their once-proud name had fallen.

She had tried to convince Hortense that a different approach would work better. “Gentlemen prefer demure innocence and dislike being openly pursued,” she warned. “It creates an impression of impropriety that is difficult to overcome.”

“What would you know about the world?” scoffed her cousin. “You have never even been out in local society.”

“True, but Peter was, and I had many friends at school whose brothers and sisters were in London.”

“Ha! Some friends! Have you heard a word from any of them since you lost your place in our world?”

Catherine did not reply, for the question was rhetorical. They both knew she had no relationships outside of the family.

“Quit blathering about things you do not understand,” continued Hortense brutally. “There are different rules for town and country. London manners must be restrictive, for one sees the same people every day. But here one must seize the moment else visitors will leave before they can become acquainted.”

Catherine had nearly contradicted the falsehood, but protest was pointless, for Horty’s manner drove off the very men she hoped to attract. Pushing the memory from her mind, she sighed. Only the present was real.

She met with the cook to go over the day’s menus, then called on Mrs. Newman. The woman had suffered a severe inflammation of the lungs during the winter that left her weak, so it was hardly surprising that she was again ill. Her real problem was the poverty that had forced her to rise from her sickbed before she was fully recovered. The Newmans could not afford servants, and Lord Braxton had refused to supply one during her winter illness. With four small children at home, she would face the same future. One of the Tuggens girls might be willing to help, but she would have to be paid. Catherine had no money and could not use household funds for something her uncle had prohibited. Compounding the problem, Mrs. Newman was again increasing. Would she survive this time?

 * * * *

Damon turned his curricle through the gates of Ridgway House and gasped. The manicured park that had rivaled Devlin Court in all but size was now a property on the decline. Weeds encroached on the drive. The estate wall was crumbling where roots had buckled its foundation. Brush grew under the trees, and damaged limbs remained in place, posing a hazard to the unwary.

But overriding his sadness was renewed grief. Memories were everywhere, even stronger than at Devlin – he and Peter playing soldiers in the clearing, reenacting ancient battles from Hastings to Culloden; Catherine trotting after her twin brothers (as they had always styled themselves), her five-year-old legs unable to keep up with their longer ones; the fence which Peter had cleared at age eight, while Damon had suffered the ignominy of being thrown; a glimpse of the best fishing spot along the stream – Old Wily had kept them busy for years, moving at random between this stretch and a similar one at the Court. The ancient trout was recognizable both by his enormous size and by the distinctive notch on his dorsal spine. Fifteen-year-old Peter finally captured the fish, though his admiration for so stout an opponent had prompted him to throw Old Wily back. It was the last time they had gone fishing.

Damon shook his head to clear the visions, determined not to allow the past to intrude during this visit. He would not be here at all if Catherine had wed as expected.