Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Having a dog the size of a small pony launch itself into one’s bed was the surest way to startle a man from sleep.
Aside from physically dumping him out of the mattress or pouring water on his head.
Wake-ups that Lyness Eastwood had experienced on multiple occasions while at school.
Which, really, meant he did not mind Apollo’s giant paws on either side of his head as the massive boar hound licked his face.
“Roman!” he yelled, rather than scold the animal. It was not the dog’s fault that his master had trained him to do ridiculous things like this. “Can you not send a servant like a normal person?”
Roman leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, eyebrows raised. “Can you not rise at a decent hour?”
“It is only ten in the morning.”
“It is one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Oh.” Lyness finally pushed Apollo aside well enough to sit up. He squinted at the clock on the mantel, but the curtains were half-drawn and cast most of it in shadow.
“And even ten is late. We are not keeping London hours here, Lyness.” Roman came into the room.
“Apollo, Komm.” The large dog jumped down from the bed and circled around Roman to then settle beside him, sharp ears perked up and ready for the next command.
The dog was a towering beast, formidable in both size and bearing.
Standing nearly to his master’s hip, he bore the unmistakable frame of the German mastiffs favored by continental sportsmen.
His coat was a warm tan, short and gleaming, his frame all muscle and elegance.
Apollo was a creature bred not merely for beauty, but for strength.
“You know it sounds exactly like the English ‘come.’ I bet he would even respond to that.” The German accent seemed entirely unnecessary. “Most of the commands sound like English words, in my opinion.”
“Yes, but then there are delightful words like—”
Lyness raised his hands. “Do not do that here, when I am the only one for him to P-a-c-k-e-n.” The word for attack.
“Apollo would not touch you, Lyness. You know that.” Roman grinned and ruffled the fur between the dog’s ears. “Your pillows, on the other hand, would never be the same.”
Lyness climbed out of the bed and shrugged on a robe he’d left slung over a chair the night before. Belting it at his waist, he pulled the cord to summon his valet next. “I take it you came in search of me, and found me happily asleep, for a particular reason?”
“Why were you still in bed?” Roman came all the way in, taking the chair near the cold hearth as his own. Apollo stayed beside him, flopping on the rug at Roman’s feet. “You aren’t normally a layabout.”
That made Lyness pause. “Did I f-f-forget about something? A meeting? Did a letter come from the estate?”
Roman narrowed his eyes, for a moment looking even older than his thirty-two years. “No letter. No emergency. Though it’s rather telling that those were your first thoughts.”
Lyness rubbed the back of his neck. At only nine-and-twenty, he felt half his age when Roman gave him such a glare. “You sent your hound to assault me, Roman. One assumes urgency.”
“I sent him because I was tired of the housekeeper asking whether you’d been taken ill. She didn’t say it, of course. Merely mentioned you hadn’t requested breakfast or appeared in the dining room. Which I noticed hours ago.”
“Oh.” Lyness winced. “I was thinking.”
“Mm. In your sleep?”
“Restful thinking,” he muttered. “I sat up late copying a poem.”
Roman gave him one of his looks. The sort that some might call stern, but Lyness knew well enough meant only that he’d been taken off guard. And didn’t know how to react. Finally, slowly, his brother said, “You stayed up half the night. Transcribing poetry.”
“It was a good poem.” Lyness didn’t bother hiding his grin, though he felt Roman’s confusion keenly.
“An older one. But the structure was beautiful. It reminded me of ivy, actually. The way it winds upward around old trees.” And he had tried to put that same feeling into his calligraphy, the ascendant and descendant loops of lettering mimicking vines and leaves.
Roman gave him a look. “So, you missed half the day to transcribe verse no one asked for?”
Lyness crossed to the window and pushed aside the curtain just enough to glance out.
Gray skies. Rain clinging to the corners of the glass.
“I should have told someone I meant to sleep in.” Lyness turned back to the room, catching his reflection in the glass.
Hair tousled, dressing gown askew. “I will speak to Mrs. Gibbons. My apologies, Roman.”
His older brother shrugged and turned his attention to picking up the iron to poke at the banked coals in the hearth. “You haven’t caused a scandal. Merely a brief disruption in the kitchen. Disturbing nothing other than Cook’s sense of order.”
“If I shift my schedule, others must shift theirs. I can see how that would prove disruptive. That is all.”
Roman glanced at him briefly, then let out a slow breath. “You have been out of sorts since we returned from Town.”
“I haven’t,” Lyness said, though he had. But for a reason even he knew to be ridiculous. Who grew distracted over thoughts of a woman he had seen only once? “I am always like this.”
“Hm.”
There was a silence thick enough to imply all the words neither of them had spoken about their mother’s mid-season summons. Lady Hartwell’s sudden insistence that they return to York immediately, despite the peak of the Season and the vague assurances in her letter that everything was fine.
It had not felt fine. It had felt planned.
Roman was the one she confided in, when she chose to confide in anyone. Lyness had not asked questions. He rarely did.
“Was it really Mother who sent you?” Lyness asked, voice low.
His brother’s mouth curled at one corner. “She asked if you were awake. I told her I would find out.”
“And instead of knocking like a person with manners—”
“Apollo volunteered.” Roman gave a brief scratch behind the dog’s ear, and the massive hound wagged his long, thin tail. “I sent word to Cook we would eat an afternoon meal together. The two of us. Mother has gone out.”
That made Lyness raise his eyebrows with hope. “Oh. That is a good thing, is it not? Do you know where?”
“Not precisely,” Roman said, rubbing at his temple.
“She said something about the two of us needing to mingle in society more. As though we are the members of the family refusing to leave the house most days. But she seemed to have a purpose of some sort in mind. Given the gleam in her eyes as she left, I am not certain either of us will like what she is planning.”
Lyness tried for a smile. “I suppose we should be grateful she’s planning something. When she has a project, she has less time to notice I’m not being particularly useful.”
Roman shot his brother a dark look. “Less time to worry over you, you mean.”
“I wish I understood anything that goes on in our mother’s thoughts.”
They were both silent for a long moment.
Lyness missed the sensible, reasonable woman their mother had been in the years before they lost their father.
She had possessed a vibrancy and openness that kept him from despair over his own failings, because she always saw beauty and brightness in even the most profound mistakes.
Eight years ago, they had lost their father, and not much initially changed in her character.
Or they hadn’t noticed it, until small eccentricities grew more frequent.
The last two years, she had withdrawn into herself.
Devoting more time to her garden, quietly ignoring friendships, hardly speaking to her own sons.
But of late, she had shown interest in a variety of seemingly unconnected things.
She had recalled them from London on an urgent matter concerning the complete reconstruction of their country estate.
A thoroughly unnecessary idea, but one she had already engaged an architect to look over.
Roman had put a swift end to that idea.
“For now, I take her excitement to leave on mysterious errands as a good sign. Even if it will only result in a dozen new rose clippings,” Roman said, his smile limp at best. “Are you joining me for something to eat then?”
“I will be ready in half an hour,” Lyness promised.
Roman rose to leave, crossing the room without hurry, and then hesitated at the door after Apollo trotted out. “Lyness?”
“Yes?”
“Try not to let Mother see you looking like a poet in mourning. She is already dramatic enough without you feeding her fire.”
He shut the door behind him.
Lyness scrubbed his hand across his face and went to his desk, ensuring he had left everything tidy after his late night artistry.
Roman might not understand, but Lyness found a measure of peace in making simple words take on greater meaning and beauty with no more than the flourish of his pen.
He’d give anything to write an entire book as they had done in the years preceding the printing press, illuminating manuscripts with careful handwriting and evocative imagery.
He sank into the chair and picked up his pen, turning it over in his hands.
In this modern era, creating such a thing would be a colossal waste of time and resources.
He was helping Roman run the estate so his brother could focus on political and civic matters.
There were better uses of Lyness’s time.
A few minutes after Roman’s exit, the door opened again—this time with a polite knock and a pause long enough to be civilized.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said Hobson, entering with a waistcoat draped over one arm. Athena trotted in at his heels, as silent and composed as a duchess at tea, despite matching Apollo in size. “I have brought a guest.”
“Well, good afternoon, Athena,” Lyness murmured. “I was wondering where you might be.”
Athena approached with dignified purpose, nudging his hand before settling beside him. Her tail gave one slow sweep across the rug, then stilled.
“I found her in the morning room,” Hobson said, setting the waistcoat on a nearby chair. “She made herself comfortable beneath the window seat. Watching the rain. Likely for the last hour.”
“She likes the quiet.” Lyness scratched behind Athena’s ears, and she huffed with pleasure. “Much like you, Hobson.”
“She has excellent instincts,” Hobson replied. “And finer manners than her mate, though I wouldn’t dare say so in front of His Lordship.”
Lyness smiled faintly. “He’d defend Apollo’s honor with a sword, I think.”
“Or a sermon.” Hobson straightened the cravat he’d taken from Lyness’s chest of drawers, running a practiced fingers over the fabric.
“Regardless, the hounds may be Lord Hartwood’s by ownership, but Athena’s made it quite clear she rules the entire household.
Cook feeds her scraps. Mrs. Gibbons speaks to her like a person.
Even the footmen step over her rather than ask her to move. ”
“She has presence,” Lyness said, still absently petting her. “Unlike some of us.”
Hobson gave him a dry look. “Sir, if you wished to command presence, you could easily do so with less ceremony than a German hound.”
Lyness huffed a quiet laugh, though it faded almost at once. Presence. In school he’d been told he had none, or rather, that he made a virtue of keeping himself unobtrusive. That had never troubled him much. Until lately.
Until York had grown smaller, in a way. Smaller because every walk along the walls or through St. Helen’s Square might, by some happy accident, place him in the path of a certain lady.
Lady Emily Sterling had been in the city long enough to be seen at tea rooms, to stroll with her sister-in-law near the ruins of Saint Mary’s Abbey, to pause at the bookshop window and laugh at something unseen, and was noted going to visit Terry’s for confectionary delights.
He knew this because York was not London, and news—especially the sort that involved a lovely woman with a place in the peerage—moved quickly.
He had known precisely where she was staying since her arrival. He could have called. But he had no business to conduct, no errand to fulfill, no task that required his presence. Without one, he found himself standing still.
He had no right to expect to see her again, truly. They had met once, danced once, exchanged no letters, no promises, and no verbalized hopes of seeing each other again. Yet the memory of her voice lingered, unhelpfully precise, and had returned to him last night as he bent over his desk.
Perhaps that was why the loops of his pen had curved upward like climbing ivy. Why he had lost all sense of time.
Hobson cleared his throat, drawing Lyness back. “Shall I bring hot water, sir?”
“No,” Lyness said quickly, setting down the pen he’d been turning between his fingers. “We needn’t bother, and I told Roman I would meet him in half an hour. I will not keep him waiting.”
Roman likely would say he did not mind, but Lyness had already inconvenienced enough people with his late rising. He would be where he said he would, at Roman’s side, when he said he would be there.
Dependability was, without question, one of his greatest talents. It had never failed him yet.