A Gentleman Of Substance

“There sits the heir to all your hard-won wealth, Drake.” She waved scornfully in Neville’s direction. “How long will take him to run through your fortune? Six months? A year?”

“I expect to live a long, healthy life, Grandmother.” Drake’s words sounded clipped and precise, his voice menacingly soft in volume, like the first rumblings of thunder.

“What my cousin means, Grandmama, is that he expects me to be worm food when he is enjoying a vigorous old age. Staggering about the countryside. Minding his mills and mines. Wolfing down heaping bowls of boiled cabbage and tripe. And celibate—is that not also part of your regimen, Cuz?”

“For pity’s sake, Neville, stop plaguing the poor man,” snapped Phyllipa.

The marchioness looked at Clarence’s widow with a faint glimmer of interest. She hadn’t thought the vapid creature capable of snapping.

“Drake is our host,” Phyllipa continued primly. “He has just lost his only brother. Besides, your bickering will upset poor dear Grandmama.”

“Fiddlesticks!” exclaimed the marchioness, when no pithier oath came readily to mind. “There’s nothing I like better than a good family row. It’s obligatory to quarrel after a funeral. Keeps everyone from dwelling on morbid thoughts of mortality.”

Neville raised his glass to her. “What a philosopher you are, Grandmama.”

“Save your oily tongue, coxcomb! I’ve been flattered by men more skilled in proper subtlety than you’ll ever be.”

His grandmother caught Drake in the ghost of a smile. She had no intention of letting him get complacent. “Your cousin has a point, Drake. No one cheats death forever. What becomes of your fine enterprises when you’re gone? You need sons to inherit your title and carry on your work. Come back to London with me and take your pick from this season’s marriage market.”

“I’d sooner swim in a cesspit.” Drake wrinkled his aquiline nose expressively.

“Exasperating cub!” The marchioness was not used to being flouted. “Were you counting on Jeremy to supply you with heirs? Now you’ll have to do the deed yourself, my boy.”

Drake rose abruptly from his chair. The “boy” cut quite an imposing figure these days, his grandmother grudgingly admitted. Though his long, angular face gave him a gaunt look by times, he had the lean muscularity of his late grandfather. A far cry from the sickly child whose life the family had despaired of.

“Consider this discussion closed, Grandmother. I am not a child you can cane into submission. Now, if you will excuse me, I mean to go for a ride before I retire.”

“Oh, Drake, you can’t be serious!” Phyllipa gestured toward the room’s large windows, each composed of over a hundred small panes. Judging by the force with which the rain thrashed against them, it was being driven by a fierce westerly. “Hear that wind. It’s raining fit to sink Noah’s Ark.”

Already halfway to the door, Drake shrugged his wide shoulders. “Never fear, Phyllipa. I have yet to dissolve in water. Besides, I prefer the impersonal hostility of nature to Grandmother’s cherished family quarrels. Good night, everyone. I trust the lack of company won’t spoil your enjoyment of my port, Neville.”

He closed the door quietly, but firmly, behind him.

Tipping his chair back, Neville hoisted his feet up to rest on the edge of the highly polished mahogany table. “Not in the least, my dear fellow,” he chuckled in reply to his absent cousin. “Not in the least.”

For twopence, the Dowager Marchioness of Cranbrook would have garrotted her grandson with the string of his own monocle.

Drake was well soaked by the time he reached the stables. The chill rain had not cooled his smoldering temper, though.

“Evening yer lordship.” One of the stablemen touched his cap in greeting, surveying his master with obvious puzzlement. “Is there aught I can do for you tonight, milord?”

Compared with Silverthorne’s dining room, the stables looked invitingly tranquil. Drake inhaled the soothing aroma of leather, horses and sweet dry hay.

“I fancy a ride before bed. Saddle up the Spaniard.”

The big black stallion strained eagerly to get out into the storm. Pointing his mount toward an expanse of open countryside, Drake rode into the darkness. Gusts of wind drove the rain into his face, taking his breath away. Rivulets of water ran down his cheeks like tears. Abandoning a lifetime of painstaking civility, he gave himself up to the savagery of the storm. Fury and anguish warred within him, as he allowed himself the luxury of experiencing raw emotion for the first time since receiving word of his young half brother’s death.

For fifteen years he had striven with might and main to resurrect Silverthorne from the ashes of his late father’s ruin. To what end? For Neville to mortgage it to the hilt and gamble it all away? For Phyllipa’s nasty little Reginald, to do who knew what? Whatever else his grandmother might be, Drake admitted she was no fool. He had been relying on Jeremy to provide him with an heir. Now, if he hoped to salvage his life’s work for the future, he would have to perform that odious chore for himself.

He’d gone to London once before, in a flush of youthful naiveté, and there been so abominably used as to sour him on the idea of matrimony ever since. Why could Jeremy not have taken a wife before rushing off to fight Napoleon’s armies? What had possessed him to take up a commission in the first place? Heedless. Imprudent. Unreliable.

Suddenly, Drake pulled his mount up short and headed back home. He’d let his self-control slip quite enough for one night. He had no intention of handing everything to Neville on a silver platter by catching his death of ague. Before he returned to a warm bed and a scalding cup of Mrs. Maberley’s cambric tea, however, Drake had one stop to make.

A faint light flickered in the old stone sanctuary of Saint Mawe’s. Drake tethered his horse by the eastern wall, sheltered from the wind. It was foolish of him to come here, he supposed. However, since he’d already indulged in an orgy of foolishness by riding out on so wild a night, he might as well purge it from his system. Something compelled him to kneel by Jeremy’s grave and ask, Brother, why did you desert me?

Cautiously, Drake picked his way through the old graveyard, following a winding route around the haphazardly arranged tombstones. So loud was the wind and so fiercely was he concentrating to avoid a fall, that he scarcely heard the sound of weeping until he was almost on top of the source. His leg brushed against a small figure huddled beside Jeremy’s grave.

What was a child doing loose in a graveyard, on such a night? If Drake had a weakness, it was for the lost and the helpless, anyone in need of his aid. Abandoning his plan to commune with his brother’s ghost, he hoisted the little stray into his arms and carefully wended his way back to the church. Finding the vestry door unlocked, he pushed it open with his shoulder. Only when he had settled into a pew and relinquished his burden, did he recognize Lucy Rushton.

“What the…? Miss Rushton, what are you doing here?”

Though admittedly not the most perceptive of men, where women were concerned, Drake could tell the girl was fighting to master turbulent emotions. Distractedly, she pushed the rain-soaked hair out of her eyes. The wetness made it look quite brown. Ordinarily, it curled in delicate tendrils around her face, a warm shade of dark honey.

“Forgive me, your lordship.” Her words sounded muffled, as though by a head cold, but the tone was icily formal. “I know you endow my father’s living, but I had no idea you counted the graveyard as your personal property. Excuse me for trespassing.”

For some reason, her haughty reply made Drake want to smile with admiration. She looked so forlorn-drenched and dripping, eyes and nose ruddy from crying, face pale and pinched. Yet there was a spark in Lucy Rushton that no amount of rain or misfortune could quench.

“You know very well I don’t own the graveyard.” Fishing in his pocket for a handkerchief, he handed it to her in a conciliatory gesture. After all, he had no more quarrel with her than she could reasonably have with him. “Even if I did, you’d be welcome to come and go as you pleased.”

Many a time, on rides about his estate, he’d come upon Lucy Rushton sitting under a tree or perched on a stile. An open book spread over her uptucked knees and a plump apple half-eaten in one hand. Engrossed in her reading or her daydreams, she seldom noticed him. Yet, from those brief encounters, he’d absorbed a measure of her contentment, going on his way in a strangely lightened mood.

Lucy scrubbed at her eyes, which only succeeded in making them redder. “Would I be welcome? I wasn’t welcome this afternoon when you buried Captain Strickland.”

She made a thorough job of blowing her nose. Loud and wet, it sounded intentionally rude.

“Not welcome?” Drake looked at her in frank astonishment. “What nonsense, I…”

“It was very badly done, barring everyone but family. Who were those people, anyway? That ridiculous creature with the garish waistcoat and quizzing glass. He didn’t appear the least bit grieved. I’d swear he was gloating.”

“Cousin Neville, the son of my father’s brother.” Drake didn’t try to deny Lucy’s opinion of his cousin.

“I recognized your grandmother, but who was the younger lady? I’ve never seen her at Silverthorne before.”

“Lady Phyllipa Strickland, widow of my cousin Clarence.” If asked, Drake could not have said why he answered her peremptory interrogation so readily.

“Oh.” His account of Phyllipa’s identity appeared to confound her for a moment. Her inexplicable indignation rapidly gathered strength again. “Those people may be Captain Strickland’s relatives. But I doubt if they knew him or cared for him as well as many of his old friends.…”

Her words trailed off as fresh tears sprang into her wide-set brown eyes. Drake reached out to take her hand, but she pushed him away. In the split second they were in contact, he could feel her trembling.

“You must be freezing. I’d offer you my coat, but I fear it would do little good, sodden as it is.”

“F-f-father…” She was shivering in earnest now, her teeth chattering rhythmically. “F-f-father keeps a s-s-spare surplice in the v-v-vestry.”

Rising from the pew, Drake strode down the side aisle to fetch the vicar’s spare surplice. He wrapped it around her as best he could.

“Believe me, Miss Rushton, it was never my intent to slight you. I only wanted to spare my tenants any obligation to attend the funeral. If you’d spoken to me beforehand, I would have welcomed you to join the family. Jeremy was very fond of you.”

In the perverse, puzzling manner of women, Lucy greeted his attempt at kindness with a fresh effusion of tears.