Seth, Duke of Leithfield
Serenity House
"More dispatches, your grace," Frank Mercer said from behind. He had crept up unheard as only he could do. His stealth made him a brilliant advance scout and excellent at practical jokes. I just wished the dispatches were a joke.
Your grace. I still expected it to refer to father. Someone greying and with years of experience to tackle all that the role demanded. "On the desk, please."
My gaze stayed on the view across the front lawn. Or what used to be the front lawn, and now looked more like the plains of Africa. "You could graze sheep out there."
"We are. You just can't see them." Humour laced his words.
Another task to add to the never-ending list. As a boy, I remembered lawns so short and lush I once thought they were another type of expensive carpet. Now the grass grew rough and long. The turf created a potential battle ground; standing hay could hide the enemy creeping up on your position. Or the turned, sneaking up on the house. We were so exposed, and I had so many reliant on me to protect them in their sleep.
I turned back to the inside view. I should have been motoring across Europe without a care in the world, save for which casino to visit next, how much champagne to drink, and which gorgeous girl to bed. The war snatched away my playboy status before I could enjoy it and replaced it with the sobering reality of a dukedom. Now I worried about the hole in the roof over the south wing. We had dodgy electrics that made the lights flicker in the ballroom, and how was I to ensure no one was attacked in their beds?
Even worse, the matrons of England rose up and flung their unwed daughters in my path. Some were passably attractive, others looked like the horses they rode. I was more hunted than a fox with the hounds hard on its scent. I had thought Serenity House would be my bolthole, but I could still hear the baying at my back, coming ever closer. Only one woman had seen me, the man and not the title.
An oval face danced in my vision, one with unusual eyes. The grey around the pupil changed to hazel at the outer edge with the expert blending of an artist's brush. Complex eyes hiding a complex soul that shone with laughter and intelligence. A woman with blonde hair hacked short; as though it were getting in her way and she had no maid at all to contain it. I conjured the slender form of a young woman who thrilled at speed and carried a lethal sword. Some would call her willowy, but I had felt the lean muscle from wielding her katana. Eleanor Cowie was a conundrum; nothing about her added up to what I expected from a gently bred woman. There was one thing I truly wanted— more time to figure her out before the hounds ripped out my still-warm entrails.
Frank dropped the stack of envelopes on the desk. The solid smack dashed cold water on my thoughts. I sighed and stared at the pile. They represented another weight pressing me down. The Great War was over, but the war at home still raged. I kept my intelligence position with the War Office as we fought a different enemy—the turned, or vermin. No, I couldn't think of what my father became as vermin. Turned reflected what happened to those unfortunate souls and allowed them to keep their humanity.
I picked up the first letter and tore it open.
A coded sheet directed me to report on the movements of the turned in Somerset. I was to chart locations and sightings, and overlay it with deceased and missing locals. London wanted to know the size and spread of the undead virus. Isolated rural communities made the task more difficult, not to mention the sheer number of men still missing after the war. The Somerset light infantry lost five thousand men and only nine villages in all of Somerset were untouched. 'The lucky nine' they called themselves. Our losses were small compared to the vast scale of death the war had wrought. They say over seventy thousand men went missing after the slaughter of the Somme Offensive alone. They will have no graves except the mud of the battlefield. Perhaps in decades to come French farmers will dig up their bones when ploughing their fields. We have no time to mourn their passing, not until we clear out every dark corner of England and burn the last of the turned, sending them to eternal rest.
"Visiting cards are being crammed through the mail slot, too," Frank said.
I swore under my breath and caught the smile that tugged his lips. He knew I hated the trappings of society and thought it humorous that they had become just that, my trap.
Another expectation. I had arrived only a week prior, had not yet paid my respects to my own father, yet I was supposed to organise social events for the well-heeled waiting to pounce and offer up their daughters as the next duchess. I needed the heads of a hydra to do all that everyone demanded of me.
The letter fell from my fingers and drifted to the littered desk. I ran my hands over my face, wishing there was a way to scrub away all the strings tying me up. I glanced up at Frank. "I'll be here all afternoon. Can you please see if anyone is available to mow the lawns?" May as well see if I can strike one thing off my list.
"If none of the lads are free, I can do it myself. I'm no stranger to a tractor." He nodded and slipped from the study.
I called Frank my 'man of all things' because that was what he did, everything. He had arrived on the estate when we were both five years old, and we've been inseparable ever since. When we inevitably got in trouble, he got the beating, and I would smuggle my pudding up to his room to try and make amends. Only school years pulled us apart, and continuing our adventures was my main reason for heading home at the holidays.
When I set off to Oxford he attended as my valet, but we were only there a few short months before war intervened. I signed up, proud to lead the local lads, blissfully ignorant of the realities of war. Frank followed as my sergeant. He dogged my every step, cementing our friendship further over those hard years. That would outrage the social set, friends with your man servant. But what else could you call the man who always had your back and a spare cigarette? The man who dragged your unconscious and bleeding arse from no-man's-land? Some soldiers would have stepped over their titled officers and never looked back.
It still seemed odd to take up residence in the old house. I left for boarding school at ten. In the intervening years, I had only spent Christmas here. The silence unnerved me at times, too quiet. Like the calm before an all-out artillery assault. I thought the old mill would bring it all back, bloody men scattered over a field, but Ella's presence made the silence bearable.
A soft tap sounded at the study door.
"Enter," I called without looking up from the mound of mail. By necessity I had three distinct piles: urgent, can wait, and ignore until they vanished entirely.
Feet shuffled over the carpet with a hesitant step. Warrens, the butler. While only in his late fifties, events had aged him. I knew he was the one who had dealt with father when he turned with the only weapon at hand, a golf club. Poor man had been practising his swing outside when father arose and headed for the vulnerable inside the house. While he did what he had to, the sheer brutality of it haunted him. The faithful retainer spent every day expecting to be hanged for murder and trying to absolve the stain on his soul.
"Yes, Warrens?"
He cleared his throat. "Cook would like to know your plans, your grace."
"As always, I will have a simple dinner in the small parlour across the hall." I didn't see the point in putting the staff through the charade of a formal dinner for one person. I didn't need white-gloved footmen watching me sip at a delicate consommé. It was like living in a blasted zoo, your every move and emission examined. In the trenches I had shared tight quarters with Frank, who slept on a mat by my cot. We ate with the men, bowls in our hands and hunched over a fire when it was cold, or in any shade when the sun burned our skin in summer.
"As you wish, your grace." He lingered still, an indication of a burning question that needed to be extracted rather than volunteered.
"You don't approve, I know, but times move on. We lost so many men, and the war is not yet over. I cannot bear the waste of time and resources to embrace pointless traditions, like a seven course dinner attended by five footmen, when I am quite capable of eating a simple meal from a tray."
Warrens heaved a sigh. He fought a losing battle, and God knows, I know what that looks like. He needed to fall back and regroup. Given the set look on his face, he intended to do just that.
"If I may be so bold, your grace, sometimes it is not enough to labour in the dark. One must be seen to lead." He kept his hands clasped behind his back, spine rigid. Too old to serve, Warrens kept the house ticking over, adapting easily from butler to hospital manager when it became a recuperation house for recovering soldiers.
I suspected it would be futile to try and hide in the country. Desperate matrons would soon start lobbing their daughters through the lower windows. Which reminded me, must check on defences to keep the turned out. The hollow void gaped in my chest at the thought. There were days I wanted to curl in upon myself and have the world cast a blanket of forgetfulness over me. One week. It hadn't even been one week and already they pounded on my door. They wouldn't even grant me the time to drink myself senseless and forget.
I met the butler's steady gaze. "We shall host a dinner then. Tell cook, and if you would be so kind, invite forty locals to join us for the evening."
One eyebrow shot up, the closest Warrens would come to a whoop of joy. "Very well, your grace. Shall we say this Saturday?"
"Yes. And please ensure Miss Eleanor Cowie is invited." Another letter fell victim to the sharp opener. This one heavier in my hand.
"Miss Cowie, your grace?"
"Yes. Ask Frank, he's stepping out with her maid. He'll know what relatives she is staying with."
Warrens frowned as he searched his memory. "I shall enquire, your grace."
"Good." Ella's presence might be the only thing that would make the damn night bearable.
Warrens coughed into his hand. "There is one other small matter, your grace."
He said that with the same bland tone my commanding officer used to tell me to throw my men over the top in a suicide mission. "Which is?"
"The village fête, your grace. It has been some years since we last held one. Many of the local women are planning a festive event to celebrate your return, armistice, and of course, the summer harvest."
Good God, save me from judging the best jam or knitted sock. "What exactly would be the nature of my participation?"
"Cutting the opening ribbon, and perhaps if you would be so generous as to judge an event?" His bushy eyebrows raised in expectation.
While the battlefield was never quiet, the constant artillery bombardment could induce a type of deafness. Your ears became overwhelmed by the pitch and noise and all you hear is a constant drone. I imagined the fête would deliver a similar aural overload. Frank had better pack a hip flask—a large one.
"Very well, Warrens. Tell the local matrons I will be in attendance."
He looked chuffed, his chest swelled. He either just won a bet by talking me into attending, or he was certain he'd win whatever vegetable-oriented events a fête held.
"One other thing, Warrens. I need maps, detailed topographical maps of Somerset." The War Office wanted to send troops into the countryside to finish off the turned, but first we needed to identify where the most attacks were occurring.
War never ends, it just changes form.