Page 9 of A Gentleman Fallen on Hard Times (The Lord Julian Mysteries #1)

She sent a worried glance in the direction of her knees. “I’m not allowed in Town. Mendel says I need the country air. Nobody stays in Town these days anyway. Once grouse season starts, London is deserted.”

Grouse season was still two months off. The king’s birthday had passed, true, but the worst of summer’s heat had yet to entirely decimate London’s fashionable ranks. Did Miss Cleary know what month it was?

My sympathy for her expanded, such that I was no longer in a hurry to leave. “London is noisy and smelly in summer. Country air can be quite reviving.”

She stole a glance at me. “Can it, really? Nobody calls in the country except the vicar. Vicar smells of camphor.”

“Does he preach at you for all your wayward tendencies?”

My attempt at teasing earned me another worried glance. Prisoners had eyes like that; as did the elderly, apparently, when peering into the abyss of inchoate mental decline. Big, dark pupils full of bewilderment and a small, hopeless flame of rage.

“Vicar mostly wants money,” Miss Cleary said. “I have pots of money. You mustn’t tell anybody. Mendy looks after my funds for me. I should have married.”

If she’d married, the pots of money would have become her husband’s worry, assuming he yet dwelled among the living and assuming her pots of money truly existed. Her shawl was less than pristine. She wore neither gold nor jewels nor so much as nacre hairpins. Her house slippers were fit for the charity box.

“Lady Ophelia married,” I said. “She suffered many griefs for becoming a wife and mother.”

“You are her worst grief, my lord. She’s quite clear on that. Always has been.”

That observation stung, though it was the offering of a wandering mind. “I’m not that bad.”

“You are very sweet to sit with me here. I don’t suppose you’d see me back to my room?”

“I’d be happy to, unless you’d rather join the other guests downstairs?”

She gazed out upon the park, probably seeing Venetian breakfasts, ridottos, and gaiety long past. “I’d best not. Travel can be so wearying. We’ve been here a week, and still I am not at my best.”

She offered me a sweet smile and rose when I gave her my hand. If she’d arrived with the other guests, she’d been on the premises three or four days.

Once I got her on her feet, she genuinely needed my arm to remain upright. We tottered into the corridor, and she aimed another smile, this one more determined than sweet.

“Lead on, my lord.”

She obviously did not know where her room was, and neither did I. An inquiry to a passing maid solved our dilemma. Though our progress was stately, we did manage the ten yards to Miss Cleary’s door.

The door whipped open when I would have lifted the latch.

“There you are, miss. Thank God.” A woman of middle years and stout dimensions held the door open wider. “Please do come in.”

She was attired not as a maid and must therefore be the companion—or nurse companion.

“Miss Cleary and I were enjoying a friendly chat,” I said. “She’s known me since I was in short coats.” A slight exaggeration. “Lord Julian Caldicott, at your service.”

An odd transformation came over the woman’s features. She bobbed a curtsey best described as furtive.

“Thank you for your assistance to Miss Cleary, my lord. I’ll see to her now.”

Miss Cleary stood, hand on my arm, head bent like a penitent schoolgirl.

“I offered to see Miss Cleary downstairs. Perhaps you’d like to accompany us, Miss…?”

“Mrs. Waldrup.”

“Wallie,” Miss Cleary said softly. “Wallie is devoted to me.”

“That, I am.” Mrs. Waldrup’s tone was genuinely fond. “We’ll enjoy our breakfast on trays, my lord, though thank you for the thought.” She took Miss Cleary gently by the arm, thereby removing Miss Cleary’s hand from my sleeve.

“Perhaps we can breakfast together tomorrow,” I said, an excess of gallantry, also an invitation to one of the few other guests who would not hold me in low esteem.

“Miss Cleary is seldom abroad in the morning,” Mrs. Waldrup said, “though it’s kind of you to ask. Come along, miss. You were very naughty to go exploring without me. All this travel has upset you, I’m sure. Let’s have a tisane to settle your nerves.”

“The raspberry,” Miss Cleary said, brightening marginally. “I do enjoy my raspberry tisanes.”

Mrs. Waldrup rearranged the shawl over Miss Cleary’s shoulders and waited for me to take my cue.

I bowed. “Good day to you ladies, then.”

I was halfway through the door when Mrs. Waldrup called after me. “My lord?”

“Ma’am?”

“You won’t say anything to Mr. Cleary, will you? Miss Maria was only gone for a few moments, and she’s safely returned, and Mr. Cleary does fret over her so.”

The odd quality of Mrs. Waldrup’s curtsey, the grimacing nature of her smile made sense. She feared being sacked. She was likely paid a pittance that she desperately needed, and she feared one momentary lapse in vigilance would cost her her post.

“Not a word,” I said. “You may rely on my discretion.”

Her relief was pathetic and also, I noticed, shared by Miss Cleary.

I took my leave, unsettled by the whole encounter, which had lasted perhaps ten minutes. Was a failing memory my first step toward the sort of timorous, retiring life Miss Cleary had been reduced to? Was I soon to regard a raspberry tisane as the highlight of my morning?

Torture at the hands of the French had been a terrifying thought, but the notion that I might end up drifting in a world without any mental or physical autonomy was a horror too vast to contemplate.

Whatever Mendel Cleary’s other failings, that he was devoted to his aunt spoke well of him.

When I gained the privacy of my broom closet, I found a valise sitting at the foot of the bed. A day after my arrival, my luggage was finally on hand, and I was to unpack it myself.

“Brung your tray!” Atticus rapped on the open bedroom door while balancing the tray on his hip. “Thing’s heavy if you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”

“Set it on the vanity, please. Good morning again, Atticus.” Even Arthur believed in polite acknowledgment of the people who prepared his food, looked after his clothes, and kept his house from falling down around his ducal ears.

Atticus kicked the door closed behind him, put the tray on the vanity, and made a fancy leg. “Good day, your toffship. I could unpack your duds. Idiot Taylor brung your trunk to Westmere’s room, where it sat until idiot me saw it when I fetched the shaving water. Westmere don’t have the blunt to put a family crest on his spare satchel. You have the same design on your ring.”

Was temporarily misplacing my effects due to malice or incompetence? “The winged lion was on the Caldicott coat of arms when we held a mere barony. Another branch of the family uses three lion heads and a lot of other folderol. Bless you, child. You brought me eggs.” And toast and ham and fat slices of what looked to be a ripe peach. “My compliments to the kitchen and to Cook specifically.”

“Canny said to feed you up, and Cook is fond of Canny. She’d fix up a tray for Old Scratch hisself if Canny asked her to. Tea this time, because the coffee is all being drunk up in the breakfast parlor. Between cards at night for the gents and breakfast at dawn for the ladies, the staff be grumbling already.”

Atticus wasn’t grumbling, but neither was he decamping as readily as he might. A grumbling staff might take to cuffing the boot-boy at the least provocation.

“Please deal with my luggage if you’ve nothing better to do,” I said, taking a seat on the vanity stool. “Hang a sachet in the wardrobe before you put any clothing in there. The other sachet should go in the bottom drawer of the clothespress. If there’s a third, that one goes on the bedpost nearest the night table.”

He sniffed the little muslin bag of lavender sitting atop my packed clothes. “Pretty.”

“Keeps the bugs away. Do you happen to know who was chaperoning the card games last night?” The eggs were hot and redolent of a tangy cheddar, the ham cooked to a turn, and the toast soaked in butter.

God bless a conscientious cook. As I made a breakfast sandwich from my feast, I realized that I was not eating simply because one consumed a morning meal. I was ravenous for good, plain fare. Famished, as I hadn’t been for months.

“Taylor would know who was in the cardroom,” Atticus said. “He had late duty last night. He’s the only red-haired footman in all of Britain, to hear old Chessman tell it. Chessie’s the butler, and he’s a good sort.” Atticus lifted one of my shirts from the trunk and fingered the cuff gently. “Some fine duds you got, sir. I’d be afeared to iron fabric this delicate.” He held the sleeve up to the light, as if to peer through it.

“Bond Street tailors are the envy of the fashionable universe,” I said, pouring myself a cup of steaming tea. “If you were apprenticed to a tailor, you might already know how to make such a shirt, though it could take you as much as two weeks of steady sewing. You’d spend your days sitting on a table by a window, praying for sunshine and good eyesight.”

“And some jolly mates to work with.” He laid the shirt out reverently on an open drawer of the clothespress, folded the sleeves this way and that, and then scowled. “I don’t know how to do this.”

For Atticus, that was probably among the hardest phrases to utter in the whole language.

“Like so,” I said, tidying the shirt so it was free of wrinkles, then arranging the arms and cuffs in the traditional fashion. “The creases that form will not be visible once I put on my waistcoat and jacket.” I showed him how to deal with satin knee breeches—yes, I’d brought a pair—and riding breeches, waistcoats, stockings, and trousers before finishing my breakfast.

I left two pieces of buttered toast and a thick slice of ham on the tray and silently lectured myself about putting off the inevitable.

“Are the ladies scheduled for any particular entertainment this morning?” I asked.

“Chasing the gents while appearing to ignore them,” Atticus said, arranging my slippers beneath the clothespress. “Why put wings on a lion?”

“Because the lion is the king of beasts, and the eagle is the king of birds, so put them together—sometimes you’ll see the winged lion with an eagle’s beak—and you have an invincible creature.”

“Birds can be shot outta the sky, and lions can end up in a menagerie. Pretty slippers.” He waved my favorite pair of house slippers in my direction.

“My sisters are skilled with their needles. I’m off to find Lady Ophelia, and as soon as you’ve unpacked that trunk, I might ask you to pack it again, so try to recall how that was done.”

“You’re leaving?” He sounded disappointed, which was inordinately gratifying.

“I was never invited.”

“But you’re here, and Mr. West ain’t, and Lady Longacre do set great store by everything being just so. If you leave, she’ll be shy a bachelor.”

“The lesser of two evils, apparently.” I disdained to linger where I was unwanted, but neither was I comfortable abandoning Hyperia at a gathering where I’d found the daughter of the house soused and singing by dawn’s early light.

To say nothing of a valuable horse going missing— my valuable horse—about which nobody seemed troubled save myself and the beast’s former owner.

To say even less about Hyperia herself being assaulted by moonlight.

“I hope you’re decent,” snapped a female voice from the far side of my closed bedroom door, “though I’ve seen you and plenty of other fellows as God made you.” Lady Ophelia charged into the room without further preliminaries.

“I was an infant when you had that privilege,” I said, bowing. “My lady, good day.”

“Is it? Is it a good day when my godson and escort cowers in his room rather than meet me over eggs and toast?”

“Are we dueling?”

Atticus found it expedient to focus on rearranging my footwear beneath the wardrobe.

“Out, boy,” Lady Ophelia said. “Leave the door open. I don’t care who hears me berating a thoroughgoing rascal for neglecting his duties.”

Atticus shot me a look that said he’d stay if I needed him. A touching display of loyalty, perhaps, or a clever boy hoping to collect some gossip for the staff.

“If you’d take the tray, Atticus, I’d appreciate it.”

He scampered off with his booty.

“They don’t even send a footman to you.” Ophelia took to pacing, her morning gown swishing as she prowled before the hearth. “By God, Betty Longacre has a nerve.”

Betty? I could not credit my hostess answering to Betty.

“Her mother was the same way,” Lady Ophelia went on. “All condescension and grace in the churchyard, but don’t turn your back on her. Betty’s ashamed, of course. Took her too perishing long to provide Longacre with an heir. No spare to be seen, so Longacre’s brother hovers at his elbow like a vulture in winter. One understands where Miss Longacre gets her personality.”

“She’s grieving.” I dragged a brush through my hair—my damnably white hair—and found a clean handkerchief to fold into a pocket. “She lost two cousins in childbed last year, and they were like sisters to her.”

Too late, I realized my mistake. Ophelia came to a halt and studied me with narrowed eyes. “How would you know that? You were kicking your heels in France, and then caught up in the Hundred Days, and then… otherwise engaged.”

“Canning, the footman, told me. He offered the family history in confidence by way of mitigation for Miss Longacre’s lack of charm. She’s not eager to follow her cousins to the grave.”

“Nothing is more inconvenient to the polite world than a young lady attempting to think for herself. How well I remember…” Ophelia went to the window, which offered a dingy view of the roof of the conservatory and one corner of the back terrace. “Those deaths were not secrets, but why would a footman be interested in improving your opinion of Miss Longacre?”

“Loyalty to the family, I suppose.”

Ophelia tried to open the window, which refused to budge no matter how she banged and tugged at the sash. “Hyperia West rode out with a groom and returned not fifteen minutes past with William Ormstead. Do you intend to let her slip away after all I’ve done to bring you two back together?”

“Yes.”

Ophelia whirled to scowl at me. “Ungrateful gudgeon. You won’t do better. Perry West isn’t loud or hilarious, she’s not dripping with jewels and titles, but she has a good head on her shoulders, and her mother isn’t half mad.”

“Hyperia is all that is lovely, and if Ormstead has sense enough to appreciate her, I wish her the joy of his attentions.”

“Do you?”

I once again sensed I’d ridden into an ambush. “I most assuredly do.”

Ophelia’s expression became suspiciously pleasant. “Glad to hear it, because if they’re of a mind to start courting at this house party, you will be witness to their billing and cooing.”

“Hyperia has excused me from any obligation to her. I expect to leave for London tomorrow.” Atlas could make the distance by sunset if he had to, but I’d asked much of him on our morning hack, and no wartime exigencies required that I demand heroic measures of my horse.

Lady Longacre’s vanity did not signify compared to Atlas’s wellbeing.

“And yet,” Ophelia said, “here you are, because I have not excused you, and you aren’t so far gone in your pouting that you’d strand me in these dismal surrounds without an escort.”

I replied with the same exaggerated pleasantness she’d aimed at me. “Sparing my family and Society my unwelcome presence isn’t pouting, and you have never been stranded in your life.”

Something strange flickered across Ophelia’s features. Not rage, not fear… sorrow, perhaps? Bewilderment? The emotion was too fleeting and complicated to be parsed.

“How like your father you sound. Even more than Arthur, you have the late duke’s flare for martyrdom.”

I’d learned from Papa that silence could be wielded for tactical purposes, and thus I held my tongue.

“You think you are Prometheus,” Ophelia said, stalking up to me, “bound to the only rock of shame and loneliness in the whole of Britain. There’s Maria Cleary, going nigh half-witted on me when she’s six months my junior. She was always sharp as Toledo steel, Julian. Westmere has to leave because his mother is half mad, and he’s been summoned home. She might well have tried to take her life again because some fool thought to withhold her laudanum.

“Banter prefers men, but he must do the pretty with a vengeance lest he end up on the business end of a hangman’s noose. Cleary sent two brothers off to war. One came home lame, the other fell in with a pack of rotters and is said to be on remittance in Rome. Miss Ellison was visiting an aunt in Ireland for most of last year, and word is that the child she bore has been sent to a cousin in Wales. Longacre has only the one son, and the boy is dull-witted, to put it politely. Maybelle must marry a sensible man, or the family fortunes will sink precipitously.”

What a sad litany for a group of people whom most would envy. “What has any of that to do with me?”

“First, you aren’t leaving. Lady Longacre will now need you to keep the numbers from slipping further out of balance. She might recruit one late-arriving volunteer bachelor, but not two. Town is emptying out for the summer, and all the best bachelors are in demand elsewhere.”

I disliked the sound of that. Staying because I was concerned for Hyperia and curious as to the whereabouts of my horse was one thing. Staying because Lady Longacre had a reason to tolerate me was quite another.

“What’s second?” I asked with some trepidation.

“I require your escort over to Morelands.”

The name took a moment to register. I associated the Morelands estate with summer playmates, long evenings racketing about on ponies with another ducal brood, and at least one peer and his wife who had regarded my father with genuine affection.

“You, my lady, are well equipped to travel five miles in a closed carriage without dragging me along.” She should take Maria Cleary. Get the lady a bit of fresh air and scenery.

“So ride your horse.”

“I’ve already put him very much through his paces this morning.” I was resisting for form’s sake, and also because some niggling unease had taken root where Ophelia was concerned. What was she up to this time?

Because she was always up to something.

“I was concerned for you,” she said, “shut up all alone in that poky town house, lurking behind drawn curtains, your clothes hanging on you like winding sheets. You received nobody other than immediate family… But my concern was misplaced. You are simply too poutful and selfish to bestir yourself on another’s behalf.”

Poutful was not a word in any proper lexicon. “Godmama, you traveled to Russia when you were younger than I am now, for pity’s sake. In winter .”

“ I don’t need you clinging to my skirts, you dimwit. Devlin St. Just bides at Morelands, and he could use the cheering sight of a fellow former officer.”

The name landed like a mortar shell in the conversation. “Most former officers cross the street when they see me approach.” St. Just would not. He was perceptive and good at convincing the unsuspecting that nothing bothered him. One could not call him shy, but neither was he as naturally boisterous and outgoing as his legitimate siblings.

“Her Grace is worried about St. Just,” Ophelia said. “He weathered France and Spain, he dealt with the loss of the brother he was supposed to protect—as if one can protect a sibling and fellow soldier in wartime—and he has made being the bastard firstborn look easy, but he’s not in good heart these days.”

St. Just had come close to disgracing himself after Waterloo. Attacked a civilian on the horror that the battlefield had become when the fighting had ceased. The details were sketchy. He’d resigned his commission, and not much had been seen of him since.

“I’ll come with you,” I said, “but tomorrow I’m leaving for London, unless Lady Longacre herself asks me to stay.”

“Well of course she must ask. Caldicotts don’t grovel to anybody, ever, as I and the rest of the world had occasion to know. The coach is waiting for us out front.”

I grabbed my hat, made sure my spare spectacles were in my pocket, and resigned myself to a tedious penance of a day.

My assumption in that regard, like many of my assumptions regarding Lady Longacre’s house party, proved to be wildly inaccurate.