A Season for Love (22 page)

Jen waved Miss Tompkins back to her chair.
“You are welcome in any portion of the house at any time, Sarah. No
explanation is needed. Indeed, the duke tells me we have you to
thank for the children’s excellent upbringing.”

“
Not at all, Your Grace,” Sarah
Tompkins protested, if feebly. “I am convinced Lady Caroline was
born with proper manners.”

Since they both recognized the polite
falsehood for what it was and both fervently wished to avoid any
discussion of the first duchess, Jen asked Miss Tompkins if she
were enjoying her stay in London. The governess swiftly revealed
she had been taking full advantage of her half days, having visited
an astonishing number of improving educational exhibits in the
short few weeks she had been in town. Since the duchess herself had
not seen a quarter of the art or historical displays mentioned by
Miss Tompkins, she was once again beset by an attack of inadequacy.
Her husband seemed to have an inborn knowledge of art and history
that she could never match. Undoubtedly, the result of his superior
upbringing, plus all those years at Eton and Oxford. In contrast,
he must think her a dolt.

Yet, Jen reminded herself with some
satisfaction, it was a well-known fact that gentlemen did not care
for bluestockings.

The duchess was not permitted to examine this
conundrum. Running steps were heard in the hall. Laurence
Carlington, Marquess of Huntley, burst through the open doorway and
threw himself at Miss Tompkins, crying, “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!
Where’s Caroline? I want Caroline!”

“
Laurence!” Much shocked, Sarah
Tompkins reminded her charge he was in the presence of the duchess.
He must stand and make his bow.

“
No! She wants me gone. She hates me.”
His voice rose to a wail. “I want Caroline. I want to go
home.”

Jen jumped up and attempted to take the
sobbing little boy in her arms. “Laurence, I do not hate you. I
assure you I love you as if you were my very own boy.” The marquess
stiffened his narrow shoulders and tightened his grip on Sarah
Tompkins.

“
Please, Laurence,” Jen urged, “tell me
what has happened. I will do my best to mend the
problem.”

“
He
says I must
go to school,” Laurence sobbed. “George has told me about school.
It is an awful place with great bullies and paddlings . . . and
grim professors and so much work your brainbox fair busts. I do not
want to go!”

“
George?” Jen inquired,
baffled.

“
One afternoon a week ago,” Miss
Tompkins explained, “Huntley and Susan joined the children of three
other families for games and general improvement of their manners
outside the family. I fear young George Wentworth passed along
tales from an older brother.”

The duchess, frowning, stayed on her knees
beside her step-son. “When is your birthday, Laurence?”

“
Twenty November . . . Your
Grace.”

“
You will be eight?” Laurence,
swallowing an errant sob, merely nodded.

“
You know, Laurence,” Jen said as
calmly and quietly as she could manage, “your papa probably went
off to Eton when he was eight. It’s what the sons of titled
gentlemen do. And I know your papa was so very happy to have a
little boy that he wants to be certain he does everything exactly
the way it is supposed to be—”

“
No!” Laurence screamed, his fears
rapidly turning into a temper tantrum. “No, no, no, I won’t go. I
want Caroline! She’ll tell him. She’ll take me home, I know she
will. Where’s Caroline?”

“
She is not here at the moment,
Laurence,” Jen soothed. “She has gone shopping with her friend
Emily.”

“
I want her. I want her
now
.”

Sarah Tompkins, looking truly shaken, stood
up, hauling the young marquess up with her. “I’ll take him
upstairs, Your Grace. I fear there’s no reasoning with him
now.”

“
Yes, of course,” Jen murmured, equally
stricken. As the governess led the still-sobbing boy out of the
room, the duchess followed their progress with anguished eyes. How
to tell a small boy there was no “home,” that the cottage in Little
Stoughton had already been let to another family? How to explain to
his father that the boy had suffered too many upheavals in his life
of late, that his entrance into Eton should be put off for a
year?

Mentally, Jenny put on her marching boots,
then headed down the hall toward the bookroom. Surely . . . they
had been so close of late, particularly since those delicious
moments at Vauxhall. Surely Marcus would listen to her. Would
understand.

The bookroom door was closed tight. Not
unusual when the duke wished to go over the many government papers
with which he dealt each day, but still . . . not the best sign of
her husband’s mood. Softly, Jen scratched at the door, then opened
it a crack and peeked inside.

“
Go away,” the Duke of Longville
growled, without looking up from his perusal of a stack of fine
vellum.

“
I wish to speak with you,” Jen
declared, stepping into the room and closing the door behind
her.

Marcus leaned back in his burgundy leather
arm chair and regarded his wife with open hostility. “If you have
come to plead the brat’s case, you are fair and far out. He goes to
school, and there’s an end on it.” The duke bent his head to the
papers on his desk, an obvious gesture of dismissal.

“
He has had too many changes lately,
Marcus,” Jen told him in forthright tones. “He needs to become
accustomed to the loss of his mother, to having a larger, and quite
different, family. He needs to feel loved and secure, certain that
we will all be here when he comes home from school. Indeed, he does
not yet think of this as his home at all. To him, home is still in
Little Stoughton.”

“
Then it is time he grew up and learned
the world is not always the way—”

“
He is seven years old, Marcus. He has
plenty of time to grow up. Do not force him to it,” Jen
begged.

“
Enough! My son will do as he is told.
As will my duchess,” His Grace, the Duke of Longville, emphasized
on a more ominous note.

The room quivered with outraged silence. Then
Jenny Norville Wharton Carlington, Duchess of Longville,
straightened to attention. She snapped off a smart salute. “Aye,
Your Grace. At once, Your Grace. By your command, Your Grace.” In
all the glory of a rose silk day gown with a ruched hem, the
duchess executed a formal military turn and marched from the room,
never looking back to see if her husband was watching her or had
returned to his stack of papers.

That night, when the Duke of Longville
turned the doorknob leading to his wife’s bedchamber, it failed to
move. He jiggled it, tried again.
Locked,
by God
. Marcus was so genuinely shocked, he wandered,
unseeing, back through his dressing chamber to his own room, where
he slumped down on the side of his bed. It had to be an accident,
the lock had to be stuck. Jenny would never do this. It wasn’t in
her nature. She was warm and loving . . . and he needed her. They
could not be quarreling over something so simple as Laurence going
to school, something that was an undeniable part of the boy’s
heritage.

Rising, the duke moved softly back
through the dressing room, once again trying his wife’s
door.
Locked
. He thought of
tapping on the door, dismissed it. His wife had quite deliberately
shut him out, the wretch.

He’d done it again. Married a woman as
volatile as Amy. Amy who had denied him his rights for years on
end. Amy who had left him rather than be a proper wife.

But Jen—Jen wasn’t like that. Jen was strong.
Jen was everything Amy was not.

Yet she had locked him out. Just as Amy
had.

Striding back to his bedchamber on a
whirlwind of temper, the Duke of Longville grabbed up a crystal
brandy snifter and shied it into the fireplace, where it shattered
in a hundred satisfying pieces. He was the Duke of Longville, by
God, and his children would do as they were told.

And so would his wife.

~ * ~

Bert Tunney stifled a grunt as, with the aid
of Flann McCollum’s cupped hands, he hauled himself up and over the
fence that separated the mews from the Longville House gardens. As
the lightest in weight, Alfie had been first over the fence, easily
boosted by Flann and Bert, and was already waiting below.

A sharp exclamation. A hissed, but pungent
expletive. Bert Tunney thudded onto the ground, still swearing. “A
nail! Tore m’ pants on a blasted nail. Blood’s running down m’
leg.”

“
Shut your bleedin’ mouth, or we’re
done fer,” Alfie Grubbs hissed as Flann McCollum dropped lightly to
the ground beside them.

“
A great ox ye are,” the Irishmen said
with feeling. “Left y’ home we should, if we didn’t need an extra
pair of peepers.”

“
Never said I was anything but an
honest carter,” Tunney protested, much affronted. “Can’t expect me
to know nothing about the dub-lay.”

“
It’s more of a revolutionary ye are,
Bert Tunney, than an honest carter,” Flann declared with
feeling.

“
Hush!” Alfie urged. “’Ere comes the
watchman.” The three men flattened themselves against the wooden
fence, willing their bodies to perfect immobility.

When the duke’s private watchman, swinging a
square-shaped lantern, had made his way through the gardens,
apparently unaware of the intruders, the three housebreakers
unglued themselves from the fence with audible sighs of relief.
“Just the one, you say?” Bert Tunney whispered to Flann
McCollum.

“
Aye, the dook’s fair took with his own
importance. Who’d dare snabble somethin’ from the great, important
Dee-ook of Longville?” said Flann, mimicking the upper crust accent
of the
ton
.

“
Let’s get to it then,” Alfie said,
“before y’r fingers grow so old they fergit how to pick a
lock.”

The first part of their plan went well. On
the watchman’s next turn through the garden he was surprised and
trussed up as fine as a Christmas goose. Or so Bert Tunney
pronounced as he observed Flann and Alfie at work. So far, so good.
In under an hour they would all be wealthy men.

As Flann had promised, he was indeed adept
with locks. They were inside the kitchen entrance in a matter of
minutes. He and Alfie were glad enough to leave the nervous Bert on
guard, still complaining about his bleeding leg. The two men stood
still, listening for any sign of life. There was none. Cautiously,
they moved forward, keeping the lantern dark. Flann had enjoyed
another evening of convivial conversation with the footman from
Longville House, so the two housebreakers found their way up the
servants’ stairs with little difficulty. Alfie could only be
grateful that Flann seemed to have a cat somewhere on his family
tree, for the Irishman climbed the narrow servants’ stairs as if he
could actually see where he was going.

Alfie followed, torn between determination
and doubt. He would, he vowed, stick to the jostle and grab from
now on, doing his business in daylight as any God-fearing man
should. A trap, this great house, that’s what it was. Yet he could
see those jewels—great gleaming things winking at him, urging him
on, promising new hope in a new land. Bleedin’ duke had so much
blunt he’d never miss them baubles. Not a bit of it.

Alfie heaved an inward sigh of relief when
they reached the upper hallway. After the stairwell, it seemed
bathed in light, although, truthfully, there was only the merest
glow drifting in from the lanterns surrounding Grosvenor Square.
Gawd! Flann was forging ahead as if he actually knew where he was
going, as perhaps he did after his night of matching the Longville
footman pint for pint.

Flann paused and snuck open a door a scant
few inches. Shaking his head, he closed it and moved on. Then
fortune seemed to smile. The very next bedchamber proved to be
their goal. The secretaire loomed, a dark hulk against one wall,
exactly as expected. Flann had the lock open in a trice. The men
grabbed a jewel box each and swiftly backed out of the room,
keeping their eyes on the massive bed where the duke lay sleeping,
his view unobstructed by draperies unnecessary in the warmth of
near summer.

Not a sound. Not so much as a wiggle.

They backed into the hallway, softly securing
the door behind them. Flann’s heart was singing. Sweet revenge
against the Brits, a new start in the Canadas—

A scream rent the air. A unending series of
screams. A wraith in billowing white seemed to fill the entire
width of the corridor, barring their passage back to the servants’
stairs. Not that they truly thought a ghost could scream so loudly,
but both men, still clutching the heavy jewelry boxes, turned and
ran for the front stairs as fast as their legs could carry them. In
the corridor behind, Nell Brindley, who only wished to sneak a fine
slice of roast beef from the kitchen larder, continued to scream at
the top of her country-bred lungs.

The lock on the great front door would take
too long to pick. Flann and Alfie ran down the ground floor
corridor, throwing open doors, looking in vain for another exit.
The green baize door, they had to find it. And quickly. Now
frantic, they doubled back, found the entrance to the servants’
area at last. Hearts pounding, they flung themselves out the
kitchen door.