Page 23 of The Marquess’ Disguised Heiress (Love and Secrets of the Ton #13)
Viscount James Augustus Northwell stepped off the ship, shivering at the cold spray of the mist off the Thames against his back.
Even with his coat to shield him from the wind and rain, the nip of the dreary English weather in fall was a vastly different from what he’d become accustomed to in the Southern Colonies, the cities of India, and most recently, Africa.
His travels had shown him a much sunnier, more inviting climate, and returning to the drab grayness of London’s fall was the last thing he would’ve chosen on his own.
He took a moment to gain his bearings. His legs wobbled on the solid ground after so many weeks at sea, and he wished he could get back on the ship and sail away, back to where he’d come from. Forcing his mind off the thought of running away, he looked up at the city of London, or, at least, the dingy dock area of it. This wasn’t the worst dock on the Thames. Far from it. But no dock on the Thames was his preferred place to be.
Others traveling to London on the ship from Africa began to unload behind him. The sailors handed down luggage from the ship, and he spotted a porter collecting his to be loaded into whatever carriage came for him.
He’d sent word ahead that he would be coming, and he’d also had the ship’s captain send a bird to inform those on land to send word to the Northwell home for a carriage. One would be waiting on the street, no doubt.
The porter spotted him and waved him over. “Viscount Northwell,” the man said in the thick accent distinctive of the East End. “I have your luggage ‘ere, Lord Northwell. Top of the mornin’ to you, by the by. ‘Ow was the voyage?”
He smiled faintly, though he wanted to grimace at the shock of hearing the man refer to him as Viscount Northwell and the stark reminder the salutation carried that his parents were now dead and gone. “It was uneventful, thank you.”
Despite the smile and polite words, something of his bleak mood must have slipped through. Either that or the press had spread the news of his parents’ deaths in a distillery fire three months ago for all of London to read. Whatever the case, the porter was quieter after that.
“Just bring the luggage to the edge of the street,” he told the porter. “I should have a carriage waiting with the Northwell crest on it. I trust you can manage?”
“Aye, Viscount Northwell. Been doin’ this many years now, milord. Just you leave it to me.” The porter picked up James’s luggage and headed for the street.
James plucked a bag of his personal effects out of the luggage before the man could make it too far. “I’ll carry this myself.”
The little bag was too precious to lose. It had all of his botany journals and a packet of letters from his father. Neither were things he could easily replace. The thought of the letters was a fresh reminder of the open wound in his soul following his parents’ deaths.
The bag contained the final letter he’d received regarding his parents three months ago. It had been a notice that they had died in the distillery fire and a request from his sister that he return home.
His family’s attorney had sworn he would take over the family fortune and estate since there were no other heirs to do it.
The weight of that responsibility pressed on him. While he was not unhappy that his exile over something he hadn’t done was now over, he was returning to a family whose name was in shambles thanks to the lies and rumors spread about him, and he had a great deal of work to do if he wanted to restore their honor.
He would bear not only his grief but also the curiosity and judgment of the ton regarding his return.
He moved along behind the porter to the street, examining the bustle of people and carriages as they went. It was so different, yet in other ways, so similar to the other major cities he’d visited in the last eight years.
It was cleaner than the cities in India and the little villages in Africa, but it was dingier and dirtier than some of the cities he had visited in the Colonies. It lacked the bright fall colors of New England, but it had the same bustle and hubbub of people.
As he stepped to the side of the street, scanning for his own carriage, a closed carriage rattled past, and an embroidered handkerchief escaped a crack in the window, flying free to tumble into the street. James hurried to snatch it up when it came to a stop at his feet and looked for where the carriage had gone.
The carriage was rumbling to a slow stop on the cobblestones just ahead of the porter, and James strode toward the carriage to return the woman’s handkerchief. The window of the carriage opened just as he came to a standstill in front of it and lifted a gloved hand to knock.
He looked up into the angelic face of a woman whose striking appearance left him momentarily without words.
Her blonde curls were done up neatly, swept back into a soft chignon with ringlets that gently framed her face, and her soft blue eyes met his for a moment before her full lips curled into a delicate smile.
“Is that my handkerchief, sir?” she asked, her voice sweet but strong enough to be heard over the chaos around them.
He held it up to her with an apologetic smile. “My apologies, my lady. Yes, I fetched it from the road when it fell and wished to return it to its rightful owner.”
She reached out and took it with delicate, lace-gloved fingers. His own fingers brushed her warm ones as he did so, and then the carriage jolted into motion again as the driver up front pulled the horse back out into the flow of carriages along the street.
James stared after it, trying to find his bearings. Such a gentle, sweet woman didn’t belong in such a dingy, dark place. Who had allowed her to come down here alone with that unmarked carriage? Certainly, no one who could afford a proper governess or chaperone for the young woman!
“Lord Northwell!” A man’s loud voice cut through his reverie and the noise of the crowded street.
He spun and found a valet waving to him from a carriage down the street just a little way. The porter was setting down his bags, and the valet, seeing that his call had been heard and his presence noted, turned to put them up in the carriage.
James made his way to the carriage and paid the porter for his help before climbing into his carriage. The carriage jerked and then rumbled into motion as soon as the valet had closed the door, and he was off, heading for the Northwell house and wondering what might await him there.
***
The family home sprawled across the front lawn of the Northwell estate just outside the inner boroughs of London.
His parents had owned a sizable house and a good bit of land for a city dwelling, but though the house was sprawling and had once been considered beautiful for its time, James couldn’t help thinking it looked old and a bit ordinary.
It had no beautiful eaves or bright, crisp white siding. Instead, it was blocky and gray, like everything else in this city.
It was home now, though, and there was something to be said for the way the glittering frost from the morning chill gave it a sort of worn-out charm. Whatever the case, the place could certainly use some updates, and he would make them if there were funds to do so.
For now, his focus had to be on reintegrating into a household that had forgotten about him when his father sent him across the seas to get rid of the source of the family’s scandal.
He helped his valet take the luggage inside while the carriage driver went to put the horses and carriage up, and he walked through the front door to silence.
Inside, servants stopped what they were doing to greet him with subdued murmurs and curtsies. None of them seemed happy to see him.
Looking up at the grand staircase in the entry hall, he wondered which bedroom would be his now. The master bedroom that had once been his parents’ quarters? It felt wrong.
A woman appeared in the hall at the railing and began to descend the stairs, but she stopped to stare at him when she spotted him. With a start, James realized it was his younger sister, Lily.
He hadn’t seen her in so long, and she’d grown a great deal. Instead of the little girl he’d left behind, Lily had grown into a striking young woman who surely turned heads at any social event she might attend.
Did she recognize or even remember him? He’d kept in contact with his father and mother, though the contact had been sporadic. They hadn’t wanted to send him away, though they’d been forced to it by the situation. He hadn’t wanted to go, either.
But the whole scandal he’d been embroiled in when the young woman he’d been engaged to claimed he’d fathered a child with her had been too great to quiet no matter how his father tried. Leaving had been the only choice.
The moment between them hung awkwardly in the air. Lily didn’t rush to him. After a moment, though, she greeted him with a curtsy. “Lord Northwell,” she said, her voice carrying down the staircase.
Another woman, her hair graying and wrinkles around her pinched mouth, stepped into the upper hall and onto the staircase beside Lily. When she saw James, her mouth pinched even further. “You,” she spat.
“Lily, I will be departing this moment now that this disreputable man has arrived. I am sorry that I cannot stay longer for your period of mourning and assist you in your dear mother’s absence, but I simply cannot stay under the same roof as a man like your brother. I will return to my husband and the parsonage and pray for the Northwell household.”
She came down the stairs, scowling at James as she approached. “I do hope you will repent before it is too late for your eternal soul, young man! And for your poor sister’s sake, I hope you are ready to fulfill your duties as the man of the house.”
Lily winced and turned away, her cheeks blooming with color.
James gritted his teeth and took a deep breath to calm himself. His Aunt Maria had always been a bit of a harridan, judging everyone who didn’t live by her overly pious standards. Even her own sister, who had married up when she’d married James’s father, had never been good enough.
“Aunt Maria,” he said stiffly. “Thank you for caring for Lily. I am quite certain I can manage now in taking over as the man of the house.”
Maria shook her head and looked up at Lily, who was slipping quietly away from the scene. “That poor, poor child! Think of the ruin of her future thanks to your foolish, wicked behavior. At least the woman you foisted a child off on has left the city!”
Upstairs, Lily froze in the hall. Her gaze darted to James as he felt heat creeping up into his cheeks. He held her gaze. Did she believe the same of him? Did she think he had fathered a child with his former fiancée and then abandoned her to deal with his bastard child alone? He couldn’t blame her if she did.
Lily’s cheeks flushed, and she looked away. “Please excuse me,” she said before fleeing from the hall’s landing.
His aunt harrumphed and shoved past him to the door. “God have mercy on this household with you in charge!”
The door slammed with an ominous boom behind her. The servants, who had been peering around doorways and corners, quickly disappeared, leaving him all alone in the house’s large, empty entryway.
James closed his eyes and fought back the wave of despair and fury threatening to overwhelm him. Then he opened his eyes and headed upstairs. He wandered down the empty halls with his luggage until he found the master wing where his parents had lived.
Staying in the main room didn’t feel right, so he put his luggage in the large guest room that they’d kept for important family who deserved a place of honor in the home.
He would transform the old master bedroom into the new guest room later when he could bring himself to look it over and decide how to go about that.
He dropped onto the cold bed and stared forlornly out the window at the city beyond their grounds and the rain falling over the lawn now. The whole house felt barren and void without his parents here.
His stomach clenched in a mixture of anger over the past and fear for the future. Why had he come home at all? Traveling an unknown world to places that might be hospitable or hostile had never felt so dreadful or uncertain as coming home to a place he had known for most of his life.
Had he been better off before he’d known of their deaths, thinking that he was still disowned and exiled? Or would he be better off here when he’d settled and managed to escape the specters of the past that haunted these halls and his soul?