“Why? How can your being in Portsmouth hurry the ship up?”
She had a point.
She hurried on before he could muster another objection. “I miss all my particular friends, dearest. I miss attending balls and routs.” She closed her eyes. “And there are many new plays to be enjoyed on Drury Lane.”
And shopping, he thought.
“And shopping, naturally. I do adore shopping on Bond Street, you know.”
She also adored shopping in Saint Austell, Julian thought, recalling the quantity of clothing bills that arrived punctually on Harlan’s desk.
“And you need to visit your tailor. Your coat is very well indeed, for Italian society, but not exactly what you would want here in London, and your boots, well—”
Yes, he did need new boots, but—
She rose from the blue brocade settee opposite him, patted his shoulder, leaned down to kiss his cheek. “I truly wish to go. There has been so much rain here, and to be blunt about it, I am growing mold, not an elevating sight. It is time for a change of scene—specifically, it is time to visit London, for the Season this time, not for your wretched man of business.”
Julian felt the earth shifting beneath his boots, his old boots. At last he was home. He wanted to settle in, manage his property, play with his spaniels on the dog run that ended at the low cliff above the beach. He knew it was time to see if Richard Langworth and his father, Baron Purley, still blamed him for Lily’s death. “You really don’t need me, Mama. You could as easily travel to London, open the town house, and do whatever pleases you. Why do you want me along?”
She said, with a good deal of hauteur, “Do you forget you are my son, my only son, and I have not seen you for three—three—years? I wish all of society to gaze upon your exquisite self, admit there is no finer-looking a young man in all of England, and be jealous of me.”
What was going on here? He said slowly, “Don’t forget the other Monroe lady, namely, Lorelei, your stepdaughter-in-law. She will doubtless be there. You know you would rather have your eyebrows plucked than have to deal with her.”
His mother had thick black brows like his, and he’d heard her shriek when her maid, known as Poor Barbie, had to pluck them every week and a half.
“I shall firmly plant myself above Lorelei this time; I shan’t allow her to give me the headache with her obnoxious little observations on my looks and health and how you should never have been born and how your dear father turned into a pilchard-headed old moron when he turned seventy-five, and just look what came of it—namely, me—and would you look what I did—brought you into the world. And then, naturally, she will go on and on about you, her chins quivering all the while—a duke’s son, even though you should never have been born in the first place, and you’re obviously deficient, since you sprang from an old man’s tired seed, and not the healthy, intelligent seed of a vigorous man, as your dear father was many decades ago. Worst, you indulge in trade, and what a horror that is.”
She paused to take a well-earned breath. She tapped her long fingers against her teacup and brightened. “If I recall, Lorelei had gained flesh when I last saw her, and I haven’t, and I’ll wager she still persists in wearing all that purple.” She gave a small shudder.
Julian said nothing.
She eyed him. “Devlin is always in London for the Season. I know his father is beginning to agitate for a daughter-in-law, since Devlin is now twenty-seven—can you believe that?—and he needs to get himself wed and set up his nursery.”
“Both Devlin and I are to be consigned to leg shackles?”
She ignored that. “Really, Julian, do not concern yourself about my dealing well with Lorelei. I shall give her my most regal nod and continue on my way.”
Julian gave it one more try. “As I said, you really don’t need me with you, Mother.”
To his surprise, her small rounded chin began to tremble, and those beautiful dark eyes of hers sheened with tears.
“All right, I see you will have the truth out of me, Julian.”
3
The truth?
Before he could find out this truth, Julian heard barking outside the drawing room and rose. “I have a surprise for you.” He opened the door and motioned to his valet, Pliny, to release the King Charles spaniels he’d brought back from Genoa.
Freed, the spaniels ran to him, yipping, leaping about, their long silky ears flopping up and down. They didn’t jump on him, but they circled him, dancing, as he’d taught them.
He went down on his haunches and gathered them all to him. He said, pointing, “Mother, I would like you to meet Cletus, Beatrice, Oliver, and Hortense. They are a year old. You might think they all look the same, but their personalities are as different as ours. Since my estate room gives onto the dog run, that is where they’ll spend most of their time.”
“Ah, that is fine, dearest. Goodness, they do leap about, don’t they? Look at that one.”
“Cletus.”
“Why, I think he would like to meet me.”
Julian picked up an excited Cletus and carried him to his mother, the other three spaniels barking madly behind him. She petted his soft hair, received a dozen enthusiastic licks.
“Cletus,” she said. “I fancy you are a very well-behaved little fellow, are you not?”
Cletus wriggled free from Julian’s hands, yipped and barked, and relieved himself on the Aubusson carpet.
Corinne said, “Yes, your estate room is an excellent place for these charming little dogs. Call for Pouffer, dearest, to clean up little Cletus’s accident.”
Soon the four spaniels were racing after Pliny, barking, tails wagging, to visit their new home in the estate room, and Pouffer was directing a maid to clean up little Cletus’s accident, after which he burned two feathers to eliminate any possible odors.
“Pliny is looking well,” Corinne said.
“As much as his poet’s brooding soul allows,” Julian said. “He should have trod the boards, I’ve told him. He adores drama and being in the center of it. I’m pleased, though, he didn’t cry when Cletus relieved himself on the carpet.” Pliny, a dapper little man of forty, blessed with a full head of white-blond hair, had been selling boots in Portsmouth and fair to starving when Julian had hired him away as his valet. Eleven years, he thought, he’d been so young. On the other hand, Pliny had been young as well.
His mother eyed him and spit it out. “We must go to London because there is a young lady for you to meet.”
“Ah, so this is the truth you must tell me?”
“Yes. You remember Bethanne Wilkie. She was my very best friend. She died two years ago.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. You wrote to me of her death. I remember her as a charming lady, always smiling.”
“Yes.” Corinne sighed. “I still miss her. Do you happen to remember her daughter?”
Julian recalled a skinny little girl with dark braids scraped back from her small face, tall, awkward, never saying a word in his presence. He remembered once when he’d been working at his desk, he’d happened to look up and see her peering at him from behind a curtain in the estate room.
His mother cleared her throat. “The truth is Bethanne Wilkie and I always wished to have our families united.”
His stomach dropped to his dusty Hessians. He had a terrifying image of the skinny twelve-year-old gowned in white standing beside him in front of a vicar, a long veil covering her face, the beautiful Ravenscar ruby ring sliding off her small finger to land on the floor and rolling, rolling—“Good grief, Mama, she’s a little girl! When she wasn’t trailing after me, she was tucked against her mother’s skirts or lurking behind curtains to stare at me. As I recall, I once said hello to her, and she turned pale and ran from the room.”
“Little girls become ladies.”
“Why have you never spoken to me of this young lady before?”
“When you married Lily, she was far too young for you. When Lily died, she was still too young, but it didn’t matt
er, because you sailed from England for three years.”
“I don’t recall her name.”
“Her name is Sophie Colette Wilkie. Sophie is spelled quite in the French way, since her father, a clergyman, adores the French, a people few can stomach, and rightfully so, but so he does, particularly the classical French, particularly the playwright Molière. Sophie even has a French second name—Colette.”
He had no memory whatsoever of the little girl’s name. Sophie Colette—it was enough to curdle his innards. Julian had come home to find peace. And instead, his mama wanted to present him with a bride named Sophie Colette? He said, “I like Molière as well.”
“Yes, he is classical enough, I fancy, but I mean, who cares? Now, I have informed Sophie’s father that I shall present Sophie in London at the Buxted ball Wednesday evening, exactly two weeks from today. You will be there, naturally. I understand dear Sophie will be chaperoned by her aunt, Roxanne Radcliffe, who is one of Baron Roche’s daughters, and they will stay in the Radcliffe town house on Lemington Square. Since Roxanne was Bethanne’s sister, she must be well advanced in her years. Bethanne always told me Roxanne preferred the country, and so I simply must travel to London to assist her in bringing out my dear Sophie.” She paused, raised her dark eyes to his face, the look that always pierced him to his gullet, and had, obviously, pierced his father’s gullet as well, ancient though his gullet was at the time.
He tried once more. “If you tell me Sophie Wilkie is fresh out of the schoolroom, I will board one of my ships and sail to Macao.”
“I don’t know where this Macao place is, but it sounds nasty and foreign. Oh, no, dearest. Since her mama died two years ago, followed quickly by her grandmother, Sophie has worn black gloves forever, poor child. She is well into her twentieth year, not a child at all, indeed, very nearly a spinster.”
Twelve years between them, an acceptable age difference by society’s norms, but too many years for him. She’d been naught but a little girl when the Duke of Wellington finally vanquished Napoléon at Waterloo. She would have no memory of what was happening in the world during his first twelve years. Julian realized he might as well batter his head against the huge stone fireplace in the great hall of Ravenscar. No hope for it. He folded his tent. “When would you like to leave?”
His fond mama wasn’t a fool. She never rubbed her fist in a face when victorious unless it was that of her stepdaughter-in-law, Lorelei. She gave him a sweet smile as she rose to kiss his cheek and pat his shoulder. “Did I tell you she is a beauty? Her hair is dark brown, her eyes a light blue like a summer sky. She is no small mincing miss. Indeed, I find my eyes must travel upward a goodly distance to meet hers.” She patted him again. “You are a remarkably fine son, dearest.”
“Do you think, Mama, that I might have a week at home to see to estate matters?”
She patted his face. “With your exquisite brain, I believe four or five days will do the trick nicely.”
He wasn’t stupid. He had four days.
Julian hadn’t been home in three years. Why hadn’t he waited three more months, until, say, August? The wretched Season would be over. But he hadn’t. He would go to London, he would meet Sophie Colette—spelled in the French way—and he would pat her head and leave her to the younger gentlemen.
4
4 Rexford Square
London
EIGHT DAYS LATER
Lord Devlin Archibald Jesere Monroe, the seventh Earl of Convers and heir to the Duke of Brabante, and only son to Lorelei Monroe, stood quietly in the doorway of his half-uncle’s estate room, watching him study a sheaf of papers, his concentration so profound he hadn’t even heard his butler, Tavish, announce him. Devlin realized he’d missed Julian very much. Three years, it was too long a time.
Julian’s black hair was standing on end, his collar was open at his throat, and he wore a linen shirt nearly as white as Devlin’s face but not quite. Devlin smiled as he cleared his throat.
Julian jerked up, his pen spluttering ink on the final page of a document he was on the point of signing. He shot a glare at his half-nephew. “Damnation, Dev, look what you made me do. Now Pennyworth will have to recopy this page.”
“Pennyworth was last seen flirting with one of your downstairs maids, so your butler told me. Her name, I heard Tavish say to Mrs. Stokes, is Emmy.”
Julian laid down his pen, rose, stretched, gave his nephew a lazy smile, and strode to him, hugging him close. “It’s been too long, Dev. How are you?”
Devlin grinned. “I remember things were always more stimulating when you were about. I trust you have not become dull and sober in your old age?”
“We will spend the evening together, and you will tell me.”
He realized Devlin was nearly his size. How could he have forgotten that? He clasped his shoulders, studied his face. “You look as pale and healthy as the last time I saw you. No, since it’s been raining interminably, you’re paler than I remember.”
Devlin laughed. “I worship the rain, I chant for its coming, since I must maintain my otherworldly vampire persona.”
Julian remembered that at eighteen, Devlin had become enthralled with some ancient manuscripts he’d read at Oxford and decided that being a vampire would amuse him. It had. Devlin, Julian thought, made an excellent vampire.
“Would you like a brandy, or do you need to drink some blood?”
“Do you know Corrie Sherbrooke once offered me her neck at midnight?” He laughed again. “It was only six months ago. I remember once when I rode with her in the middle of a sunny day, I took a huge risk and didn’t wear a hat. It must have been a wager, I don’t recall.”
“You did not burn up. That is a relief. So she wed James Sherbrooke, did she?”
“Yes, last fall.”
“I remember the Sherbrooke twins. Didn’t all the ladies consider them gods?”
“Curse James, he does look like a bloody god, the bastard.”
Julian said, “I’ve got something better than brandy or blood.” Julian walked to the sideboard and held up a crystal decanter. “Whiskey from the wilds of America.”
“I hear it is a nasty drink,” Devlin said.
“Here, give it a try.”
Devlin eyed the whiskey. “You insist on forcing me to burn out my stomach?”
Julian laughed. They clicked their glasses and drank.
Devlin felt the brutal fire all the way to his heels, but he wasn’t going to cough. He nearly turned blue, the effort was so great, then he lost the battle and wheezed until Julian, grinning like a bandit, smacked him hard between his shoulder blades.
“You are my elder,” Devlin whispered. “You should protect me, not torture me. Give me brandy, Julian.”
Once he’d drunk some of Julian’s very fine Spanish brandy—Gran Duque D’Alba, no less—he was able to collect himself and sit down, his color restored, but since there wasn’t much color at all on Devlin’s face, Julian couldn’t tell. He crossed his legs and swung a booted foot.
Devlin said, “My mother told me this morning she received an impertinent missive from your upstart mother informing her that you were home at last and she would be in London for the Season, you as her escort. I was pleased. It really has been too long. I’ll say, the thought of dumping insults on your mother’s head perked my mother right up. Your mother is well, Julian?”
“My mother is always well. I was dragged here to meet a young lady, the daughter of my mother’s bosom friend, Bethanne Wilkie is her name, now dead, and thus the daughter has been in black gloves and not as yet had a Season. Her name is Sophie, spelled in the French way, you know, and thank the good Lord she isn’t fresh out of the schoolroom, else I would flee to Scotland to hunt grouse.”
“How old is Sophie, spelled in the French way?”
“Twenty, but that is still too young for me.”
Devlin grinned. “As long as men must insist on not wedding until they’re in their dotage, young wives will continue to flourish. It is sai
d they are more malleable.”
“What idiot said that?”
“Still, twelve years between husband and wife isn’t anything out of the ordinary.”
“It is to me,” Julian said.
Devlin laughed again, stretched his arms behind his head, and regarded his step-uncle. “Do you remember when you and I sailed to the Isle of Wight in your yacht Désirée and those drunk young men from Oxford plowed into us?”
“I do, although they were about your age, as I recall.”
“Possibly, but I was more mature, more governed in my habits. In any case, do you remember that one very young girl we saved when she got tossed overboard?”
“I remember. What was her name?”
“Giselle, quite French, she told me, as she coughed up water all over my shirt, like your French Sophie.”
“What happened to her? You never said in your letters.”
“Ah, I brought her to London. We quite enjoyed each other for a time. She is now in Plymouth, I believe.”
Julian rolled his eyes. “Trust you to save a girl and take her to bed.”
Devlin said in his world-weary voice, “Do tell me your point, old boy.”
Julian laughed, couldn’t help himself. Three years had made a difference in his half-nephew. Devlin was more sophisticated, he supposed, much more confident, at ease in his world. He realized he loved his half-nephew and quite enjoyed his vampire affectation. How strange life was, he thought. Julian’s very old father had married his very young mother, produced him, and he’d instantly become the half-uncle to the future Duke of Brabante. As for Devlin’s mother—the evil witch Lorelei, according to Julian’s mother—he found her amusing and blessedly predictable in her bone-deep dislike of him. He said to Devlin, “I daresay she considered you a fine protector.”
Devlin said, “It is always quite nice when there is only a question of recompense involved between a man and a woman. Now I will take you to my tailor and boot maker. You are in grave need of polishing up, Julian, before you meet this Sophie, spelled in the French way.”