Page 7 of Hearts at Home

7

R osario was edgy today. It wasn’t the people who insisted on cooing at her, and offering her fingers to hold and twigs or ribbons or bits of food to grasp. Chloe had taken Rosario to several events where the monkey’s admirers had thronged even thicker, and she seemed to bask in the attention.

But today, between preening and showing off, she tried to edge away from Chloe, tugging at her leash as if hoping to find it detached from the person at the other end. Her eyes kept scanning the landscape. She chittered to herself from time to time, a plaintive worried sound.

In the end, when even taking her for a run across the lawn did not rid Rosario of the jitters, Dom suggested a row on the lake.

Several little pleasure boats were tethered to the low dock that edged the expanse of water. Dom led Chloe past the punts, a couple of canoes, and the larger row boats. The one he chose was just big enough for the three of them.

He handed Chloe down into the boat while Rosario clung to her, staring wide-eyed at the water and commenting bitterly in a shrill gabble. “It will be fun,” Chloe assured the monkey, who was not convinced, and sent up a loud screech when Dom made the boat rock as he dropped into it.

He fumbled briefly with the oars, then pulled them strongly away from the dock. “Gary and I used to spend most summers on the lake at Bethancourt,” he commented. “I had forgotten the trick of it, but it comes back.”

“Did you always want to be a soldier?” Chloe asked.

“Yes, for as long as I can remember. Gary and I had complex battles with battalions of soldiers back in nursery days. We planned to join up together and win glory for King and country.” His wistful smile faded, and his face hardened. “After Pevenwood threw me out, I thought I was going to have to take the King’s shilling.”

Chloe gasped. “He threw you out?”

Dom’s shrug belied the hurt that lingered in his hazel eyes. “Perhaps an exaggeration. It was my eighteenth birthday. He said I could continue to live in one of his houses until I reached my majority, but I could choose one he didn’t visit. He said I was no son of his, and that he’d more than fulfilled any obligation he might have had to his wife’s brat by paying for my education until I could stand on my own two feet. I asked if I might have the money to purchase a commission, and he turned me down flat. So, I walked out.”

“The old fiend!” Chloe wished he was here. She would—she would push him in the lake, that is what she would do. “What a nasty old man! Well done you for becoming such a good person despite him!”

“I am not a saint,” Dom warned. “But I will try to be a good man for you, Chloe. I can promise, if nothing else, that I want a true marriage, where both parties are faithful. Where they respect one another, and look after one another’s interests.” The wistful smile returned. “And I would like to be an involved father.”

It sounded appealing. Chloe barely remembered her own father. Her step-father Lord Seahaven was more absent than cruel. He ignored all the females in the nursery, and it was well known that his only interest in children was in siring an heir. As for Uncle Swithin, he readily explained to anyone who would listen that a family was a yoke around the neck of a godly man, and his cross in life was to be burdened with a wife and his nephew’s children.

She returned Dom’s smile. “Did you, then? Take the King’s shilling and win a commission in the field?”

“I went to all the relations I could think of. As a last throw of the dice, I even went to the Duke of Haverford, and was being refused an audience when the Marquis of Aldridge arrived and invited me to talk to him, instead. He purchased my commission and paid for my kit. He said it was the least he could do for a brother.”

“That was good of him. And you have stayed in touch. He is the duke, now, isn’t he? His seal was on your letter.” Aunt Swithin had often read bits from the gossip columns about the duke when he was the Marquis of Aldridge. He had married two years ago and disappointed many avid readers by becoming a devoted husband.

Whatever his past, Chloe was predisposed to like him for his kindness to Dom.

“That’s right. Haverford asked me to go to a few reform meetings while I was up in Yorkshire to see my estate.”

He had continued rowing throughout their conversation, and as he made that remark, he gave a strong stroke with the oars that propelled the boat into the cool shade of trees that hung over the water from a small ornamental island, one of several that dotted the lake.

Chloe felt a tug as the leash slipped through her hand and Rosario took a flying leap from her shoulder up into a tree. The monkey was gone in a fraction of a second, leaving behind madly swishing branches and the rustle of leaves.

“I let her go!” Chloe cried. “Oh, Dom, I am so sorry, but we must land and look for her.”

Dom made another powerful sweep with the oars. “Of course. I’ll circle the island and see where we can land. Don’t worry, darling. She won’t be able to go far, and we’ll soon have her back safe.”

Finding a place where they could get ashore proved to be harder than Dom expected. The island had no handy little jetty; not even a flat area of dry bank at a suitable height to step safely out of the boat.

Most of it was heavily wooded, with twisty willows that hung over the water’s edge so that they could not get close enough to the bank to clamber onto land, and the few clear patches were on banks higher than Dom’s head. One of those had the remnants of a landing place. Random piles stuck forlornly out of the water, a couple with scraps of beam and bits of decking still clinging. A stair must have led up the near vertical bank, for the top of it hung crazily in midair, a good eight feet above the water.

Dom rowed on, until they had circumnavigated the island.

Chloe was anxiously peering into the trees. “This is where we started, yes?”

“It is,” Dom confirmed. “I’m going back to where the wharf used to be. I can tie the boat to the posts that are in the water and climb the bank.”

She nodded. “I am so sorry to be so much trouble.”

Uncle Swithin strikes again . Dom figured the old man was responsible for Chloe’s habit of apologizing. “You are no trouble, Chloe. Rosario is just a tiny bit of trouble, I’ll concede. On the other hand, she has given me an excuse to spend a bit longer alone with you.”

Her smile was a perfect reward. Though it occurred to him that a kiss would be even more perfect, even if more perfect than perfect was logically and grammatically impossible, as one of his teachers used to insist. He was thinking nonsense, but her smile turned his brain to mush, so he might as well get used to being nonsensical, for he hoped to make her smile often.

Just ahead, they would turn and reach another face of the island, the one with the high banks. Dom began to ease up on his left stroke and deepen the right, looking over his shoulder to confirm his direction.

“Wait!” Chloe commanded.

He looked back towards her, and past her in the direction she was peering.

“Do you see?” she asked.

Yes. Movement in the willows behind them; a slender shape that ran out along a branch on all four legs, tail held high.

“Rosario!”

The monkey checked and gazed towards them, then dropped into a thicker patch of young willow withies and out of sight. Even as Dom turned the boat, the foliage began a violent shaking and Rosario’s screech rang across the water towards them, angry with an edge of panic.

“Something is wrong,” Chloe diagnosed.

Dom focused on his rowing. “Tell me when I’m around ten yards out,” he said.

Somewhere in the distance, he was aware of a high voice shouting “Pepper,” and idly wondered what was going on.

“Ten yards to go,” Chloe warned.

Dom backed oars, feathering them slightly so that the boat glided into the clump of willows that still shook with Rosario’s struggles.

And they were struggles. When they managed to clear enough foliage out of the way to disclose the monkey, they found that she had caught her harness. Somehow, two branches at an angle to one another had slid up between the monkey and the leather then sprung apart, so she hung in the air, head down. All her twists and turns were making things worse, not better.

She bared her teeth at them as they approached, and screeched again.

“That is no language for a young lady,” Dom told her, sternly.

Chloe cooed soothing nonsense until the monkey calmed enough to allow Chloe to stroke her. That gave Dom the opportunity to examine the offending branches. They were too thick to bend and too green to break. And the knife he had with him was not big enough to cut through.

“I will have to undo the buckles, Chloe,” he said. “Will you hold her still?”

That wasn’t easy, either. At some point since she left them, Rosario had been in water, and the leather was swollen and stiff. She wouldn’t keep still, either, constantly twisting to see what he was doing.

At last, the second tongue slipped free of the second buckle, and Chloe was able to lift the monkey out of the harness. One armhole held the harness to the tree, but a lazy stroke with an oar took the boat the length of the branch, harness and all.

“Back to shore?” Dom asked Chloe, who was occupied taking off the monkey’s wet jacket, drying her with a handkerchief, and soothing her with a constant stream of words, both endearments and scolds.

“Yes, please. I need to get Rosario warm. I am sorry…”

“No apologies needed, Chloe. When we left home with her, I expected an adventure, and this has been a relatively scatheless one.” Though he was coward enough to hope that the monkey would calm as she grew older, since the constant disruption to social occasions could grow wearisome if repeated. Perhaps he should look around for a companion for the beast, a kind of a personal groom, a monkey keeper. That way, Chloe could keep her pet, and he could keep his wits.

“Your brothers are waiting on the deck,” Chloe told him. “And that’s odd. The urchin who lurks near our house, the one who held the horses, he is there, too.”

Dom glanced over his shoulder. The boy Sam, with whom Dom had struck up an acquaintance while waiting for Chloe, was peering fiercely at Chloe. No. At Rosario.

Dom’s battle instincts stirred.

At that moment, Rosario screeched again, and took a flying leap into the water. Chloe lurched after her, flinging herself against the side of the little boat. Dom leaned the other way to balance the boat, just as Chloe realized she was tipping it and threw herself backwards.

Too far. She went straight over the side, and the boat rocked back the other way. Dom stood up and dived into the water after Chloe.

It would have been a spectacular and brave rescue, if the water had been more than three and a half feet deep. As it was, by the time he reached her, she had found her feet.

“Oh, Dom,” she said, her face moving with strong emotion. “This time, you have to let me apologize!” she insisted.

He grinned. “A somewhat wetter end to our boat excursion than I intended,” he admitted. “Come on. We had better go and find your monkey.”

He held up his hand, as if he was about to lead her into a stately dance, and she raised a dripping arm and placed her hand in his. Gallant lady. From the dock, a few yards away, Pevenwood commented, “Well played, miss.”

Beyond him, Rosario was hugging and being hugged by the boy Sam, the monkey’s chittering and the boy’s murmurs mingling in an ecstatic greeting.

Gary knelt at the edge of the walk, reaching out a hand, and Pevenwood came up beside him to offer another. Lady Seahaven hurried towards them with several of her stepdaughters in her wake.

Dom released Chloe’s hand into Pevenwood’s, and she lifted her other hand to Gary.

“Chloe, allow me to present the Marquess of Pevenwood and Lord Pythogaras Finchley,” Dom said, as he cupped his hands above the water where Chloe could see and then sunk them for her to put her foot into. “Gentlemen, Miss Tavistock, my intended.” A little presumptuous of him, but she did plan to accept when he proposed, did she not?

Pevenwood and Gary pulled and Dom lifted. Chloe, little elf that she was, rose like Venus from the water, and Lady Seahaven was there to wrap the glories displayed by wet cotton in a shawl and hurry her away to the house.

“Lord Dom,” she said, over her shoulder, “will you deal with the monkey and then get yourself up to the house to be dried?”

Dom regarded his brothers with wary interest. Up close, they seemed well. Pevenwood looked much like a younger version of his sire, though the previous Pevenwood had never worn such a benevolent smile. “You are a hard man to track down, Dom. Gary and I thought we might see you when you arrived in London. Then we heard you’d gone away to Yorkshire. We went out to your estate, but they said you were in York.”

“I thought…” Dom swallowed. “The marquess said the whole family wanted me gone, and that I need never bother speaking to any of you again.”

Pevenwood shrugged. “That marquess is dead.”

“Stupid selfish old man,” Gary added. “We are your brothers. He had no right to speak for us.” He flushed. It looked like anger, rather than embarrassment. “He told us that you’d walked out, saying you never wanted to see any of us again. That you’d refused an allowance from him and gone to Haverford’s family.”

“Lies,” Dom told him.

“We know,” said Pevenwood. “We found correspondence after he died. Dom, we know we didn’t stand up for you when you were a boy, but we would like the chance to make amends.”

“Me especially,” Gary said. “We were friends once, and I always regretted being mean to you. Even while I was doing it.”

Dom shivered, and Pevenwood whipped off his elegant coat. “Take off your coat and put this on. We’ll have to get you up to the house before you take cold.”

Unlikely. Dom had been much wetter and much colder more times than he could count while on campaign. “Just a moment,” he said, turning to look for Sam and Rosario.

The boy was legging it across the lawn, the monkey clutched in his arms. Dom took off in pursuit, and a moment later Gary passed him. He easily outdistanced Dom and soon overtook the boy. “Here he is, Dom. Is he stealing your monkey?”

The boy let loose with a string of imprecations, within which was the claim that the monkey belonged to him, and not to Dom or the lady. “She’s mine,” the boy insisted. “My dad took her, and now he’s gone, so Pepper is mine, again.”

Pevenwood strolled up, still carrying Dom’s coat. “Bring the boy and the monkey up to the house, and we’ll get it sorted while Dom changes into dry clothes.”

* * *

“Sam is the son of the thief who was arrested,” Dom explained to Chloe and her twin step-sisters, who had come along for propriety as they rode back to York in Pevenwood’s carriage. Gary, with Pevenwood for company, was driving the hired curricle back to the stable, and they were going to have dinner with Dom after he had escorted the ladies home and changed into clothes that fitted better than the ones borrowed from their host.

“Sam was working as a groom—he says his mother made him promise not to turn out like his father. When he found out that his father was in prison and the monkey was missing, he left his job to come and find her. He has been watching your house for a chance to steal her back.”

Chloe looked up towards the roof. “I suppose if she is his, he has a right to keep her.”

“As to that,” Dom said, “I had an idea. He needs a job, and we’ve already seen that he is good with animals. And Rosario—Sam calls her Pepper—needs a full-time keeper to take care of her when you can’t. So, I’ve hired him. He’ll be coming home with you, Chloe, if that is acceptable.”

Ivy clapped her hands. “Chloe said that you give the best tokens of appreciation, Lord Dom, and that is the finest yet. How clever!”

Chloe looked worried. “Is it proper?” she asked.

Dom smiled at her concern. “There is a way to make it proper, my love. A certain question. Are you ready to hear it from me yet?”

Chloe blushed, and looked up at him from under her lashes. “You mean right now this minute?”

“We could sing loudly, put our fingers in our ears and look out the window,” offered Iris.

“Thank you for the kind offer,” Dom told her, “but it might lessen the romance.” To Chloe he suggested, “Tomorrow morning?”

“Noon,” she said, firmly. “Come at noon and ask your question, and I shall give you your answer.”

From the curve of her lips and the sparkle of her eye, it would be the one he longed for.