An Heir of Distinction (The Bad Heir Day Tales #5)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

“Lady Barclay is Scottish.” Bernard Huxley paced the understated elegance of St. Didier’s library as he flung that accusation. “His Grace did not bother to warn me that her ladyship is a Scottish, red-haired Amazonian and unfashionably devoted to her children.”

“The last strikes me as a maternal virtue.” St. Didier poured two brandies. “Do Lady Barclay’s height, hair color, and antecedents truly matter?”

Bernard hesitated before accepting his drink. Strong spirits for other than medicinal purposes struck him as tending toward hedonism, but to refuse would be rude.

“My thanks. To your health.” He sipped, unsure what to expect.

“I picked up a case of this vintage on my last jaunt to France.” St. Didier settled into a wing chair that might have been related to a throne a few generations back. Commodious, deeply cushioned, generously proportioned, and beautifully upholstered in green brocade.

Not quite extravagant but powerfully inviting.

“Thank the celestial intercessors,” St. Didier went on, “that Napoleon didn’t wreck the wineries, distilleries, and vineyards. He is said to be quite an appreciator of champagne.”

Bernard took the proffered seat because manners required that as well. Then too, he was tired, and the chair was exquisitely comfortable.

“We wish l’empereur the joy of his epicurean tastes,” Bernard replied, “as he endures his flea-infested purgatory in the South Atlantic. What am I to do about Lady Barclay?”

“You’ve met her?”

“That pleasure yet awaits me. I have observed her cavorting in the park with her offspring.” Laughing loudly enough to turn heads, for pity’s sake.

Flying a kite. A bright red kite with a fantastical white creature in the middle—a winged unicorn or a dragon or some such.

“One child each, male and female. Ages seven and six, respectively. Jordan and Bridget. His Grace of Chanderton claimed they are both quite bright, but then, the duke is their uncle. He would say that.”

“You are their cousin. What do you say?”

“Chanderton is my uncle, too, else I should tell him that this little bit of family business is not my business. I have far too much else to contend with to be guardian of Lady Barclay’s progeny.”

“Bit of a shock, I’d guess, learning that your grandfather was the late Duke of Chanderton, and your biological papa was a courtesy lord.”

St. Didier had a gift for understatement. Tallish, quiet, soft-spoken, and dark-haired, he also had a sense of self-possession that Bernard envied. Bernard had learned during his years in the Church to exercise self-restraint, but St. Didier had self-possession.

A different and more precious quality entirely.

“The real shock was learning that my mother was a fraud,” Bernard said, taking another small sip of his drink. He knew next to nothing about brandy, but the libation in his glass was smooth, redolent of apples, and even boasted a touch of nutmeg in the finish.

Very pleasant, in moderation.

“Your mama,” St. Didier said, “daughter of an earl, disported with a ducal scion, got with child, and then had to be hastily wed to the mere brother of a baron. Not that unusual a tale in polite society, but you only recently learned of your own antecedents. That cannot have been easy. Have you been told how much your papa’s family added to her settlements? ”

St. Didier also had an ability to discuss the most distressing subjects as if they counted for less than the weather. A vicar aspired to the same talent, and in that regard, Bernard had considered himself modestly successful.

When is the baby due? Do you know who the father is? Have you any relatives in Scotland or the Home Counties? Nothing on the scholarly road to ordination prepared a vicar for those conversations, and yet, they were necessary in even the most devout parishes—rather frequently.

“I am embarrassingly solvent,” Bernard said.

“My father apparently insisted that half the sum contributed to Mama’s settlements be set aside for me and that annual contributions be added to it from his funds and from his estate.

I was entitled to claim the whole when I turned five-and-twenty, but I had no notion the money was mine. ”

Had had no notion the funds existed, even as they kept racking up interest year by year.

“That had to hurt,” St. Didier said, getting up to retrieve the decanter.

“Your mother, leading light of the congregation, self-aggrandizing saint of the parish, and general meddlesome busybody, lied to you, tried to steal from you, and was more of a sinner than the whole rest of your flock put together. The Antipodes are welcome to her. How are you getting on with the present duke?”

“To be honest…” Bernard avoided honesty on most occasions. He was careful, kindly in the conservative fashion of an earnest churchman, and he tried to keep the Commandments. One could avoid bleating unhappy truths about without telling falsehoods. “Chanderton looks like me.”

Tall, blond, and beaky. On the aging duke, those qualities were distinguished.

“How lucky for him, though you’re too skinny and academic for most of Mayfair’s matchmakers.”

“I beg you, St. Didier, do not say that word. Do not whisper it. I have been in London a mere six months, and it’s as if nobody thinks of anything else save matrimony and its preliminaries.

Settlements, courting, understandings, vouchers, waltzes, and scandals.

I am in Town to learn about and manage my cousin’s commercial enterprises, not to appease the curiosity of Mayfair’s numerous gossips.

Where did you say you found this brandy? ”

“Thought you’d like it. A little family operation in the Charente department, quite near the coast. I can give you their direction. As far as I know, they lack a British distributor.”

Bernard nearly told him, I could not possibly impose to that extent, the polite version of I could not possibly deal in the wickedness that is expensive, French spirits.

No bishop was on hand, though, and brandy was merely a drink, no more wicked than ale or hard cider. Wickedness did not come aged in oak barrels. In Bernard’s experience, evil usually pranced around on two human feet. Every bishop in the realm kept some brandy in his cellars.

“That would be appreciated.” Bernard took another sip. “What can you tell me about Lady Barclay?”

St. Didier had invited Bernard to join him for supper at his club, where conversation had been mostly political—and surprisingly Whiggish.

Bernard, as befit a loyal churchman, was more familiar with the Tory presentation of most issues.

Seeing the realities of London life in all their squalid glory had invited a broadening of his perspective.

This nightcap, which St. Didier had suggested as an apparent afterthought, now struck Bernard as the point of the evening. Bernard’s cousin Camden, who held the Lorne baronial title, had asked St. Didier to look in on the nursery, as it were.

Camden’s businesses were prospering. Bernard was not sure the same could be said for Bernard himself as he learned to manage those businesses.

London stank, never slept, and was unrelentingly loud. London teemed with an unfathomable abundance of people from an unfathomably broad sampling of the world’s locations and professions. Disease, prostitution, commerce, and gossip thrived in London.

Bernard had failed to divine how any sane soul could likewise prosper in the capital, and yet, hordes and scads and hundreds of thousands of people did.

Case in point: Lady Barclay, laughing like a dairymaid and flying her red kite in the yellowish gray skies over Hyde Park.

St. Didier set his drink aside. “I can tell you that Lady Barclay, like you, is only partly Scottish. Her grandmother was English, as your grandmother was Scottish. Her ladyship was well dowered, married quite young, and Lord Barclay left her well set-up. She will not purloin her children’s means or fritter away her own.

Barclay courted her in the usual fashion, the usual negotiations ensued, and the first child came along a decorous year after the wedding.

The second followed a year later, and then Barclay’s health began failing.

He was quite a bit older than his bride, but nobody expected him to cock up his toes that soon. ”

“How will her ladyship take to having a guardian appointed for her children?”

“A successor guardian,” St. Didier said.

“The old duke was the guardian appointed in Lord Barclay’s will, and he and her ladyship got on well.

His Grace left her alone, and she’s been raising the children quite without interference from her ducal in-laws.

Your uncle now has the title, and he’s petitioning to have you appointed as successor guardian to the old duke. ”

Bernard spoke aloud the question that had been haunting him since last week’s summons from Chanderton.

“Why me? I am a legitimate by-blow, a family secret, evidence of scandal, albeit scandal from years ago. I have no qualifications for the post of guardian. I have no children, and I was a poor excuse for a child. I was neither bright, nor charming, nor adorable.”

“Perhaps,” St. Didier said, “you were normal, and the present duke knows how rare and precious that experience can be for children raised under the penumbra of a title.”

Penumbra. Shadow. Bernard’s entire life had progressed under the penumbra of his mother’s perfidy and meddling. Bernard sent up a short prayer, one of many, for the unfortunates soon to endure Mama’s company in the Antipodes.

“Might you provide me an introduction to Lady Barclay?” Chanderton had not bestirred himself to see to that detail, and yet, even a red-haired, kite-flying, Scottish deserved the courtesies when meeting the proposed guardian of her children for the first time.

“I’d be happy to. Her ladyship hacks out in Hyde Park on the occasional fine morning, and I enjoy the odd horseback outing myself. Meet me by Tattersalls tomorrow at dawn.”