Earl on Fire

Prologue

The king had always known he was dust and unto dust he would return, but he had never prepared himself for the possibility that one of his sons might turn to dust before he did.

— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.

It was a mark of the degree of estrangement between him and his offspring that Henry Charles William Delamere, the seventh Earl of Ashthorpe, did not learn he had a granddaughter until a week after his son’s death.

He first heard the news while sitting behind his desk, the same desk where his brother and his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather et sic in infinitum had sat and where his eldest son would now never sit.

Henry sat behind the slab of English oak, darkened by time and layers of varnish, and listened to the man who had just arrived from London claiming to be Hal’s solicitor.

Rather, he pretended to listen.

Everything had become pretense in the last week.

Henry went through the motions of being Ashthorpe and all that that entailed, but the underpinnings of his entire life—those sturdy, unassailable virtues of honor, duty, and order—had suddenly revealed themselves to be as flimsy as the neck of a young viscount thrown from a curricle.

“—the late Lord Delamere had the foresight to arrange an annuity for the child and the child’s mother. Given that—”

The word caught Henry’s attention, pierced through his grief, dispersed a phantom battlefield and its odors of exploded saltpeter and spilled blood.

“Child.” It came out as a bark.

“My lord?”

Henry raised his chin. “Mister . . .” He could not remember the name of the man speaking to him from the other side of the desk.

“Crompton.”

“Mr. Crompton, you claim my son fathered a child.”

The solicitor’s nostrils flared. “I claim nothing, my lord, save that I drew up a will as per your late son’s specifications.

A will he signed in the presence of witnesses.

Since your second son, the new Lord Delamere, has not yet reached his majority, you are the executor, and, as such, it was incumbent—”

“Where—” Henry needed a moment to draw breath, slow speech, quiet the row-dow-dow that had erupted in his chest. “Tell me where the child and the child’s mother can be found.”

“I—” Mr. Crompton touched the knot of his cravat, licked his lips. “You are not aware? I thought you had been told. Miss Kirby was with your son when he perished. Like him, she was thrown from the carriage, and her injuries— She also, she—”

The earl gritted his teeth. “Died.”

“Yes.”

He had to know. “And what of the child?”

“The girl was also in the carriage—”

No, no, no. Henry could not hear this. He could not bear it. He would crack in two.

“—foundling hospital, but, because of the annuity from your son, she might have a pleasant home with a good family and eventually marry well since the annuity provides for a generous dowry—”

Another man, a different man, would have sprung over the desk and seized the solicitor’s lapels and shouted questions at him, but Henry only said, “She lives,” and, when an affirmation did not come as quickly as he would have liked, “You say the child lives,” with slightly greater force.

“Yes, she lives.”

“She is unhurt?” He was on his feet, finally betraying himself. “She is well?”

A fleck of moisture appeared on the solicitor’s cheek. Henry had sprayed his spittle on the man, but, to his credit, Mr. Crompton had not recoiled. He met the earl’s eyes bravely.

“Yes, she is well.”

Well.

Henry brought out a handkerchief and extended it over the desk. The man hesitated but then nodded and accepted the square of linen and dabbed at his face.

Henry turned and strode to a window and looked out, unseeing.

“The child’s name.”

“Wilhelmina Kirby, my lord.”

Wilhelmina. It would be a mistake to attach any importance to the name, to think it significant that his own name was Henry Charles William Delamere and his first son had also been Henry and his second son was Charles and his first grandchild bore a feminine form of his third name.

The girl’s name would have been chosen by her mother, not by his son. The name was mere happenstance.

“Her age.”

The sound of papers being shuffled. “Two years, my lord.”

Two years.

“Her mother was my son’s mistress for some time.

” Henry spoke the words slowly, as if he were testing the notion by saying it aloud.

He had never doubted that his handsome, hale son had known pleasure with women before his death, but perhaps Hal had also known something more, something Henry never had.

“Yes,” Mr. Crompton answered although the earl had asked no question. “Miss Louisa Kirby. You might have heard of her? She was an actress.”

Henry shook his head. He had not been to the theater in the last twenty years. Worse, he had not spoken to Hal in the last four. Neither of his sons had wanted anything to do with him after their mother’s death.

The sun came out from behind a cloud, and a beam struck the window. Henry closed his eyes. The light warmed his face and turned the insides of his eyelids a golden-pink-orange.

“The family of Miss Kirby are making no claims on the child.” He willed it to be true.

“My lord, it is my understanding that Miss Kirby was quite alone in the world.”

Quite alone. Until she and Hal made a child. Who was now quite alone in the world, too.

No, Lord Ashthorpe refused to sit and wait in the visitors’ parlor of the foundling hospital. He would be taken to his granddaughter immediately. The earl was armed for battle, issuing orders that would brook no delay. He had not been a colonel in the 53rd Regiment of Foot for nothing.

He recognized her before she was pointed out to him.

She stood in a corner of the nursery, her thumb in her mouth, watching the other children.

Her brown hair and eyes must have come from her mother since the Delameres were all fair-haired and blue-eyed going back several centuries, but the dimple in her chin, the set of her ears, the broad span of her forehead were pure Hal, his beautiful boy turned dead man, rotting away in the Delamere mausoleum.

The director of the hospital said something, and one of the nurses went and took the girl by the hand and led her to Henry.

The nurse curtsied. “My lord.”

A pair of nut-brown eyes stared up at him. A pair of round cheeks sucked away at her thumb. A shiny upper lip indicated a cold or recent tears.

“Good afternoon, Wilhelmina,” Henry said.

Head tilted back, she stared, she sucked.

He stared back.

They were at a nonplus.

God almighty, this won’t do. He descended into a crouch, his knees creaking. When his face came even with hers, he said, “I am your grandfather.”

The brown eyes blinked.

“Your father’s father.”

The cheeks sucked.

“Will you not greet me, Wilhelmina?”

The thumb came out of her mouth. “Mina,” she said. The thumb returned to her mouth.

She had spoken to him, given him her name. It was a minor victory, but one deserving of fanfare and parades, so great was his relief.

“Yes. Mina. You’re going to come and live with me in a big house in the country.”

The thumb came out. “Mama?”

Henry looked up at the nurse. She bobbed another curtsy and said, “The girl has been told her mother and father are dead, my lord.”

The earl approved. Unadorned truth was best, but a little one such as Mina would not understand the permanence of death. She would still expect her mother to be waiting for her around the next corner.

Henry searched his mind for what to say. Finally, like many a hapless man before him, he resorted to bribery.

“You like sweeties.”

Mina nodded.

“I will take you to get some sweeties.” He stood, ignoring the groan of his joints, and addressed the nurse. “Gather the child’s things so that I might take them away with her.”

“Things?” The startled nurse gave yet another curtsy. “She has only this dress and her shoes, my lord.”

No one had thought to fetch the girl’s belongings.

Even he—the most neglectful, the most remote, the coldest father who had ever lived, according to his late wife—knew his sons had been attached to their playthings.

Hal had slept for years with his little wooden horse.

Charles had nearly worn out the bindings on his favorite books.

Mina surely had some beloved dollies that would have comforted her since her mother never would again.

And she had been in the same clothes since the carriage accident. That rusty stain on her frock might be his son’s blood.

Mina wrenched her hand away from the nurse and stepped up to Henry and pulled on the tassel of his boot. The thumb popped out.

“Sweeties,” she said. “Cakes.”

“Yes, sweeties,” he agreed. “And cakes. As many as you like.”

She reached up to him, and he bent over and picked her up.

He now had an armful of warm, unwashed child. Her arm hooked around his neck. The pale, wrinkled thumb went back into her mouth. Her head bobbled about loosely for a few seconds before it fell against his shoulder.

He turned his face into his granddaughter’s curls and took in a great lungful of her scent. She smelled of porridge and tears and skinned knees and scalded milk.

She stank of redemption.