Page 5 of The Wordsworth Key (Regency Secrets #3)

No one was supposed to know about his and Dora’s involvement in the Elgin marble investigation, which had taken them into the murky world of French espionage. ‘Talking about what, Fee?’ He accepted a plate of bacon and eggs from an attentive footman.

‘That he nearly blew you up at Berwick– some ghastly enemy spy who didn’t stop at killing women and children– then you saved the lives of hundreds of casualties.’

His mother silently patted his hand.

‘Hardly hundreds,’ said Jacob. The incident was public knowledge, so he could talk about that. ‘I merely helped with a few of the injured.’

Felicity leaned her cheek against her hand in an approximation of the pose of a lovelorn lass and sighed.

‘Heroic Dr Sandys.’ She dropped the pose.

‘They gossiped about you for weeks. My friends have been badgering me to snip a lock of your hair for them– you’ll be quite bald by the time I finish. I’m sick of hearing how brave you are.’

William cleared his throat. ‘Though we’re all proud, naturally.’

That did not seem to be the consensus.

‘I apologise for my ill luck in being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Fee,’ said Jacob, ‘but I could hardly walk away to leave injured men bleeding out, could I, in order to escape notice?’

‘There are ladies present,’ rumbled Arthur, disapproving of the mention of bloodshed at breakfast.

Jacob bit back the childish urge to say, ‘she started it’. Coming home dug up some of his worst character traits.

‘If you could be less remarkable in future.’ Felicity gave him a sardonic smile.

He tapped his forehead. ‘Yes, miss. I’ll make sure I walk by on the other side next time.’ He turned to his mother who had been listening with a pained expression. ‘I’m sorry if news of my actions distressed you, Mama.’

‘Distressed? Yes– but only because my son’s life was in danger again. Surprised? No. We always knew you would have to go your own way, Jacob.’ Her hand shook as she raised her cup to her lips. ‘You’ve got so much of your father in you. He could be mule-headed too.’

He wondered what his father had been like at his age.

Starting a family relatively late in life, the viscount had always seemed old to Jacob.

He regretted that he had lost the opportunity to ask his father about what he had done before settling down, the adventures that Jacob would never now hear about.

‘Tell me about his last illness. What did the doctors say?’

‘There was nothing anyone could do.’ As his mother recounted the recent weeks of heart pains and breathlessness, Jacob’s eyes travelled down the table to his eldest brother. Arthur was looking at him, not with the tolerant affection he used to, but more as a problem he now needed to solve.

* * *

‘Shall we walk?’ asked Arthur after breakfast, including William and Jacob in the invitation.

Felicity jumped up. ‘I’ll grab my shawl. I’m gasping for some fresh air.’

‘Not this time, minx,’ said Arthur quickly. ‘We’ve business to discuss and, er, Diana said she needed help with the flowers for the funeral.’

His wife blinked. ‘I did? Oh, yes, I did– and Felicity dear, your taste for such things is impeccable. I noticed how well you matched your bonnet trims this season. We’ll go around the garden and choose the colours. White and purple?’

That was news to the rest of the family, but Felicity stood a little taller for the approbation. ‘Then, of course, I’ll help. I know where the best lilies grow.’

The new viscountess was going to be a success, Jacob would wager on it.

The brothers by common consent walked out the same way Jacob had entered the house, skirted the stables and headed for the cliff path.

This had been their favourite haunt as children.

There was a track down to the sands, though they had been forbidden to go onto the estuary without a local guide.

The sea came in faster than a galloping horse and every year people drowned being surprised too far from shore.

It didn’t mean three spirited boys obeyed, rather that they kept an eye on the timetable for the tides and hoped no one betrayed them to their parents.

‘I wonder if Old Mary-Lou still digs for cockles down there,’ said William, standing on the bluff, admiring the glittering estuary. A thin silvering of water showed that the sands had entered the treacherous time when no sensible person ventured onto them.

‘I remember being terrified of her. She must be a hundred if she’s still with us,’ said Jacob, recalling the fearsome old lady who wore breeches like a man and was never spotted without her pipe clamped between her teeth.

Dora would enjoy her sharp tongue, and Wordsworth would possibly be moved to write a poem about her.

The poet loved memorialising encounters with rural originals.

‘I can report that she is alive and kicking– and draws a pension every week from the steward which she collects in person.’ Arthur folded his arms. ‘So, Jacob.’

William glanced awkwardly at Jacob. He clearly knew something was afoot, but he hated family rows.

Jacob got in with his question first before whatever bee in his bonnet buzzed out of Arthur’s mouth.

‘So why didn’t you send for me when you could have easily found out where I was?

I was only twenty miles away in a place to which it was well known I was heading– not the other end of the country.

You could have left a message at Ambleside– or with a neighbour. ’

‘I didn’t think it appropriate,’ said Arthur stiffly. ‘I had to make the best decision I could in the circumstances.’

Arthur was hopeless. Jacob turned to his other brother.

‘You knew I was on my way to my cottage, Will. I saw you in London just the other week. Couldn’t you send a message if King Arthur here was too busy with his kingdom?’

‘Jacob, this isn’t helpful.’ said William in a low voice, a warning not to lose his temper, but Jacob didn’t have it in him to let this pass.

‘Damn you both! He was my father too!’

That shout went out over the sands, startling them all. Jacob was usually cold in his anger, sarcastic with his cuts, not prone to a hot-blooded response. He didn’t regret it as it let out some of the pent-up grief.

Arthur swelled with importance, a cock about to crow. ‘He was also, Jacob, father to two unmarried girls in a delicate stage in their lives?—’

‘I’m their brother– not some Richardsonian rake!’

‘But you travel in low company, you must admit that. If you brought her here with you, they could be ruined by association.’

Jacob wanted to punch that self-righteous expression off Arthur’s face.

‘If you say one word against Dora Fitz-Pennington, I’ll call you out, brother or no!’

Arthur waved that threat away. ‘Don’t be absurd, I’m sure she’s very well in her way. I too have admired my fair share of actresses.’

‘Yes, we all know about your little love nest in Marylebone,’ said Jacob bitterly. ‘Have you given Marian her congé ?’

‘We aren’t talking about me, but yes, Marian and I have parted ways a few months ago. The problem is that you are doing more than admiring– you are going into business with your actress, harnessing our name to hers in a way that cannot be ignored. Society talks, Jacob.’

‘Really? And has it mentioned that she’s a hero? She’s saved this country at the risk of her own life, twice now.’ She had first done so to bring down the Hellfire plotters and then again but a few weeks later to foil the French spies after Elgin. They were hoping for a quieter summer.

‘And so does many an ordinary seaman or soldier facing the French without flinching, but I don’t move them in with my family.’

Jacob span on his heel and took three steps away, afraid that he might push his supercilious brother over the edge– literally, in the case of the cliff. ‘Will, you’ve met her. Tell him.’

‘Dora is a lovely young woman. Charlotte adores her,’ said William gamely.

‘As a married woman, Charlotte may do as she wishes– with your approval, of course.’ Arthur clasped his hands behind his back in his sergeant major stance.

William raised a brow. ‘Have you met my wife? My approval is moot.’

‘It’s what everyone assumes if you receive the woman in your home– and no one is scandalised. Bringing the actress here, at this time of public mourning, is beyond the pale.’

‘There was never any question of dragging Dora into this. She’s got too much pride and sense for that,’ said Jacob.

‘That’s not the impression William gave me. He said you were inseparable.’

And the rub was that Jacob didn’t want to be separated from her.

With her wit, she’d cut Arthur down to size and charm the family, as well as comfort Jacob in his grief.

He had thought the arguments would start when he broached with his brothers the subject of wanting to marry her, not for merely associating with her.

‘Don’t you get tired of considering everyone as types, rather than individuals, my lord?

Can’t you make your own mind up about someone without dismissing them sight unseen all because a gaggle of people you don’t care for might disapprove?

What’s the point of being a viscount if you can’t rise above all that? ’

‘We don’t have the luxury of living in isolation.’

‘But I’m your brother: don’t I count for more than society gossips?’

Struggling with his frustration, Arthur marched a few steps, turned, then came back. ‘I’m not unfeeling, Jacob.’

‘I realise that.’ Just unbearably rigid.

‘Why can’t you simply install her in a nice house in a quiet part of town as your mistress?’

‘To echo William, have you met my lady? No, you haven’t. She’s an independent lady of intelligence and wit, well able to earn her own living. She would scorn offers of protection and has no need to beg for your approbation.’

Arthur paled. ‘Good God, don’t tell me she’s a follower of Wollstonecraft, that harridan who harped on about the rights of women of all things?’