Page 5 of The Elusive Earl (The Bad Heir Day Tales #3)

CHAPTER FIVE

The hour before supper was the best and worst of Peter’s day.

The best, because he could give himself up to anticipation. Without fail, Lanie would at some point join whoever had assembled in the family parlor, her presence illuminating a room she could not see. She resembled Morna—red hair, height, perfect complexion—but formed a more diminutive and graceful package. Morna was impressive, whereas Lanie… Lanie was special.

“Make yourself useful,” Uncle Brodie said, closing the door behind him, “and pour an old fellow a wee nip to ward off the chill before the ladies arrive. They keep count, you know, bless their hearts.”

No, they did not, but any fool could see whether the level of the decanter had fallen. Peter had learned that lesson by watching John, who’d had a prodigious capacity for drink.

“A wee nip,” Peter said, passing over the requested libation. “I will wait until we have more company before I indulge, if you don’t mind.” Fitting Lanie’s hand around her glass was just one of the delights the preprandial hour offered.

“Forcing me to drink alone,” Brodie replied. “Bad form, young man, but needs must, and my fortitude is equal to the challenge despite my vast and advancing years. I’m like a fine whisky. I improve with time. We’re in for more snow. I can feel it in m’ bones. How are you adjusting to the prodigal’s return?”

“‘Prodigal’ refers to wasting one’s resources recklessly, similar to ‘profligate.’” A man who gambled beyond his means qualified as prodigal, as Brodie ought to know. “I’d say Graham has been more errant than prodigal.”

“Outlawed and banished, in the tradition of pigheaded Scots from time immemorial. This is good whisky, my boy. You are missing a treat.”

Peter was missing Lanie. He’d been missing her since she’d risen from lunch and declared a need to catch up on her knitting. He’d nearly asked her to teach him how to knit, but the torment of her hands guiding his on the needles, her sitting beside him, her soft cinnamony scent stealing his wits…

Even the thought required fortitude.

“Tell me, Peter, have you forgiven Graham for killing your grandmother?” Brodie asked with the same you-can-tell-your-old-uncle-anything air that Peter had found unappealing since childhood. Uncle never wanted to know about a boy’s dreams or hopes. He wanted to know about naughty behavior, poor marks, and temptations.

“Graham did not kill Grandmama,” Peter said. “Her death was an accident, and the rubbishing physician would not have it so.”

Brodie’s usually genial expression sobered. “I want to agree. I miss my sister sorely, even after all these years, though she was clearly suffering. Still, that doctor knew what he was about, and Graham should have been more careful.” He drank to that—the whole not-so-wee nip.

Brodie was aging well, unlike his late half-sister. He was tallish, dapper, spry, and possessed of a head of luxurious white hair. His eyes were a faded blue compared to the typical MacNeil hue—he was not a MacNeil, let it be said—but he could be charming when he chose to be.

He apparently did not choose to be at that moment.

Because Graham had pleaded guilty to the charges, the official inquiry had been cursory, and thus no precise family tale explained Grandmother’s demise. Too much laudanum was explanation enough, and Graham had admitted to measuring out the nightly dose. John had never offered details if he’d even known them, and Grandfather had declared the whole business a tragic disgrace.

Ancient history, and might the particulars please be permitted to rest in peace.

“Are you glad to have Graham back?” Peter asked.

“Of course, of course.” Brodie refilled his glass at the sideboard. “The notion of a pack of English solicitors managing MacNeil properties was preposterous. Your dear grandfather must have been courting senility when he set up that arrangement.”

Before Graham had left, he’d explained the why of it to Peter: John was not temperamentally suited to managing multiple properties and did not want the burden of same. With solicitors holding the reins, John would be safe from the perpetually importuning vicar and the charities with their worthy causes nobody had ever heard of.

Had the solicitors also kept John from Uncle Brodie’s wheedling? Probably not, but the question was worth putting to Lanie. She was astonishingly astute, which made keeping feelings from her notice nearly impossible.

Peter was still smiling over his darling’s general impressiveness when the lady herself walked through the door.

“Peter, Brodie, greetings. I vow I am famished. Knitting works up a prodigious appetite.”

Brodie drained half his glass. “Fairest Lanie. Will ye have an aperitif with your old uncle?”

“Peter can pour me a drop, and I do mean a drop. If you’d add some peat to the fire, Uncle, my feet might possibly thaw out in an hour or so.”

She made her way unerringly to the corner of the sofa closest to the fire, and Peter immediately set about fixing her drink, lest Morna, Graham, or the hopelessly English St. Didier take the place beside her. He wrapped her fingers around the glass and appropriated the coveted spot.

“Brodie says we’re in for more snow.” Not exactly a brilliant gambit, but Brodie was four feet away, trying to use the poker to spear a square of peat and deliver it to the fire. Uncle was more fastidious than any spinster auntie, but then, he hadn’t the means to replace a jacket simply because it had a few stains about the cuffs.

“Snow never lasts this late in the season,” Lanie replied. “Snow might slow down the curious, though. Graham’s arrival will see us flooded with callers.”

“With nosy neighbors,” Brodie muttered, showering the hearthstones with dirt as he lifted the peat over the fireplace screen. “Graham should not have called on MacHeath so soon. He should have waited a decent interval, got his bearings, been in no hurry. Popping up the hill posthaste like that lacked dignity.”

Brodie’s life lacked dignity. He was too cheap to live on his own means and too lazy to pursue any sort of purpose. He collected jeweled snuffboxes, though he didn’t take snuff, and he read London newspapers, though he’d not seen London for years.

I will not be like him. Peter had made that vow frequently since the age of eight, when Brodie had introduced him to cigars. While Peter had coughed to the point of retching into the dirt, Brodie had stood around, chuckling and smiling as if the whole business had been hilarious.

St. Didier arrived punctually on the quarter hour and allowed Brodie to inveigle him into a drink and into a discussion of that most heinous of modern inventions, the Corn Laws.

“He can’t help himself,” Lanie muttered behind her glass.

“Uncle?”

“No, St. Didier. He’s polite and patient to a fault, poor man. He and Graham have that in common.”

“How did you know Uncle was already in the room?”

“The stink of cigars clings to him, Peter. Promise me you will never take up the habit.”

“You have my solemn word.”

“Be serious.” She patted his knee. “Smoking is filthy, and it roughens the voice. Imagine what it does to the lungs.”

Peter imagined what another pat to his knee might do to his composure. “Brodie asked if I was glad Graham was home. When I put the same question to Brodie, he said of course he was, but he also referred to Graham killing Grandmama. I wanted to hit him.”

“I frequently want to kick him, but he’s like an old dog. Malodorous, lazy, and frequently underfoot, but basically harmless.”

“And helpless in a way. A cautionary tale. Are you pleased to have Graham home?”

Lanie sipped her drink, then held the glass out for Peter to place on the low table. “I’m not sure Graham is home, Peter. Some fellow who sounds like Graham and hugs like Graham has joined us, but even his walk has changed. He used to make a lot more noise. His steps would thump, he spoke and the whole room listened, and he laughed. I haven’t heard this Graham laugh. He smells of heather now, when he used to favor cedar. He’s not the same man.”

“You fascinate me,” Peter murmured, lest Uncle or St. Didier overhear. “You leap from impressions that I miss entirely to conclusions that would leave an oracle gaping.” Will you teach me to knit? Do you enjoy my preferred balsam scent?

“I am not distracted by what can be seen. You look at Graham, and he’s pretty much as he was the day he left. Older, of course, and with more muscles or maybe a scar or two, but the two images—who he was and who he is—bear a close resemblance. The scents, the footsteps, the silences… They have all become quite different. Morna and Graham went for a walk around the lochan together.”

And what was the significance of that development? “No, they did not. I saw Graham take the path down the hill. He was alone.”

“Morna saw him, too, and she followed, and neither one of them is here yet, are they?”

“They were friends, from what I recall.”

“As we are friends?” Lanie said, gesturing for her drink.

What did a besotted fool say? What was the one thing he must not say? Brodie’s back was to the sofa—holding forth about the free press and peasants never winning, but never behaving for long either—so Peter gave in to impulse and kissed Lanie’s cheek.

“We are the best of friends, I hope.” He took Lanie’s hand and passed her the glass. “The very best.”

Lanie was quiet for a moment as Graham joined the gathering, and to Peter’s eye, his brother’s expression was more relaxed. Not quite genial, not quite happy, but less fierce.

“How would you feel,” Lanie said quietly, “if your very best friend admitted to the negligence that resulted in your grandmother’s death, and he did so without making any apology or explanation to you? How would you feel if he cut you off without a word, banished himself from your life even as the days you had together evaporated one by one?”

“You are angry with Graham?” Peter certainly was—for being stupid enough to plead guilty to ridiculous charges, for being transported, for coming home as a grimly serious incarnation of a man who’d been a fine older brother.

“Morna is wroth with Graham and trying not to be. She has never asked me about that night, Peter, nobody has, and I was sitting with Grandmother for most of the evening.”

Peter had known that—looking in on Grandmama had been a courtesy required of them all most evenings, and Peter had been designated to bring the countess her nightly posset. Graham had certainly been aware of Lanie’s presence in Grandmama’s bedroom, but nobody had mentioned it to the authorities. What would have been the point?

“Don’t think about the past,” Peter said. “Graham is back, he’s the earl now, and life goes on. Shall I read to you tonight?” Graham’s arrival had put the evening routine at sixes and sevens, but the two hours Peter spent reading to Lanie were the highlight of his day and not to be given up for anything.

“Please do read to me,” Lanie said. “People assume a blind woman is stupid if she can’t recount the Society pages or discuss the latest novels.”

“So why do you insist on having me read from my pamphlets?”

“Because the Society pages are frivolous and novels often doubly so. I learn from your pamphlets, Peter.”

Ask her now, you idiot. Please teach me how to knit. Six little words. “I learn things too. Fascinating stuff. I’ve also been reading Adam Smith. He takes a very dim view of government, you know, whether it’s monarchy, empire, democracy, republic… Quite the grouch is Mr. Smith. Goes on and on about government existing to defend the rich against the poor. He gets quite fierce.” Not Adam Smith, you dolt. For heaven’s sake, cease before you sound like Uncle. “Morna has just arrived, and she and Graham are trying not to stare at each other.”

“Her attar of roses gives her away. Offer to pour her a drink, Peter. She’ll need the fortification.”

“Graham’s seeing to it.”

“Ah. Well, then. They must have enjoyed their walk. I suppose that’s a good thing.” Lanie’s tone suggested perhaps it wasn’t a good thing at all.

“If they are putting the past behind them, Lanie, that’s a consummation devoutly to be wished. It’s all old business anyway. Tell me about your latest knitting project.” Come at the business sideways, and perhaps…

“I refuse to bore you. Tell me about Mr. Smith.”

Peter took the drink from her hand and drained the dregs. “I’ll pour you another. We can read pamphlets tonight, all about steam engines and steam-powered sail. The packets to Calais won’t have to wait on the wind or even the tides, and crossing the ocean will no longer take weeks.”

“How exciting—assuming the ships don’t blow up or catch fire, of course.”

Peter wanted to kiss her cheek again, because she was smart and willing to poke a little fun at his enthusiasm and because she was Lanie and kissable. He instead took himself to the sideboard and measured out another scant portion of whisky. Lanie’s objective had been to distract him while she eavesdropped on whatever Graham and Morna were saying to each other.

Lanie was worried about her sister, and about the past, and probably not the least bit interested in Adam Smith. Peter downed the drink and poured another and caught Uncle Brodie eyeing him with a damnably knowing expression.

Life in the Antipodes had been considerably easier if a man learned to tell himself some comforting half-truths.

Seven years isn’t an eternity.

Australia can make a hardworking fellow wealthy.

The heat isn’t that bad for much of the year.

Graham had leaned on all of those bouncers from time to time, but the falsehood he’d wrapped around himself most frequently—and with the least success—had been a bald-faced lie.

It wasn’t love, not really. More of an infatuation. You were at that age, and so was Morna, and she’s likely breaking half the hearts in Edinburgh by now.

As Brodie bored St. Didier witless with political maunderings, and Peter made sheep’s eyes at Lanie, Graham watched Morna conferring with the head footman. Her smile would have charmed Cupid from his clouds, and the lilt of her voice carried under the other conversations like the murmur of the Tay on a pretty summer day.

Infatuations didn’t last for half a man’s life. They didn’t send him around the world and back again. They didn’t compel him to open a Pandora’s box of memories at bedtime every night. Morna on her mare, flying across the countryside like some happy Valkyrie. Morna fluffing Grandmama’s pillows and fetching yet another extra blanket. Morna raging at the crown’s extravagances while hardworking farmers barely survived…

Always Morna.

“You are pensive,” St. Didier said, escaping Brodie’s clutches when the old fellow excused himself, likely to heed nature’s call.

“I went to the pond this afternoon—the lochan,” Graham said. “I wanted to see the place, and I didn’t want to see it ever again.”

St. Didier swirled the whisky in his glass. “I made myself ride around the estate one last time after it had passed from my family’s hands. Every couple of years, I go back and do a little trespassing in the name of self-torment.”

For St. Didier, that amounted to an anguished confession. “Why?”

“For the same reason you went on that walk today. Because life took turns I railed against. Seeing the fences sagging and the orchard in need of pruning keeps me honest. I can grumble all I like, but the property does not belong to me and never will.”

“I am the earl. I knew it, and…” Graham thought back to Morna’s head on his shoulder, her warmth against his side. “I am also starting to believe it.” More to the point, Graham knew he was in love with Morna MacKenzie and always had been. The most daunting realization, which had come over him gradually as they’d sat on the chilly bench in the deepening shadows, was that he always would be.

“You had to come back to Scotland to take up the title?” St. Didier asked.

“It’s complicated.” Graham had come back to Scotland to test one theory and explore others. “I hear you’ve been putting questions to my brother.”

St. Didier let the maladroit change of topic pass unremarked, though as far as Graham was concerned, any and every topic eventually led back to Morna.

“You should be putting questions to your brother,” St. Didier said. “What happened, MacNeil? All those years ago, a sequence of events transpired that resulted in your grandmother’s death. Who orchestrated that sequence, if anybody? What sequence of events precipitated John’s death?”

St. Didier would ask that question. “John tippled nigh constantly. He sat out under the stars contemplating weighty questions, eventually rose, took a wrong step on soft ground, dropped a good dozen yards onto rocky shallows, and expired. Leave his memory in peace, St. Didier.”

St. Didier tidied up the decanters, which had already been sitting in a precise line. “Do you believe that?”

“Yes, and I also believe the inept footpad who tried to set upon us in London was merely coincidence. London is a cesspit of crime, as is known to all, and we spoke with more education than we dressed in that pub, and thus we made targets of ourselves.”

That earned Graham a visual inspection. “I’d forgotten about the footpad.”

“As well you should.” As Graham should have, but in retrospect, he was half certain he’d been followed from his lodgings that night. A patient sort of footpad, to go to that much trouble.

“Who knew where you were staying?”

“You did, the solicitors, and thus Peter, of a certainty. Anybody who chanced on Peter’s correspondence. The penny press might have spotted me. They certainly knew of my return.”

“Did Miss MacKenzie?”

Miss MacKenzie sent the footman on his way with a pat to his arm. Graham didn’t recognize him. The fellow was old enough to be her father and looked besotted enough to be her beau.

“St. Didier, your unfortunate experiences have warped your faith in human nature. Miss MacKenzie would never be so underhanded as to set minions upon an enemy in the dark. She’d trounce him properly in the churchyard and fight fair.”

The butler appeared, another new face, or a face matured to the extent that Graham didn’t recognize him.

“Think of it this way, MacNeil,” St. Didier said. “Miss MacKenzie was among those in the household when the sheriff’s man laid charges against you. She either believes your negligence caused the countess’s death, or she knows for certain that your negligence had little to do with it. Either way, you should give her a wide berth.”

St. Didier could be reckless. A revelation, that. “You insult a woman I esteem highly, St. Didier. Morna would never have mis-medicated Grandmama. Never.”

“Somebody did. You should talk to Peter. He’s hiding something.”

“He thinks he’s hiding his great love for Lanie when it nigh perfumes the very air. I wish them a fruitful union. The succession would benefit.”

“Dinner is served.” The butler’s tone managed to be both gracious and magisterial.

Graham nodded to St. Didier and crossed the room to offer his arm to Morna. “Might I have the honor?”

She looked quietly splendid in blue velvet trimmed in MacNeil plaid. “We’re to observe the formalities, my lord?” Her tone was teasing with a hint of challenge, a great improvement over her initial chilly good manners.

“We’re to observe a few simple courtesies so that Peter escorting Lanie won’t be such a departure from standard behavior.”

Morna slipped her hand around his arm. “Lanie doesn’t truly need an escort. She knows the whole castle, from cellars to parapets.”

“Peter needs to escort her. One hopes his regard is reciprocated.” Graham set a dignified pace for the dining room.

“I honestly can’t tell,” Morna said. “They like each other, and they have been friends for so long… For some, attraction arises like a sudden gust of wind. For others, it’s more like a breeze that gathers force over time. Perhaps Peter is waiting for Lanie’s breeze to blow his way?”

For others, the attraction was just there, like the air, the heavens, the habit of breathing in and out.

“Would you object to them marrying?” Graham asked quietly as Uncle Brodie came chattering along with St. Didier in tow.

“Would you?”

“Not at all.” A half-truth, at best. “I’d like them to observe a decent interval of courtship, though.” Long enough for Graham to either discover who had delivered Grandmama’s fatal dose, or conclude that a definite answer to that question was impossible to discern.

“For some couples,” Morna murmured, “a decent interval would be about twenty minutes. Leave them alone longer than that…”

She blushed. Graham seated her with as much punctilio as he was capable of. When he leaned down to give her chair one last little push, he let his hand rest on her shoulder. Straightening somehow involved his fingers gliding along the side of her neck.

“For shame, Miss MacKenzie,” he murmured. “Every Scottish laddie knows that twenty minutes isn’t nearly enough to properly express his most tender sentiments. Such an undertaking demands the whole of a long night and even into the next morning.”

“Scottish lasses know utter balderdash when they hear it.” Morna whisked her table napkin—more MacNeil plaid—across her lap. “Courtship doesn’t stop at the altar. The genuine version lasts for years and is never complete.”

“One doesn’t argue with a lady, particularly a Scottish lady. That roast smells wonderful.”

The venison was done to a turn, the potatoes swimming in butter, and the pear compote a superb finish to an excellent meal. As the conversation wandered from politics to local gossip to weather and the possibility of an excursion into Perth, Graham considered his exchange with Morna.

He loved her. His regard was not the half-invented prop of a homesick shopkeeper, nor the desperate fantasy of the transported felon. His feelings for Morna had roots in his youth and had only grown stronger for being separated from her.

Morna was at least viewing him in a friendly light, and he could work with that.

The difficulty he faced involved the need, the honor-bound need , to deal with her honestly, and that meant a frank and fraught discussion of the past.

Soon. Not yet, but soon.