‘Why the devil did you come here looking as if you’ve never done a day’s work in your life?’ Fergus demanded the moment he was alone with his brother on their trip from the great house to the one he was making do with for the time being.
‘I’m lulling your enemies into a false sense of security,’ Brendan returned as if Fergus was an idiot not to see the logic of his plan straight away.
‘Which enemies would those be?’
‘I don’t know; you summoned me here to smoke them out, so you must know more about them than I do.’
‘I don’t even know if I’ve got any yet. I only asked you to find out if there’s good reason to worry about leaving my wards and their governess virtually alone in that great rabbit warren when I decide to go away again.’
‘And you’re planning to do that soon, are you?’
‘Of course I am; you know I never wanted to be here.’
‘Hmm, but how can I guess what you’re going to do next when you’re pretending to be your own land steward?’
‘As Moss I can find out what’s going on here without everyone being wary of telling me the truth. My tenants and neighbours are eagerly lining up to tell me their woes right now and Lord Barberry wouldn’t hear the half of it. Why should I look such a gift horse in the mouth when the governess presented me with it before I could even open my mouth?’
‘Nevertheless, I’m surprised my dour and upright elder brother is behaving so badly. In your shoes I would have come here ten years ago and to hell with your stiff-necked family and whatever they had to say about me and mine, but you’re too stiff-necked yourself to accept what they didn’t want you to have. We both know Ma’s worth a hundred of every other Selford but you, for all they called her foul names and tried to take you away from her when your father died.’
‘And I hope they’re rotting in hell for what they tried to do to her, but I still have the care of four young girls on my shoulders and you know how Ma’s been nagging me about them since I got home. Now I’m here I know she’s right to worry.’
‘She usually is, it’s one of her worst habits,’ Brendan said with a rueful shrug. ‘But it’s not the girls’ fault they were born Selfords, any more than it’s yours you were as well. You’re going to be busy if you’re about to become their true guardian though, Caroline Selford is going to be a beauty and you’ll have no peace at all when she makes her debut. I’ll give you my expert opinion on the rest after I’ve met them.’
‘If I catch you flirting with any one of them I’ll string you up by your balls,’ Fergus said with a fierce protectiveness that surprised him nearly as much as Brendan.
‘You’d have to catch me first,’ his brother replied with a lazy grin.
‘That shouldn’t be hard, considering you’re too idle to ride here and back from Temple Brampton every day and I’ve walked and ridden half the county since I arrived. I’m heartily sick of corn and cabbages and can count sheep in my sleep, but I’m fitter than a poacher’s dog.’
‘Ah, but I only look like a Bond Street Beau.’
‘And if you ever look at my eldest ward the way she’s going to want you to, I’ll black both your eyes and send her to a nunnery until she’s learnt some sense.’
‘Like that, is she?’
Fergus felt a terrible urge to wipe the smile off his little brother’s face before Brendan could even meet his eldest ward and wondered what the devil had come over him. He felt like the girl’s father with a dangerous predator in his sites, for heaven’s sake, and he’d never asked to feel anything for these girls who had been thrust upon him along with the title he didn’t want either. He wondered if the Fergal Ford of a few months ago would recognise the confused idiot he’d become since he came here.
‘Yes, she is,’ he finally admitted on a gusty sigh and wondered why it mattered so much to him that Lavinia had the airs and talents of a hardened flirt and turned into a lost little girl the moment she forgot to be so rebellious. ‘God knows how I’m going to protect her from the wolves when she’d far rather be gobbled up by the first one who comes her way.’
‘Maybe you should let her scare herself on a tame one,’ Brendan suggested with the modest look of an expert in the art of flirtation and seducing willing women that Fergus knew was a little too well-deserved for comfort.
‘I might, if I thought she wouldn’t fancy herself in love with you. I doubt you want to land at the altar with her, but that’s what’ll happen to you if she throws her reputation away haring about the country chasing after you as she would probably love to do.’
‘That’s the last place I want to be for a good while yet,’ Brendan almost yelped in horror at the idea of marriage to a rebellious schoolgirl.
He followed it up with a colourful curse at the very notion of marriage that made Fergus feel a lot better. At least his sometimes careless brother had been reminded to take care with the confused and confusing young woman Lavinia was about to become. He was doing his brother a favour by warning him off, he reassured himself, as that protective instinct argued any young man who wanted to wed one of his wards had best be close to perfect. If Fergus didn’t take him apart for playing along with Lavinia’s fantasies, their mother would flay Brendan alive for raising a young woman’s hopes if he was reckless enough to do anything of the kind after that warning, then she’d weep because her beloved boy had broken a young girl’s heart. Her impressive fury followed by abject misery at any bad behaviour they were forced to own up to could outdo a synod full of bishops saying a stern No when they were younger. Yet he could rely on any member of his family to fight for him to the death and Fergus realised how lucky he was now he’d met his true father’s family. The more he saw of what his late grandfather had done by putting the succession before everything else, the less he minded being the Selford family outcast. Set against the deep love he had always had from his mother and the patient good humour of his stepfather, the Misses Selford were poor indeed. Miss Court tried to make them feel valued and unique, but even she couldn’t blot out their grandfather’s contempt for them as mere girls, or his own indifference.
‘We’re nearly at the steward’s house, so kindly remember you’re not my brother and we never set eyes on each other until today,’ he warned Brendan after the rest of their stroll through the parkland passed in thoughtful silence. He supposed the generous garden of the quaintly foursquare Queen Ann house in front of him ought to say how much the Earl of Barberry valued his land steward, but its current state did the exact opposite.
‘What a fine old place this should be, big Brother. You have yourself to blame that it’s nothing of the kind, so don’t glare at me as if I’ve been wilfully neglecting it for a decade, Moss,’ Brendan said, raising his eyebrows at Fergus’s muddy boots and well-worn working clothes as if he couldn’t imagine why the brother of an earl had agreed to share the quarters of such an out-and-out son of the soil.
‘As if you don’t spend most of your days on the gallops looking a damn sight worse than I do now,’ Fergus said grumpily, contrarily longing for the fine clothes he’d once thought so disposable as he eyed his brother and wondered if Miss Court was as impressed by them as she seemed to be by the rest of his confounded brother.
‘Ah, but that’s what I do when I’m in Ireland. We all know what a heathenish place that is, don’t we?’ Brendan asked as if he didn’t love the place passionately.
* * *
‘Did you do as I bid you and bribe the post boy for a look at one of Hancourt’s letters?’
‘Of course I did, Derneley,’ Lady Derneley replied triumphantly.
Her fugitive lord looked reluctantly impressed by his wife’s unexpected talent for subterfuge. ‘Good, that was the last half-crown I had; so, where is she?’
‘At Berry Brampton House, working for the Earl of Barberry, of all people. I could hardly believe it—that milk-and-water creature in the employ of one of the most eligible men in England. If I was thirty years younger, I’d marry an earl.’
‘You’re not and he doesn’t even live there,’ her spouse said impatiently, reverting to his usual bare tolerance of his wife’s butterfly thoughts as she flitted from one topic to another without much connection between.
‘No wonder the clever little minx doesn’t come to London, though. She must be waiting for him to get home so she can catch him by hook or by crook before anyone else can get there first.’
‘Shut your chatter, woman. I need to think.’
‘Remember, I’m the only one who recalls how life was when we were young and you were handsome and more fun than the rest of my suitors.’
‘Aye, and you were a damned fine woman, thirty years ago,’ he conceded. ‘But that was then, so be quiet and listen to what you must do if we’re to get out of here. I can’t venture out without being caught by the vultures and put in the Fleet, so you’ll have to go to Berry Brampton and get Chris’s daughter’s papers off her somehow or another.’
‘I certainly can’t live with my aunt’s nip-cheese ways for much longer, so it might make a nice change. I’ve no pretty gowns and she expects me to sew and clean and even wash my own laundry and cook for us both. You know perfectly well I don’t know how to do any of that; I’m a lady.’
‘If you don’t learn you’ll starve or stink,’ her lord told her abruptly, ‘now listen to what we must do if we’re not to be stuck here for the rest of our days.’
‘Ooh, no, Derneley, don’t even think of it—I swear I’ll go as mad as my aunt quite soon if we don’t get away.’
Her lord muttered something about that not being much of a leap, then perhaps he reminded himself she was his only ally, because he went on to explain his plan for tracking down the fabled Lambury Jewels and making off with them before anyone worked out he hadn’t been able to have them broken up years ago, because Pamela never got the real ones out of her lover in the first place.
‘You’re so clever, Derneley. I wouldn’t marry Barberry even if I could.’
‘Seeing you’ve no money or brains and you can’t cook, sew or clean to make up for the lack, it’s as well he ain’t even in this country to get in my way, then,’ her doting lord said under his breath.
‘How am I to get to Berry Brampton and do what you say though, my love?’ his lady asked, in blissful ignorance of her husband’s true opinion of her.
‘There must be something left in this dusty old mausoleum the witch or her lawyer haven’t locked away. Isn’t there anything worth selling?’
‘I haven’t looked.’
‘Why not, woman? How else are we to get out of this mess than by cashing in our assets?’
‘But they’re not ours.’
‘Then you stay here and endure the old woman. Somehow I’ll manage this business without you if you’re going to be a witless fool.’
‘No, no, Derneley, you can’t leave me here on my own with her. I’ll die without some life about me and my own pretty things, and some new gowns, and hats and...’
‘Then be quiet and do as I say,’ her lord demanded roughly before her list of requirements could get any longer.