Chapter One #2
Hayes was coming? He’d only seen him a few times in London since the wars had ended and Hayes had sold his commission.
Frankly, that had been enough for him. They’d spent their childhood and school years together, but adulthood had separated them in many ways.
These days, his cousin was a rule book personified.
‘Hayes? That do-gooder?’ Alistair groaned.
Hayes would suck whatever fun was available out of an already-arduous continental trip just by being present.
Hayes was one more yardstick he’d failed to measure up well against. His cousin had known his duty and done it since the day he was born—another family member who had staked out his trajectory early and never wavered.
Alistair was sure Hayes never faced each day feeling unfulfilled, hungry for something he couldn’t name but desperately desired.
Perhaps this was a certain kind of hell, being surrounded with family members who understood themselves, who led happy and productive—albeit dull—lives.
Dull at least was one thing his life was not: The hodge-podge and uncertainty of his routine was not dull, just directionless.
His father frowned disapprovingly at the groan. ‘Hayes is a war hero. When other officers lost entire regiments at Waterloo, he brought his men through almost unscathed while also achieving great feats of victory.’
Yes, how could he forget? Hayes the hero; Hayes, who had been in Spain, and at the Siege of Genoa; Hayes who’d been at Waterloo a year later; Hayes who was likely the son his own father would have preferred.
Alistair wondered if anyone realised what a bore Hayes was, though?
He drank with self-restraint, gambled with self-control.
He never lost more than he could afford.
Never risked his horse over a potentially dangerous jump.
Hayes did all things in moderation. Where was the fun in that?
Nowhere, that was where. Now his father wanted to send him across Europe with the Lord of Moderation.
‘You never got a Grand Tour because of the war. This would be a chance to make up for that, to see something of Europe with someone who has been there.’ What he meant was to see Europe with someone who could keep him in line.
Alistair gave a cynical chuckle. ‘Is Hayes to be my bear-leader? My chaperon?’ Grand Tours were for young men fresh out of university. ‘We’re the same age. I’m too old for a Grand Tour.’
He regretted the words immediately. His father met them with a gaze that conveyed agreement that he was indeed too old for a lot of things, many of which he still engaged in with regularity anyway.
‘Raking around London is also a pastime for young men, Alistair. There are unflattering names for older men who persist in such behaviour.’ Alistair knew those words. Roué. Lecher. Philanderer. Debauchee.
‘I’m not old,’ Alistair protested. But neither was he truly young anymore. It might surprise his father to know he was acutely aware of that with each passing year.
‘You are old enough to know better.’ His father sighed, and Alistair felt his own sense of disappointment surge.
He was failing his father, a man he respected and loved, yet again.
This time, he was failing on two fronts.
He and his cousin might be the same age in years, they might have done Eton together, but since then, Hayes had been to war and had led men willing to die for him.
He was a respected son of his house, always doing his duty.
What had Alistair done with his own skills and privileges?
He had no such accomplishment to match those of Hayes.
Any success he might claim had come as a member of his father’s ventures, a follower of other men. He had nothing on his own.
Who cared? It didn’t matter. Alistair’s conscience made the argument with its customary fierceness.
What had all that effort gotten Hayes? He’d never be duke.
Hayes’s older brother had a son now. All of Hayes’s upstanding behaviour as an exceptional spare, all of that rule-following had been for what?
His father set aside his glass and rose, walking to the polished desk to retrieve a leather folder from a drawer, his tone conciliatory, his trajectory firm.
‘Italy is beautiful this time of year. Hayes is looking into a vino santo vineyard for your uncle. As I said, he will accompany you as far as Florence. Feel free to stay there a while before going on to Naples. Perhaps take time to help him get established. The two of you used to be close despite having quite opposite personalities growing up. Perhaps you might be close again.’ He paused. ‘This is a good opportunity, Alistair.’
Alistair knew what that meant: this was an opportunity—a mandatory opportunity—to make something of himself.
To put his persuasive skills and his acuity with numbers and ideas to use beyond the frivolity of gaming tables and ballrooms. He knew it galled his father that the son who so closely resembled him in looks and in talents did not resemble him in ambition.
But not even for his father could Alistair resign himself to life as a country gentleman running an estate, a life of ledgers and crops.
Perhaps that was part of the desperation eating at him.
Deep down, he knew he was made for more, yet he didn’t know what that more was.
He’d spent years since the cream cartel hopping from idea to idea, but nothing held his attention long enough to see them through, perhaps because he couldn’t bear to fail again.
Just when a plan was approaching fruition, he was off to something else.
Now he was running out of time. He was thirty-two, the age at which his father had married his mother and promptly sired a son.
He was nowhere close to considering marriage let alone fatherhood, and the sands were slipping through his hourglass.
His father’s remark about age tonight had hit the target.
Behind his bravado, Alistair was scared that life was passing him by, that he’d somehow missed a critical turn in the road, a path not taken.
He wasn’t the only one who was desperate.
There’d been distress in his father’s words, This is a good opportunity.
This time it had to work out, although Alistair didn’t see how it would.
How would he find his future in a place he knew nothing about when he hadn’t been able to discover it in a place he’d known all his life?
Alistair nodded warily towards the leather folder. ‘What’s in there?’ Just how long had his father been planning to send him to Naples? Since the autumn? Since the summer?
‘Your documents, travel papers, letters of finance and introduction, an itinerary.’ His earlier suspicions were confirmed. Such things took time to organise. Spontaneity wasn’t his father’s style. Meticulous attention to detail was.
‘Is that all?’ His father had yet to tell him what he was expected to do in Naples. Alistair did not think for a moment this was meant to be a holiday.
‘Ah, yes. Your commission, as it were. There is a sealed letter for Thomas Rose that I need delivered,’ his father added smoothly. Did his father hope he wouldn’t notice the admission? But he did notice, and the alarm was raised.
Sir Thomas Rose. His father’s best friend, scholar of the realm, knighted for his outstanding contributions to British knowledge of the ancient world, and father to the hellion, Ismay Rose, who’d haunted the footsteps of his childhood.
‘Exactly how is Thomas Rose involved?’ This was getting worse by the moment.
It was bad enough his father wanted to send him to Italy and cause him to miss the whole Season, the one time of the year he looked forward to, but it was an absolute agony to give up the Season for the Roses, all of whom who were their own brand of eccentric.
Too eccentric for England, despite Sir Thomas’s knighthood.
Alistair secretly thought that was why they’d left for other, more tolerant, climes.
‘My old friend and I have an arrangement that needs looking after.’ That was a fairly cryptic response for his practical father.
Alistair made no attempt to stifle a groan—a much louder groan than the one that had announced his distaste for travelling with Hayes.
The Roses, the Burke-Prices and the Wintertons had spent several summers together, all of the children running wild together—some of them wilder than others, particularly Rose’s daughter, Ismay.
She was…annoying, to put it mildly, always wanting to tag along with the boys instead of playing with Ravenswick’s five daughters and Alistair’s sister.
Ismay Rose preferred trees to tea parties, fishing to fashion, and she absolutely loved jumping her pony over hedges while wearing breeches.
She’d once worn his breeches, leaving him to stroll home from the swimming hole without them.
She’d been very much afflicted with a strong case of anything-he-could-do-she-could-do-better, which had not endeared her to his younger self.
He was the master of pranks, not a mere slip of a girl.
Pranks and dares were his one claim to fame among the cousins.
But Ismay Rose had thought she could best him.
He’d not been sorry when the Roses had moved abroad.
‘It’s all there in that letter, which had better arrive sealed and unread,’ his father instructed in all seriousness.
‘That’s Thomas Rose’s business and no one else’s.
’ But Alistair had a feeling that statement wasn’t quite true.
He was the one carrying the message, and that, by extension, made it his business.
If he went at all. He’d not said he would.
Going to Italy on an amorphous mission to see a family he didn’t particularly like and travelling with a cousin who was as rigid as a bare stick in winter was not his idea of a good time.