Fortescue

“Mr. Birdwhistle, sir, if you might leave your students to their lesson, we are having a. . . consultation. . . and require impartial opinion.” Lavender Marlowe, the youngest female in the late Earl of Wycliffe’s household, clutched her hands until her knuckles whitened.

Struck by the unlikelihood of anyone in this household consulting anyone, much less a mere tutor, “Birdwhistle,” set down his book. Anything that upset Miss Lavender, upset him. “Of course, Miss Marlowe.”

With an excess of the Wycliffe family’s blond beauty, the young modiste wore wispy side curls, delicate muslin, and a lacy fichu that almost concealed her sumptuous bosom. She’d be an Incomparable had she graced London’s ballrooms. Her thick, long lashes were artfully designed to conceal or widen big, silver-blue eyes, had she been inclined to flirtation.

Like the rest of the late Earl of Wycliffe’s eccentric family, however, Miss Marlowe had little patience with idle dalliance. Generally, she was too busy to give him the time of day. Oddly, her indifference was what appealed.

Unfortunately, as the youngest son of the Duke of Castlefield, Lord Terence Fortescue—Fort—Dacre, also known as Birdwhistle, would lose his head if he did more than admire a Wycliffe by-blow.

Fort instructed his mathematical geniuses on their assignment and followed Miss Marlowe into the dark attic. Down the corridor, in one of the manor’s medieval towers, the children in the public schoolroom chanted their multiplication tables.

At nine, Fort’s talented students were well beyond simple mathematics, but he feared he had failed to accomplish his goal of teaching them to adequately socialize—as well as anything else he’d intended in the year of anonymity he had given himself. It was time to move on. To what. . . he didn’t know.

In the nursery under construction, Fort made his bows to the chamber’s other occupants.

“We have a dilemma.” A classic beauty, Miss Dorothea Talbot was slender, well-curved, with champagne-blond hair, vivid pansy-purple eyes—and an heiress. She was just the sort the duke expected Fort to be courting.

He had about as much interest in Thea as he did in law, religion, or the military, which was to say, zero. Thank the heavens, his five older brothers had already established themselves in those professions far better than he could.

The lady handed over an expensive sheet of stationery.

“We have a disagreement,” Miss Talbot’s constant companion, the Comte Arnaud Lavigne growled.

Not part of the late earl’s extended family, Arnaud was nearly twice Fort’s breadth and a head taller. A war survivor and artist, he and the heiress had apparently come to an arrangement that did not involve marriage. Priory Manor accepted almost every eccentricity except crime.

Conscious of the beautiful modiste’s anxiety, Fort unfolded the creased paper and recognized the ridiculously poor handwriting at once. Eyebrows raised, he scanned the hurried message.

Attacked by assassins in riot. Need physician, safe place to recover. Directed farm wagon to Priory. It was signed Weston and dated late yesterday.

Monty? Assassins? His eldest brother, the very proper Montague, Earl of Weston, the duke’s heir. . . No. Just no.

Choking on shock, Fort belatedly realized the others watched him anxiously. They thought him a tutor. How could he even explain. . .

“This is the noble who has brought the misfortune on us once before!” Arnaud growled, snatching back the missive. “We are a household of women and children. All the gentlemen are away and the ladies wish to extend the invitation to rebellious mobs!” The solitary artist did not often speak and his English slipped when agitated.

Fort did a quick mental inventory of Priory Manor’s inhabitants and realized with alarm that Arnaud was quite correct. Captain Huntley had taken their lawyer and several other of the gentlemen to Birmingham. They had learned it would be simpler to have Gravesyde legally recognized as a village if the late earl’s estate were annexed by its neighbor, Worcestershire, rather than remain isolated as a medieval exclave of Shropshire. The isolation had invited villainy for too long.

Those gentlemen not consulting with magistrates were visiting their own estates to oversee harvests or were taking final journeys before winter set in. Arnaud, as a French emigre, had no estate in England and nowhere else to go. Fort was the only other gentleman in residence.

Thea Talbot hastily added, “Arnaud is being ridiculously cautious, but if you believe we are in any way endangering the boys, we thought you should be consulted.”

Normally, with his experience as a French aristocrat, Arnaud was more than sufficient to stand in his English cousin’s place as head of household. They had no reason to consult a mere tutor.

Assassins, on the other hand, with two wealthy heirs at risk. . .

He needed time to think, but the others waited expectantly. An heiress, an artist, and a seamstress. . . None of them had the knowledge he did but they had no reason to know that.

By Jove, how could this. . . Fort tried not to rip the letter from Arnaud and shout for a horse. Damnation, he’d thought the danger was here, in Gravesyde. Instead, he should have been in London all this time?

Wide-eyed, young Lavender gripped her fingers in a form of anxious prayer. “Surely, we must offer Lord Weston our protection? Captain Huntley would expect it.”

As much as he’d love to fall under her spell and agree. . . Fort couldn’t. The captain would quite sensibly agree that entertaining an injured earl with a mob on his trail was insanely dangerous in an unprotected household.

The captain’s wife, on the other hand, like Thea and Lavender, was one of the late earl’s heirs, and she would agree with her soft-hearted cousins. They might ask, to be certain of her response, except Clare Huntley had just produced the captain’s son and should not be disturbed.

All Wycliffe’s descendants were female except the two boys across the hall. They could not inherit the title, but they were the future heirs of the earl’s trust, which included the manor. Until then, the ladies were essentially in charge—which meant Thea and Lavender, not the Frenchman.

Fort met Arnaud’s glare with assurance. “Normally, I would agree with Monsieur Lavigne. Gravesyde has not suffered the unrest afflicting other parts of the kingdom because we are too small and have no authority worth protesting. Inviting revolution to our doors. . .”

And here he must throw off his cloak of invisibility and reveal his cowardly deception. His year was more than up. He’d hoped to settle the boys in school and quietly depart, but. . . If he must be cast out, he might as well do it for good cause.

Hiding a wince of regret, Fort gestured at the letter. “I fear the reason the Earl of Weston is requesting aid is that, as his brother, he trusts me to provide it.” He bowed to the ladies. “Lord Terrence Fortescue Dacre, at your service.”

Arnaud crossed his arms and glowered. The Frenchman had experience in not trusting. The ladies. . . appraised him with suspicion.

The beautiful modiste did not appear pleased. She drew away as if he’d introduced an obnoxious odor. Fort sighed in regret.

“Not Birdwhistle? Of course not. No one is called Birdwhistle.” Thea, the sophisticated London heiress, was the first to speak. Outside of the dowagers, she was the only one of the late earl’s otherwise impoverished descendants who had ever set foot in society and might know Fort’s family.

The other Priory inhabitants knew the Duke of Castlefield, his elderly father, as a bibliophile and occasional visitor, but even the duke was unaware of his youngest son’s presence at the manor. Now was not the time to explain the reasons Thea had never met Fort in London’s social whirl.

“Weston is nearly twice your age,” she added. “You bear no resemblance.”

Fort laughed dryly. “Not precisely twice. He would resent that. I am son of wife number three. I resemble the duke in his youth. Weston, however, resembles his maternal grandfather, a six-foot Scotsman. He was already out of university and terrorizing society by the time I was born. We scarcely know each other, but he wrote my recommendation for this position.”

“A young pup like you. . .” Arnaud expressed his doubt better with a Gallic gesture.

“Please, ask Minerva Upton. She has recognized me.” Minerva’s father was the duke’s steward. As the curate’s wife, she had questioned his presence. As the daughter of a former army officer, she kept silent at his request.

His audience’s eyes widened at the mention of the manor’s petite but formidable librarian. One of the ladies would be at the parsonage within the hour. Fort had to convince them that secrecy must be maintained before that happened.

“We are much the same age, Miss Talbot,” Fort continued. “I was scarcely twelve when I tutored one of my older brothers and Weston’s. . .” He could not say bastards in front of the ladies. The duke’s rages often erupted because none of his sons had produced legitimate heirs. “Children. I was a poor student, suffering the same social afflictions as the boys.” He nodded toward the schoolroom containing the geniuses. “But I lived for books and was able to help my brother and Weston’s sons, who suffered the same reading difficulty as Miss Marlowe.”

Lavender blushed but continued to eye him as if he were an insect. Everyone knew he’d been trying to teach her to read, but they seldom had enough time. His fault. He had little experience with females and did not dare linger in her presence for fear of making an ass of himself.

“Because I suffer a similar impairment to that of the boys, I recognized their difficulty, although I have outgrown much of mine with practice. People often think us stupid and slow. We are not. We simply function differently.” Although this was probably more than he’d said to anyone in a year, he’d had lots of practice in explaining.

“Weston has children?” Lavender finally asked, dismissing his painful explanations in her concern for his brother’s family.

Also dismissing his explanations, Thea looked appalled at his nod of agreement. In unison, the ladies turned on the glowering Frenchman. “The earl has children! He cannot endanger his family by going home!”

“You rather he endangered ours?” Arnaud demanded, sensibly. He turned to Fort. “You understand, do you not? The manor, it is full of women and infants! Surely he has other places he might go.”

Fort gestured at the letter. “One, he is badly injured and already on the way. Two, it is precisely because few are aware of his connection to the Priory that he is safe here. Three, he knows I am a tactician and can conceal his presence. And four, he knows we have a superb physician on call because she’s saved his life before.”

“Tactician?” Lavender asked, as if he’d just called himself a magician.

Fort hoped her astonishment was admiration, but it would evaporate with reality. His brothers had called his obsessive mind far worse. “When you have five older, much larger, brothers who insist on war games, you learn tactics to survive.”

Much as Lavender had survived the circumstances of her birth, but he didn’t offer to explain. He was already formulating a plan.

“What, precisely, has an assassin to do with a mob?” Arnaud demanded. “Rioters do not normally follow a target far.”

Fort gestured at the letter. “He had no time to explain. We must take his word.”

Thea took the simmering Frenchman’s arm and patted it. “After what you have suffered, Arnaud, we understand your loathing of revolution. If we are to avoid the same in England, we must work to avert it. Weston is one of the good landlords. He’ll be duke some day, in a position to institute change. This is our opportunity to make a difference.”

Despising politics, Fort had only thought of his brother’s welfare, but she’d found the key to her consort’s heart.

Reluctantly, Arnaud nodded and pinned Fort with a black glare. “Before I send the letters to the others, demanding their return, what do you suggest?”

“A bad case of measles.”