CHAPTER 2 #2
Besides, Percy was dead. That thought alone made the day sunnier.
He dismounted in front of an elegant house of more than average size. No ruin this, but then Percy had never been able to touch what their father had given to Mrs. Johnson. Gareth hoped that Percy’s last thought had been one of fury over how neatly Father had worked that out.
Mrs. Johnson received him in her delicate drawing room. He strode over, bent, and kissed her. Her arm encircled his shoulders so the kiss became an embrace.
“It is so good to see you, Gareth. I assume you have heard the news.”
He settled into a chair. “I returned as soon as I read about it, Mother. Terrible news. Just terrible.”
His mother maintained a sober face, but her eyes sparkled at his ironic tone. “Yes, terrible. He was still so young. Why, what, thirty-three? So sudden and unexpected too.”
“A tragedy.”
“Have you been back to Merrywood yet?”
“I thought I would see you first. I will head there in the morning.”
She reached over and patted his arm affectionately.
He rarely had to explain much to his mother.
They were of like minds, just as surely as they were of like visage.
His eyes, his nose, even his mouth came from her.
Had Allen Hemingford, the third Duke of Aylesbury, been less sure of her he might have suspected Gareth was not his bastard at all.
Instead, he had accepted his mistress’s claim, and fulfilled his contract to her.
That contract, worked out when she was eighteen, had not only provided this house, a carriage, servants, and an income for life.
Being shrewd, she had also insisted her children by the duke be provided for, and be allowed to have the surname Fitzallen in the ancient way—bastard of Allen.
Percy had never been able to interfere with the income Gareth received, either.
The house near Langdon’s End was a different matter.
Aylesbury had left that to him in a codicil to his will.
Percy had contested the legacy before his father was cold.
Not that the income came close to his mother’s. On it, he could live as a gentleman bachelor with a decent degree of fashion. As it was, however, almost all of it went to the lawyers pleading his case in Chancery.
So he had found ways to augment it. Fortunately, he inherited his mother’s shrewdness, and doing so had not been too difficult after finishing the education also provided in that contract. An eye for art had helped.
Other gentlemen might not invite him to their parties and would never introduce their sisters and daughters to him, but his blood meant they might trust him to find a buyer when they had a collection to sell.
With the economy in shambles these days, a great deal of art was changing hands.
It was the sort of occupation that did not reek of trade, since he did it all as a favor for everyone involved.
“You just returned, you said.” Mrs. Johnson spoke while she served the coffee one of her servants had brought.
She was entitled to four of them. There had been a Mr. Johnson for a short while.
Perhaps as long as a week, Gareth guessed, before the man took the healthy payment made to him and sailed to America.
When the duke had met Amanda Albany, she was unmarried.
An innocent. What the duke wanted was not done with unmarried girls.
So he arranged a marriage for her, with an army captain by the name of Johnson.
Only it was not Johnson’s nuptial bed to which young Amanda Albany had gone that wedding night.
“I disembarked less than a week ago. Why? Does it matter?”
“It may. I have been in correspondence with old Stuart. You remember, the footman with the limp. He and I have remained friends since Allan died. He says there is some question about Percival’s death. The coroner has left the entire matter open, and investigations are being made by the magistrate.”
“Has anyone laid down information that would imply something untoward happened?”
“No, but eyebrows are up. A sudden digestive infirmity with extreme pain and quick death—well, my eyebrows would be up too.”
Hence the notice in the paper in Amsterdam, that inquiries were under way. “You worried that they would look to me, didn’t you?”
“The enmity between the two of you has been long, and the business over that legacy might encourage them to wonder.”
“Have no fear. I was out of the country. I can prove it.”
Her expression lightened. She suddenly looked younger than her forty-eight years. Also intelligent and formidable. She would have made the duke a splendid duchess had he not already married Percy’s mother, and had Amanda Albany not been a butler’s daughter.
Her change in mood implied she had worried a bit about his doings recently. It is a hell of a thing when your own mother thinks you capable of murder. Then again, given the right circumstances, she probably was also.
“I expect Lancelot and Ives will be at Merrywood,” she said. “What with the title’s transition to Lance and the settling of the estate.”
“I hope so. I want to see them.” Since Lance now became duke, presumably he would be involved in the inquiries. Ives would take a hand in the estate settling, being a lawyer.
He did not lie in saying he wanted to see his half brothers. Unlike the relationship he had with Percy, Gareth had gotten on well enough with them over the years. And, of course, Lance would now decide about that case in Chancery.
“There is to be a reinterment next week,” his mother said.
“A mausoleum was quickly built, to Percival’s deathbed orders.
Now that it is ready, they are digging him up to put him in it.
It is a monstrosity, according to Mr. Stuart.
I have a drawing here somewhere. I shall find it, so you can prepare yourself.
It is so hideous that one wonders if he was determined to be remembered for something, even if it was being the duke who was buried in the ugliest pile in the family graveyard. ”
“He never had any taste. Father always said so, which drove him mad.” He spoke absently, his mind on other things.
If magistrates were sniffing around a duke’s death, the new duke was not likely to turn his mind to minor matters, like a small property tied up in the courts.
Damnation, even in death Percy was going to be an ass.
“I rode up near Langdon’s End,” he said, “before coming here.”
His mother’s expression of forbearance chastised him. She thought he should let it go. The daughter of a butler and the mistress of a duke, she did not have a sense of property, even if she had a life interest in this house.
“He has let it go to ruin. There is no caretaker. It is derelict and turning into a shell. I doubt any furniture remains worth using. I was told thieves have been busy.”
“Did you enter it?”
“I am forbidden to, remember? I walked around the outside, however, and looked in a few windows. He knew contesting the will would not hold, so he made sure when I finally got it, the house would be almost worthless.”
“Perhaps fate has intervened before that happened. Lance has no reason to continue the fight.”
“Perhaps.” He stood. “If you don’t mind, I will go above. I have been on the road too many days.”
He took his leave, but her voice stopped him at the door.
“Lady Chester wrote to me. Her niece still sighs over you, and wonders when you will return to London.”
Lady Chester’s niece was an attractive woman in an unhappy marriage to a boorish viscount. “When I do, I will call on her, but she will be disappointed if she expects anything more.”
“You love and leave too quickly, Gareth. No wonder your reputation is not the best.”
“I would have stayed longer in the lady’s bed if she had not started to try to buy me. A man does not allow his lover to keep him if he has any pride. I did us both a favor in ending it.”
“You were not so particular with Lady Dalmouth.”
“I was much younger then, and Lady Dalmouth had much to recommend her besides her gifts.” Most notably, Lady Dalmouth possessed sexual experience such as few men are honored to enjoy.
Randy, resentful, and ready to take on the world, he had been a willing student, and had barely noticed how he had become the lady’s whore until the morning she ordered him to change his coat because she did not favor its color that day.
“Women are kept all the time. I managed to hold on to my pride well enough. I do not see why it should be any different for men if two people share affection.”
He had hurt her. He had not meant to, but one hour in his mother’s presence and he was fifteen again, and she was trying to plan his life.
“You were not merely the duke’s kept woman. You were his true wife and the law be damned. Write to Lady Chester and tell her that I am enthralled with a widow in Amsterdam, so her niece does not expect me to dance attendance if I go up to town.”