Chapter Four #2
Before Orson chose to respond, Hartley ordered, “We should return to the Home Office and set others searching every thread of this coat. We have men who are experts in such matters, and, in Duncan’s continued absence, I have a meeting with the head of the Home Office.”
Beaufort did not wait for Benjamin to take charge. Instead, Navan opened the trap and provided Mr. Stanton orders for Hartley’s office.
As he often did, before he sat back on the bench seat, Benjamin turned his head sharply to look out the small window at the back of his carriage.
It was a habit he developed when his life was in constant danger from his late uncle’s enemies during those first few years he had come to live with Duncan.
“What is so interesting?” Beaufort asked in teasing tones.
“It is she.” Benjamin pounded on the roof of the carriage so his driver would stop, and, without making an explanation he released the lock and dropped the steps as quickly as he could manage.
Ignoring his brothers’ curiosity, he strode away to reach Miss Whitchurch, where the woman was making her way along the boulevard.
“Miss Whitchurch,” he said as he bowed to her.
She took a stutter-step and managed to stay upright only because his hand caught her elbow to steady her. “My lord,” she said in apparent surprise.
“Well met.” He had yet to release his hold on her arm. “Fancy encountering you in this part of town.”
“Yes,” she said in what sounded of distraction. “I had business…”
She looked back and he stared off also. “There are not many businesses about. Mostly residences,” he observed.
“Yes,” she said with a second look. She straightened her shoulders. “Did you also have business in this part of London today, my lord?”
“It is Whitehall, Miss Whitchurch, and I am an earl,” he said with a smile to thwart any sound of reprimand in his tone. Benjamin was not accustomed to speaking to young ladies.
“Yet, Parliament does not generally meet until later in the day,” she countered.
Before they could say more, his brothers sauntered up beside him. “If this man is bothering you, ma’am, we will be happy to dispense with him,” Beaufort said with a bow and a flirtatious smile, which always came naturally to his lordship.
“Ignore them,” Benjamin responded in irritation. “They are my brothers.”
“Your brothers!” she declared in delight. “How wonderful that you have brothers!”
Benjamin spoke for the group. “We are not brothers in blood, but we were all raised together in the same household until we were old enough to claim our peerages. My eldest brother Lord Richard Orson and the third of our brood, Lord Navan Beaufort. Gentlemen, Miss Whitchurch.”
His brothers bowed to her and she curtseyed, but Miss Whitchurch looked from one of them to the other, likely realizing how they had nothing in common in appearance. “It is good to find a family where we may. People who will always stand with you. You are truly blessed, are you not?” she asked.
“We are,” Benjamin was quick to say before Beaufort could comment. “Might we see you to your destination, Miss Whitchurch?”
“I would not wish to put you again out of your way, my lord,” she protested.
“Miss Whitchurch,” he argued, “you must be several miles from your home. Too far for a respectable female to walk alone.”
“And how do you know where I reside, my lord?” she questioned with a lift of her brows in disapproval.
“I do not know where you reside, miss, but I have made the presumption it would be close to your place of employment, for you were on foot in the rain when we last met.”
“What if I had taken a hackney to the closest street possible?” she challenged.
Orson settled it for them. He removed Benjamin’s hand from the lady’s elbow and placed her hand on his own arm.
“My ‘lesser’ brother has one of those minds that never stops churning. Too many ‘what ifs.’” Orson turned her steps towards the carriage.
“Which means our friend Mr. Hartley will be late for his meeting with the head of the Home Office, and both Beaufort and I have arrangements to make regarding a hunting lodge.”
“We do?” Beaufort asked in confusion.
“I will explain in a bit,” Orson responded. To Miss Whitchurch, he said, “So we will forgo haggling about your place of residence. You will be escorted by four gentlemen, at least as far as the Home Office.”
“Then what happens?” she asked as she fell into step with Orson.
Beaufort elbowed Benjamin. “Follow our elder brother.” Benjamin frowned deeply, but there was little he could say.
Hartley was waiting for them beside the coach’s still open door.
“Place our package in the boot for safe keeping,” Orson instructed. “Thompson has offered the lady passage home. We will leave you at the Home Office, and…”
“It will be too crowded,” Miss Whitchurch protested.
“I assure you, Miss Whitchurch, when one has lived in a house with five young boys and one sister, one becomes accustomed to fitting himself into tight spaces to make a lady comfortable, while not disturbing said lady.” Orson steadied Miss Whitchurch on the steps.
“Moreover, it is not far to the Home Office. Hartley will attend his meeting, and Beaufort and I are to meet another brother, Lord Graham, regarding a journey into the countryside for some shooting.”
Although Benjamin was confident Beaufort held not an inkling as to the nature of the journey of which Orson spoke, Beaufort made no protest, even though they all knew “shooting” would not be a part of the journey: It was not the hunting season for grouse or pheasant or any other birds, for that matter.
Once they were settled, Benjamin made the only remaining introduction. “Mr. Justin Hartley of the Home Office, Miss Whitchurch,” he said with a nod to Hartley.
“Mr. Robert Hartley’s son?” Miss Whitchurch unexpectedly asked, while Benjamin frowned. “I have read your name before.”
“Do you know my father?” Hartley asked.
“No, sir,” the lady was quick to say, “but my father and yours studied together at Oxford. My father spoke of how excited he was to learn of your father’s ascent to the barony. He has spoken quite extensively about your father’s godliness.”
“Does your father currently have a living?” Hartley asked politely.
Benjamin noted the lady’s slight reluctance to respond, but, with a lift of her chin, she said, “Not at this time. There was a crisis in the family, and he has stepped away until it might all be settled.”
There was no time to say more, for the coach rolled to a stop before the Home Office. Hartley said, “I will tell my father I have met the daughter of one of his former classmates. The baron adores such gossip.”
Benjamin was not happy to think that Hartley and Miss Whitchurch might find common ground with their fathers’ interference.
“And I shall write something similar to my father when we next exchange letters,” the lady said with a small smile and a gracious nod of her head.
Hartley followed Orson’s and Beaufort’s nods of farewell, with Beaufort adding, “I will inform Duncan of what we learned today.”
Orson leaned in to ask, “Did you tell Miss Whitchurch that your late father was also a vicar, Thompson?”
The lady looked to Benjamin with a bit of surprise, but she graciously said, “Our companionship is not so long standing for us to speak of families, though I suppose we covered that topic today, but his lordship and I both have agreed on the utility of a proper umbrella.”
Orson’s eyebrow rose in a question he did not speak aloud. “Then I will leave you to discuss umbrellas and clergymen. Farewell, Miss Whitchurch. A pleasure, miss. Thompson, we will speak soon.”
With that, Orson closed the carriage door, but they did not pull away immediately. “I will require your directions, Miss Whitchurch,” Benjamin said as he studied the perfection of her features.
“Anywhere near the drapery shop will prove beneficial,” she instructed without making eye contact.
With a bit of frustration, Benjamin said, “I am not the type of gentleman who takes advantage of a young lady.”
“I never thought…” she began.
“You did,” he conceded, “but it is wise, especially for a woman in the City to do so. Therefore, I cannot fault you.”
She sighed heavily. “I fear I fail miserably when I am expected to speak half-truths.”
“Why do we not begin again?” he suggested.
“But, first, I must provide Mr. Stanton with a destination.” When she frowned again, he amended his request. “There is a small tearoom near the drapery shop. Might you consider sharing a cup of tea and a cake or two as being more acceptable than my seeing you to your door?”
“Thank you, my lord,” she said softly. “You have been very solicitous to me.”
He reached for the trap to present orders to Mr. Stanton, then Benjamin switched seats so he might sit across from her and view her features better.
“I thought you might wish to know more of me,” he began cautiously, while asking himself what a woman of her nature would want to know.
“As Lord Orson mentioned, we are ‘brothers,’ but not brothers of the same lineage. Lord Macdonald Duncan, a Scottish lord, with an additional English title and a prominent place in the United Kingdom’s government, took each of us in to protect the peerages we were meant to claim.
It began with Lord Duncan’s wife, Lady Elsbeth.
When the lady did not deliver his lordship a son and knew, instead, a series of failed attempts, she suggested they bring in Orson as an ‘adopted’ son of sorts.
Next came Lord Aaran Graham, another Scottish lord who sits in Parliament to represent his home country.
Then, Beaufort, who is an Irish earl who holds an additional English barony.
He has been elected repeatedly by Ireland to serve in Parliament.
“Fourth was Lord Alexander Marksman, whose estate marches along with Duncan’s English one.
The Marksman’s earldom had lost the first three heirs before the fourth son was found and put in place to save it for Alexander Dutton.
I was the last of those who joined the Duncan family.
Neither Marksman nor I knew Lady Elsbeth, but we were part of her vision for her husband’s future. ”
“How lovely,” Miss Whitchurch said in tones of pure appreciation. “She must have been a remarkable woman.”
“I was still quite young when my father and uncle, the previous earl, were attacked and killed. I am constantly asking myself if either or both would have approved of the Duncans’ generosity.
I think they would, but perhaps not my new family’s role in keeping the United Kingdom safe.
My father would wish us to assist others, but sometimes we are seeking answers from our government’s most dangerous enemies.
Then again, I could have erred in my opinions.
I was quite young when he was taken from my mother and me, and how I saw him then may not be how he would be today. ”
“Anyone would feel likewise,” she said softly.
“When his brother, the previous earl, passed,” Benjamin explained, “My father was called up from his position as a vicar to claim the earldom, but he, too, was killed. As Duncan had done with each of my brothers, he removed me from danger and from my mother’s care, for she was in no position to protect me, assuredly, not as he could.
In that manner, when I reached my majority, I would inherit the family’s peerage,” he admitted.
“Did your brothers suffer similar fates?” she asked in what sounded of amazement.
“Lord Duncan’s version of family is quite different from what we each experienced.
All of his ‘sons,’ as we are often called, faced danger from someone who should have been securing our best interests and our futures.
” He sighed heavily. “I do not know why I shared all this with you. It is just that you were not likely to have been conducting business in this part of London. In fact, it appeared that you were coming from the direction of the Lyon’s Den.
” He held up his hand to prevent her denial.
“I am not judging you, Miss Whitchurch, but know that whatever brought you to Whitehall today, I am willing to assist you. No conditions beyond the hand of a son of a vicar extended to the daughter of another vicar.”
The lady looked upon him with first wonderment and then denial.
His honesty was obviously not what she wished to hear: Miss Whitchurch was not yet prepared to trust anyone, at least not him, with her secrets.
He knew, if his father was still alive and Benjamin had had a sister, there would have been no means that Mr. Ernest Thompson would have permitted said daughter to live alone in London.
It was not the place for young and genteel ladies to be without a friend to assist them.
“I believe, Lord Thompson, that I should not tarry too long today, for there is still much to accomplish on my free day. Please forgive me if I must ask to be set down soon. I do not mind if a walk is necessary,” she said with a slight shift of her shoulders into a defensive slant.
Benjamin nodded his acceptance. “As you wish, Miss Whitchurch, but I insist that I am permitted to escort you as close to your quarters as you will tolerate.” He reached in his pocket to claim one of his cards and extracted a pencil from a side pocket along the seat.
He scribbled his directions, as well as Duncan’s on the back of the card and handed it to her.
“The first is directions to my home. The second to Duncan Place. I live comfortably in Cheapside. I do not seek the grandeur my brothers do. If you ever require my assistance, present the card to the butler at either house, and they will protect you until they can locate me.”