Counterfeit Earl

Beatrice nodded. Obviously a country gentleman, she thought, perhaps with some recent military service. Olivia was used to the refined manners and gentle flirtation offered by the gentlemen she had met in London drawing-rooms. She might well find the abrupt way of speaking some country squires had a little harsh.

“It seems there was no harm done,” she said. “Get into the coach now, my love. I think coachman is ready to go on.”

“Yes, of course,” Olivia said. She glanced back towards the wood but could see no sign of Captain Denning. Why should she want to? He was not handsome in a conventional way, nor charming. Yet there had been something about him. “Yes, of course, we should go on…”

She climbed into the coach and settled her gown about her. It was most unlikely that she would ever meet Captain Denning again.

Jack Denning stood amongst the trees, watching as the carriage moved off. He whistled to Brutus, then turned to continue his walk through the woods of his estate. All the land to both sides of the main highway had belonged to his maternal grandfather until a few months ago, when the very desirable estate and substantial property elsewhere had passed to him through Sir Joshua’s will.

Jack had been sad to learn of his grandfather’s death on his return to England. Sir Joshua was the one person ever to have shown Jack true love and affection, and he had been very fond of him.

“Sir Joshua was a very wealthy man,” the solicitor had told Jack when he at last answered Trussell’s repeated invitation to call at his offices. “His fortune was made from trade, Captain Denning. Ships, coal and iron—he had invested in a new foundry just a few months before his final illness. I do not know whether you would wish to sell? I do have buyers interested, should you wish to dispose of one or all of Sir Joshua’s assets.”

It was not usual for the aristocracy to be concerned in trade. Many young men in Captain Denning’s position would have instantly sold the flourishing businesses and invested their money in land or the five percents.

“Not for the moment,” Jack said, surprising the lawyer. “If Sir Joshua believed in them, I imagine they are good investments.”

“Your grandfather was an excellent businessman, sir.”

“Yes, I imagine he must have been. Tell his agents and managers to carry on as usual for the moment. I shall give myself time to think about the future before I do anything.”

Jack was not sure what he wished to do about any of the estate. There was sufficient money for him to live the life of a gentleman of leisure should he so wish, but he doubted it would suit him. He had loved the routine and bustle of army life—but that was over. His memories of comradeship had become tainted by those last hours at Badajoz.

He shut the pictures out of his mind resolutely. There were times now when he almost managed to forget…almost.

But there was no sense in remembering. He had failed, and his shame haunted him, most often at night when the dreams tortured him so that he woke sweating and crying out in pain and remorse.

He should have stopped it! Damn it! He should have done something. He had been so stunned, so disgusted by what he was seeing, that he had been slow to react…and then it had been too late. No, he could not go back, he must find a way to go forward, find a future for himself.

Jack frowned as he returned to the house at last and saw the old-fashioned, heavy travelling coach pulled up outside the front door of Briarwood House. The crest on the side panel would have told him who his visitor was had he needed to be told, which he did not. He had subconsciously been expecting this visitor for weeks, ever since his return to England.

“The Earl arrived half an hour since,” Jenkins told him as he entered the hall after scraping the mud from his boots outside the annexe door. “I asked his lordship to wait in the library, sir, and I took him some of the good Madeira Sir Joshua laid down.”

“Thank you,” Jack said and smiled. “You did exactly right.”

He glanced at himself in the mahogany-framed mirror in the main hall, brushing some debris from the sleeve of his coat. He was dressed in the simple garb of a country gentleman, but he must not appear careless. The Earl was a stickler for good manners, and it would not do to arrive looking as if he had come straight from the stables.

In the large, comfortable parlour, the Earl of Heggan was standing by the long French windows looking out on to the formal gardens. He was a tall man, silver-haired and impeccably dressed in knee-breeches and a frockcoat with wide tails, a style that had been fashionable some years back and was perhaps more formal than usual for the country. He turned as Jack entered, moving a little stiffly, his face showing no signs of the pain he suffered almost constantly.

Jack would not have expected anything else. Lord Heggan had never been known to show weakness of any kind.

“Forgive me for not being here to receive you,” Jack said. “You sent no word of your intention to visit today.”

“I imagined you would be expecting me?” Lord Heggan’s clipped tones spoke of his disapproval.

“Yes. I expected a visit at some time, though I was uncertain of precisely when you would come.”

“It would have done you more credit had you the courtesy to call on me, sir.”

“I believe you know my reason for not doing so,” Jack replied. They were very alike in that moment, two strong-willed, uncompromising men. “You have been staying at Stanhope. I vowed never to return when I left six years ago, and I do not lightly break my vow.”

“You are a stubborn young fool,” the Earl said and sighed. “You will forgive me if I sit down? I am past seventy and too old to stand for long. Besides, the journey tired me.”

Jack knew a moment of concern as he saw beneath the older man’s mask and sensed how much of a strain he was under.

“Forgive me, sir. You are not well. I had not realized.”

“It is merely age,” the Earl said and frowned. “I dare say there are less than five years left to me at most—that is why it is imperative that we talk.” He looked straight at his grandson. “I know you have no love for Viscount Stanhope. I do not blame you. My son has lived as a wastrel, and will, I have no doubt, die with his sins upon him. He does not repent and swears he will not as he draws his last breath.”

“My father cursed me when I left his house,” Jack replied. “I am aware that he is ill. Mama told me that he cannot live long when I called on her in London. If you have come to beg me to see Stanhope, you have wasted your time, sir. He would spit in my face and accuse me of having come to gloat at his deathbed.”

“I dare say you are right,” the Earl said. “I am not such a fool as to waste my breath on a lost cause. It was my duty to see Stanhope. I have advised him to make his peace with God at last. I could do no less.”

Jack nodded. The Earl had seemed a distant figure when he was younger. Unbending, a stern disciplinarian who descended on the house only to make his displeasure known, but he was a just man by all accounts.

“No one could expect more, sir.” Jack looked him in the eyes. “If it was not for my father’s sake—why have you come?”

“To remind you of your duty to the family,” the Earl said. His faded blue eyes were seemingly without warmth or feeling. “You have been sent back to England for one purpose. Since your father has only months—or weeks—to live, you must make sure of the succession. You must marry and get yourself an heir before it is too late.”

“I am seven-and-twenty, sir,” Jack said, a faint smile in his dark eyes. “I do not think the case desperate just yet.”

“Your life has been in danger since you went to the Peninsula,” the Earl replied. “Now that you have returned to England, you could be killed in a fall from your horse or take a fever and die of it in days. Until you have at least one son, there is a danger that the title will die with you. We have no male relatives. Therefore it is your duty to make sure of the succession.”

“I have no wish to disoblige you, sir,” Jack said, his mouth set hard. “But at the moment I cannot promise to do as you ask. I have no desire to marry.”

“Your desires are of no importance.” The Earl glared at him. “I thought I had made myself plain. This is a matter of duty. Your own wishes are secondary. You owe this to me as the head of the family.”

“Forgive me, sir, but you do not know what you ask.”

“If you are thinking of love…”

“I was not,” Jack said. “And I know what you were about to say—that I should make a marriage of convenience and take my pleasures where I will. You above anyone should know that the idea of such behaviour is abhorrent to me. I have a mistress who suits me well enough for the moment. She is a lady of good birth, married to a man who neglects her. Should I take a wife, Anne and I would part by mutual agreement and as friends.”

“At least you have some sense of decency, which is more than Stanhope ever did,” muttered the Earl, a grudging approval in his eyes. “Why will you not do your duty, Jack?”

“If I were to marry, it would naturally be to a girl of good family, an innocent, respectable girl—and that I shall not do.” Jack’s face was hard, his mouth set in a stubborn line. “My hands are stained with the blood of innocents, sir. My touch would defile a decent girl.”

“Ridiculous!” snapped the Earl. “You are a damned fool, Jack. I shall hear no more of this nonsense. If you wish to inherit my personal fortune as well as the Heggan estate and title, which is of course entailed, you will do as I ask.”

“Titles mean nothing to me,” Jack replied. “As for money—Sir Joshua left me more money than I shall ever spend. I have ever lived by my own code of honour, and it is all I have left to me. Do not ask me to deny it for the sake of a fortune, for I shall not do so.”

“By God, sir!” The Earl’s eyes glinted. “If I were a younger man I should thrash you.”

Jack smiled oddly. “You might try, sir—but if you were a younger man and not my grandfather, I might be forced to kill you.”

“Damn you! Where did you get your stubborn nature? Your father was a weakling, a drunken wastrel who gambled away his life and his fortune. Your mother a cold beauty with no heart.”

“Would you have me trapped into the same kind of marriage as they had?” Jack asked. Then, before the Earl could reply, “And, since you ask, I believe I resemble you in character more than either of us had previously imagined.”