Page 7 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

S adly, like many of Freddy’s schemes, the interception failed to fire. That was to say, it needed to be postponed, because Claire had not come to dinner.

That was fine, he decided. He’d learned to be patient, if nothing else, in these last few years.

Besides, it would only give him time to perfect his strategy.

He’d eaten dinner like a proper, well-behaved lad, made polite conversation with some Portuguese people seated across from him, and now had retreated to whiskey and cigars with the other men to nurse a glass of water and air.

“What are you plotting, you wee scunner?” Abe Murphy asked, peering at him over his Scotch like a fishwife. “I know that face.”

“This face?” said Freddy with an innocent raise of his brows. “The beautiful one, you mean? Jealous, Murphy?”

“Cain!” Murphy tattled, turning to summon over Freddy’s dour half brother. “Freddy is being suspicious.”

“Is he?” said Silas Cain in a bored voice, not making a single move to change his position in the corner of the room, where he was lounging with something that looked suspiciously pink and feminine in his glass opposite Dom Raul and Joe Cresson. “That sounds standard, then.”

“Oh, come on!” Murphy exclaimed. “Stop him before he does something untoward.”

It only made the other men laugh.

Freddy grinned at Abe. “You could always try,” he suggested. “Though I remind you what happened last time you tried to corral me.”

“Aye, I remember,” Abe muttered, twisting a signet ring around his pinky, the same ring Freddy had once stolen to teach the man a lesson, back before he was reformed. “If you ever drug me again, I will actually kill you.”

“Of course,” Freddy agreed with mock solemnity. “Abe, if I were going to drug you again, I probably would have done it when I was preparing a decent portion of your daily meals.”

“On the contrary,” Abe said, sipping his drink. “You still needed me back then. What is going on in that gilt-and-feather head of yours, though? I know it’s something.”

“Why don’t you guess?” Freddy suggested with a tilt of his head. “Isn’t that what you do?”

“Guess? Never,” Abe said, obviously affronted by the observation of objective truth. “I investigate. There is a wide berth of difference.”

“Is there, though?” Freddy replied, which successfully annoyed the other man away from him.

He passed another hour needling the others over this and that, thoroughly enjoying being back in his own home.

He’d never spent any time with Silas here as adults.

Because Silas himself was their father’s bastard, and because his mother lived only a couple of hours away in Stow-on-the-Wold, his visits had often been sporadic and limited to his father’s study or one of Tommy’s grueling nature walks.

Unsurprisingly, those visits became less frequent as Silas aged, and by the time Freddy was old enough to actually enjoy his brother’s presence, Silas had taken off to study law in some dusty university library.

It was a pity. He had always taken his older brother for granted as a frowning, ice-veined killjoy, but since getting married, he’d really become much more palatable to spend time around.

It would probably be even better if he’d married a stranger rather than the woman Freddy jilted, but if wishes were horses and so on.

“Is that sherry?” Freddy asked, looming over Silas’s glass and trying to take a sniff. “Are you drinking sherry?”

“Get out of here, you little insect,” Silas barked, swatting at him with what Freddy had come to recognize as good-natured dismissal. “Drink your water.”

So Freddy had. He’d taken his leave, whistling and pleased with himself, and tracked down a member of the staff to direct him to wherever the hell Claire had banished his luggage to.

He half expected it had gone directly into the cellar, where the old limestone vein still ran through the buffed (but uneven) stone ground.

Perhaps she’d also include a ratty blanket as a courtesy.

But alas! She’d given him an actual bedroom in an act of polite decorum.

He’d have preferred the aggression. It would have been more personal, in any event. What was she about, treating him like a respected guest?! It wouldn’t do.

“Which room is it?” he’d asked the maid, a knobby-handed granny of a woman who had worked here longer than England had been a single kingdom.

“Your old one, Master Freddy,” she answered with a rheumy grin.

“The nursery?” he replied, baffled.

“No, after that,” she answered, pointing at the staircase like that clarified anything, “before the old earl died. The one in the eastern corner.”

“Oh, right,” said Freddy, frowning. “That one.”

It wasn’t that there was anything at all wrong with the bedroom he’d had through his adolescence and early adult years. No, of course not. It was a very nice room indeed. It was only that those years were when the trouble had started.

Was he superstitious? Had he finally become one of those fools who had lucky socks and a fear of housecats after he’d kicked the gambling?

That would just figure.

Besides, those years were also the ones in which his father had been alive. He’d never say out loud that the trouble and the father were related, but perhaps it was worth considering. Quietly.

He wondered if the chamber was still a horror of aspirational decor as he’d left it, sporting prints, more antlers than were seemly at all, a little bookshelf stocked with liquor, and, of course, a tiny games table in the corner.

God, he’d been an insufferable little git.

Maybe someone had turned it into a sewing room or something. He’d prefer hideous floral wallpaper and a bunch of very low chairs any day. A couple of baskets of wool yarn would hardly be amiss, would it? Lovely!

He clicked his teeth together, steeling himself for the possibility that history loomed yonder, and pushed the door open.

Ah, there was a God.

There was still quite a lot of tartan, but the room had clearly been reoutfitted into a guest chamber.

The bed was the same, there were still some antlers, and he would bet his hat that there was still a bottle of a truly terrible plum cordial under the fourth floorboard from the wardrobe, but of course, he didn’t bet his hat anymore.

As a rule.

It was different enough to not feel like a portal to the past. That was plenty.

And there was his luggage, stacked a little more haphazardly than it had been at the foot of Claire’s bed. He chose not to read into that.

He reached out to take a fistful of coverlet and paused, surprise pulsing through his hand. On the pillows, there was a letter.

A letter from Claire.

Surely not?

He drew his arm back, considering the sheet of paper and her crisp, slanted lines. He sat. He picked it up as carefully as he could manage. He held his breath to read it.

Freddy,

I have arranged for you to have a private breakfast with your son, Oliver, tomorrow morning, should you wish to meet him. Your mother will be in attendance.

Oliver knows only that you have been away, attending important business in some far-off land.

He pictures you with a sheen of adventure and will likely be extremely enthusiastic and hungry for your company upon meeting you.

Please do not make his acquaintance unless you are willing to sate that hunger while you are here.

If you choose not to attend, I will accept your desire to avoid an introduction. No offense will be taken.

If you do attend, perhaps it would benefit you to know some of Oliver’s favorite stories, so that you have a basis for conversation.

At present, his favorites are The Witch and the Stone King, The Tale of the Last Cuckoo , and absolutely anything to do with the Wild Hunt.

With kindest regards,

C. Hightower

“Kindest bloody regards?” he marveled to himself, still gaping down at the letter. He turned it over and back again three times, certain there must be something else there and finding nothing.

He threw himself off the bed and took to pacing, the letter still floating above his sheets. He glanced once, longingly, at the floorboard over some truly rancid old cordial. He sighed.

“Oh, hullo, Freddy,” he ranted to himself, half a whisper, half a keen, “fancy meeting your son in a few hours? If not, you’ll never have another chance. Kindest regards!”

He stopped, spinning around to look at himself, wild-eyed in the mirror. “Kindest regards!” he said again, just to confirm that his reflection couldn’t believe it either. He snatched up the letter again just to be sure he hadn’t imagined it.

He hadn’t!

He huffed. He stripped his clothing off. He changed into pajamas. He shook his head. He picked his nails. He cleaned his teeth.

He put the letter to the side. He might have looked at it again. He made a grumbling noise.

And after he’d climbed into bed, blown out the candle, and put his head on the pillow, he said it one more time.

“My kindest regards,” he murmured in disbelief. “Huh.”