Page 48

Atheridge, his pasty complexion as gray as the dust on all surfaces, quavered and shook like a leaf in the wind as he conducted St. Ryne around.

Mae Atheridge followed behind, silently save for the swish of her long black skirts.

Wringing his hands nervously, Atheridge begged pardon for the condition of the house, saying they received money only for their wages from Mr. Tunning, the estate manager.

The lines around Mae’s mouth deepened, her brows sinking over deep-set eyes.

St. Ryne merely laughed. “This place is splendid! Better than I had hoped to find.”

Atheridge looked at him bemused. “B-beg pardon, your lordship?” he stammered.

“Do not change a thing. Do not clean anything. I dare swear the chimneys will smoke if lit. Best have the master bedroom chimney swept. The estate agent, what did you say his name was? Tonning?”

“Tunning, my lord.”

“Yes, tell this Tunning fellow I said to have it done and he’s to see it’s paid for. Oh, best have the library done, too. No other rooms mind you. I want it just as it is,” the Viscount said, grinning broadly as he looked about him. He began to laugh. “Yes, just as it is.”

The Viscount hurriedly declined their offer to ready a room for him, saying he would stay at the inn in the village, and took himself off almost immediately, still grinning as he wiped a trace of cobweb off his coat sleeve.

“Well, that’s done it for us,” Atheridge said heavily to his wife.

“Hush, Tom Tunning will cover for us or it’s his neck, too,” Mae said sternly, her mouth set in a straight line and her hands clasped primly before her ample form.

Silently they stood together on the front steps and watched the Viscount bowl down the avenue, turn the corner, and disappear from sight behind wildly overgrown hedges at the front gate.

St. Ryne returned to London early the next day, and immediately began a round of meetings with his solicitors and bankers.

These worthies had served the Earl of Seaverness’s family for many years, and had heard many an unusual request. Though they were delighted to receive news of St. Ryne’s planned nuptials, they were aghast at his settlement requests; yet they drew up the paperwork and opened the accounts as he requested, each silently bemoaning their tasks and wondering, as others had before them, if the tropical sun hadn’t indeed affected his lordship.

St. Ryne’s friends quizzed him unmercifully concerning his week-long absence, coming as it did hard on the heels of his encounter with Lady Elizabeth Monweithe. He only laughed but admitted the events were not unrelated; more they could not wrest from him.

“Pray, cease!” he implored when he was particularly besieged one afternoon at White’s.

“Well, old fellow,” Freddy said, laying a companionable hand on his shoulder, “what is the story?”

“Freddy, Freddy, not you too?” St. Ryne asked, looking over his shoulder.

“All right, though I find this sudden interest amusing,” he said turning back to take in all those gathered around.

“I tell you all, I merely went on a tour of my holdings. I have been away a year, and I need hardly tell you the necessity of looking after my own.”

“Particularly if one has specific goals they wish to achieve,” Sir James Branstoke drawled.

St. Ryne turned to look quizzically at him, but Branstoke only smiled as he bowed his way out of the group.

Watching that enigmatic peer withdraw, St. Ryne’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

Shrugging slightly, he turned back to the group before him and suggested a game of faro in order to bend their inquisitive minds elsewhere.

One crisp, bright morning shortly thereafter, Freddy Shiperton paid a morning call on his friend to request his company on an excursion to Tattersall’s.

There was a good-looking gray there that he had his eye on and wanted St. Ryne’s opinion, for he was a known connoisseur of good horseflesh.

He arrived at St. Ryne’s home, to learn from his butler that the Viscount was still dressing and had not yet descended.

Freddy’s brows rose. It was not like St. Ryne to be so late about.

Entrusting his hat and greatcoat to the footman, he informed Predmore he would announce himself.

He loped easily up the staircase, taking two steps at a time, before Predmore had an opportunity to object.

He found St. Ryne in a distracted mood, yet dressed very elegantly in a jacket of blue Bath superfine, with fawn-colored breeches.

He was snapping at his valet to remove a piece of fluff from his jacket sleeve.

That little gentleman, who had been with his lordship since he’d come down from Oxford, and had even endured the hardships of a year away from civilization by attending his lordship in Jamaica, this particular morning looked extremely harassed and frazzled.

“I say, Justin, what’s this?” Freddy asked, waving his walking stick in Justin’s direction to indicate his attire.

“I have an important engagement this morning.”

“Eh?”

“An engagement, Freddy, my boy,” St. Ryne repeated, then stopped and grinned as the double meaning of what he said registered.

“But I need you to come to Tatts with me. They’ve got this handsome gray I need your advice on. Looks a prime ’un, but I’ll be the first to admit I ain’t got your eye,” Freddy said, not seeing how anything else could be more important.

“My apologies, I am resolved. It must be this morning and no other. Tell you what, why don’t you take La Belle Helene for a walk in the park this morning?

” A thoughtful look crossed his face. “Yes, just the ticket. I’ll walk over with you and renew my acquaintance with the Earl of Rasthough, while you spirit your beauty away. ”

Freddy’s face brightened. “Dash it, that’s good of you, St. Ryne.

Hard to get her out from under the Dragon Lady’s or her father’s nose.

” A frown creased his delicate brow for a moment.

“Thought you said you had an appointment.” St. Ryne waved his hands nonchalantly.

“On the way. Besides, anything I can do for a friend.” He smiled engagingly before turning to take his hat, cane, and gloves from his waiting man.

“Come, this should prove an interesting and entertaining morning.”

Freddy looked at him blankly for a moment, but refrained from further comment, his mind pondering the strange behavior of his friend. Sadly, he thought Tretherford was correct; St. Ryne had spent too much time in that damned tropical sun.

The Earl of Rasthough was greatly surprised and curious upon hearing the names of the visitors awaiting him in the parlor.

Shuffling papers hurriedly aside and combing his thin hair back with his fingers, he arose from his desk and scurried out of his library to join his guests.

He remembered the Viscount St. Ryne as the gentleman who’d danced with Elizabeth two weeks before.

He could hardly forget. Elizabeth, always difficult to manage, had become impossible during the last two weeks.

Although he knew the Viscount had upset her, he never learned how, for Elizabeth remained reticent about the meeting—a circumstance her father viewed with trepidation.

When he opened the parlor door, he was in time to see the Viscount rising elegantly from a bow over his daughter Helene’s hand, and saw that young lady smile brightly up at him while his sister-in-law looked on benignly. He groaned inwardly and said to himself, another conquest.

St. Ryne turned immediately at the sound of the door opening, and smiled lazily at the Earl, then turned an inquisitive eye to Freddy, who was staring steadily with doglike devotion at La Belle Helene.

Catching St. Ryne’s eye upon him he looked up, flustered, glancing from his friend to Lord Monweithe and back, before he recalled himself to a sense of duty and hurriedly stumbled through appropriate introductions.

“So you’re St. Ryne. Known your father the past twenty years. How is he, by the way? Don’t get much to town these days, do he?” Lord Monweithe asked jovially.

“He is well, sir, but prefers his books to a rackety social life, as he calls it. That is, unless it is hunting season.”

Monweithe laughed. “He always was a neck-or-nothing goer in the field. That’s how I met him years ago, when you were barely out of leading strings. I remember him telling us one evening how you wanted to come with him, but your little pony weren’t fast enough to keep up.”

St. Ryne’s answering smile bore an odd twist at the corner.

“Ah yes, I remember the incident. Did he tell you, too, that I followed anyway and became lost? When I finally found my way home, it was very late. and my parents were extremely distraught. That Christmas, however, I received a hunter as a gift from my father.”

The Earl guffawed heartily. “Forced his hand, did you? Well, well, can’t say as I blame you.”

St. Ryne inclined his head and smiled lazily. “As you say?—”

“Oh-h!” Lady Helene cried, clasping her hands before her, her pale blue eyes wide. “What a frightening experience for a child!”

St. Ryne studied her closely. He was amazed to discover her quite sincere. “Perhaps,” he allowed slowly. “I really can’t recall,” he admitted. “What I do recall is the lesson in obedience it engendered.”

Freddy gave a snort of laughter. “Aye! I can, too!”

The Viscount raised a quelling eyebrow at his friend. “That will be enough, Freddy.”

His friend glanced down at his boots, stifling an urge to laugh. He was one of a select few who knew the truly scapegrace background of the elegant Viscount St. Ryne, a background seemingly at odds with his ton persona.

Lady Romella Wisgart sniffed audibly. “Well, I should hope it was compensatory with the crime,” she announced stentoriously.