Page 11 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

F reddy personally oversaw the packing of the picnics for the excursion to Long Compton. Everything, he had decided, must be perfect. The cheese must be uniform. The meat must be smoky. The bread must be moist.

It wasn’t an unreasonable request, was it? All he wanted was the perfect luncheon. Just a flawless afternoon. Just a day unmarred by embarrassment or disappointment or calamity.

Freddy was a reasonable man. He did not ask for much!

Only perfection.

Today, he was taking his son to see the Stone King.

Everyone else was just incidental, weren’t they? But it couldn’t hurt to show these Portuguese guests the charms of a properly outfitted English picnic basket.

The carriage ride should be, at most, two hours.

More of the guests had decided to join the excursion than he had anticipated, including his slippery little wife, who hadn’t attended a single dinner since his arrival almost a week ago; all of her scheming little friends; and his mother’s full coterie of scary spinster ladies.

Tommy, of course, was also coming, which meant that the carriage needed room for Abra. His mother and her beau were coming. And an assortment of Portuguese people he hadn’t been able to commit to memory were apparently also coming.

“We’ll be telling the story in English,” Freddy said testily.

To which his mother responded, “They all speak English, dear. We are the deficient ones in the company for our lack of options.”

“I could tell the story in French!” Oliver had offered, screwing up his little face as though he were going to attempt it in earnest. “ Un … un temps! Un temps quand je suis sur le temps?! ”

“Darling, no,” said Patricia, suddenly red-faced with the suppressed urge to laugh.

“ Once upon a time? ” Raul had guessed later, in a respectful whisper. “Once I was on top of the time?”

“He’s still very young, Raul,” she’d tutted back affectionately. “But we should probably be on top of the time, all the same. The morning is progressing.”

“Agreed!” Freddy had boomed, scooping Oliver up and onto his hip. “ Tout le monde! On y va! Sur le temps!”

The boy, in all his angelic perfection, had giggled so hard, he’d gotten the hiccups.

Claire was already in the drive when they emerged, holding court between a gaggle of attentive females and the line of obedient carriages ready to do her bidding.

She glowed. She was wearing dandelion yellow, stitched with bright red accents on the bodice and sleeves.

From here, he could see she was wearing a pair of jasper earrings he’d bought her in Luxembourg, catching the red lowlights in her hair when she turned her head.

Did she remember he had bought those for her? Would she be wearing them if she did?

Freddy frowned, but he did set his son down to allow him to run over to his mother before they were to depart. In an ideal world, the three of them would have all chosen the same carriage and bundled into a domestic unit of anticipation and bliss as they rambled down the road to Long Compton.

Alas.

Freddy narrowed his eyes at the way Abe Murphy tossed Oliver into the air, at the way the boy’s delighted squeals echoed across the pebbled drive.

Surely Oliver had the good sense to prefer his father over his uncle, didn’t he?

His uncle by marriage only. Not even a blood relative.

Just some sod who happened to be married to Claire’s sister.

“Darling, you’re making a face,” his mother had said in a bored sort of voice, patting him on the shoulder and crossing in front of him. “It isn’t becoming.”

He did not stop glaring; he simply rotated the entire operation toward his mother instead as she went about greeting some of her future in-laws in a charming little stutter of newly learned Portuguese.

“Good morning,” said Silas from his shoulder. “You’re making a face.”

This led Freddy to announce loudly that it was time to go.

And perhaps because they agreed or perhaps because, for a brief, shining moment, everyone remembered he was the damned earl of this damned estate, they did.

They went.

They all loaded up in the carriages, lurched into horse-drawn movement, and set off to meet the stone king and his doomed army.

Perfection was on course for success.

He’d held Abra for most of the journey, insisting to Tommy that the dog preferred his lap to hers just now while trying to hide the grip he needed to keep her in place. There was just something soothing about her warmth and weight.

He didn’t need to explain it!

Especially since Oliver had chosen to ride with his mother on the way out.

Abra, sensible little thing that she was, had given up on having seating preferences in good order and slumped into a snoring slumber shortly after the carriage reached the main roads.

Freddy stared down at her quite a lot over the conversation in the carriage, wondering what it must feel like to sleep like that.

In answer, Abra had gurgled, rolled onto her back, and shown him the strain her body was under with unquestioning clarity. Her teats were swollen and flaked with dry skin. Two had little scabs, doubtless from the emerging little teeth of her offspring.

All right , he thought. Point made.

“Long Compton,” read out the Portuguese lady to his right as they passed a signpost. She bunched her brow up and turned to Raul, holding her hands apart like she was measuring a fish. “Long? Longo ?”

“No, no,” said Raul, frowning. “I do not think so. Comprido? ”

The lady scoffed, gesturing to the little township on the hill and shaking her head.

“It’s just to differentiate it from the other proud British town, Stubby Compton,” Freddy lied, winning a glare from his mother. “Stubby Compton is inferior in length but has superior baked goods.”

“Shut up, Freddy,” Tommy said fondly and in a tone that suggested to Freddy that she’d rather he keep talking.

Raul and his relative had another exchange in Portuguese, during which both glanced at Freddy and repeatedly said the word boi .

“I beg your pardon,” Freddy said on a yawn, “but I am a man.”

“Yes,” agreed Raul, “a boi man.”

“Raul,” said Patricia with absolutely no firmness whatsoever, and then, “oh, look, here we are.”

They unloaded in stages on the green, just below the rise where the Rollright Stones stood on the horizon. They had to move slightly beyond the scope of the Whispering Knights—the smaller, jutting stones that flanked the main feature.

As Freddy shook his legs out and gave instructions on careful unpacking to the servants with the food baskets, he could hear Tommy at his rear telling Raul, “It means along more than long. You see how the village unfolds in the same shape as the road? Along the road. Along Compton.”

“Ahhh,” said Raul, and translated this for his relative.

Freddy scoffed.

His explanation had been better.

“Oh, well, isn’t this bonny,” said Abe to his wife as they took in the effect. “I love standing stones. They’re all so spooky.”

“These are especially spooky,” Freddy told him, strolling up to join their conversation with his hands in his pockets. “Legend has it that no matter how many times you count the little stones here, you’ll always get a different number.”

“That’s just you, Freddy,” Abe said gently, “because you can’t count.”

“Oh ho,” said Freddy flatly. “Devastating.”

Joe joined them, squinting past the sun at the largest standing rock—the Stone King himself—a bit farther on.

“Why can’t you count them?” Millie asked with a curious tilt of her head. “Magic?”

“Yes and no,” Freddy answered with a grin.

“The story is that these knights wake at midnight and move around. Some are said to walk down to the stream below to parch their thousand-year thirst. Some stay gone for a few days, seducing the local village girls, enjoying a cup of ale, buying a new hat, and so on. When they come back, they land in different places. Maybe a few have never come back at all.”

“Knights,” repeated Joe skeptically, squinting at one of the jagged little flats of stone, pitted with centuries of erosion. “Why knights?”

“Patience, Joseph,” Freddy chided. “Christ, but you’re always so exuberant and eager. Restrain yourself for once.”

“Indeed,” Joe answered with barely a glance in Freddy’s direction, stepping forward and bending down to examine the stone nearest him.

Millie chuckled.

Freddy suspected it was at him, not in delight of him, and gave her his best withering glare as the servants began to walk their picnic toward the stone circle.

It only made her laugh more.

“By the by,” Freddy said with a casual roll of his shoulders, “what does boi mean in Portuguese, Joe?”

“Hm?” Joe glanced up, drawing his brows together. “Ox. Why?”

“Ox?!”

“Oh, or it can mean … erm …” Joe’s smile flickered, dimples threatening to emerge on his cheeks. “Did someone call you that?”

“No,” Freddy lied, suddenly overcome with a desire to examine something off in the distance.

“Papa! Papa,” Oliver called, running at such a tilt that it was almost a waddle as he collided with Freddy’s legs. “I sat on the big horse! Did you see?”

“I missed it!” Freddy replied, aghast. “Which horse? Shall we go back?”

Oliver pointed but shook his head. “I already used up my bravery the first time, Papa, but I did sit on him. I swear!”

“I believe you, Son,” Freddy assured him with a pat on the head and a sniffle. “Are you ready for luncheon? Ready to tell the story?”

He lifted the lad onto his shoulders to walk up the remainder of the way as the food was laid out.

The maids looked like regatta sails in the afternoon wind, their starched aprons and bonnets playfully tugged at and lifted as they went about their task, murmuring in little sounds of distress when napkins were unfolded by a particularly mischievous gust.

It smelled good, Freddy noted with satisfaction. Appetizing.

“Papa, that’s the Stone King,” Oliver whispered, gripping Freddy’s face on either side to turn it in the proper direction. “That’s him .”

“Goodness,” Freddy marveled. “Do you think we ought to make him a plate?”

Oliver gasped, clearly affronted by the idea. “No, Papa! He is very bad!”

“Oh, right, right,” said Freddy, chastened. “My mistake.”

He made a show of swinging Oliver back to the ground once they reached the blankets, determined to outdo Murphy’s acrobatics from the Crooked Nook drive. He did win a delighted series of giggles, but not quite the squeal of surprised delight that he’d heard before.

It was still enough. He pressed a kiss to the boy’s brow before letting him run off, and when he stood, straightening his jacket, he found he was being observed.

By Claire.

She was stood by Silas and Tommy, who were deep in some sort of argument over the skyline, and had her hands folded in front of her.

She was watching with a look on her face that seemed to Freddy like shock.

She looked the way someone might look after seeing someone fall into the Thames or get kicked by a donkey.

He met her eye, and for a moment, there was nothing at all there on the little green wold. There was no crowd. No picnic. No oxygen.

Just Claire. Just Freddy.

It was the only time he’d managed to get her to look at him since that day in the master chamber. He wanted to raise his arm, to wave at her, to smile, but he could not do any of it. He could only stare back.

He realized that he could currently relate rather well to that person he had imagined, who had just seen someone get a donkey kick to the heart and land in the Thames.

It took the maids walking between them to break the spell, to bring the air and the heat and the smell of food back into focus.

He considered dismissing all of them with harsh prejudice for doing it, for daring to exist in a moment that he had longed for so fervently. He sighed, squeezing his eyes against the glare of the abruptly returned sun, and when he opened them again, Claire was gone.