A Gentleman By Any Other Name

Julia shook her head, interested and not a little impressed at Chance Becket’s so-smooth pronunciation of such tongue-twisting French names. “I’m sorry, I’m not. It’s an island? Is sugar grown there?”

Chance wished back his words. “Another time, Miss Carruthers. I was only thinking that there has already been one instance of a people copying the methods of the French Revolution. Indeed, we do not want another, most especially not here. Let me tell you about Becket Hall. Shall we walk?”

“I really should go upstairs to check on Miss Alice,” Julia said, getting to her feet.

“I’ll have a maid sent up to sit with her. Alice has no problem with strangers.”

Julia still believed she should return to Alice’s chamber, but she did long to hear about Becket Hall and the Becket family, as well as more about Haiti, of all places. “Very well,” she said, handing over the key to the chamber. “But wait, I’ll do it. I should go fetch my bonnet anyway.”

“Not if you have any pity for me, Miss Carruthers. The thing is close to an abomination, you know. Even that ridiculous bun is less offensive to the eyes.”

Julia went to raise a hand to her hair but caught herself in time. “One would assume you, too, were a motherless child, Mr. Becket, as that was quite an untactful remark.”

Chance did not smile. “Wait for me here, Miss Carruthers, doing your best to keep any opinions to yourself.”

Julia gave herself another short, pithy sermon on the benefits of knowing her place while also taking the time to munch on another slice of ham and tuck a roll into the pocket of her gown before her employer returned and led her out onto the street.

He turned to the left and then guided her around the side of the large building, down a gravel pathway to a bench that overlooked the River Medway. Or the River Wen. Julia only knew that Maidstone had been built on the banks of both waterways. Until the horrible mail coach ride to London that now seemed two lifetimes ago, she had never strayed more than a few miles from Hawkhurst, except for occasional trips to Rye with her father.

She sat, raising her face to the sun while she listened to the flow of water through the wheel of the mill on the opposite shore, the song of birds overhead…and concentrated on not thinking about the man sitting beside her. And there were flowers; flowers everywhere. Maidstone had been touted as the Garden of England, and now she knew why. “I still can’t smell the Channel, but we will tomorrow. How near is Becket Hall to the water?”

“All but too near when the tide comes in during a winter storm,” Chance said, a mental portrait of Becket Hall forming in his mind. “My father loves the sea.”

“And you don’t?”

This woman turned his every spoken word into a question about him. How did she do that? “I’ve sailed. Now, you’ll be with Alice at most times, but I know my family. They’re extremely informal and they’ll wish to include both of you in their day-to-day lives, so you’d best be prepared for that.”

Julia could sense tension building in the man, from his posture to the tone of his voice. “You disapprove?”

“It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove. Only to explain. My father, Ainsley Becket, is still a rather young man. We’re not his children by blood, you see, except for Cassandra. In truth, I only refer to Ainsley as my father when I’m in society, because that’s easier than constant explanations. Ainsley never leaves the Marsh, you understand, and has never been to London. In any event, Ainsley was a man of business in the islands for many years and simply acquired the rest of us from time to time.”

Julia was absolutely fascinated. “He adopted you there? In the islands, you said? Islands in the Caribbean?”

“Adopted, purchased, scooped up—yes, he did. I’m not disclosing any secrets here, for you’d soon realize that the Beckets are a rather mixed assortment. I am the oldest, although Courtland likes to believe himself our keeper, and Cassandra is the youngest. The rest all fall somewhere in between, whether thinking of their ages at the time they became a part of the household or when they were born.”

Julia, having grown up as the only child in her father’s household, often envious of her friends and their many brothers and sisters, was eager to hear more. “How many of you are there?”

Chance wished he hadn’t begun this conversation, but the woman should know what she was facing. “Eight, other than Ainsley. Quite the menagerie. Court, Cassandra, myself. My sisters, Morgan, Eleanor and Fanny. My brothers, Spencer and Rian. So you under stand, Alice will not want for company.”

Julia’s head was spinning as she attempted to digest so much information given so quickly. All those names. Too many names. “I’m sure she will be delighted. But all those people. Becket Hall is probably enormous?”

Chance watched as a V of ducks slid across the current toward the shore. One in the lead, the rest following in that V, all neat and tidy and regimented. So unlike his family, his house, all of their lives.

He could never run far enough to get away.

“Becket Hall is large, yes. Large and rambling and fairly ugly.” He stood up. “Shall we go?”

Julia got to her feet. “I believe I’ll sup with Alice in our room this evening, sir. When shall we be ready to travel tomorrow morning?”

Chance ran a hand over his hair. “That’s my decision? I hadn’t planned on abdication, you understand, but I have begun to believe I’ve been overthrown. Shall we say eight?”

Julia smiled. “I think eight is a perfect time to continue our journey, sir.” And then she gave in to curiosity yet again and pushed for more information. “Why, you may even have time to say your hellos to your family and still be back on the road to London early the next morning.”

“A plan that would please me straight down to the ground, Miss Carruthers, much as that obviously disgusts you. But we both remember the amount of luggage I have brought with me. It turns out that I have matters to attend to up and down the coast, so I will be staying at Becket Hall—or at least returning to it every few days—until such time as I can escape to London.”

“Really?” Julia said, trying to sift through the feelings his information had aroused, decide if they were feelings of joy or discomfort. “Alice will be very pleased, sir.”

“Oh, yes,” Chance said, then sighed, mentally picturing his brother Court’s reaction to the news. “Everyone will be extremely pleased. Good day to you, Miss Carruthers. Don’t remain outside without your cloak or you’ll take a chill. I refuse to consider the prospect of being compelled to interview yet another nanny.”

Julia watched him walk away, heading downstream along the bank, his hands clasped behind his back. Another woman might be intrigued by the man. The bereaved husband. The harassed, unknowledgeable but sincere father. The wretchedly handsome man with the brooding eyes and the full mouth of a soul who had been born for passion and adventure, even if he seemed woefully unaware of that fact. A man who’d seen an exotic place like Haiti, had even lived there. How? As a poor, orphaned boy at last discovered by Ainsley Becket and given a new but clearly unhappy life?

Yes, any woman would be intrigued, fascinated. Any woman would want to hold him, comfort him, help him.

Well, almost any woman.

Julia Carruthers longed to run after him and give him a good push in the back, sending him toppling headfirst into the river.

CHAPTER FOUR

CHANCE TOOK JACMEL for a run early the next morning, knowing the only way to keep the animal to a steady pace would be to first wipe away the memory of being locked in a strange stall all night. He then spent most of the day on Jacmel, either cantering ahead of the traveling coach or waiting by the roadside for it to catch up with him again, until he at last pushed into the coach to ride sitting beside his daughter.

It was dark now. Alice was soundly asleep. And Billy—had Julia Carruthers put the fear of God into the man?—had slowed to carefully pick their way through the moonlight over the last miles to Becket Hall.

A maddening day. A wasted day. And yet a lovely luncheon with Alice, who could chatter away nineteen to the dozen about everything and anything.

And all of that time, for every moment of the day, Chance had been unable to block Julia Carruthers from his mind. She was a servant, yes, but more than that, she was a woman. She might not be a society miss, but she probably knew more of her bloodline than he did of his; most anyone would. She was no worse than he, probably a good deal better, even if she had hired herself out as a child’s nurse and he was living in a fine house in Upper Brook Street, dressing in custom-tailored clothes and holding a fairly important post in the War Office.

He was the man he had made. A gentleman, in name if not by birth.

He rarely thought of the young Chance anymore, the ragged, barefoot boy who had angled for pennies on the wharf and slept wherever he could. He’d been known only as “Angelo’s brat,” until Ainsley.

He’d moved so far beyond that life, both in the islands and here in England.

But every turn of the coach wheels took him closer to Becket Hall, and the memories refused to go back where they belonged, into the far recesses of his brain. He blamed Julia Carruthers for that, although he knew such reasoning to be ridiculous.

Ainsley would like Julia Carruthers, damn him.

Yes, he publicly referred to Ainsley as his father and the others as his brothers and sisters, but in his mind all he saw was the end, that last day, that last memory. He would never forgive Ainsley that last memory.

Build a life, watch that life be destroyed. Love and refuse to love again. Protect yourself, adhere to the rules, refuse to be vulnerable or dependent again. Never, never trust.

Those were the lessons of that last memory. All of that. And Isabella’s smile…

Julia cried out when Billy sawed on the reins. The horses all but plunged to a stop and she was tossed into Chance’s arms from the other side of the coach.

“What on earth…?”

“Cow-handed fool!” Chance tried to disengage himself, but he had reflexively thrown out one arm to keep a sleeping Alice from tumbling to the floor of the coach, so that he could barely steady Julia with the other as she scrambled to right herself.