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Tap-tap.
Lex glared at the solid oak separating him from the obscene domestic world outside his study. Bickley would never disturb him in the hour after breakfast.
Tap-tap.
There the noise was again. It must be Eleanor. A picture of her—eyes eager, cheeks flushed, nipples taut—flashed before him. Against his better judgment, he bade her enter.
The person who slipped through the door was a good deal smaller than his wife, and Lex had even less desire to see him. “Good morning, my lord.”
“What the devil do you want?” He probably shouldn’t have spoken so harshly, but the sight of the small boy dressed in a smart blue skeleton suit thoroughly addled his brain.
Unabashed, the child planted himself in front of the desk. “To introduce myself.” He executed a perfect gentlemanly bow and said, “I am Henry Nonus Rupert Mayne, sir.”
“Bloody hell, she didn’t,” Lex mumbled. He stared at the boy, feeling as if his eyes were spinning in their sockets.
He remembered Eleanor writing to him upon the child’s birth. I have delivered you a healthy son and heir, on August the twelfth. What shall I call him? Blinded by rage and betrayal, Lex hadn’t cared one whit. But he’d always hated his name, his father’s attempt at being clever and naming the future eighth earl Octavius. He’d written back: Anything but Octavius.
So she had named the boy Nonus. The ninth.
Nonus, for God’s sake.
A rough bark of laughter escaped him.
The child smiled in response. His brown eyes were bright and cheery—and maybe a tad wary.
“What do you prefer to be called?” Lex asked, unsure of what else to say.
The boy chewed his lower lip. “Henry. But Mama says I must become accustomed to Corby, as that’s how it’s done when you’re an earl’s son.”
That constricted feeling enveloped Lex again, as if he’d fallen from his horse and had the wind knocked out of him. He would not be calling this little bastard Henry, Corby, or anything else.
“You are supposed to remain in the nursery. Did your mother tell you to come down here?” Eleanor would encourage her son to ingratiate himself.
“No, sir. She didn’t.” The boy tugged at the coat of his suit, as if it were uncomfortable. “The nursery’s being aired and I wanted to meet you because you’re my father—”
“Get out!”
Lex hadn’t meant to yell the words, but his voice boomed across the study, echoing off the walls. The boy’s eyes widened a fraction, but he only shrugged and said, “Mama did say you would be too busy. I’m sorry for interrupting.”
The door flew open. “Henry! What on earth are you doing here?”
Despite her words, Eleanor looked a silent accusation at Lex, as if he’d been thrashing the child. He was clearly going to pay, every minute of every day, for bringing her to London. He wanted the Mayne Arsenal to succeed; he wanted the British Army to turn to him for its rifles; he wanted the Drummond family’s finances in ruin. But the effort was going to bleed him dry.
He moved to the open doorway, calling for a footman, and Richard scurried into the room.
“Return the child to the nursery,” Lex told him, directing a pointed stare at Eleanor. Where he is supposed to remain.
He swung the door shut after the two as they left.
“You—” Eleanor began.
“There is nothing for you to say. I told you how matters would stand.”
She glared at him with a fierceness that undoubtedly came from suppressing the wish to call him several undesirable names, so he folded his arms across his chest in an authoritative air.
“I began discussing your wardrobe last night,” he said. He had been barely able to concentrate on the subject with her breasts exposed to his gaze. Today they were hidden beneath an old lace fichu, but he remembered how tantalizing they’d looked—
How pathetic was he to lust after the wife who had cuckolded him? Was this another sign of the insanity coursing through his veins?
Eleanor tilted her head in inquiry but apparently decided to say nothing until it was required of her.
Lex uncrossed his arms and rolled his shoulders. Finish this business. “You need a gown for this evening. It will have to be something that is already finished. Take Richard and your maid. There won’t be time to order more, but arrange for the seamstress to visit the house in the next day or so.”
“I am in the midst of setting the nursery to rights—for our son—and arranging dinner for this evening.”
Lex locked his muscles against the inevitable flinch the words our son brought on. “The staff will follow your instructions while you are gone.”
She thrust her shoulders back, which did nothing to diminish his disgusting lust. “I don’t need a gown.”
Would she ever heed him straightaway? “You do.”
“Why?” Her eyes blazed a darker shade of green. “So that you may put me on display for your friends?” She swept out her arms and posed as if she were holding a Grecian urn. “‘Look at the wife I’ve bought, Mr. Robson. Lovely, isn’t she? Of course, my hasty marriage to her was the biggest mistake of my life. The vows had barely been said when she began to seduce some mysterious gentleman.’”
At her mocking but accurate words, Lex took an unsteady step backwards. He never should have married her. But he’d been twenty-three years old and his stiff yard and inherited recklessness had muddled his brain to an extraordinary degree.
“Why am I here, Octavius?” She dropped her arms and her sarcastic tone, now sounding flat and weary. “You don’t want me here, nor do I want to be here.”
She was right. But the past was neither here nor there. What mattered was Robson. “To help me entertain. As I mentioned, Mr. Robson and his wife have recently arrived from America, and I would like to further my acquaintance with them. For that, I need a hostess.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is this another of your business deals? Goodness, Octavius, how much money does one man need?”
“You, of all people, should be able to answer that,” he fired back. “Would you rather I sat idly by and spent it all on this, that and the other, until I was as deeply in debt as your father?”
A fine sheen of moisture welled up in her eyes, and a masculine voice from the distant past whispered inside his head, Be mindful what you say, son. Words can strike as sharply as stones.
Lex closed his eyes against her pain and his. Whatever faults her father might possess, Eleanor wasn’t foolish with money. She’d saved her pin money, for God’s sake. Had she striven, as fiercely as Lex had, to be the opposite of what her father was, to ensure she didn’t fall prey to his biggest fault?
He heard a sniff and felt the air stir. He opened his eyes to find Eleanor already in motion. “I will see about that gown.”
She swished past him, still clinging to those tears, refusing to let them fall, as defiant as ever.
Lex turned, wrapped his hand around her upper arm, and spun her back toward him. Before he could reason with himself, he bent his head and pressed his lips to hers. His irrationality twisted darkly with six years of sexual frustration, and he spared nothing, savagely attacking her plump lips, reaching a hand behind her head and pulling her tight against him. He willed her to stiffen and resist, to be the rational one...
But no. Eleanor could never hold herself back, be it with her words or her passion. Her body eased and loosened as if a dam had opened. Indeed, her eyes were closed but those tears had finally escaped and were racing down her cheeks...
Stopping Lex cold. Pulling him back from the brink.
His words had driven her to cry.
His head swam. He felt off-kilter.
Next thing he knew, he abandoned her mouth and captured each tear in a soft kiss. The salty flavor seemed to turn his blood to treacle. His heartbeat slowed. He released her head, moving his hand to her ear as he slid his mouth back to her lips, and with gentle coaxing she opened to him, allowing him to taste her tea-with-honey flavor.
She moaned when his tongue touched hers, a tiny sound that made even his toes tingle. He kept his lust in check this time, kissing her slowly, stroking her earlobe with his thumb. Could a kiss serve as an apology? It was all he could offer for his previous hurtful words.
She slid her hands up his chest, her fingers tangling in the folds of his cravat, but abruptly she froze. Wrenching her mouth away, she cried, “I can’t do this.”
After a moment’s fumbling more, she was out the door.
She couldn’t do this? Neither of them could handle the marital state. That much had been proven six years ago.
Lex dragged in breath after breath and returned to his desk, willing himself back to the rational world. His letter to the War Office lay there, waiting to be finished.
He picked up his quill and began to write, ignoring the faint taste of honey upon his tongue.
––––––––
HIS CONCENTRATION WAS sporadic at best over the next hour, as he alternated between damning himself for still desiring his faithless wife and for being haunted by the hurt in Eleanor’s eyes. He had barely written three lines when a commotion arose in the entrance hall outside. He would have paid the disturbance no heed, except he distinctly heard a little boy’s indignant voice. The same little boy who’d disrupted him earlier.
Lex could solve this problem. The coach could be ready for travel to Essex in under an hour. But if he sent the child away, he’d have no leverage with which to make Eleanor play the dutiful, happy wife before the Robsons.
He stormed out to the chaotic hall. Eleanor, crouched down, skirts dragging across the marble, seemed to be pleading with her child, who was shaking his head so vehemently Lex thought he would surely induce a headache. Richard the footman stood off to one side, whispering to, or perhaps flirting with, Eleanor’s maid, while Bickley held the front door open, looking as if he wished to not only usher them all through it, but on to perdition as well.
No one paid any attention to Lex.
That didn’t stop him from saying, “Close the door, Bickley. Such behavior need not be displayed for all of Mayfair.”
That condemnation brought Eleanor fully erect, her mouth set in such a harsh line Lex could not believe he’d been plundering it a short while ago.
“What is the problem?” he asked, his patience greatly diminished by all the other interruptions this morning.
“I don’t want to go shopping, sir! I want to play with my soldiers.”
Lex shifted his gaze to the boy and just managed to repress a reaction to the dark scowl on that miniature face. Lord, did he ever remember the tedium of shopping.
“You aren’t going shopping,” he declared. He glowered at Eleanor as if she were the recalcitrant child. “He is to remain in the nursery. Must I repeat myself ad nauseam?”
“He can’t,” she replied through thinned lips. “The nursery is being cleaned by his nurse and an upstairs maid. I have been told by you to bring Beth”—she nodded at her maid—“with me. Everyone else is preparing for this evening. There is no one to care for him.”
So that might be, but Lex could also see wariness flitting through her eyes. She didn’t want to be separated from the child. She didn’t want Lex to have the opportunity to...to what? Send the boy off to Essex without warning? Sell him to the nearest chimneysweep as a climbing boy?
Well, Eleanor wasn’t the only one who could be contrary.
“I will take charge of him,” Lex announced, flicking a glance at Bickley, who, despite a flash of shock, willingly opened the door once again.
Eleanor gawked. “But... That’s not necess—”
“Don’t worry,” Lex said darkly, herding her out onto the top step. “We’ll begin with refreshments in the kitchen.” He turned and nodded at the boy. “Come.”
The boy obeyed, and he and Lex set off toward the back corridor, the little scoundrel smilingly pleased with himself for escaping the shopping trip. Lex couldn’t blame him for feeling so satisfied, of course; he himself was feeling much the same, if for different reasons.
He looked over his shoulder to find Eleanor still standing in the doorway, looking for all the world as if she feared he intended to make a feast of the boy. Though she had not known Lex’s father, she couldn’t have made it more clear that she saw the same erratic madness running through him that had plagued his sire. With a growl, Lex turned away.
As they descended to the kitchen, the boy looked over his shoulder. “Thank you, sir.”
Lex mumbled something vague and herded him into the steamy kitchen where the clashing, chopping, and chattering assaulted their ears...but only briefly, for his appearance belowstairs sucked every last decibel of sound from the room. One girl stood before a gnarled table, her knife frozen in mid-air above an onion. Another maid seemed to have ceased breathing.
Lex searched out Cook, who hastily lowered the pot she’d been holding and gave a clumsy curtsy. The other girls bobbed up and down in unison and then resumed their tasks at Cook’s sharp glance.
“Have you a treat for...?” Lex glanced down at the small boy, still uncomfortable calling him by any sort of familiar name. However, it was best not to make a fuss before the staff. “Have you a treat for Colonel Henry? He’s in need of sustenance before he wages a fierce battle with his toy soldiers.”
God. Where had that twaddle come from? There must be a sensible medium between making a fuss and making a fool of oneself.
No one else seemed perturbed by his comment. Henry giggled. One of the maids smiled shyly. Cook beamed, her plump and rosy cheeks dimpling, looking as happy and heartening as someone in her post should. She reminded Lex of the cook who’d been employed when he was younger and he’d sought comfort and sugarplums in the kitchen.
“Certainly I do, my lord. Jenny, bring out that seedcake. Cut a slice for both their lordships,” she instructed, clearly familiar with Lex’s taste for sweets.
However, Lex wanted out of the kitchen. Away from the boy. It was all fine and good to vex Eleanor, but he had no intention of actually spending time with the child. Cook could keep him occupied with food for a while, and then he could play with his soldiers. Yet, before Lex could extricate himself, Jenny had plopped two generous slices of iced seedcake on the old table, Henry was seated on the bench, and everyone in the hot, close room was looking at Lex expectantly.
He sat down across from the boy, which meant he had to look at that brown hair and those dark eyes. Eyes twinkling in further satisfaction.
Lex stifled the urge to scowl, mindful of his wider audience. He ate in silence, which couldn’t have seemed as unsociable as it was, because the boy, between mouthfuls of cake, babbled incessantly.
“I mean to fight the Battle of Talavera today, although I’m not certain which regiment came down the hill with General Wellesley,” he said, his earnestness almost enough to make Lex forget himself and smile. “It might have been the Forty-Eighth Foot, but I can’t remember and Mama hasn’t had a chance to find out for me. Do you know, sir?”
“No.” Lex busied himself with finishing his cake, which had indeed hit the right spot.
“Well, p’raps once I have the other regiments positioned I can work it out for myself.” Henry tilted his head and pinned Lex with a questioning look. “Sir, do you know General Wellesley? He’s a lord now, like you.”
The hero worship in the boy’s eyes fairly lit up the dim room. Maybe Lex should remind him Wellesley had only won a few battles, not saved the country or sent Napoleon scurrying. “He and I are not acquainted. As you seem to be aware, he’s been rather occupied of late.”
The child nodded, though his mouth turned down in disappointment. He swiveled toward Cook. “May I please have some milk?”
“Oh, laddie, there isn’t any fresh.” Cook shot Lex a wary look, as if she thought she might be fired for not attending to his heir’s every desire.
Lex rose and grasped the opportunity. “Send one of the maids out for some. The colonel may wait here until she returns. I must return to my work.” He attempted an agreeable expression and nodded to each of the women before escaping up the stairs without a backward glance.
Once more secluded in his study, he pulled his letter to the War Office in front of him. He could delay no longer. If he didn’t submit his request soon, the Mayne Arsenal might lose out on supplying the British Army. Then he wouldn’t be able to sink the rifle manufacturer in which William Drummond’s father had invested his last shilling. Yet, Lex smirked. That arsenal didn’t have Elliot Robson or the American’s expertise.
Unfortunately, the words wouldn’t leave his pen, and Lex found himself drawing out a piece of vellum and picking up a pencil. He was so lost in his reverie that the now familiar tap-tap on the door didn’t register right away.
He stared at the door, weary resignation settling onto his shoulders. He’d got himself into this situation; there was no one else to blame, though Eleanor always made a nice target. But he was the one who had spoken up.
Stuffing the vellum and pencil in a drawer, he called, “Enter.”
The boy marched in with a tin full of soldiers, a mustache of milk arching across his upper lip. “Ready to fight, sir?”
“I am presently occupied. You will have to play elsewhere.”
The corners of the boy’s lips drooped, as did the white mustache. “But you are in charge of me. How can you super...super...look after me if we aren’t together?”
Lord, the child had learned to spread the guilt as thickly as his mother.
Lex rose, refusing to look at those doleful brown eyes. He pushed a leather wing chair closer to the fire and then hoisted the marquetry table out of the way. Motioning to the now vacant corner he said, “You may play here. I, however, still have work to do.”
He returned to his desk as the boy dutifully took up his position in the corner, a mysterious smile playing about his lips, which looked rather ghoulish with that white mustache painted above them.
“Come here,” Lex ordered. When the boy drew close, Lex whipped out his handkerchief and scrubbed the milk off. “I highly doubt General Wellesley tolerates such slovenliness in his army.”
For the love of heaven, why couldn’t he just speak like the adult he was?
The boy’s small forehead wrinkled in consternation. “What’s sloven...slovenishness?”
“Slovenliness. After slovenly, which means ‘unclean, disheveled, unkempt.’ It means you need to learn to clean yourself after you eat.”
He’d meant that last as an admonishment, but the boy straightened his spine and saluted, smiling. “Yes, sir!”
Damn, but the child had an unflappable personality. Lex’s gruffness never ruffled a single one of his feathers. Which, Lex supposed, just further proved that he wasn’t a Mayne at all.
He turned back to his desk, once again feeling as if a hundred bricks pressed down upon his chest. Damn Eleanor to hell and back. Yes, he would blame her. If she’d left the child in Essex as he had commanded...
The boy returned to his corner, spilling out all his soldiers. Able to breathe once more, Lex dipped his quill and began to work on his letter. Luckily, the words now came more easily.
Lord Palmerston,
With war raging apace on the Continent, and the colonies—
“Sir, why haven’t you joined General Wellesley’s army?”
“I am an earl,” Lex ground out.
—and the colonies pressing matters in the Atlantic, England’s—
“So?” The jackanapes didn’t bother to look up, but continued setting his soldiers aright.
“I have responsibilities here in England.” Lex’s words didn’t sound very intelligible through gritted teeth.
—England’s need for an efficient and economical supply of—
“What responsibilities?” The boy’s soldiers were beginning to form neat rows and columns under their industrious and intrusive leader.
“I have estates and tenants that need looking after. I must visit them frequently.” Why was he explaining himself to this whelp? Lex dipped his quill again, ready to explode at the next interruption.
“You never visit Mayne Castle, so that must not be one of your responsibilities.”
A well-placed thrust. Lex closed his eyes as guilt worked its way through his veins. He’d spent his childhood at Mayne Castle. It had been his father’s favorite of their three estates. Lex hadn’t been there in seventeen years.
He opened his eyes and loosened his death grip on the quill. Thank God for capable stewards. But not for inquisitive little bast—
“Earls do not go to war,” he forced himself to say. That wasn’t a whole truth, but it was offered with enough finality that the conversation—or rather, inquisition—should be at an end.
“But—”
“Enough!” It seemed the martial genius before him would recite at least three titled gentlemen who had bought commissions in the army, so Lex hardened his tone. “I will have silence, or I will remove you from this room.”
For once, the boy’s brown gaze turned wary. Then he turned his back on Lex, concentrating on his soldiers. A low mutter reached Lex’s ears, something that sounded like, “You give commands just like an officer.”
Lex did not believe it was meant as a compliment.
In the relative silence that ensued, he dashed off the rest of his letter. After signing his name, Lex paused and glanced over to the corner where the Battle of Talavera was unfolding. He returned quill to paper and added a postscript, having no idea if Palmerston would know the answer to his question, but surely someone at the War Office would. Then, before he could rethink the question, he folded the paper and dropped sealing wax on it.
Now, for even more peace. “Colonel, would you like to go the park?”
The child leaped up and bounced from foot to foot. “Oh, yes!”
Lex crossed to the door, calling for a footman. When Joseph appeared, he said, “Take the child to the park for a few hours.”
Neither servant nor boy looked as if they found this plan satisfactory. However, Lex thought it brilliant. Once Bickley had shown them out, Lex returned to his study and savored the first quiet moment of his day.