Read A Private Gentleman Online
Authors: Heidi Cullinan
A Private Gentleman (8 page)
should think you would be eager to seize this chance to be of use.” He smiled a
sad smile before turning back to his books. “But of course I will let you think on
it.” He ran his finger down a line of figures. “So. Are you off to your Regent’s
Park garden today? How does your work there progress?”
“G-G-Good.” Wes longed to explain how he’d solved the problem with the
piping in the south part of the main greenhouse and saved the society several
hundred pounds in averted catastrophe, not to mention the cost of replacement
for overheated plantings, but he knew better than to try to get such a
complicated sentence out. Certainly his father wouldn’t wait for it. “Y-Y-You
should st-st-stop b-b-by and s-s-see.”
“Oh, I shall leave the plants to you, boy.” Daventry shuffled through the
papers on his desk. “I should like to have nothing better to do with my time than
see your trees and flowers. Not a minute of the day goes by without another
trouble thrown at me, and here your brother has brought more for me to bear.”
He rose, signaling the end of their interview. “I shall look forward to next week.
Martin will send the details to your apartments.”
Wes nodded, though his smile was forced, and made his way out of the
room as the secretary returned.
The house was quiet, and he wondered absently what else his father had
upgraded. He indulged himself in a tour.
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The library was much the same, but there were several other prominent
changes. The dining room had been papered, and the painting at the foot of the
stairs had changed. He climbed up to the first floor, curious to see how extensive
the remodeling was. His old bedroom, long since turned into a guestroom, was
blue instead of the rich yellow it had been last he’d checked up on it. There was
gas lighting down the entire hall as well as within the bedrooms, which made
Wes smile wistfully. How he wished he would have had such a luxury when he
had been a child. No need to find a bright window to read or squint at the light
from a candle.
“You there!”
Leaning on the doorframe, Wes paused, uncertain, but when no one else
answered and angry footsteps became louder, he stood up and leaned the other
way to glance into the hall. A pinch-faced elderly man stalked toward him,
looking very cross. Wes pushed aside his anxiety and forced himself to
straighten. This was Daventry House, after all. He stood tall, lifted his chin and
stared down at the stranger.
He said nothing at all, either, a trick which had served him well in the past
and did not fail him now. The man approaching him slowed, faltered, then
stopped entirely. Wes might have an idiot’s stammer, but he could still give a
haughty glare with the best of the Westins.
“Pardon, sir,” the man said, bowing. “He’s stolen my glasses again, and I
mistook you for a footman from a distance. I am Martin Gibbous, his lordship’s
tutor. Is there any chance you’ve seen Lord Alten?” The man’s jaw set in a hard,
angry line. “He’s gone missing again.”
Wes frowned. Edwin was here? But term surely had restarted by now. Why
on earth wasn’t his nephew back in school? “Wh-Wh-Why is h-h-he—”
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He cut himself off as a towheaded figure darted out of a linen closet, ran
across the end of the hall and disappeared into a small sitting room.
Understanding seemed to dawn on the tutor’s face and with it a great deal of
condescension. “Ah. You are Lord George. I have heard Lord Daventry speak of
you.” His tone took on the careful speech one used around the very young, the
very old and the very simple. “Have you seen your nephew about today, my
lord?”
Wes looked Mr. Gibbous in the eye. “No.”
Gibbous sighed and ran a bony hand through his remaining wisps of hair.
“Likely as not he’s gone into the cellars again. I should lock him down there for
an evening. That would cure him.” He gave Wes one more simpleton’s smile and
did all but pat him on the arm. “Very good, my lord. Thank you so much for
your help.”
Wes smiled back and remained standing in the doorway until the tutor was
all the way down the stairs and in the main hallway, calling out to a maid and
demanding to know if she had seen Lord Alten pass by. When all was silent, Wes
pulled off his shoes, stayed close to the wall and proceeded almost as silently as
he had when it had been he himself ducking from tutors. Outside the sitting
room at the end of the hall, he waited, patiently, until at last he heard the sound
of something heavy being shoved across the floor, at which point he smiled. A
four-and-a-half-foot tall, gangly blond boy appeared in the doorway, ready to
dash across the hall.
The boy froze, then tensed, ready to bolt. But then he got a better look at
Wes’s face and relaxed, his face breaking into a bright, wide smile.
“Oh, Uncle George,” Edwin cried. “I’m ever so glad to see
you.
”
“I was thrown out again.”
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Edwin swung his legs back and forth after this confession, the heels of his
boots clipping the wall behind the wooden shelf he perched on. Wes had
smuggled him through the stovehouse and into the gardener’s shed behind it,
the gardener’s silence bought with a pair of shillings and the sly touch of Wes’s
fingers at his wrist. The latter would cause him an awkward conversation later,
he knew, for he had no intention of tupping the man a second time, but all he
cared about just now was getting to the bottom of Edwin’s situation.
Wes sat on a bench opposite Edwin. “T-tell me what h-happened.”
Edwin’s feet swung a few times. “My schoolwork.”
Wes frowned. Edwin was a brilliant young man. Something else was going
on, surely. He waited patiently for the rest.
It took some time in coming. Edwin continued to swing his feet, though
when he lifted his head, he looked at Wes with all the sobriety of an adult. The
boy was eleven, that odd age where he was both boy and man, flitting between
the two without a moment’s warning.
“They tease me. Everyone does. And this boy across the hall does horrible
things to me. Once h-he made me eat soap. In front of everyone. It made me sick,
so horribly sick. They salt my food too, and put mud in my sheets, then say that
I—” He blushed furiously and averted his eyes.
The sound of the rain beat around them, pelting the windows. It was warm
inside, and it smelled comfortingly of plants and damp. But the cold bite of
memory washed over Wes.
“Sn-snow,” he said at last. “Th-they liked to put sn-snow into my p-pants. I
h-had to stand there unt-til it m-melted.”
Edwin’s eyes filled with unshed tears. “I didn’t want to go back after
holiday. I thought if I were a bad student they would kick me out. And they did.
But Father says I’m a disgrace. Says I’ve”—he swallowed hard, looking guilty—
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“betrayed the family and the name.” His tears spilled over. “But I can’t go back,
Uncle George. I can’t.” He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “I told Father I wanted
to have tutors at home like you did. He got very angry. He says he’s going to let
Grandfather punish me.”
There wasn’t a lot of terror in Edwin’s voice, and Wes had to hide a wry
smile. Punishment from Daventry? Guilty lectures, yes. Possibly some boxing
lessons. But punishment? No. Wes felt a tug of envy. How he would have longed
for such personal attention from his father.
“If y-you like,” he said, “I c-can ask if you can h-help us at the g-gardens. G-
Give you g-grueling work as w-well as an educ-cation.”
It warmed him to see the way his nephew beamed. “Oh! Would you really?
That would be so wonderful. I would do any work you asked. As grueling as
you like.”
Wes was fairly certain he could astound Edwin with new levels of disgust
when he saw the manure sheds, but he also knew Edwin would wade through
worse rather than go back to his torment at school. Which he would eventually
need to return to, unfortunately. There would be no quiet arrangement of tutors
for Edwin Westin, Baron of Alten, heir to the Earl of Vaughn and one day the
Marquess of Daventry.
But Wes could give him a few shining moments while the boy was still in
town.
He rose and held out his hand. “C-come. If you w-want to h-help me, you
must first h-have your l-lessons. Let us s-see where your t-tutor has g-gone.”
It was midafternoon when Wes finally returned to his lodgings—technically
he lived only a few blocks away from Daventry House, but once he’d helped
settle matters with Edwin, he went to the club for a luncheon and a stiff drink.
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After dealing with his elder brother for an hour, he’d thought it was the least he
was owed.
“I can’t coddle him,” Vaughn had snapped when Wes suggested Edwin be
allowed to spend some time with him at the Regent’s Park garden. “It’s all well
and good for you to hide out with your plants, but you can’t encourage that in
Edwin. He’s the heir. He has responsibilities, and he must learn how to manage
them. Everyone has trouble in school. Everyone faces bullies. It’s part of growing
up.”
Wes had wanted to argue with his brother, but when he’d tried to pull out
his notebook to present his own position, Vaughn had only rolled his eyes.
“Do you see? This is what I’m speaking of. You would have me coddle the
boy until he is like you, unable to participate in a simple conversation without a
paper crutch. He must be made to be strong. I won’t have him turn out like you,
fit for nothing but playing with dirt in the park.”
His brother had turned on his heel and stalked out of the library before Wes
could recover from the blow enough to mentally prepare a retort, let alone find
means to deliver it.
The insult had carried the devil’s barb in it, Wes acknowledged as he leaned
back in his seat on the hack ride home. His brother’s verbal slap robbed him of
his usual solace—“playing with dirt” as Vaughn had put it. No Regent’s Park
garden for him, not that afternoon. He would have nothing but cigars and
whiskey and the din of men’s conversation drifting into the club library. The
prospect of dinner with more of the same had turned his stomach, and so he’d
headed for home, content to ring up a sandwich for supper or send the potboy
out for a loaf later if he grew hungry.
Though the thought of sliding into a warm bath with a large pot of poppy
tea had a great deal of appeal. A bit of opium would make all the day’s misery
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drift away. No, he shouldn’t use it as such, but surely today warranted a bit of
bending the rules.
It wasn’t as if he were required to be of
use
to anyone tonight.
By the time the driver let him off, Wes’s mood was so black he found himself
wishing he had opium to smoke and could lose himself properly. He was
halfway to the door and nearly resolved to fetch his purse and a warmer coat
and head right back in to the City again to seek out a decent den, when he looked
up to see Rawlins, the building’s butler, hurrying down the walk to meet him.
Wes stopped short and blinked in confusion, but before he could form a
question, Rawlins closed the remaining distance between them and made a bow.
“Forgive me for troubling you, my lord.” He held out a slip of unsealed
cream paper. “But a gentleman brought this by three hours ago and was most
insistent I get this note to you as soon as I saw you.”
Before I even stepped in the front door?
Something was odd here, that was
certain. Frowning, Wes took the paper from the butler.
Require a moment of your time to discuss a mutual acquaintance. Will stop by at
four this afternoon. Sending pleasant regards from Mr. V.—R.
Wes stood on the steps, staring at the paper, confused. Mutual acquaintance?
V? Who was V?
Slowly, terribly, the words and what they meant permeated his brain.
Mutual acquaintance.
Mr. V. Which could only be Vallant. Michael Vallant.
Someone knew.
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Wes crumpled the paper into his fist. “Th-th-th-th—” He shut his eyes,
forced himself to calm, and tried again, but he was so rattled it was work enough
to keep himself speaking. “Th-Th-Th-Thank you.”
“I’m very sorry, sir,” Rawlins said, sounding almost as agitated as Wes was.
“It is not my wish to deliver what is clearly bad news to you so abruptly, but the
gentleman was most insistent.”
Wes couldn’t reply. He ran a hand over his face as he pushed past the butler
into the house, fighting against the torrent of potential ruinations this unknown
R could bring to him and to his family. His father. Heaven help him, he would