Chapter Four
As Neville sat down with his cousin in the duke’s study, he kept a careful eye on the small, jealous dog curled in his master’s lap.
The pup was staring at him with a distinct air of triumph, as if Neville were a threat he’d vanquished.
But little Mercy did not understand that, by the time Harbury returned, Neville had already been done in—not by the pup but by Millicent.
Neville squeezed his lids together and then pinched the bridge of his nose. He willed away the sting as he prepared to receive Harbury’s censure. Deservedly so—Neville had shown a lapse in judgment by remaining in the house alone with Harbury’s unmarried sister-in-law.
Harbury’s chair squeaked, indicating he’d leaned back.
The silence stretched on; Neville opened his eyes. His cousin’s expression was one of close calculation. Unused to being subjected to such scrutiny, Neville, too, shifted in his chair.
“You have something significant weighing on your mind,” Harbury started. “Or so I’ve long suspected. May I presume your unexpected visit indicates you’ve finally decided to take me into your confidence?”
“Has the change in me been that obvious?”
“Cassie, in fact, noticed first.”
Harbury templed his fingers and then touched them to his upper lip. The gesture reminded Neville of his uncle, Harbury’s father, a man who had been hard as a five-hundred-year oak, but unfailingly honorable and widely esteemed.
“My wife thinks she knows the reason, too,” Harbury continued.
As Neville swallowed, his cravat pressed against his Adam’s apple. He must have a talk with his valet. Tonight, if possible. Couldn’t a man be left room to breathe these days?
“She does?” he managed.
“Yes,” Harbury replied. “And I am inclined to hear the details of any proposed alliance you wish to make.”
Proposed alliance…? Neville frowned. Harbury couldn’t possibly mean… “Millie!?” Neville expelled her name. “And me?”
Harbury’s eyes crinkled slightly at the sides. “Yes, Millie and you.”
Why, in all creation, could he not stop using the version of her given name only her close family used? Nothing she’d done suggested she would welcome such an intimacy.
“Is Cassie correct? Is that what this impromptu meeting is about?”
“I—” Neville looked away. “I confess…” What? That he couldn’t get his cousin’s sister-in-law out of his head? That, just a few minutes ago in the library next door, he’d practically stripped her with his gaze?
Harbury chuckled. “You don’t need to look so stricken, Nev. I cannot order your execution. Nor am I likely to hold a cocked flintlock to your head, as Asquith did to me—in your presence.”
Neville blanched. “The gun—the threat of a duel—they were Asquith’s idea. I only hoped that my acting as second would bring home to you the seriousness of your offense.”
“Nothing worse than I deserved at the time—I had just insulted Asquith’s ward, after all.
” Harbury’s rueful smile was lopsided. “And the forcing me to court Cassandra turned out quite well for me. Besides, calling you out would not be my place. Asquith is Millicent’s legal guardian.
I’m only curious. If, admittedly, somewhat protective. ”
“I can assure you I wish for Miss Millicent all that is just and good.”
Harbury’s smirk deepened. “How very…admirable.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Neville pressed his fingers to his temple. Just and good? Perhaps he was turning into his own father. “Millie wouldn’t have me even if I offered—as we both know.”
“Likely not.” Harbury inclined his head. “At least not at present.”
Neville frowned. Not at present?
Not ever.
She had just, for the thousandth time, made that abundantly clear.
Even if Neville could, on her behalf, command the stars in the heavens to burst into glitter like a Vauxhall firework, Millicent Wainwright would still be as far beyond his reach as the moon. But if Harbury could not discern something so obvious, Neville didn’t know how to explain.
He had better come to his point. “My visit, as I told the duchess just before you arrived, has to do with Uncle Farnsworth.”
“Farnsworth?” The duke appeared genuinely surprised. “This has to do with my offer to him?”
Neville nodded. “I’ve come at his behest.”
“When the living at St. Margaret’s opened, I immediately thought of him. And I knew Aunt Jane would be pleased to have her brother-in-law remembered. You cannot mean to tell me he wishes to refuse the post?”
“No. My uncle and, indeed, my whole family, are all indebted to you for remembering him. And he is beyond thrilled with the prospect of a larger congregation.”
“And, one assumes, a more lucrative living.”
“Any man would be,” Neville agreed. “But he feels, before he can accept…” No, that put the onus of this mess on his uncle. “Before he accepts, he has insisted I make you aware of certain things I have, until now, kept private.”
Harbury stopped petting the dog. “You begin to alarm me, cousin—you, the most dutiful of all my relations, excepting, perhaps, my sister Sarah. What terrible, secret problem could you be facing?”
“Not me,” Neville replied. “At least not directly. It’s my brother, John. I’m afraid his situation is very bad. Dire, you might even say.”
“John…” Harbury’s voice trailed. He glanced away, frowning. “Come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing young John since my wedding last summer.”
“Few have,” Neville replied. “I’ve kept him hidden away at my uncle’s current vicarage.” Neville chewed his lip. Best to come right out with the truth, he supposed. “No one would think to seek a fugitive at a vicarage, you see.”
Harbury inhaled sharply, startling the dog in his lap. Marcy barked at Neville, as if Neville were at fault.
Which, in fact, he was.
“Mercy, go to your bed.” Harbury placed the beast on the floor.
Only after the dog had thrown his head and snorted out his indignance did he amble over to the pillow in the corner and lie down.
“Before you continue,” Harbury resumed their conversation, “I think this is the sort of discussion that could use a little lubrication. No?”
Neville nodded.
Harbury unlocked his cabinet and poured a measure of a dark amber liquid into two glasses.
Neville gratefully sipped from the one he’d accepted, savoring the soothing burn. Not brandy, as Neville expected, but something even stronger. French, perhaps?
He continued, “After your wedding, John returned with me to London. But when Asquith invited me to come with him to visit Adrian and Eliza at Ravenswood, I accepted.”
“Yes, I remember,” Harbury agreed. “You and Asquith, but not John, were there when Adrian brought me to collect Cassie.”
Neville nodded. “Since I did not wish to leave my brother alone in the city, I sent John to my mother in Brighton.”
“Brighton?” Harbury tilted his head. “Ah yes. Aunt Jane said she intended to take up permanent residence there.”
“She says she prefers Brighton society to that of London.” Neville looked away, knowing if he did not, Harbury would guess correctly they’d had a falling out.
“My brother, however, does not. In fact, he begged to come with me to Ravenswood. I felt I couldn’t be bothered.
” He winced. Not wanting John to interfere with his chance to spar with Millie had been a foolish reason to send him away.
“My concerns, at the time, were frivolous.”
“Frivolous?” Harbury scoffed. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“True, nonetheless.” Neville sighed. “While John was staying with my mother, he met with some trouble in the form of a young woman. The result is that he, or at least someone of his description, is being sought by a Justice of the Peace in Goathurst, a small Somerset town a few miles as the crow flies from Brighton.”
Harbury’s second sharp inhale was a slice to an essential vein.
Neville forced himself to continue, “I believe the charges—bribery and abduction—are false. But his description, and the accusations against him, were published in the Brighton Chronicle and Weekly Gazette.”
“His description, but not his name?”
“No.” Not yet. “For reasons I do not yet understand, the lady who accused him gave a false name to the Justice. But since John was seen by others, the description is accurate.”
Harbury whistled. “Is John even old enough to embroil himself in such a mess?”
“He’s eighteen and a budding knight errant,” Neville wearily replied. “He swears he was trying to rescue the girl, not abduct her. In fact, he claims to be in love. He’s even made himself ill as he’s been so worried, he’s been unable to properly eat.”
Harbury’s gaze softened. “I know something about youthful infatuation. What, exactly, did the girl tell the Justice of the Peace?”
“She said an Andrew A. Mann lured her to the inn by giving her his ring to prove his good intentions. But then, after she had given him her virtue—”
“Did John—?”
“No,” Neville replied. “At least he claims he never insulted her person. But she told the Justice that after he ruined her, he told her his real intent was to install her in a London brothel.”
“Well, now I know she must be mistaken. What would young John know of London brothels?”
“Not a thing,” Neville replied, relieved Harbury immediately grasped the discrepancy.
“Nor will he, while he is under my guardianship. Except for his time in Brighton with my mother, since my father’s death, he’s either been in my care or at school.
And not once has he given either me, or his schoolmasters, cause for grief. ”
“Well, then. Surely, we can provide a character reference, and prove the villain was someone else.”
Neville shook his head. “There’s the problem’s crux. John was, in fact, with her at the inn. Worse still, the ring she described is John’s ring, too.”
“Rings tend to look alike.”
“John’s ring belonged to my father, and has the initials A. A. M. engraved inside.” AAM, for Ambrose Augustus Merriweather, the Christian names Neville shared with his father.
“The initials fit the false name—Andrew A. Mann,” Harbury mused.