Part 65 (2/2)

Millie knew better than to suggest her aunt's pets stay behind. ”But not the cat. I still have scars from the last time we tried to give her a bath.”

”I daresay Grimalkin wouldn't travel well. If Henry stays back, he can feed her and keep an eye on the cottage, although everyone in miles knows there's nothing to steal here. But what if we don't return? If we are invited to stay at Knollwood?”

If Ned and his wife did invite them, Millie thought, it could only be because they needed free servants in the nursery or the scullery. Either way, Millie had no intention of returning to this decrepit, draughty cottage, or to the meanest cat in creation. If worse came to worse, Millie still had her pearls, her gold locket and a pair of diamond eardrops to sell. She'd been saving them for an emergency. The end of their financial support, such as it was, counted as just such a crisis. ”We can send Henry funds to take Grim home with him.”

The cat rolled over and swatted at the threadbare curtains, leaving a jagged tear behind. Aunt Mary nodded. ”I suppose that means she doesn't like it here, either.”

So they were going. Back to the past with hopes for a better future.

That night Millie wept, not for the father who'd always been distant and disapproving, certainly not for leaving the place where she'd lived the past five years. No, she cried for the memories of what once was.

Two.

”It is I, Whitbread. Ted.”

The white-haired butler stared at the unkempt brute at the entrance of Driscoll Hall, ready to slam the carved oak door or call for the footmen. And a blunderbuss. Then he looked past the bushy hair and the darkened skin. ”Master Theodore? Is that truly you?”

The tall bearded man in rough leather coat, boots, and breeches stepped closer and smiled, showing even white teeth against the tan. ”Truly, Whitbread. I am home at last.”

”Oh, Master Theodore, how glad I am to see you after all these years. And looking so, ah, hearty. But I forget myself. I should be calling you Lord Driscoll, should I not?”

”Not yet, my friend. I still have to prove myself alive to anyone outside the family before I can officially announce my return. Then I have to prove myself innocent of countless spurious charges. I have much to do before I can present myself as Viscount Driscoll or take my seat in Parliament.”

Whitbread led the way into the library, where generations of Driscolls had gone over accounts, entertained their cronies and escaped the day's worries in a gla.s.s of spirits. ”I trust hiring a valet and seeing a tailor is among the first priorities.”

Ted smiled again, this time with pleasure at the old retainer's unspoken affection, as well as the fine cognac Whitbread was pouring out. He pushed his long dark hair away from his eyes and smoothed out his untrimmed beard as best he could. ”My first priority must be staying alive, hence the frontiersman disguise.” Which was no disguise at all, simply the way he had looked and dressed for the past several years in the Canadian provinces. ”I shall repair my appearance and my wardrobe in time, but not until I restore my good name and bring to justice those who tried to destroy it, and me.”

Now the butler shook his head and frowned. ”To think that anyone would try to murder you, much less label you a traitor and a deserter, My Lord. Not that anyone in the family would harbour suspicion for an instant. Not knowing what a fine young man you are, how loyal and honest and-”

Ted cleared his throat and gestured for the butler to join him in a welcome home libation.

The butler nodded his appreciation and filled another gla.s.s. ”Kind and modest, too. Why, we were so thrilled to know you were alive, we wished to shout it from the rooftops. Except that might have put you in greater jeopardy, we feared, from reading your letters.”

Ted sipped his liquor, savouring the rich, smooth taste. ”It would have. The only way I escaped the firing squad was by changing my name to Winsted and my appearance to a fur trapper's, then disappearing into the Canadian backcountry. Staying dead, in effect. My father knew the truth. I wrote to him as soon as I was able.”

”He kept your letter by his bedside, His Lords.h.i.+p did. And he pa.s.sed away content to know you survived.”

Ted raised his gla.s.s. ”To the Viscount. The seventh Lord Driscoll.”

Whitbread raised his gla.s.s too. ”His Lords.h.i.+p informed me and the family solicitor of a secret way to correspond with you in case of necessity. Lord Jared knew, also, of course.”

Ted drank and made another toast. ”To the Viscount. The eighth.”

”And to the ninth, My Lord.”

”I should not be in the tally.” Ted fell silent, thinking of his older brother, the eldest son who had succeeded their father for so brief a time. Jared and Ted had been best of friends, playmates and partners in every mischief two lively boys could find. Jared grew to a more sober lad, as befitted his position. It was he who had to study agriculture and investments, everything connected to the Driscoll holdings. Not Theodore, the devil-may-care second son, up to every rig and row. How Jared must be laughing now. Ted felt like crying.

”I wish I could have seen him again. Both of them. The mail was so deucedly slow.”

”Across the ocean, in times of war, with you travelling the entirety of North America, it seemed? I found it amazing that you received our letters at all.”

Sometimes it took years, sometimes Ted knew letters had gone missing. ”I treasured the ones I did get. Except for all the bad news.”

”Sad times for Driscoll Hall, My Lord. But at least you have finally returned to take up the t.i.tle and responsibilities.”

”If he wasn't already dead I would curse Jared to h.e.l.l for not taking care of his duties before shuffling off. Begetting little Driscolls is the primary job of the heir, not the spare. I never wanted to step into my father's shoes, much less Jared's. He should have had a son by now. Or two, by all that's holy.”

Whitbread sighed. ”Before the old Viscount died, Lord Jared promised to find a wife when he turned thirty. I'm certain His Lords.h.i.+p never expected to meet his maker before meeting the perfect female. Not at such an early age.”

Jared had been eight and twenty, the age Ted was now. A d.a.m.nably, painfully, young time for his brother to die, Ted thought, feeling the familiar ache of loss and the sense of years rus.h.i.+ng by. He'd seen many a young man die, though, a lot younger. Some in battle, some from disease, some from the harsh life in the northern territories. Ted could not let himself dwell on those tragic losses either. The present had to be for the living, not the dead. ”Influenza, your letter said.”

”Yes, the epidemic took many in the vicinity. The apothecary, the vicar's two infants and the entire Gorham family. Baron Cole, too.”

”I will not mourn Cole's pa.s.sing. If not for that self-righteous jacka.s.s I'd never have gone to Canada to make my fortune in the first place.” Ted tried to shake off the gloom of past misfortunes. ”But enough of dwelling on losses or rueing what cannot be changed. Tell me of Noel. My baby brother is well?”

”Master Noel is twenty years old, My Lord, and a fine, strapping young man.”

That was hard to imagine. Noel had been the baby of the family, a sickly infant after their mother's death giving birth to him. Then he'd been a pampered pet to his father and two doting older brothers. He'd been a sprig of thirteen when Ted took pa.s.sage to Canada, stick-thin and spotty. How could he be a man already?

”He was away at university during the scourge,” Whitbread went on. ”Lord Driscoll would not permit him to return home despite the physician's dire prognostications.”

Which was dashed wise of Jared, not knowing if Ted could or would ever make it back to England and the succession. He might not ever have returned. Why should he? His dreams of England had died years ago, starting in Lord Cole's estate office. He was making a new life in the New World . . . until Whitbread's letter reached him seven months after Jared's death. The pa.s.sage home had taken longer than that.

Poor Lord Noel was left in a muddle, the trusted servant had written, with people dubbing him Lord Driscoll, when he knew he was no such thing. Ted was the heir, ready or willing or not.

Not.

”So he up and left?”

”He left his studies and his friends in London, rather than answer awkward questions. He stays close to home now, consulting with the steward and the solicitors. Today he's gone with the bailiff to purchase a new bull. Reluctantly, I might add. Master Noel fancied himself a regular London swell, not a farmer.”

Well, Ted never fancied himself a viscount either. Or a soldier, much less a dishonoured one. He always had a head for figures so he'd set out to be a trader, a s.h.i.+pping magnate, a success, so he could come back to England a rich man and prove Baron Cole wrong. Too bad the old puffguts wasn't there to see.

”Learning about the estate cannot hurt him,” Ted told the butler. ”A bull might.”

Whitbread poured another splash of cognac into both of their gla.s.ses. ”To hopes he never succeeds to become the tenth Lord Driscoll, for all of our sakes.”

Whitbread left to see to Ted's baggage, order his room readied and inform the cook to prepare a meal fit for a viscount.

While he was gone, Ted poured himself another gla.s.s of cognac and stared into the fire. He was home, yet he felt more lost than when he'd found himself in a log lean-to during a blizzard. He had no doubt Whitbread would have the viscount's rooms prepared for him, not his old comfortable bedchamber on the upper floor. He'd have to sleep where his father and brother had died, with their ghosts scolding him for his sins and his seven-year defection. He'd sleep next to his mother's room, the one that had stayed empty so long. Her ghost was sure to plague him to marry, to fill the nursery. d.a.m.n them all and the nightmares he'd suffer. Hadn't he suffered enough?

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