Viscount Vagabond (7 page)

“A soldier,” said Lord Rand, breaking into a smile for the first time since he’d entered the house. “Where?”

“Peninsula, My Lord. I caught a ball in my leg, and being of no further military use, had to take up my old work.”

So it happened that amid the exchange of stories, the one talking of the Old World and the other of the New, Lord Rand forgot most of his objections to having someone poking about his belongings and gave utterance to only one mild oath when the valet laid out dinner clothes.

“Confound it,” his lordship muttered. “I’d almost forgotten the kind of rigour I’d be stuffed into for dinner. With the Old Man, no less. You could stand a regiment on his neckcloth and the blasted thing wouldn’t so much as crease. Wouldn’t dare.”

“Likes everything in order, does he, My Lord?” the valet asked as he gathered up his employer’s scattered belongings.

“And can’t for the life of him figure out how he sired such a disorderly brute of a son.”

“If you’ll pardon my free speech, My Lord, I must disagree with that assessment. It’s a pleasure to a man of simple tastes like myself to attend to a gentleman who wants neither padding nor corsets nor any sort of artifice to look as he should.”

That he looked as he should, and better than he had ever done in his life before, was of small comfort to the Viscount Rand some time later when he endured his mother’s effusive welcome and his father’s frigid greeting.

Lord Rand’s neckcloth began to grow rather snug, in fact, as the dinner conversation turned to his domestic responsibilities and, in particular, his need for a wife.

“Lady Julia is very sweet,” his mother told him. “Raleforth’s youngest girl, you know.”

“Simpers,” said Lord St. Denys.

“Miss Millbanke does not simper, Frederick. Very clever, too, they say.”

“Blue-stocking. Worse, she’s a prig. From what I hear, the family wants to shackle her to that one with the bad foot that fancies himself a poet.”

Lord Rand fought down his annoyance, though he could not keep the challenge from his tone when he spoke. “I daresay, m’lord, you’ve someone particular in mind.”

“No,” the earl replied without looking up from his plate.

“No?” the son echoed in some astonishment.

“But Frederick, what about Miss—?”

“No,” the earl repeated. “It’s none of our affair, Letitia. The lad is perfectly capable of finding his own wife.”

“Why, yes, of course,” Lady St. Denys agreed as she turned apologetically to her son. “I never meant to imply, dear, that you were not. Only that you go about so little in Society—”

“Doesn’t go about at all,” her husband interrupted.

“Why, yes, dear, and that is just the point. If he does not go about in Society, how is he to find a suitable girl?”

“Perhaps, Mother, I ought to advertise, and ask my secretary to screen the applicants for the position. Worked well enough for finding a valet.”

“Oh, Max,” the countess gasped.

“Got a valet, have you? I thought you appeared more presentable than usual.”

“But, Frederick, he can hardly advertise for a wife as one does for a servant. What would people think?”

“How should I know? None of our set’s ever done it before.”

“Oh, Frederick, I believe you’re roasting me. And you too, Max. You wicked creatures.” The countess smiled indulgently and returned her attention to her dinner.

Baffled by his father’s uncharacteristic behaviour, the viscount had trouble concentrating on his meal. Never in Max Demowery’s twenty-eight years had his parent shown any confidence whatsoever in his younger son’s judgement.

The father had the same tall, strong Demowery physique. However, his features were haughtier, more aquiline and forbidding, and maturity had added distinguished grey to his thick hair. That and the extra stone or so of girth made him a formidable figure—one, in fact, of a man accustomed to command. The Earl of St. Denys was indeed so accustomed, having inherited his title at a very early age. His voice rang out in the Lords as he enumerated with sonorous regularity his colleagues’ errors. That same voice resounded with equal force through his household. The Old Man, Max often complained, had never noticed that his children had graduated from leading strings.

Lord St. Denys had not permitted his eldest son to take orders, though that was what Percy wanted and what everyone knew him best fitted for. The earl had also tried to choose his daughter’s husband. Fortunately, unlike Percy, Louisa had not inherited her mother’s meekness. She’d refused. Threatened with being locked in her room until she could work herself into a compliant frame of mind, she bolted, dragging a reluctant abigail with her, to take refuge with the one human being her papa could not command—his formidable cousin Agatha.

In this Louisa had followed the example of her younger brother, who’d been running away from everyone and everything since his little legs were strong enough to carry him. Max had run away from home innumerable times. At the age of ten he’d fled Eton and would certainly have found other ways to make himself unwelcome there after being dragged back had not a young, perceptive master taken the restless boy under his wing and found work to challenge him.

Max had managed his Oxford career with a few scrapes, but without disgrace. Immediately upon quitting that institution he’d enlisted under a false name as a common soldier. The earl had eventually tracked him down and gotten him discharged. Less than a year later, Max smuggled himself on board a ship bound for the New World.

There he’d have contentedly remained had Percy not met with the riding accident. Rebellious as Max was, even he was no match for the claims of eight centuries of Demowerys. Even he could not ignore this one great duty, especially after the earl had effectively sundered the one tie that might have kept his new heir in that raw, wild, young country. The place had suited Max. It appealed to his restless nature, his impatience with convention. He had learned there that he could make his own way. He could achieve success without depending upon either his social station or his father’s largess.

Max returned from his sojourn in the wilderness with a fortune of his own. That was some consolation for having to embark upon a life he’d always detested among people whose narrow-mindedness, rigid rules of behaviour, and arrant hypocrisy made him seethe with frustration. He might have to accept the responsibilities of an heir, but at least he need not beg his managing father for money. He owed the earl nothing.

So the heir had meant to assert as soon as Lord St. Denys embarked upon the hated topic of marriage and producing heirs—several, preferably. After all, as Percy’s accident had demonstrated, a nobleman could never be certain he wouldn’t require spares.

Now the viscount felt the wind had been taken out of his sails. He’d looked forward to another blowup with his father. The heir’s townhouse, with its army of servants and its spotless, tasteful furnishings, had seemed so cool and proper and polite that it suffocated him. The prospect of living there as the lone master oppressed his spirits.

In the past when he’d felt stifled, he’d always run away. Since he couldn’t do that now, he wanted to take out his frustration on the Old Man. Lord Rand wanted, as well, distraction from the odd female whose eyes and voice persistently intruded upon his thoughts. A quarrel about the future viscountess was just the thing—only it seemed he was to be forestalled in that too.

Refusing to give up hope altogether, the viscount raised the subject again after his mother had left the two men to their port.

“I confess I’m puzzled, My Lord. Louisa told me today that you had half a dozen suitable brides picked out for me—but just a while ago you claimed you hadn’t any.”

“Oh, I do,” said the earl. “Five, actually.”

Max’s blue eyes gleamed, and he felt a rush of exaltation as the old animosity blazed up within him.

“Only five?”

“Yes, but I’m not going to tell you who they are.”

The son put down the glass he’d just raised to his lips. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said I won’t tell you. What sort of fool do you take me for? As soon as I breathe a young woman’s name you’ll take her in dislike, sight unseen, simply because I suggested it. No, as I see it, the only way my opinions stand a chance is to keep them to myself.”

“Do you mean to say that you think I’ll approve one of these five?”

“I’m not saying anything, as I just told you. It’s your affair, and if I come poking in with my opinions, you’re bound to go contrary on me, as you always do, Max. Since the day you were born, I think.”

Lord St. Denys took an appreciative sip from his refilled glass. “Still, you’re no longer a child, as my son-in-law has pointed out repeatedly,” he went on while absently turning the goblet in his hands. “Edgar claimed you’d be back at the end of your six months, ready to do your duty. So you are, punctual to the minute. I have no doubt you’ll do your duty in the matter of finding a bride. More than that a parent has no right to ask.”

Had Lord Rand not been staring perplexedly into his own glass, he might have caught the suspicious twinkle that lit his father’s eyes. As it was, the viscount was aware only of a surging frustration—and a resultant need to find some topic on which the two might loudly disagree.

“Except, I suppose, that I do this duty at the earliest opportunity,” the son suggested.

“Whenever,” was the provoking answer. “Plenty of time, plenty of fish in the sea. If you never do get around to it before you reach your dotage, there’s always your Cousin Roland. Serena—his wife, you know—just produced their fifth, I hear. No danger of the title dying with you.”

Max ground his teeth. He detested his sanctimonious Cousin Roland and suspected his father did as well. The idea of Roland or one of his puling brats becoming Earl of St. Denys was more than one could stomach, even if one didn’t give a damn about titles and thought the whole business of primogeniture a poisonous carryover from barbaric times and the aristocracy itself a cancer on the body politic.

“I thought you’d rather see the line die out than have it carried on by Roland and that stupid cow he married,” he could not help reminding.

“Won’t matter to me, will it, when I’m six feet beneath the earth?”

This altogether unsatisfactory conversation ended shortly thereafter when the gentlemen rose to join Lady St. Denys in the drawing room.

Consequently, as soon as he’d taken leave of his parents, Lord Rand marched himself directly to White’s, confident that he would be denied entrance to that bastion of Torydom and might, in response, instigate a riot in St. James’s.

Lord Rand had reckoned without Mr. George Brummell. That gentleman, upon learning of a brewing altercation upon the club’s outer steps, and finding himself holding a singularly poor hand, put down his cards and strolled to his usual place at the famous Bow Window to join his colleagues in watching the scene.

“Who is that tall, noble-looking fellow?” he enquired of his neighbour.

“Wh-why—L-Lord Rand, sir,” stammered Sir Matthew Melbrook, his poise knocked to pieces at being addressed by the Great Beau. “A r-radical—and a great r-ruffian.”

“Ah, yes. Viscount Vagabond. His neckcloth is a work of art,” said Society’s arbiter of fashion. He turned away and sauntered back to the card table.

In less than a minute his pronouncement had made its way out to St. James’s Street. A gentleman who’d been endeavouring to lay his hands upon that same neckcloth— apparently intending to throttle his adversary with it—backed away, and Lord Rand, to his astonishment, was invited to enter the club.

“I ain’t a member,” he challenged loudly as he stomped inside.

“‘Fraid you are,” drawled Lord Alvanley while he surveyed the newcomer with appreciative amusement. “Have been this twelvemonth. Andover sponsored you and the decision was unanimous. Apparently some of our lads forgot that small matter. I would have spoken up sooner myself, but I hated to spoil the entertainment you were so kind to offer us.”

“Confound it,” the viscount complained as Lord Alvanley ambled away. “Has everyone in Town taken leave of his senses?”

“If you mean the warm welcome,” came a voice behind him, “it must be they suddenly remembered what a dull old stick Percy was. Either that or the fact that Brummell admired your cravat.” The voice’s owner, a good-looking young man with dreamy grey eyes and rumpled brown hair, moved to Lord Rand’s side. “Don’t you remember me, Max? Langdon. We were at Oxford together.”

“So we were, Jack,” said the viscount, a smile finally breaking through his clouded countenance. “Only how was I to know you without a book in front of your nose? Damn if I didn’t think they grew there.”

“Oh, these suspicious fellows won’t let me read when we’re at cards. They claim I keep a spare deck between the pages. But come. As your brother-in-law isn’t here to do the honours, let me introduce you around.”

His humour partially restored by the presence of his old school chum, Max submitted with good grace. Whatever remained of his rage soon evaporated in the convivial atmosphere of gambling, drinking, and increasingly raucous conversation as the night wore on. So convivial was the company that Lord Rand had to be carried out to a hackney shortly before dawn, from which vehicle he was removed by a brace of footmen, who carried him to his bedroom. There Blackwood succeeded to the honours of attending to his happily unconscious lordship.