Page 2 of The Elusive Earl (The Bad Heir Day Tales #3)

CHAPTER TWO

Morna did not label Graham MacNeil a killer per se, but rather, a man whose carelessness had nonetheless cost a precious life. In a just world, he would have returned home looking chastened and worn, a pale ghost of the robust young man who’d brought such sorrow and scandal to his family.

If he returned at all.

He did not deserve to be larger, more self-possessed, and, drat all the luck, more attractive because of it. He still looked a lady in the eye, still showed Lanie a subtle consideration that respected her pride, still had no use for pointless ceremony.

Morna stalked into the breakfast parlor and found Great-Uncle Brodie lifting the lids off the warming dishes.

“Uncle, the food will get cold. Graham has arrived.” Dunhaven, rather. The earl. His lordship.

“Has he now? Lovely.” Brodie set the lid back over the sliced ham. “Graham, there you are. Welcome home. A happy day, this, when the prodigal returns. We had snow on the hilltops the day before yesterday, but this morning all is awash in sunshine. We must conclude even the weather is conspiring to make your arrival joyous.”

Brodie talked too much, in Morna’s opinion. This fault was evident even before he started drinking and blatant thereafter. A gleam of mischief in his eye belied his friendly tone.

“Uncle, a pleasure to see you,” Graham said, sounding as if he meant it. “I’m glad to be home.”

While Graham used the basin and pitcher in the corner to wash his hands, Morna discreetly moved cutlery and linen. Uncle Brodie went on about the state of the roads, and how the parliamentary delegation claimed bad roads slowed invading English armies, but most of Wellington’s troops had been Scottish or Irish, and those intrepid lads hadn’t needed good roads to best the Corsican, had they?

By the time Brodie finished his diatribe, Morna had relaid a place setting at the head of the table and moved down to her usual seat at the middle across from Lanie. Peter occupied the place beside Lanie, and Uncle Brodie shuffled around to the chair at Morna’s right.

“Shall we be seated?” she asked, though it wasn’t a question. “Cook has gone to considerable effort.”

“And I,” Graham said, standing behind the chair at the head of the table, “have a considerable appetite, but might we wait for St. Didier?”

He’d put his query to Morna, and she wasn’t sure if he was challenging her or deferring to her. The point became moot as the Englishman strode into the dining room.

“Sorry to be late. I was admiring your stables. Something smells delicious. Do I dare hope for a juicy ham?”

St. Didier could be charming, but on no account did Morna consider him trustworthy. He’d been on hand when Grandmama had died, a visitor Graham had collected on one of his jaunts to Edinburgh. St. Didier had seen the whole tragedy firsthand and by rights should have denied an association with MacNeils of any stripe.

Instead, he’d dropped by —hundreds of miles north of his London address—at least once a year and maintained a regular correspondence with Peter.

Up to something, no doubt. The English were invariably up to something.

“How is the lambing coming along?” Graham asked as the soup was served. He’d chosen his opening gambit well, because Peter was particularly keen on the flocks, though Brodie had opinions about sheep, wool, shepherds, shearers, and collie dogs.

“We need to improve our rams,” Peter said, glowering across the table at Brodie. “Any nation that can grow grass can grow sheep, and the coarse wool the army bought in such quantity is no longer in demand.”

Brodie countered with a prophecy of doom for the kelp industry, which was how half the crofters in the Western Isles kept body and soul together. Lanie observed that whisky would be the salvation of Scotland if the excisemen weren’t so relentless.

In the midst of this predictable verbal affray, Morna paused between bites of buttered potatoes to find Graham smiling at her. Not the sort of boyish grin Peter indiscriminately aimed at half the world, but a slight, private, amused smile. A pleased smile.

She grabbed for the basket of rolls and busied herself applying butter that wasn’t soft enough to bread that wasn’t warm enough. When she looked up, Graham was in earnest conversation with Brodie about the challenges of growing barley in India.

India. He’d been so far away, and for so long. If John hadn’t died…

“Tell me about the neighbors,” Graham said when the sticky toffee pudding was disappearing apace. “How fares MacHeath?”

“He’s going wife-hunting in London,” Peter said. “But he ought to be going to Edinburgh. We don’t need an English marchioness looking down her nose at us and ridiculing our plaids.”

Sebastian MacHeath had been largely brought up among the English at his uncle’s insistence. Know thy enemy, and all that. Morna approved of the philosophy. She did not approve of sending children far from home to be reared among strangers.

“MacHeath hasn’t departed yet,” she said. “Dunhaven should look in on him before the marquess is away to the south.”

“Is that wise?” Uncle Brodie asked. “If MacHeath won’t receive Graham, then nobody else will. Better to let the marquess disappear on his errand and dodge the issue altogether.”

“MacNeils,” said Graham softly, “do not dodge issues . Sebastian is the Marquess of Dunkeld now, and I owe him a neighborly call. Is there more of this most excellent sweet? I detect a wee drop of our own uisge beatha in the sauce, and that suggests a genius in the kitchen.”

Point made, subject changed. Graham had had the same ability to steer conversation as a younger man. He was never loud, never rude, and never caught out in a falsehood, though he lied. He lied while looking a lady straight in the eyes.

“The genius isn’t in the kitchen,” Peter said, beaming at Lanie. “Our own Nose decided Cook should try fortifying the caramel sauce, and now it’s Cook’s signature sweet.”

“I am honored by the menu,” Graham said, “and hope my compliments reach Mrs. Gibson straightaway. A meal this good deserves a stroll and a nap.”

Uncle’s bald observation about Graham being unwelcome at the next castle up the hill hadn’t produced the same awkward silence that the reference to Mrs. Gibson did. Not even St. Didier attempted to rescue the conversation.

“Mrs. Gibson quit,” Lanie said. “Left after Grandmama died. We have Mrs. Anderson now. Much jollier, though the fare isn’t as fancy. I actually prefer her menus.”

Lanie was ignoring that Mrs. Gibson had quit amid pointed mutterings about men getting away with murder and old women being unsafe in their own beds.

“I see,” Graham said, taking the last bite of his sweet. “Then my compliments to Mrs. Anderson and her staff. An excellent meal in fine company. I’m for a walk in the garden. Morna, might you join me?”

She ceased drawing rose patterns in her pudding sauce. Graham was neither smiling nor scowling. Was he issuing a summons or a polite invitation?

MacNeils do not dodge issues. Morna wasn’t a MacNeil by blood, but years at the castle made her MacNeil-ish by association, and of necessity.

“Of course. I’ll need my cloak.”

The meal ended with Peter and Lanie squabbling over the preferred nationality for Sebastian MacHeath’s bride, a common topic of local discord. Morna tolerated Graham’s escort to the back hallway and even allowed him to hold her cloak for her.

“You aren’t wearing a coat?” she asked when he would have held the door for her.

“Suppose I ought to wear something. I’ve been cold since leaving the Azores.” He grabbed an old plaid cloak in the blue and green colors of the MacNeils of Barra. A pretty pattern. He would choose that one.

“That will be short on you, my lord.”

“The wool is soft, and I like the colors. Let’s get some fresh air, shall we?” He opened the door, and Morna made herself walk past him into the brilliant afternoon sunshine.

“Tell me about Lanie’s eyesight,” he said. “I will ask her directly, but one doesn’t want to give offense.”

Not where Morna had thought he’d begin. “Her eyes are failing, all but failed. She was losing ground before you… left, of course. The situation seemed to stabilize for a few years, but she tells me unless she’s in strong sunlight, peering out of the very edge of her vision, she can see only a gray blur. She seems to detect movement, but I gather that’s her acute hearing as much as her sight.”

Graham did not offer his arm, which was a relief. “And her nose is keen?”

“The best in the shire. We don’t tap a barrel unless she says it’s time. She’s a wizard with spices, and if I could interest her in flowers, she’d be a superb parfumier.”

“What of Peter?” Graham descended into the lower part of the garden, where the walls provided protection from the wind and helped concentrate the sun’s heat. “My dear brother seems at loose ends, which I suppose is to be expected. I used to be at loose ends myself.”

Until your negligence cost a dear old woman her life. Time enough to hurl that accusation later. “Your grandfather extracted a promise that Peter would never join the military. Peter is not a scholar, and the church would be a poor fit. Loose ends, it is. Brodie has made a life’s work of being at loose ends and seems to enjoy himself most of the time. Why?”

“I owe Peter a place to start, Morna. A place away from what happened here, away from an older brother who went from a fribble to a felon and now—through the parsimony of the crown and the grace of the Almighty—a peer.”

“Parsimony?”

“St. Didier kept a close eye on the solicitors serving as trustees of the estate after Grandpapa’s death. He insisted that they invest profits in improvements—on the crofts, in the herds, to the land itself. On paper, the earldom hasn’t much cash as a result. We’re barely solvent from one perspective.”

Morna had suspected as much. “From another?”

“We’re quite well fixed. Good acres, solid structures, enough personal coin to weather a bad harvest, and healthy livestock in every byre. To the crown, though, the earldom looked like another Scottish embarrassment, complete with crumbling castle and moldering graveyard. Then too, the legalities didn’t line up to George’s advantage.”

The garden wasn’t warm exactly, but it was sheltered and quiet. The daffodils along both east- and west-facing walls were making a good effort, and some late crocuses were still blooming around the central sculpture of the stag. Did Graham see it as a refuge or a responsibility? Both? Neither?

“What does that mean?” Morna asked. “The legalities didn’t line up?”

“St. Didier could explain this more clearly than I can,” Graham said, gesturing to a bench. “I was already a convicted felon when John died. More to the point, I had served out my sentence and had my grants of clemency and land. I was not a peer when… when Grandmother died, so the House of Lords could not adjudge me attainted. They had no jurisdiction over me at the time. I wasn’t even a courtesy lord. Now, they cannot modify the sentence of transportation retroactively so that I might be condemned to die and subject to attainder. That would be double jeopardy, or some such legal peculiarity. I am alive and legitimate; therefore, I am the titleholder.”

“St. Didier excels at those legal peculiarities, doesn’t he?”

“The College of Arms consults him and probably quizzed him at length on my situation. Fat George didn’t want another drafty castle anyway, and attainder has a history of being trotted out to enrich rapacious monarchs. George wasn’t keen on the penny press having another go at him, so here I am, an earl with a criminal past—Scottish of me, some would say—which brings us back to Peter.”

“What to do with him?”

“Morna, I hardly know him. He was a mere stripling when I left, and now… He could be the next earl. He’d be justified in disowning me, but he hasn’t.”

Whatever she’d expected of Graham, it hadn’t been humility, much less bewilderment. Shame perhaps, even arrogance, but not this puzzled concern for family.

“Ask him,” she said, ignoring the sunny bench. “Peter is articulate and nobody’s fool, though he can be foolish. I’d best make sure St. Didier’s rooms are in order. You’re in the earl’s suite, unless you’d like your old rooms back.”

“I bow to your superior judgment. The earl’s suite will do for now.”

For now? What did that mean? “Then I will wish you good day. Supper is at six, though you might be moving that later as the light lasts longer.”

“Six will do. My thanks for everything.”

“I do not want your thanks.”

His lips quirked at one side, revealing a dimple Morna had tried and failed not to miss. “You’ve made that painfully clear. You have them anyway. St. Didier will want a bath, and the wagons should arrive well before dark.”

Morna hadn’t wanted to ask about either matter. “One assumed as much. Good day.” She marched back toward the house at a smart pace, brisk but dignified, and left Graham—his lordship, rather—sitting on the bench beneath the stag, rubbing the lapel of the worn cloak against his cheek.

He should not have come home, and he’d figure that out for himself, eventually.

“You were busy spying in the stable,” Graham said, passing St. Didier a wee dram, “so you missed the opening salvo at lunch.”

“You already have a battle in progress?” St. Didier asked, nosing his drink. “I failed to notice anything in the way of real hostilities at either lunch or supper.”

Graham lifted his glass to the portrait of the first earl hanging over the study’s fireplace. “ Slàinte .”

St. Didier did likewise. “ Slàinte mhath . You resemble him around the eyes. Tell me about this war.”

“Inherited my blue eyes from Auld Dingus, supposedly, though every MacNeil I ever met had blue eyes of one variety or another. Not a war, more of an opening skirmish in family antipathies. I am the earl now, so I should sit at the head of the table. No place was laid for me there at lunch. While I washed my hands, Morna addressed the oversight.”

“Addressed it how?”

“She moved cutlery from a corner to the head of the table. Made no fuss about it. Saw it done. Didn’t raise the topic in conversation when I gave her a private opportunity to do so.”

“I cannot sample my whisky until you taste yours, Dunhaven, so drink up.”

“Right. Any moment, I expect Grandpapa to march through the door, cursing in the Erse about taxes, foot rot, and Englishmen, in that order. I expect to find Cousin John shuffling along the corridors while reading a book about heraldry. Instead, I am the host . Bit of an adjustment.”

Morna’s animosity was the larger adjustment. Entirely expected, but still disconcerting.

“You are the host and the earl,” St. Didier said, inspecting the bookcase along the inside wall. “An insulted earl, if the little drama at lunch is any indication. Maybe an aging footman simply grew confused about his directions.”

“I’d rather think that than believe Brodie or Peter served me a first course of disrespect, though both of them are entitled to their pique.” Pique being a polite term for resentment that might border on hatred. “I am prepared for more of same.”

“If you knew you were walking into an ambush, why come home?”

St. Didier had yet to sample his drink. Graham took a sip, found the whisky as smooth as it had been aromatic. Only a whisper of smoke, plenty of honey and barley, with a hint of caramel and a finish that leaned subtly toward cinnamon. The whisky struck Graham as ladylike—all the complexities beneath the surface, the fire slow to manifest.

“I came home,” Graham said, “because I do not like to live in fear of spider bites.”

“I daresay your castle, civilized as it is, has a few spiders, Dunhaven. This is excellent potation. One expects a bonfire in a glass with most whiskies.”

“We age ours, and apparently we have the best nose in the shire to oversee the whole process. If the spiders here limit themselves to shifting around forks and wineglasses, I will deal with them easily enough.”

“Brodie was your grandmother’s younger brother?”

“Seventeen years age difference, different mothers. Gran was protective of him. Left him a competence, as it happened, which was fortunate as the old boy hadn’t a feather to fly with otherwise. Grandpapa tolerated Brodie as part of Gran’s dowery. A superb angler with the gift of gab. As long as he doesn’t get to wagering over the cards, Brodie is passable company.” Uncle could also be a grouchy drunk, hardly the worst failing in a man, and he tended to tell the same stories over and over.

“Brodie certainly contributed to the conversations at lunch and supper. I’ve never been given the benefit of so many opinions on so many topics over an informal family meal. Somebody likes to read.”

“We’re a bookish lot by nature. Long winter nights can have that effect. Do you ever not spy?”

“I’m reconnoitering. You have a fine library, full of maps and plays and histories and collected letters, but you keep the fiction in here. Why?”

“Grandpapa’s study is warmer than the library, much easier to heat.” Then too, the MacNeil plaid was not on aggressive display here as it was in the library. Grandpapa’s furniture was upholstered in butter-soft leather, the walls wainscoted in oak, the hearth sizable for the dimensions of the room.

A retreat rather than a ceremonial chamber. The only tartan in evidence was a pair of soft blankets in the MacNeil plaid folded over the backs of the wing chairs.

“A more comfortable place to read by the hour?” St. Didier suggested, taking a branch of candles from the mantel and peering more closely at the bookshelves. “I can’t see you having much time for reading. Lambing, calving, foaling, visiting the local marquess, sorting out skirmishes… Will you miss the Antipodes in any regard?”

“No.” A Scotsman did not dare grow fond of the land to which he’d been banished.

“Why did you come home, Dunhaven? The real reason.”

“Unfinished business.” Also duty, which might amount to the same thing when all was said and done.

“Enlighten me. Does that unfinished business have to do with the person truly responsible for your grandmother’s death?”

St. Didier could not help himself. His very nature compelled him to poke and inspect and test. Even for him, though, the question was bold.

“I pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, St. Didier. You were here. According to all concerned, I was careless with Gran’s laudanum, and I should have known better. She was ailing, but nobody would have said she was dying. Justice demanded accountability.”

“The perishing fancy doctor demanded accountability, mostly to ensure he wasn’t held responsible. What was his name?”

“Ramsey. Theophile Ramsey. Scottish doctors are among the best in the world, and Gran trusted him.”

St. Didier set the candles back on the mantel in the precise spot they’d occupied previously. “Old ladies have been misguidedly trusting handsome young doctors since Hippocrates was in nappies. You seem to trust Morna.”

Leave her out of it. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“She was on hand all those years ago too. She was devoted to your grandmother, and her manner toward you isn’t exactly warm.”

“Her manner isn’t warm toward anybody but her cats and her horse. Morna has always been shy.” She hadn’t always been so formidable. Eight years ago, she’d been observant, retiring, demure… Appallingly well-read and happy to keep the castle books to spare Grandpapa the trouble. “Grandmother’s death devastated her.”

Had devastated Graham, too, though he wasn’t entitled to air that linen.

“And yet,” St. Didier said, settling into a wing chair, “Miss Morna does not seem devastated now. Wellington would give her a wide berth when she gets a certain look in her eye.”

St. Didier doubtless knew the great man. “She has kept Gran’s cloak, all these years. It hangs in the back hallway and bears Morna’s attar of roses scent. I put it on before I realized I was trespassing.” And if Lanie’s infallible nose was to be believed, Morna had watched for Graham’s arrival from the Great Hall, but why do that?

“Your situation qualifies as ticklish,” St. Didier said.

“I am weary of ticklish. Society in Sydney was very ticklish, what with the emancipists enjoying the governor’s favor, the exclusives reeling with horror that a former convict could hold the office of surgeon, architect, or magistrate. The indigenous people simply wanted us to stop taking their land, while the army insisted on keeping its thumb on the scales of justice. Highland feuds were card parties by comparison.”

“But you thrived in the Antipodes.”

“Spices thrive there. Grandpapa sent me with healthy specimens of everything from basil to lavender to tarragon, and, particularly with the exclusives, the taste of home was valued.”

“What’s an exclusive?”

“Gentry, the settlers who did not arrive as convicts on transport ships. Snobs, a lot of them, though they sent their cooks around to my shop, and if they could not pay in coin, they paid in goods. A penal colony isn’t supposed to be trading commercially. Don’t tell Fat George, but smuggling is another custom from home that’s been transplanted with astonishing ease.”

“You should write your memoirs.”

“I should go to bed.” Bedtime meant a night spent in the earl’s apartment. A perplexing prospect, at best.

“You should also watch Morna. I’m not saying she’s your enemy, but she’s not your ally.”

“I would not mistake her for an ally, St. Didier. She will attend to her duties without fail, no matter how much she detests me.” Her disdain should not hurt—the lady was nothing if not logical, and disdain for the instrument of Gran’s demise made perfect sense—but hurt, it did. “She didn’t engineer that little prank with the silverware at lunch, though.”

“Has Peter’s stamp on it. A bit sly, not quite mean, but the next ambush might be less benign. I would be of much more use to you, you know, if you’d simply tell me what you recall of your grandmother’s death.”

Graham had spent better than four hundred miles considering whether to take St. Didier fully into his confidence.

“One appreciates the offer, St. Didier, but right now, I am too tired to think. If you don’t mind, I’ll take my drink up to bed with me.”

Graham bowed, resisted the urge to bow to the portrait, and made for the door. Before he’d escaped, the door opened, and Morna came to a halt, a green ledger book clutched to her chest.

“Gra—My lord.” She curtseyed. “St. Didier. Excuse my informality.”

Her informality was a dressing gown of brown merino wool that covered her from wrists to neck to ankles. The garment was doubtless warm and about as flattering as a wheat sack. And yet, with her hair braided over one shoulder and her feet in worn slippers, she was fetching. Not strictly pretty—Morna qualified more as striking than pretty—but subtly attractive for being unlaced and unpinned.

Laddie, give it up. “Morna.” A slight bow. “I was on the point of retiring. Tomorrow promises to be busy, so I will bid you good night.”

She edged into the room and left the door open, letting in a river of frigid air. “You’ll call on MacHeath tomorrow?”

“You think I should?” The marquess was the ranking title for twenty miles in any direction. Graham had known him in boyhood, but that connection wasn’t to be presumed upon.

“He won’t turn you away,” Morna said. “MacHeath was banished himself, as a boy. Then he went off to Spain, some say because he was unlucky in love. He’s far from charming these days, but he’ll receive you.”

“Will you come with me?” The question was out in all its proud, hopeful, pointless stupidity. “You certainly don’t have to, but I’d appreciate the company.”

St. Didier, may he suffer boils on his backside, remained unhelpfully silent.

“You want me to call on the marquess with you?”

“Aye, if it’s no trouble.”

She sidled past, put the ledger on the blotter, and considered Graham, then flicked a glance at St. Didier, who was standing beside the wing chair.

“I’ll accompany you,” she said, “this time.” Then she was gone, closing the door with a soft click in her wake.

“Another skirmish,” St. Didier said. “One doesn’t envy you, Dunhaven. Sweet dreams.”

What a notion . “Same to you.” Graham collected his drink and eschewed a carrying candle. He knew the corridors blindfolded and drunk, but he did not know who had won that little exchange of fire with Morna. He’d not lost, though.

Perhaps nobody had.