Page 1 of The Elusive Earl (The Bad Heir Day Tales #3)

CHAPTER ONE

“How is it possible that London reeks even more intensely than it did eight years ago?” Graham MacNeil hung his hat on a wall hook, nodded to the harried tavern maid, and took a seat. “You’re looking well, St. Didier.”

Leopold St. Didier, always a considerate sort, had chosen a corner table, meaning both he and Graham could sit with their backs to the wall.

“We’re to believe that reek is the smell of progress.” St. Didier had been nursing a small pint, or pretending to, based on the amount still remaining in his tankard. “One might say you’re looking robust, MacNeil, and rather formidable. Please stop glowering as if you’d delight in starting a melee.”

“No melees until I’ve had a drink.”

St. Didier had dressed for the occasion, meaning the hat on the chair beside him was a dusty, low-crowned beaver, his cuffs were frayed, and his jacket was worn at the elbows. He smelled faintly of horse, suggesting the jacket had been stored in a stable by design. All the careful costuming in the world could not disguise the watchful look in St. Didier’s dark eyes, the slight looseness of boots that allowed for a knife or three to be kept discreetly from sight.

He was leaner than Graham recalled him being, and his features were more sharply defined. Of all Graham’s London acquaintances, St. Didier alone might have fared well in the Antipodes.

Not necessarily a compliment, given that St. Didier was an English gentleman of aristocratic origins.

“Is the ale drinkable?” Graham asked.

“Of course. I would not poison you after spending two years trying to lure you home.”

Engaging in polite blackmail, more like. Dropping hints, letter by letter, and leaving innuendo between each line and the next.

Graham’s drink arrived. He set a coin on the tavern maid’s tray, then another. She’d give them privacy, or what passed for privacy in this malodorous dockside hole. St. Didier watched that transaction with unreadable eyes.

“I am not home,” Graham said, blowing the head off his ale. “Home is a good four hundred and fifty miles north. Perthshire is ever so much more fragrant, and one encounters a lot fewer English aristos there.”

Not the most diplomatic comment Graham could have made. St. Didier’s family had boasted of a viscountcy in his uncle’s day, but no male heir of the body, anywhere, of any description, had been available to succeed the old boy, and the title—along with a significant pile of wealth—had reverted to the crown.

“No aristos here, MacNeil. Perhaps your travels affected your eyesight.”

His travels. Hilarious. “My travels damned near put an end to me, St. Didier. New South Wales boasts a wee spider that can kill you with one bite. The denizens of Sydney Harbour include a jellyfish that can literally sting you out of your mind the pain is so unbearable, and then you die of the shock. The crocodiles up north delight in snacking on human bones, and if I start maundering on about venomous snakes, we’ll never get to discussing the reason for your summons.”

A subtle puzzlement infused St. Didier’s features. “You’re not exaggerating.”

“I understate the matter, and only the English could believe such a land suitable for civilizing. You’re in for a challenge, you lot, though I grant you, Governor Macquarie—a Scotsman, of course—has some worthy ideas and the determination to see them through.” Macquarie would be toppled eventually by the contingent of prosperous settlers who saw the free labor of a penal colony as a greater benefit than a thriving, open society, but when that day came, Macquarie’s radical ideas would not be recalled to England with him.

“One generally has the sense that the wonders of Terra Australis must be exaggerated,” St. Didier said. “Here-there-be-dragons, but on land.”

Somebody at the bar launched into a foul ditty about the queen’s privy, and a lot of inebriated fools toasted the tavern maid’s ankles.

Once upon a time, Graham had considered St. Didier a friend.

A warning was in order. “Do you ever miss your family seat, St. Didier? That grand, lovely estate, carefully tended for generations by your ancestors, now going to ruin in the hands of some royal tenant who’ll bleed the place dry in a decade?”

“Of course I miss it.”

“Now imagine,” Graham went on, “that you’re put on a ship that could well be your coffin and consigned literally to the other side of the earth. You are sent as far from your home as it’s possible to go, this side of death. Throw in the spiders and serpents, the unending disdain of people who wouldn’t dare look you in the eye back home, and add the even worse contempt from the honest criminals you were transported with. All the while, your home, your birthright, the land you were bred to cherish and protect, is in the hands of solicitors .”

“Honest men, MacNeil. I made sure of it.”

“ English lawyers who know nothing about maintaining an estate in Perthshire. The court made sure of that. Thanks to that same court, I was banished for seven years on pain of death, but the court never counted on poor cousin John drowning, did they? Now I’m the earl. Such a pity.”

St. Didier took a sip of his ale, the oldest dilatory tactic known to the adult male. “You’re angry.”

“I’m in the presence of a clairvoyant. Last time that happened, I was in India. One doesn’t get over being convicted of murdering one’s beloved granny, St. Didier. Innocent or guilty, the ordeal takes a toll.”

“Not murder, involuntary manslaughter, and you pleaded guilty, MacNeil.”

St. Didier, in his roundabout fashion, was asking a question that Graham was not prepared to answer directly.

“A trial would have killed my grandfather.” As it happened, Grandpapa hadn’t lasted out the year. “He saw me off.” More to the point, the old earl had ensured that both comforts and necessities had accompanied Graham on the transport ship, along with tools, books, botanical specimens, and a few highly salable luxuries.

Grandpapa’s generosity had been literally lifesaving. Even the Royal Navy’s able seamen hesitated to steal cargo that was technically the property of an earl. Good old Highland height and heft had improved the odds too.

The rest had been sheer, unwavering contrariness, always an asset among the forcibly transported.

“You’ll go to Perthshire, then?” St. Didier asked as the singer at the bar turned into a passable quartet, though the countertenor was flat.

Graham spoke more quietly rather than compete with the noise. “I did not come back to Merry Olde out of a sentimental attachment to Fat George. I’ve served my sentence, and now I’m the rubbishing earl. I’ve doubtless some traditional Scottish penury to enjoy. Worse yet, if I know my neighbors, at least three feuds will have all but lapsed for want of some reiving and drunken insults. One does one’s duty, St. Didier, or hallowed traditions go entirely by the wayside.”

St. Didier’s expression became broodish, or reverted to its naturally thoughtful inscrutability. “That’s a yes. You’re heading north.”

“I leave in the morning. I’ve met with the solicitors, obtained their final report and best wishes, albeit they refrained from shaking my hand. You’d be welcome to travel with me, though I appreciate that the notice is short.”

Short enough that St. Didier could refuse politely, or demur until a later date that would never come around.

“Are you going by land or sea?” St. Didier asked.

“Overland. I’ve had a bellyful of the briny deep.” To Rio by way of mind-shattering heat and doldrums—whoever clad British naval officers in wool had been in Lucifer’s pay—then down to the Horn of Africa for some horrendous gales. The knife fights on the final push across the Roaring Forties had turned deadly and the drinking water brackish. Mountains of ice had floated by on the southern horizon, as forbidding as they were monotonous.

On the return journey, Cape Horn had been a nightmare wrapped in a hellscape tied up with banshee winds and bargains with the devil.

St. Didier finished his ale. “I can accompany you, if that is truly your wish.”

“You sought to come with me. That’s what this little tête-à-tête chez L’Odeur de la Thames is about. You’re afraid I’ll commit some premeditated manslaughter once I get back to Perth, aren’t you? St. Didier, you are not my nanny.”

“Will you?” St. Didier asked. “Commit manslaughter or homicide of any variety?”

“I would not know with whom to start. You can come along, St. Didier, but don’t push your luck.”

The ale was surprisingly good. Graham left half of it in the tankard for the gaunt lad trudging with his rag and bucket from table to table and put another coin under the tankard for the boy to slip into a pocket.

“Why?” St. Didier asked as he and Graham stepped out into the damp and chilly night. “Why bring me along?”

“I saved you asking to come along, of course.”

“You intended to request that I travel with you. I’m slow, MacNeil, but I do get past the post eventually.”

St. Didier wasn’t slow, he was thorough. A different matter entirely. “I was convicted of killing my grandmother, whom I loved. I did not kill her, intentionally or otherwise.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so, and if you question my word on that matter ever again, I will accidentally bash you into the next shire, St. Didier.” The night air reeked of the sewage in the river, fish, tar, and piss.

“You’re taller and stronger, I’m faster. That hasn’t changed.”

Yes, it had. “I was wrongly accused of Grandmama’s death. You are along to ensure similar accusations do not befall me again. No telling whom I might be alleged to have tossed down the garderobe or heaved from the parapets.”

“I’m your bodyguard?”

“You are my spare eyes and ears, laddie, and mind you fulfill that office with your usual attention to detail, faultless recall, and complete lack of humor.”

The footsteps Graham detected were light, almost lost in the slap of the water against the wharves and the general raillery along any dockside street. Too light. Too furtive. Not another patron ready to sleep off some indulgence in a cozy bed.

Trouble, and so soon.

“You haven’t asked about the ladies, MacNeil.”

Technically, Graham was a lordship now. An accidental earl. St. Didier was doubtless being delicate by refraining from proper address.

The distance to the following footsteps closed to a few yards. “The ladies are thriving, I’ve no doubt. Peter would have told me otherwise. He’s very fond of them.”

Between the words of and them , Graham turned and withdrew a knife from his boot, threw, and shoved St. Didier into the nearest doorway. A satisfying oath sounded in the darkness, followed by an uneven tattoo of boots disappearing in the darkness.

“MacNeil, what in the name of…?” St. Didier cocked his head. “How did you know? I realized we were being followed only as you started blathering about extra eyes and ears. You meant to warn me with that reference, didn’t you?”

“I meant to warn the poor sod who will have a very sore arm come morning—as well as possession of one of my cheaper knives. Move along, English. We don’t want him coming back with his friends to return my blade.”

St. Didier set a brisk pace toward more genteel surrounds. “I was wrong.”

“I shall notify The Times . What were you wrong about?”

“You are faster. That shouldn’t have been possible.”

“And it should not have been possible that I found myself on that transport ship.” No steps followed as the stench of the river faded and the lamplighters’ diligence was more routinely in evidence.

“Nobody else calls me laddie,” St. Didier muttered, “much less English. Your womenfolk worried about you, MacNeil.”

Not half so much as I worried about them. “They are not my womenfolk. Morna and Lanie can inspect me to their hearts’ delight when we reach Perth. You’ll be ready at first light?”

“Of course.”

“Then I will leave you to enjoy whatever passes for dreams in that hard head of yours, St. Didier. Expect to travel with more swiftness than comfort.”

“We will travel with both.”

“As long as we travel north. Good night.” Graham sauntered off in the direction of his temporary abode and was calling it an adequately dignified exit at the end of a successful meeting when St. Didier’s voice cut through the darkness.

“MacNeil!”

Graham turned to see the pride of the St. Didiers standing under a streetlamp, his attire that of a middling groom or stable boy.

“A man of your lordship’s station cannot indulge in random rudeness.” St. Didier extended a bare hand. “Good night, Dunhaven.”

The proffered handshake was actually quite a presumption, from a commoner to a peer. Also a test.

Graham shook, touched a finger to his hat brim, and left his bodyguard, spare eyes and ears, and self-appointed finishing governess in the circle of dim light.

Bodyguard, governess, et cetera and so forth, and just possibly, maybe, after a fashion… but no. A convicted killer knew better than to attempt friendships, intentional, accidental, or otherwise.

“What did you miss the most?” St. Didier asked as the horses clip-clopped along the bank of the River Tay. Spring had yet to arrive, meaning the sunlight was more brilliant for being unbroken by foliage. Despite the brightness, the landscape yet held a bleak, forbidding quality. Bare trees, chill breeze, achingly empty, achingly blue skies.

“I missed everything,” Graham replied, which was only half an evasion. “The air. You can breathe here. The light—just look about you. The sky is heavenly blue, the water blindingly bright. The quiet. No chattering monkeys—those were in India—or shrieking parrots, or deafening cicadas. This is the quiet, the sunlight, and the air that my soul understands.”

Even the seasonal bleakness was familiar and thus almost dear.

“Scotland turns you up poetic,” St. Didier said.

“Covering four hundred miles in little over a week turns me up glad to be on home soil.” Glad, but also enduring a vague dread.

What seems too good to be true is too good to be true. The Antipodes taught that lesson over and over, if British justice, months on a transport ship, and regular terror on the high seas failed to adequately make the point.

“The MacNeil castle has stood for centuries,” St. Didier said. “By that reckoning, you merely stepped out for a cup of tea.”

“I am not a castle.” Graham turned his horse away from the river and onto the track that cut across MacNeil land. They’d been on the MacNeil stretch of the Tay for the past two miles, though the coaches would take a smoother, roundabout route to the castle.

“Why didn’t you write?” St. Didier asked.

“I wrote to Peter. I wrote to you.” Quarterly notes to Peter, like the dutiful epistles schoolboys send home. Headmaster is quite stern, but I am making friends and getting good marks so you will be proud of me. I miss Cook’s pudding very much.

The headmasters had carried whips, the rations had been pathetic, the heat unrelenting and the bugs worse. Two years of that, though, and a conditional remission had come through, as it had for many convicts who avoided trouble and worked hard. Two years later, a land grant had followed.

“I’ve had longer letters delivered by pigeons,” St. Didier said. “‘Watch the trustees and keep an eye on Peter.’”

“My thanks for both.”

“Peter is an adult now. Once he left university, he didn’t need much minding.”

“My baby brother is a MacNeil coming into his prime, St. Didier. Constant surveillance is warranted.”

“Well, then, tell me, your lordship, just how—”

“Enough trying to distract me, English. The initial greetings will be awkward, the first few days and weeks a trial of another sort, but I’ll muddle through. MacNeils are good at that.” Some MacNeils were better at it than others.

St. Didier ceased trying to make conversation, which was fortunate for his old age. The next mile passed with reassuring familiarity. At the sound of the horses’ hoofbeats, old John MacIver came out of the gamekeeper’s cottage and stood by the lane. His face was more lined, his eyes a more faded blue, but when Graham nodded, MacIver nodded back.

“Welcome home, Laird.” He pulled off his cap, revealing hair gone snow white.

Graham drew the horse to a halt. “MacIver. Good to be back. Any coneys left in yon woods?”

“Enough for a stew, no thanks to those damned MacHeath boys.”

The MacHeath boys had gone for soldiers two generations ago, but that wasn’t the point. “A thankless task. Carry on as best you can.”

MacIver barely inclined his head, but when Graham half turned his horse to open the next gate, MacIver was still standing by the lane, cap in hand.

“What was that about?” St. Didier asked.

“Tradition. My grandfather ran riot with the MacHeath boys before King George bribed them into taking his bloody shilling. They could all supposedly catch rabbits with their bare hands, they were so quiet and fleet. The current MacHeath scion served in Spain, and I’m told he survived to take up his uncle’s title.”

No wild rabbits in Australia. The dread rose up again, worse than before. MacIver had known to keep watch and had had some time to decide whether and which honorific to use . Laird was better than your lordship , and my boy would have been asking for too much.

MacNeils excelled at that too.

Inevitably, the castle loomed up on its prominence, pale gray stone piled on pale gray stone, parapets and wings all drawing the eye to the watchtower, which offered the best view of Perthshire known to man. The MacHeath family seat was grander, but for sheer loveliness, the MacNeil castle won all bets. Brick facing on the lower floors added a hint of gentility and gave ambitious ivy a chance to subdue medieval impregnability into graceful dignity.

Graham stopped his horse and beheld his home. No pennant waving, because Grandpapa had died of grief, John had died of bad luck, and the present earl…

“Let’s get this over with.” Graham urged his steed forward.

The moat had long since been drained and the ditch filled in, but the approach still required crossing a plank bridge and riding beneath a portcullis. As a boy, Graham had never trusted that spiked portcullis to stay up. Grandpapa had showed him the heavy black chains wrapped around their massive capstan, but still the unease lingered.

Better to use the postern gate or enter the bailey through the gardens.

Nobody waited on the flagstone terrace. Nobody stood on the steps. No old-fashioned assembling of the household to welcome the new laird—thank God—and no eager faces peering from the windows either.

The courtyard was flooded with midday sun on hard, gray stone, the quiet complete.

Home, but the moment did not feel like a homecoming, nor even like much of a return. Somebody had planted daffodils that should have been geraniums in pots around the massive door to the great hall, and a pigeon landed on the curtain wall above the gate to the herb garden.

“Shall I whistle us up a groom?” St. Didier said.

“We’ll take the horses around ourselves, unless you’re too much of a town—”

“Graham!”

A tall, lithe figure in long skirts stood at the top of the half-dozen steps leading to the great hall doorway. Her hair was strawberry blond, a beacon in the sunshine. She’d come through the wicket door and left it open behind her.

“Graham!”

“She can’t see you,” St. Didier said. “Over here!”

The lady pelted down the steps and crossed the cobbled bailey at a dead run. At the last possible instant, Graham realized the significance of St. Didier’s warning, took two steps to the left, and narrowly preserved his greeter from colliding with the horse’s haunches.

“You’re home. You’re home at last.” She squeezed him hard, hugged him harder, and then simply held on. “I knew you’d come back. Grandpapa promised me, and John said so too. Peter tries to be all manly and stoic, but I knew.”

“Lanie.” Lanie—Elaine Marie when she’d been naughty—all grown up and bearing a devilish, heart-stopping resemblance to her older sister. “Darling girl, you have become beautiful.” Still coltish, still more elbows and angles than curves, and yet no longer a child.

Some of Graham’s dread revealed itself to be grief. Lanie had grown up without him. Peter had finished growing up without him.

“I am an adult,” Lanie said, giving him one more squeeze before stepping back and keeping a hand on his arm. “It can’t be helped. Are you still handsome?”

St. Didier passed the horses to a puffing groom who’d emerged from around the side of the bailey.

“I am gorgeous,” Graham said, “provided you like a bit of a nose on a man and don’t mind that he’s unfashionably tall and his face and hands are about the same color as old leather. My hair turned from auburn to gold on my travels, so I’m now much more au courant. ”

“Did it really?” Lanie ruffled her fingers through his hair.

“Of course not. I’m the same Graham, Lanie.” Another half truth. “And I’m very glad to see you.”

“Then come inside.” She tugged him in the general direction of the door. “Peter said you would not want us to rush you all at once, and we must await you in the family parlor, but if I am patient and persistent, I will eventually convince Peter that he can’t tell me what to do.”

“Been at it a few years, have you?” Graham’s voice came out steady, his tone light, but a knot had formed in his chest, and a lump the size of Stirling Castle was caught in his throat. She’d always been wee Lanie…

“I have been training Peter to respect my wishes since birth, so going on twenty years. He makes progress then slips back, and I am chattering. Are you well, Graham? You feel like stone.”

I am not stone. “Muscles, my dear. Lots and lots of muscles. Those are unfashionable too. Steps, Lanie.”

“I know. I can still see some about the edges when it’s this bright. I have to turn my head like an owl and peer down my nose and such. Undignified business, trying to see. I’m hopeless indoors. I will be entirely in your thrall if you promise to read to me for two hours every night.”

I am already entirely in your thrall. “Maybe I’ve forgotten how to read.”

Lanie navigated the steps as easily as if she were fully sighted. “You surely forgot how to write, Graham MacNeil. Not well done of you. We worried.”

“I wrote to Peter. He was remiss for not sharing my epistles with you. The wicket is open.”

“I left it open. Saves me fumbling with the latch.” She passed through the smaller opening cut into the massive oak double doors. “Graham is home!”

One could yell in a castle to greater effect than in some other venues. Footsteps echoed, a heavy, hurried walk.

“Graham!” Peter—also all grown up—stopped at the landing halfway down the staircase. “By God, you made it! Home at last.” He trotted the remaining steps, hand extended, and then surpassed all bounds by pulling Graham into a hug and thumping him twice on the back.

“Peter. Good God, you’ve put on some muscle.”

“But still not as tall as you, thank the heavenly intercessors. Turn me out in a kilt, and Edinburgh

falls at my feet. You have been in the sun.”

“I am a testament to bad fashion. One longs for sunshine at sea but forgets that the results of fair weather linger in the complexion. I’ve brought St. Didier with me, as he was keen to dodge Mayfair during the Season.”

“He went around to the stable,” Lanie said.

How could she…?

“My ears are in fine working order, Graham, and my nose is the envy of every distiller this side of the River Tweed. For example, my nose detects a certain hint of rose in the air, and that tells me—”

“Lanie.” Peter’s tone held a note of warning. “We’re all so pleased you’re home, Graham, or do we refer to you as Dunhaven now?”

“You’d best not, if you know what’s good for you.”

Peter grinned and was doubtless preparing to deliver a pithy retort when a voice like a whipcrack sounded from the steps.

“I shall call you Dunhaven if I choose to. That is my lord’s title, after all.” The lady was another version of Lanie, taller, curvier, more self-possessed, and infinitely less happy to see him. Her dark copper hair was ruthlessly bound up in a coronet, and her demeanor was positively forbidding.

She completed her descent in no particular hurry and stood regarding him with the same sort of expression she might have turned on a pantry mouser presenting her with evidence of good hunting. One could not fault the beast for doing the expected, and yet .

“Morna.” Graham bowed. “You may address me however you please.” Assuming she condescended to address him at all.

Her scrutiny lasted another uncomfortable moment, long enough for Graham to realize that she still favored attar of roses.

“We’d best feed you,” she said, “rather than argue over etiquette. A midday meal in the breakfast parlor awaits. Somebody find St. Didier and send him along. He’ll not be winkling secrets from the stable boys when he should be doing justice to a good ham.”

She whisked off down the passage that led to the breakfast parlor. Peter grinned, shrugged, and followed, and then Lanie seized Graham by the arm again.

“You have to be famished,” she said, “but even if you aren’t, we generally do as Morna tells us. More peaceful that way.”

Once upon a time, Graham had delighted in arguing with Morna and she with him. More exciting that way. Then the whole business with Grandmama had arisen, and Morna’s regard for him had waned considerably.

Graham allowed himself to be escorted down the dim passage by a woman who was all but blind. He who hoped things hadn’t changed too much in his absence was sometimes given what he’d sought, and wasn’t that just a damned fitting irony?