Two
Arnaud
After years of prison and deprivation due to revolution, Arnaud had lost all confidence in society. He wasn’t any more social than the heirs or the tutor—a duke’s son!
The mild-mannered, undistinguished tutor working in a dismal attic in the middle of rural nowhere—the son of a duke! Why wasn’t the lackwit carousing the streets of London, wenching and gambling like all the other useless aristocrats?
Arnaud had once been one of those worthless gentlemen. He almost had to admire this runt, except what the devil did Birdwhistle—Lord Terrence!—think he could make of himself as a miserably paid tutor? That didn’t speak highly of his tactical talents.
But his lordship’s decision to declare a quarantine and remove himself and the boys from the household had been impressively fast thinking. Measles killed. An epidemic might wipe out half the village. It could kill the new babe. No one would come near them for days.
Rolling up the boys’ mattresses, Arnaud had to approve as the young tutor spouted orders that had the recalcitrant child geniuses and the independent females obediently packing books and papers.
“Carry the cots to the empty east wing,” the duke’s son commanded, while packing his valise. “We can maintain the illusion of quarantine by using the rear tower stairs and banning everyone else from them. They are seldom used anyway.”
An experienced interior designer accustomed to rearranging furnishings, Thea pointed Arnaud toward the necessary schoolroom items, then nodded and looked around. “Lord Weston is a large man. He will need more than a cot. How do we move a bed without the maids questioning why we need it?”
“Tell them the guest bed is easier to carry than mine,” Tactical Terrence suggested.
Lord Terrence Fortescue Dacre. Arnaud snorted again as he tied mattresses.
Deuced good thing his lordship wasn’t large and didn’t require more than a cot that could be carried with the ones belonging to the children.
“Claiming the east wing for the boys is one thing. How do you plan on smuggling in le earl without the entire village knowing?”
The duke’s son, apparently having already considered this, wasn’t fazed.
“The service entrance under the east wing. The letter says he’s traveling by farm cart.
His driver can haul him in the kitchen door as if he’s a load of potatoes.
I’ll take him upstairs—if he can walk. If not, I fear I’ll need your assistance, Comte Lavigne. ”
“Arnaud, please. Formalities do not suit subterfuge.” Arnaud hefted his load and waited for the ladies to finish folding clothing.
“Fort, then, please. Dacre covers too many of us, and I despise being called Terry.” The tutor shut his battered valise.
Lord Fortescue fit him better, but Arnaud didn’t argue. “Where comes the Birdwhistle?”
“Ask Minerva,” the lordling replied in disgust.
The curate’s wife had a lot of explaining to do.
“Food.” Lavender Marlowe, the ambitious, nineteen-year-old modiste who had started her own sewing manufactory, closed the bag she’d packed without disturbing a single piece of her delicate frippery. “Two small boys do not require as much food as a very large earl. Won’t the kitchen wonder?”
Arnaud had worked for months in the same ballroom as Lavender. The intelligence behind her blond curls didn’t surprise him.
“Starve a cold, feed the measles,” Thea suggested, with a grim smile.
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble.” Young Oliver quoted the text he’d been monotonously reading earlier.
“Fire burn, caldron bubble!” Thea cried, prodding them on. “Beware of witches and spirits that walk the night!”
Chunky Davy Talbot scowled at his sister. “That is not how it reads.”
Arnaud had his arms full or he’d hug Thea.
Her family had starved her young brother at one point, before attempting to have Davy placed in an institution for not being the charming heir they wanted.
In the security of the Priory and his sister’s care, the lad had almost stopped his habit of keeping food in his pocket to eat whenever situations became taxing.
Arnaud knew Thea fretted over this episode setting him back. Davy didn’t adapt well to change.
“Since Lady Elsa has left for her estate, her kitchen staff is in such a panique that they will scarce notice should we walk out with the side of beef.” For the sake of the children, Arnaud tried to be reassuring, even though he thought they were all mad as hatters.
But then, Wycliffe descendants had a pattern of abnormal behavior over the centuries.
“Très bien, boys, lead on, show the way.”
Determined and unsmiling, the two youngsters gathered up their boxes.
The attics were their favorite playground, and they knew their way around the medieval garret overflowing with centuries of discarded rubbish.
At the rear of the square Priory keep, the garrets opened into a connecting hall between two heavily traveled, 17th century tower staircases.
Crossing that hall, the boys entered the unfamiliar territory of the new east wing, added in the late 1700s by the last viscount.
Maids slept on the attic level, but the manor didn’t have many servants living in, and the ones they had stayed busy during the day.
No one was about as they carried the schoolroom’s contents past sleeping cubicles to the new, rarely used tower at the rear.
The rear towers were only built as staircases.
The mostly unfurnished east wing had been abandoned since the death of the late viscountess—Arnaud’s great aunt—years ago.
The housekeeper hadn’t wasted much time here.
They left footprints in the dust of the tower’s attic landing.
Arnaud descended first, so his hair caught any cobwebs.
At least this staircase, unlike the old ones, had glazed windows for light.
They took the stairs past the family floor wing where Clare and his cousin Hunt had established a suite on the far end. Disturbing Clare and the new infant was to be avoided at all costs.
“Put the boys in one of the rooms facing the drive,” the tutor ordered as they tramped down.
“Activity on the drive will deter intruders, but the household can see them working and know they’re well.
The guest bed needs to go into a room on the courtyard side, where our presence won’t be noticed.
We’ll ask about locking the courtyard gate and keeping hounds in there. ”
The normally quiet teacher was snapping orders like a general. Arnaud snorted and accepted the task of beast of burden.
“I wish to notify Rafe.” On the ground floor landing, Arnaud hefted the mattresses to his other shoulder and made his demands. “An innkeeper, he will notice strangers. And we must ask for increased patrols.”
“The bailiff is an honest man.” Terrence the Tactician wrinkled his smooth brow, slowly appraising this change to his plot.
“Perhaps tell him we have received threats or messages that insurrectionists might be using our unpaved lanes to conceal their progress? I hate to force him to lie if anyone asks about Weston, but he’ll do everything possible to protect the boys. ”
“Fair, for now. Your brother may be out of danger now. In my experience, the revolutionaries find new targets hourly.” Arnaud spoke with the cynicism of experience.
Earlier, Thea had run down to the kitchen to retrieve the butler’s keys, but her efforts to unlock access to the unused wing proved futile.
Arnaud had to take the key and jam it harder into the ancient lock, while kicking the old door open.
Fire safety wasn’t a concern on this unused floor, intruders were.
With new regions to explore, the boys dumped their boxes and sped down the wide, dusty corridor. The housekeeper didn’t allow this wing to become cobweb-ridden like the tower, but she didn’t have sufficient staff to adequately maintain unused chambers.
While the young ones explored, Thea more sensibly and knowledgeably chose rooms. Using her talent for designing interiors, she had scavenged much of the scarcely-used furniture the wing had once possessed to employ elsewhere.
Arnaud dropped the mattresses in the room she chose for the boys.
All the ceilings had been elaborately plastered, gilded, or painted so it was impossible to tell what any of the chambers had originally been, but they were all public.
The private rooms were upstairs, where the the captain and his wife slept.
The late viscount had gone bankrupt before the new wings been fully furnished.
At least this room had draperies, however moth-eaten.
“I told Nettie to spread the word about the boys having measles.” Thea darted across the hall to the courtyard side. “I’m fairly sure she doesn’t believe me but she’ll tell the staff.”
Nettie was Mrs. Upton, the housekeeper and curate’s mother, but much of the household followed the curate’s habit of addressing his stepmother familiarly. It helped the staff separate her from Minerva, the curate’s wife and noisier, younger, Mrs. Upton.
“That will mean Minerva here in two minutes,” Arnaud said dryly. “What do you tell her and the other ladies?”
Grimly, the tutor studied the chamber Thea chose for the earl. “I know Minerva well. If we must tell her, she will spin webs of deceit even I cannot match. We’ll leave her to decide how much to say. You are aware her father was not only a colonel, but one of Wellington’s spies?”
Arnaud was not aware. He’d spent a great deal of effort trying not to be aware. It generally saved time and trouble when all he wished to do was paint. “That explains much. And your brother, he knows she is here?”
Fortescue shrugged his slender shoulders. “It’s hard to say how much Weston knows about anything. The reason people shoot at him is for his propensity to stick his rather large nose in where it does not belong.”
“He’s been shot at before?” Miss Marlowe exclaimed in horror.
“He’s the eldest and dictatorial, which made him a target for family and friends.
We’ve regularly brutalized him at one time or another.
He’s been shot at a time or two at dawn by men he doesn’t call friends.
” His lordship, le tutor, checked the window and shutter locks. “Assassination, however, is new.”
“And inexplicable, if he is one of the good landowners, as you say,” Arnaud was forced to point out.
“Yes, that’s been bothering me,” the tutor admitted.
Having had enough of this subversive comradery, Arnaud returned to the matter at hand. “Thea, show me the bed to steal, and I shall take it apart.” He’d been a hermit too long to emerge himself in a cadre of young do-gooders who were bound to end up in trouble. He was starting to feel old.
His sympathetic inamorata laid a hand on his arm, knowing how to gentle his irascibility. Understanding he was being a curmudgeon, he let her lead him out of the new wing, into the old manor, and up to the family and guest floor, where wide stairs made furniture moving easier.
Thea was an ethereal creature unlike anyone he’d ever known.
He should never have taken her to his bed.
Only, being the contrary female she was, she’d practically shoved him into it.
She hadn’t had to push hard. In all his misbegotten life he’d never encountered anyone or anything so extraordinary as Thea.
For very many reasons, the complications of her family and wealth prevented marriage until she was twenty-five.
He did his best to resist her. Unfortunately or not, now that they worked in the gallery together, he was finding it increasingly difficult to resist. Only the constraints of time and family kept them apart.
“You are having second and third thoughts, aren’t you?” Thea led him past the usually occupied family bedchambers. With so many traveling, the corridor seemed silent and empty at this hour. Only the dowagers appeared to be at home.
“I reserve judgment until I meet this earl. I would like more confirmation of insurrection and assassination. And I am not fond of deceit.” Arnaud knew he sounded as grumpy as his cousin Hunt. But he was well out of his element here. He preferred the seclusion of his tower studio.
“I’ll write to a few friends, find out what I can. I am still in shock at Mr. Birdwhistle’s—Lord Fortescue’s—revelations. I sensed that he wasn’t quite what he ought to be, but the boys adore him, and he seems so sensible. . .”
“There is a story there.” Arnaud traipsed into the hall in the gentlemen’s guest wing, startling a maid with a feather duster.
“Best stay away from us,” Thea called. “The boys have measles. Have you had them before?”
The maid shook her head in alarm.
“Lord Greybourne’s brother died when he brought measles home. It is a quite terrible disease. Best not to take chances. Wait until we’re gone before finishing your task here.” Thea unlatched the door to an empty chamber as the maid dashed for the service stairs.
“That should spread the rumors far and wide. We shall be fortunate if half the staff does not decide they are ill and stay home.” Arnaud eyed the massive tester bed. “I am to take this apart?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his jaw. “I can think of better uses.”
He growled, torn between tossing her on the bed or out the door.