Across town, Michael exited Horse Guards and was immediately enveloped in the stench of the Thames. His visit with Lord Hobart had taken only a quarter of an hour. Given how fraught the situation with France remained, Michael understood that the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies had more pressing concerns than the Canadian frontier. Still, it was hard not to feel annoyed, given that his morning with Anne had been dashed for something so brief.
At least he’d received one piece of good news, something he’d been hoping might come to pass: Lord Hobart had confirmed that Michael was to begin training to one day assume the post of Governor General of Canada.
Michael set off for home on foot, glad for the chance to stretch his legs after weeks cooped up on a ship. Those weeks in a cramped cabin had been particularly torturous because Michael had never been any good at sitting still. This had made his school years a challenge at best. Michael was a dutiful son, and he’d tried to acquit himself well in the classroom, but although he knew he wasn’t stupid, he just wasn’t bookish. To make matters worse, he had little facility for languages, making Eton’s curriculum of unrelenting Latin and Greek a daily misery. Michael thought best when he was moving around, preferably out of doors.
The army would have been a tempting path, had his father not absolutely forbidden it. When Michael was nine, his mother had died in childbirth, along with the little girl she’d been struggling to bring into the world. Losing his wife had been a crushing blow for the marquess, and Michael could understand why his father was loathe to let his only remaining family member take such a risk. But his father’s edict had left Michael floundering, dreading the future looming before him of being stuck inside the library all day, poring over endless ledgers.
But then he’d been sent to Canada, and it had been a breath of fresh air (literally, Michael thought, shooing a fly as he stepped around a pile of rotting garbage). In Upper Canada every day was an adventure, and the things he was required to do happened to be precisely the things he enjoyed: riding, shooting, and building. The fact that he was heir to a marquessate was actually a strike against him, as his neighbors had assumed he would be soft. But he was able to win their respect the same way every man won respect out on the frontier—by the sweat of his brow. In Canada, no one cared that he hadn’t memorized the complete works of Aristophanes. A man was judged by how hard he worked and how well he cleared the land, and Michael thrived on that physical labor.
What was more, out on the frontier, Michael’s three terms at Oxford had been sufficient to make him a man of letters. He’d been asked to join the Legislative Council of Upper Canada at the age of nineteen. Then the army had written asking for his help—could he find them a supply of walnut wood, which was desperately needed to make stocks for guns? Michael could, and he did. A request followed from the Royal Navy, Upper Canada being the ideal location from which to secure the hundred-foot poles they needed for ships’ masts.
Michael might not be bookish, but here was a task suited to his qualities. Whereas ninety-nine men out of a hundred would’ve pulled out their pen to explain to the Royal Navy that getting mast poles out of the Upper Canadian wilderness was impossible because you would have to recut the entire road to move something that long, Michael had pulled out his axe. He’d hired a crew of ten men and had joined them in the grueling work of straightening the road. It had taken the better part of spring and summer to get those poles out of the woods and to wrestle them downriver, but it had been worth it. The boy who’d once been dismissed by his teachers as a bit slow was suddenly regarded as a man of ability, the one who got things done. Michael found he liked that quite a lot.
Then had come the commission from the Crown itself.
Michael was proud of what he had done. Three years earlier there had been a horrific famine in Britain. When the Crown asked Michael to buy up as much Canadian wheat as he could and have it shipped back home, he had spent three exhausting months canvassing the countryside, doing nothing else. As bad as the famine had been, he knew it wasn’t boasting to say that it would have been ten times worse were it not for his efforts. He had done something important. He had made a difference. He had—
Michael’s reverie was broken by a trio of young Corinthians, staggering home still in their evening dress and smelling like a distillery. One of them lurched into Michael’s path, forcing him to leap out of the way. He narrowly missed stepping in a pile of pig excrement lying right in the middle of the pavement.
God, how he hated London. Why on earth would anyone want to live here? It was bad enough that it was noisy, crowded, and stinking. But the worst part, he thought, glaring after the three drunkards, was the triviality of it all. Michael enjoyed a night out with his friends as much as any young man. But for most men of his age and rank, that was all their lives amounted to, an endless round from the tailor—a waste of time and money, as far as Michael was concerned—to the club to some seedy gaming hell.
In Canada, Michael had felt such a sense of purpose. He could still recall his heart swelling in his chest as he watched that first ship sail away with a load of hundred-foot masts, knowing that the Royal Navy was going to be able to repair their fleet because of him.
He had received a letter of thanks from Lord Nelson himself. How could he go from that to the useless life of a young London buck?
He couldn’t.
And he wasn’t going to.
He was going back to Canada just as soon as he could, the only place on the face of this earth where he could acquit himself admirably with the skills that he had. He was going to do something important with his life. He was going to be Governor General.
He was going to make his father proud.
Everything was going to be perfect. Because this time when he sailed for Canada, he would have Anne with him.
As his wife.
Michael nodded to the butler as he entered Cranfield House, his family’s London residence on Hanover Square. “Good morning, Hoyle. Did any messages come for me while I was out?”
“Yes, my lord,” Hoyle said, presenting two letters on a silver tray, “one from Lady Wynters and another from Lord Fauconbridge.”
There was no question which one he was going to read first, but his shoulders slumped as he scanned Anne’s brief missive. He’d hoped that the morning’s shooting would be a prelude to them spending the rest of the day together, but Anne wrote that she was busy with her charity work all day and all evening.
She did suggest they go for a drive tomorrow afternoon, so at least he had that to look forward to.
Fauconbridge’s letter was a suggestion that, as he was suddenly free, he pay a visit to the tailor.
Michael groaned. He knew he needed to go. Last night no less than seven people had hinted with a remarkable lack of subtlety that his jacket did not pass muster. He had no wish to embarrass Anne on their wedding day, so he knew he’d have to do it sooner or later.
Still, visiting the tailor on his first full day in London… it felt like an ill omen.
He sighed. “Hoyle, let me have my hat again. It would appear I’m going back out.”