Page 8 of The Homecoming (The De Montforte Brothers #6)

Chapter Six

R uaidri—sitting on the rug with the next generation of enthralled de Montfortes gathered around—had thought they’d all see right through his sea monster story, but instead, he soon found himself relating tales of Irish mermaids, sea nymphs, and talking dolphins to appease their insatiable appetite for things that only a mariner might see.

Or invent.

Above the children’s heads and wide-eyed stares, he saw the Duke of Blackheath trying to hold back a smirk that his nieces, nephews, and even skeptical heir never saw, and Gareth elbowing Juliet and she clapping a hand over her mouth to still her own laughter.

Ruaidri was hard-pressed to maintain his own facade of awed, reverent seriousness, using his hands, eyes, and voice to paint an expansive picture for the children.

“Oh, aye, that dolphin came right out o’ the water as pretty as ye please, smiled at me and told me, ‘Captain Ruaidri, now! If it’s Massachusetts ye’re tryin’ to find, ye’d better follow me tail, as that compass there in yer binnacle, ’tis dead wrong, it is.

’ And ye know somethin’? Why, I gave the tiller over to my lieutenant, told him to look out for me signals from the bow, and I stood there watchin’ that dolphin as he led me all the way to Massachusetts, where yer Aunt Nerissa and I decided to make our home. ”

The children all spoke at once, clamoring to be heard.

“What’s a binnacle?”

“I want to know what a tiller is.”

“What was the dolphin’s name? What else did he tell you?”

“Well now,” Ruaidri said, importantly, “that dolphin told me there really isn’t such a thing as sea monsters, and that it was all just a figment of me imagination.”

Little Mary shut her eyes, leaned her cheek down to her kitten’s head, and let out a deep breath. “I am glad of that, as that sea monster story frightened me.”

Augustus crossed his arms over his chest and raised his chin. “There is no such thing as sea monsters, Mary.”

“No such thing as talking dolphins, either,” said Gabriel, though his eyes begged for the story to be true.

“Don’t you go spoiling the fun!” Charlotte admonished.

“Aye, lass, if I go telling all me stories today, I’ll have none left for tomorrow.” He knelt. “I’ve an idea, I do.”

“What is it, Uncle Ruaidri?”

“See that puppy in yer aunt’s arms? He needs a name.

And he kept your Uncle Andrew and Aunt Celsie up all night because he’s got more energy than the sun on a summer day.

Why don’t you all try to come up with a name for him, and take him out to play so he gets good and tired?

Unless,” he winked conspiratorially, “ye think ye don’t have the energy yerselves to keep up with a puppy. ”

Excited squeals rose to the challenge. The puppy, which had fallen asleep in Celsie’s arms, awoke and started barking.

Mary’s kitten hissed and scrabbled, trying to get away.

The girl passed the struggling feline to her mother, Celsie put the puppy down, and a moment later, the children—with the puppy chasing after them and the nurses in their wake—were racing out of the room in a cloud of shrieks, screams and noise.

The adults let out a collective sigh, and Ruaidri got to his feet.

Gareth approached him. “Come on, brother,” he said affably. “The day’s young and we’ll show you around the grounds. You do ride, don’t you?”

“Em, uh ... passably.”

“Good. We’ll find a horse for you out in the stable. Andrew? Will you join us?”

“I’m going back to bed.”

“Luce? Are you certain you don’t wish to go?”

“Not today. But you go on, enjoy the morning. Why don’t you and Charles take Ruaidri down to the Speckled Hen and treat him to one of ol’ Crawley’s best puddings.”

“Very well, then. Come, Ruaidri. Am I saying it correctly? Rory? Roo-ri?”

“Roo-a-ri.”

“Roo-a-ri it is, then. Let’s go. Best not to keep Charles waiting.”

The two headed out into the freshly washed air, Gareth chattering on about the weather, asking him about America, expressing his hopes that the war would end soon, and inquiring of him what kind of horse he might prefer.

“A quiet one,” Ruaidri quipped, warming to his new brother. The man was immensely likeable, endlessly affable. “I won’t pretend to be the most accomplished rider in the world. I won’t even pretend to be an accomplished rider a’tall.”

“Oh! Well then, we can certainly walk, instead. I can show you around on foot as easily as I can from the back of a horse.”

“Oh, no, ’tis fine I’ll be, for sure.” Privately, Ruaidri thought of the cool, aloof Charles awaiting them in the stable, and realized he would be judged on this as well.

Nerissa had told him numerous times that the family was horse-mad, and his own pride dictated that he at least try to fit in.

To show that he, too, could sit a horse.

After all, he didn’t need to give Charles yet more reason to dislike him.

Charles was waiting for them in the stable.

Gareth, who’d been laughing at something Ruaidri had just told him about little Aidan, felt the laughter die in his throat as his brother shot him an accusatory glare. Gareth thinned his lips and gave Charles a look right back.

You’re being a pillock. Give the poor bloke an opportunity, would you?

They were brothers and they were close. Charles didn’t need to hear the words from Gareth’s lips to understand the unspoken meaning.

His mouth tightened, and he stood waiting while Gareth summoned a groom to help Ruaidri find and tack up a horse.

Charles began tapping his foot in impatience.

Ignoring him, Gareth attended to his own mount, Crusader, himself.

Twenty minutes later, Gareth was aboard his thoroughbred, Charles was mounted on his trusty military steed, Contender, and Ruaidri was on a bay gelding who quickly took his measure, dropped his head to the grass to steal a few bites—and refused to move.

Gareth, grinning, watched his new brother pull up the horse’s head and give him a tap with the crop. The gelding stood where he was, ears pinned, head high, and muscles bunching in protest as he chewed the grass now tangling around his bit.

“’Sdeath, Ruaidri, the sun will be setting before you get that obstinate plug moving.”

“He’s an English horse,” Ruaidri shot back, with a mixture of self-deprecating laughter and frustration. “Now, if he were Irish, mind ye, he’d be sweet and mannerly, he would.”

Up ahead, Charles turned to look back, his eyes going flat with disdain.

“Do you need help?” he asked coldly.

The Irishman put his heels to the gelding’s flanks and the animal jerked up his head, planted his feet, and began to back up, one step, two—

Charles, fed up, trotted Contender back to the cantankerous nag, slapped a hand across the thick hide of his rump and got the animal—still munching, green foam now dripping from his mouth—moving.

Ruaidri O’Devir smiled in gratitude. “’Tis thanking ye I be, Lord Charles,” he said. “This horse doesn’t like me much.”

Neither do I.

Gareth saw his brother’s lips move and shot him a warning glare.

A few minutes later, they were walking down the drive, the horses’ hooves crunching in the gravel. They crossed the moat and headed toward the distant pastures. Ahead, Charles let Contender out into a canter, and Gareth saw him look back over his shoulder.

Are you coming?

Gareth, with Crusader beginning to jig beneath him in his own eagerness to race Contender as was their habit, deliberately kept a firm hold on the horse.

He didn’t want to go charging off and leave Ruaidri behind.

His brother-in-law had a passable seat, though he lacked the grace and elegance in the saddle that was bred into the de Montfortes and which, Gareth thought a bit sourly as he watched his brother’s form getting smaller and smaller with distance, perhaps all of them had taken for granted.

Not everyone was a perfect rider.

And he was more than certain that he and Charles combined wouldn’t know half of what was in Captain Ruaidri O’Devir’s little finger about sailing—let alone fighting—a warship.

He reached down to scratch Crusader’s withers and glanced over at Ruaidri. “I’m sorry about Charles. He’s not usually so rude.”

The other man shrugged. “Ah, well. At least he’s not trying to kill me, as Lucien did. And if three out of four of ye accept me, then I’ll settle for it.”

“He and Nerissa were particularly close. Charles is the epitome of perfection ... he holds himself to impossibly high standards. But like us all, he’s made mistakes, except he’s harder on himself for them than anyone. It has been quite difficult for him, the whole matter of the abduction.”

“I understand,” Ruaidri said, finally settling into the gelding’s ambling walk. “I’ve a sister too. I know what it means to feel protective, I do. And what it feels like to want to kill anyone who might harm her.”

They rode along in silence, Gareth enjoying the sun on his face, the smell of the wind in his nostrils, the breeze on his skin.

Ahead, a pair of rabbits emerged from out of the tall grasses and sat twitching their noses before bounding away.

From far off came the bleating of sheep, a dog’s bark, and a farmer’s call, and down in the village, the distant clanging of the smith, pounding away at something on his anvil.

Gareth glanced at Ruaidri. The other man was gazing out over the countryside, the hedgerows, and far off in the distance, the great manor house belonging to the earl of Brookhampton.

“That where that shite-stain that broke her heart lives?”

The vehement anger in the man’s tone caught Gareth off guard. “She told you all about Perry, eh?”

“Sure did. If we’re likely to run into him, I won’t hold back on what I’m likely to say to him. Treating her like that. Breaking her heart.”

“It was Lucien’s fault,” Gareth said. “Perry ... he used to be my closest friend. We grew up together, and it pains me more than anyone that he’s ceased all contact with our family, that he can’t forgive Lucien for what he did.

” He sobered. “Know something? I can’t say I blame him, really.

Perry’s a shell of the person he once was.

Being in that French gaol, being tortured .

.. he was different when he got back to England.

Changed. He keeps to himself, and we almost never see him. I doubt we’ll run into him.”

“And does Lucien still...”

“Manipulate people?”

Ruaidri grinned and shrugged, and raising a dark brow, just looked questioningly at Gareth.

“No,” Gareth said. “We’re all married off now, no more matches to arrange, no more lives to interfere with. He has become quite tame, really, married to Eva and enjoying fatherhood as he does.”

The Irishman laughed. “So, we’re all quite safe, then.”

“Yes. Yes, I daresay, we are.”

“Lucien, you really must do something about this situation.”

The Duke of Blackheath was in the library seated at his desk, a quill in his hand and the vellum on which he was writing already covered with his bold, flourishing scroll.

He did not look up, though out of the corner of his eye he could see his beautiful wife standing at his own customary place at the window, hands on her hips, sunlight haloing her upswept red, red hair as she looked out over the downs.

She was as beautiful as she was the day they’d married, and he finally raised his head, drinking in the elegance of her slender neck, the whiteness of her shoulders, the way her silk gown clung to her tall, slender form.

“What situation?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well what that situation was.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” she said, turning to fix her beautiful, slanting green eyes on him and Lucien laughed because as usual, Eva could almost read his mind.

“I’ve sworn off manipulating people,” he said, innocently meeting her gaze.

“Then manipulate the situation.”

He made a little noise of defeat, sighed, put the quill down in its holder and capped the ink bottle.

Rising, he went to join her at the window and slid an arm around her waist, drawing her close.

Following her gaze, he saw three riders far in the distance.

Gareth and Ruaidri riding together, walking, their horses’ tails swishing at flies.

Charles a quarter mile ahead, Contender at a full gallop as he put distance between them and leaving the other two behind.

Lucien sighed again.

“This is getting rather ... tedious,” he murmured.

“Yes, it is.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Men have their pride. And didn’t you say that the captain has quite a temper? If Charles manages to upset him enough that the two of them up in a duel, it will be a disaster.”

“Ruaidri won’t duel,” Lucien said confidently.

“Not now, not ever again, and most certainly not with the brother of his own wife. He loves Nerissa. He’ll put up with this nonsense because he won’t want to spoil things for her, but if she notices the tension, she’ll put her foot down and take him out of this. ..”

“Situation?”

“Yes. And I’d hate for her to end their visit before it’s hardly begun.”

“If she does, Charles will resent Ruaidri all the more for it. As he sees it, the man has already stolen his sister from the family. If they cut short their visit, to Charles it’ll be not once but twice he’s taken Nerissa away from us all.”

“Indeed.”

“So, what will you do?”

“Me?”

“Well, you have to fix this.”

Lucien took a deep breath, held if for a few moments, and quietly released it.

“Lucien?”

He smiled patiently. “I will think of something. Just leave it to me, my dear.” He leaned down and kissed her. “Just leave it to me.”