Fergus watched the carriage he had ordered from afar to make sure his wards travelled in comfort draw away and sighed at his own idiocy. Being here incognito had proved distinctly uncomfortable so far. He’d had no idea until he’d pretended to be Mr Moss how much he enjoyed the comfort he could expect as a gentleman of wealth and importance, even when he went under an alias. Instead of the best bedchamber of the best inn he had to endure an old-fashioned house with chimneys that smoked and windows that let in nearly as much chilly spring weather as they kept out. Not that he spent much time there, he supposed philosophically. His days were taken up with walking fields with his tenant farmers, inspecting tumbledown cottages and all the obligations Jenks had neglected. It was a wonder he wasn’t in for re-shoeing instead of his horse, he decided, with a rueful glance at his once spotless and very expensive riding boots.
‘He looks to be in fine fettle again,’ he told the smith and enjoyed a genial argument over the slightly inflated price the fellow wanted to charge because Fergus was new to the area and might be fool enough to pay it.
Having won that battle, he reviewed the bigger ones he must fight before he left here, with or without admitting who he was, as he rode to Temple Brampton. So far his predecessor’s failures as land steward seemed understandable, given old Jenks’s failing eyesight and other infirmities. The man had lied about his age from the day Fergus inherited the estates, but he should have come here and judged it for himself. Jenks claimed to be not quite sixty when a report on this estate was made for the new Earl ten years ago, so he could have found the old rogue out years ago, if he wasn’t still so sore about being the heir his family had moved heaven and earth to keep out of his grandfather’s shoes. Jenks probably was capable of carrying on a decade ago, but why hadn’t he admitted that he was failing sooner? Now Fergus had to undo all the abuses the old man was too weary to notice were happening under his nose and drag the whole estate into the current century.
He frowned at the horizon and hoped he recalled the route into the nearest town from the sketchy estate map his new housekeeper had found when she turned out the long-disused front parlour. Jenks used the framed map as a makeshift fire screen, but he knew the place like the back of his hand and had no need of it. Fergus sighed wearily and wondered if he would ever overcome the prejudices of his grandfather’s tenants. At the moment he was too busy learning the differences between land here and land everywhere else and getting the estate back in proper order to confront them as his true self, but the sooner he found a suitable replacement for young Moss the better. At least then he could decide if he was ready to admit to being Earl of Barberry or not and stay or go as the fancy took him.
Which brought him back to the puzzle of the last ten years. He’d begun them a furious young lord with a burning need to put as much distance as possible between himself and Berry Brampton and all he was never supposed to inherit. Wrong and irresponsible of him to stay away, but he had been absorbed in his new life and all but forgot this other one for too long. His fascination with a new world kept luring him on to explore the Canadian wilderness until he was entangled in the lives of those who sought to tame or live with its trackless wildness.
He’d stayed too long and got caught up in a senseless war between the United States and Britain, so how could he slide out of Canada like a coward when both nations were fighting over it and the native tribes losing more than any people should? His mouth set in a bitter line as he thought of friends who’d lost homes and families and turned into killers. Now there was a ceasefire rather than peace he could mourn and celebrate a land he had come to love. During those ten years he had lived through many adventures; loved a wild and generous woman and lost her to a better man; then fought against men his instincts screamed should be comrades and not enemies. The whole war felt like brother fighting brother and soured the promise of the new world he’d fallen in love with as a rebellious and angry boy. He’d learned so much and spent those years living and loving and exploring as Mr Ford, a man of modest means, but a stern voice he’d tried to ignore had been whispering he should go home ever since he’d got there.
So what now, Fergus? Now you’re here at last and still not your true self?
It wasn’t quite home though, was it? he excused himself. His stepfather’s rambling manor felt like his real one, but it would go to his half-brother Brendan one day. Fergus Selford had far grander houses and even more fertile acres to call his own. Yet the temptation to not quite commit himself to Berry Brampton and the life of an English nobleman had been too strong to resist when Miss Court offered him an easy alternative. Every day that went past showed him what a coward he had been that night and how far he was from calling this place home.
Then there were his wards to consider and how had he managed to close his eyes to their needs for so long? They were little more than babes when he’d turned his back on them as if him having to be the Earl of Barberry was their fault. He was the reason at least two of them existed though. Lavinia would never have been born if the true heir hadn’t done something so reckless that he’d died in a hastily hushed-up scandal and her parents had reluctantly reunited to try to put him out of the succession and produced a daughter instead of the longed-for son and replacement heir. Fergus suspected Georgiana and Caroline’s parents had made a love match, but from all accounts little Penny’s birth was something of a wonder. Even in Ireland there were whispers that the old Earl’s third son was not interested in the fair sex, yet the man wed some accommodating girl at his father’s command then died before his child was born. The old lord hadn’t been able to hang on to life long enough to be disappointed yet again, but silly, immature Fergus Selford had still walked away from a babe only days old when he left Britain, knowing he was the new Earl of Barberry after all and be damned to every Selford who thought he’d ever lusted after his grandfather’s coronet.
Well, he could sit here on his fidgeting horse and feel more and more guilty about what he’d done and not done ten years ago, or do his best to get a true picture of all that needed to be done here before he admitted who he really was and got on with doing it. The past was done with, now he must get on with finding out what could be salvaged from such youthful idiocy. The girls were safe with their fierce young governess and protector for the time being and he would make sure they stayed that way. There was so much to do he barely knew where to start. At least Miss Court cared about her charges and he could go on leaving her to that while he got the measure of them.
He glanced at yet another stand of woodland that ought to have been thinned and coppiced years ago. A fierce frown knitted his brows and he imagined his mother telling him they’d stick like that if he wasn’t careful. His hard gaze softened as he pictured Kitty, Lady Rivers, ordering him to solve his problems instead of puckering the perfectly good brows she and his father had given him at great personal cost and giving himself premature lines.
‘Yes, Ma,’ he’d murmured, then chuckled at an image of quiet and respectable Berry Brampton under the onslaught of his nearest and dearest, intent on protecting it, and him, from all invaders. The fact they were the biggest invaders of all would pass them by, but at least his half-brother was five and twenty now and capable of keeping a still tongue in his head if he absolutely had to. All Fergus needed to do was persuade Brendan to do just that and they could both be in and out of here a lot sooner than if he had to work alone. If it could be done without having to admit he was the Earl of Barberry until he was ready, then so much the better.
His horse jigged at a crow flapping raucously out of the woods. They were nearly at Temple Brampton and none of the problems he’d been brooding on since parting from Miss Court and Georgiana needed solving today. He’d tried to be an idle gentleman when he got back from Canada, but now he’d spent time with his mother and stepfather and visited the finest tailor in London he needed to be busy again. He ought to be happy with at least a decade of neglect to make up for and, less than a week after arriving, he hardly recognised the man looking back at him out of the pitted and watery old mirror Jenks had made do with when he shaved of a morning.
Which reminded him, he must put repairs and modernisation of the land steward’s house at the top of the long list he was assembling. He’d never keep a real replacement for Jenks longer than a few days if he didn’t. It might not even take that long for the next candidate to decide his old-fashioned and neglected quarters were not up to scratch. He imagined Miss Court looking down her rather fetching nose at him for putting his own comfort first, but if he was really going to do that, she and her precious girls would be out in the cold looking for respectable lodgings right now. There, he was thinking about his wards’ governess again and he had far too much to do to bother himself about the stubborn woman. He rode to the Angel Inn, handed over his horse to be pampered after his cold ride here, then strode inside to find paper and whatever ink the landlord could come up with in order to write to Brendan without delay. At least with his half-brother around he wouldn’t have time to brood on how different his life would be if he really was Edward Moss and Miss Court was her usual prickly self. She might be a good match for the third son of a country squire but he was an Earl, like it or not, and way above her touch.
* * *
‘Don’t get up, dear niece, although you must tell that delicious young husband of yours to have words with his uncle’s butler. The impudent wretch insisted that you were not at home. I told him I am your aunt and even then he tried to leave me in the hall like some common servant.’
‘Aunt Derneley,’ Mrs Colm Hancourt said coldly, ‘what do you want?’
‘Must I want something? You’re the only family I have left,’ the faded lady said in a die-away tone that implied she probably wasn’t long for this world.
‘And I’m so dear you stood by while my mother tried to kill me with neglect in your own house when I was a baby? Add your scheme to make money out of me last autumn and even you ought to know by now that you can’t rely on that accident of birth to get you a welcome under this roof.’
‘What a hard-hearted creature you are,’ Lady Derneley said with an elegant sniff into her lace-trimmed handkerchief. ‘So like your father.’
‘Yes, I’m very proud to agree with you, for once,’ Eve Hancourt said with a sceptical glance at her supposedly weeping relative.
‘He drove her to it, you know? With his stiff-necked pride and that ridiculous expectation of his that she would agree to live in that dreadful Gothic castle of his miles away from civilisation for months on end. Poor, dear Pamela. She swore there wasn’t a party to be had from one week to the next and she was used to living at Derneley House and there was never a dull moment with us in those days. No wonder the poor child pined away for some life and laughter, shut away as she was in the wilds of Northumberland with only proud and stuffy Winterleys and all those wretched sheep for company.’
‘I have no interest in my mother’s excuses for leaving my father; if you’ve come here to plead her case, then you’re twenty years too late.’
‘No, I mustn’t do that, must I?’ Lady Derneley said rather distractedly. ‘I doted on my little sister and miss her to this day, but I can tell that you were only ever told hard things about her.’
‘Perhaps there were only hard things to say,’ Eve said warily.
‘Not from me. She had such energy, such charm and wit,’ her aunt explained and her faded features warmed into a shadow of the girlish loveliness that netted her such a dashing young husband nearly three decades ago. ‘And she was such fun.’
‘At least one person loved her then,’ Eve said gently.
‘Lord Chris Hancourt adored her, don’t forget,’ Lady Derneley objected, then covered her mouth with a delicately gloved hand as if to remind herself nobody under this roof would want to be reminded of that uncomfortable fact.
‘Good afternoon, Lady Derneley,’ Lord Christopher Hancourt’s son said smoothly from just inside the door of his uncle’s newly refurbished drawing room. ‘Are you receiving this afternoon after all then, my love?’
‘You know very well I’m not, Husband,’ Eve said with a smile of welcome.
‘Then how may we be of service, Lady Derneley?’
‘Since Winterley has forbidden any of you to help poor Derneley you cannot, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t visit my niece,’ the lady replied, sniffing delicately at the thought of her lord in hiding from his creditors.
‘My wife might have welcomed one in the past, but you’re more than twenty years too late,’ he said implacably.
Lady Derneley started as if she’d found a viper in her reticule instead of a handkerchief. ‘Pamela was my sister; how could I go against her wishes?’
‘Because she was wrong in every way I can think of. Is there anything else?’
‘No...that is, yes,’ the lady said as she shredded her lawn and lace handkerchief and avoided Colm Hancourt’s level gaze. ‘We are family. It’s our duty to show the world a united front,’ she said like a well-rehearsed child repeating her catechism.
‘Your husband is still under the hatches, then?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted baldly.
‘I’ll give you a cottage on one of my estates and a pension if you agree to live apart, but Derneley’s not having a penny piece of mine or Eve’s.’
‘How can you be so mean? You have so much.’
‘He tried to sell Eve into slavery for the sake of a share of her dowry and you schemed to leave her alone with a contemptible rogue last autumn. You’re lucky to be offered so much, madam. I’d let you join Derneley in the sponging house but for my wife’s tender heart. You are her mother’s sister, although most nieces would turn their back on you after what you tried to do to her.’
‘I refuse to be parted from my husband for ever,’ the lady said in a quavering voice.
‘Then I’m sorry for you, but Colm is quite right, Aunt Derneley. I won’t pay a penny towards your husband’s upkeep. He did his best to trick me into marriage with a monster and even if I could forget what he did, Colm never will. If you change your mind our offer of a home for you alone still stands, but until then I wish you good day.’
‘You’ll regret this; family should stick together. You should remind your sister how badly it looks when one does not do so, young man. It does none of you good for the wench to stay in the countryside now she’s an heiress and can catch some sort of husband, even if she is a quiz and too long in the tooth to take properly. Rumour has it she’s ugly as sin or not as virtuous as she ought to be and hiding her in the country now she has a fortune in her dower chest won’t help. Derneley says they’re taking bets in the clubs on which of those reasons for her staying away is most likely.’
‘I’m amazed he’s welcome anywhere in St James’s,’ Colm said.
Eve frowned at her aunt for prodding her husband where he could be most easily hurt, through his family. ‘Goodbye, Lady Derneley,’ she said coldly. ‘Despite your spiteful gossip a letter to this address will suffice, if you ever decide to take up our offer.’
‘And one to my aunt’s house will tell me that you have recalled your duty to me, Niece,’ Lady Derneley replied, then swept out of the room as if she was still a rich and secure peeress and not the wife of a fugitive bankrupt.
‘She’ll have to walk back to the Strand; her carriage was seized by her husband’s creditors weeks ago,’ Eve said.
‘I’m not sending her home in one of my uncle’s carriages or your new town chariot, love. Derneley probably thinks we’ll tow him out of River Tick if he drowns in it showily enough and he’s not having a penny after what he did to you.’
‘She seems determined to drown with him, though.’
‘Then let her; at heart she’s as cold and unscrupulous as Derneley. She would have let you die as a babe and schemed to get you raped and forcibly wed the night we met. If you hadn’t foiled that plan, I’d have had to kill the brute to free you and look where that would have got us.’
‘We probably wouldn’t have met at all,’ Eve said with a shudder.
‘Unthinkable,’ he said and took Eve in his arms to reassure them both they had and were now blissfully happy, despite the Derneleys’ worst efforts.
‘You must write to your sister though, Colm,’ she said hesitantly as soon as she had breath to spare.
‘Aye, I must,’ Colm replied with a frown that emphasised the scar high on his forehead and might make him look almost saturnine to someone who didn’t love him to distraction. ‘I’m not sure Nell will change her mind and come to town for the Season because of the scandalmongers though, love, she’s more likely to dig her heels in and snap her fingers at the gossips than listen to what they have to say about her.’
‘Then maybe you should hint how satisfying it could be to prove them wrong. She is a Hancourt, after all, and therefore stubborn as rock.’
‘And you think we’re all like that, do you, Wife?’ her own particular Hancourt asked softly. Eve did her best to reassure him she liked him exactly as he was and they forgot the Derneleys and even Colm’s sister for a blissful hour or two.