The Golden Lord

B rant rode slowly through the misty rain, his collar turned up and his hat pulled down against the damp, the two dogs loping along ahead. This was the other side of June mornings, with the green grass blurring in a hazy mesh with the gray sky, soft and wet and peculiarly English, and usually as irresistible to Brant as a bright, cheerful dawn. While his brothers might have sailed as far as they could across the world and away from these fields, to him there could never be a more lovely place in every season and weather than the rolling lands around Claremont Hall.

At least that was how he’d felt on every other morning before this one. Now the clouds could part before the most beautiful rainbow in all creation, and he’d scarce notice in his present mood. The girl had been under his roof for only the briefest time, yet already his entire household was in a blasted turmoil of distraction.

A branch of wet leaves slapped across his cheek and he muttered an irritated, halfhearted oath at his own inattention. And that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? If he were honest—which, as a gentleman and a peer, he generally aspired to be—his household was functioning perfectly well, the way they always did. He was the only one who wasn’t. The girl smiled, she wept, she sighed, she sunk languidly back against her pillows with her hair in childish pigtails, she flashed him a glimpse of a charmingly plump calf gleaming silver-pale in the moonlight, and now he was a hopeless, useless muddle of inattention.

Inattention to everything reasonable and productive, that is. To her, this lost country waif without a memory, he was attending all too well.

He’d told himself sternly that it wasn’t the girl herself, but the mystery she represented. He didn’t like mysteries. He liked things ordered, arranged, neat in their proper places, the way he’d remembered them to be. He took it as a personal, rankling challenge that this girl didn’t seem to belong anywhere. He wasn’t even convinced that Corinthia was her true name, and she didn’t seem to be, either. And Brant didn’t like guessing games. He needed to know.

Which was why he was now heading toward the squat Norman tower of St. Martin’s, and the rambling timbered cottage nestled beside it that served as the parsonage. While his father had neglected the church just as he had everything else, Brant’s luck and success had provided a new roof that didn’t leak, new bellows that didn’t wheeze for the small pipe organ, even new leading for the windows so the wind wouldn’t whistle through the cracks during the psalms every Sunday. He’d even granted the living to a local man from the county, instead of to one of the better-connected applicants.

It wasn’t that Brant was particularly pious, or eager to make a great show in this life with an eye to the next, especially not here in the country. Rather he assured himself that such improvements were simply one more responsibility of his title that had been neglected too long by his father, and another way to help keep his tenants happy and, ultimately, the estate happily profitable, as well.

Ordered, arranged, neat, with everything exactly as it should be: it all made perfect sense, didn’t it?

“G’day, Your Grace,” called the oldest Potter boy, racing from the house, not bothering with a coat as he hurried to take the reins of Brant’s horse. Jetty and Gus bounded around the boy, their tails whipping as they snuffled happily at the interesting new smells on his trousers.

“And a fine, wet morning to you, Simon. Is your father at home?”

“Aye, Your Grace, that he is.” With open admiration the boy stroked the white blaze on the horse’s long nose as Brant swung down from the saddle, and the horse whinnied contentedly in return. “Shall I put this fellow in the stable for you, Your Grace? If it pleases Your Grace, I can rub him down proper, too, and give him a bit to eat.”

Brant nodded. A sympathetic appreciation for horse-flesh was always a fine quality in a boy, especially if the horse agreed. “Let him drink first, Simon, and let these two rascals have a sip, too. But mind you, if you spoil Thunder—that’s his name, you know—if you spoil Thunder too much, he won’t want to carry me back home.”

“Oh, no, Your Grace,” answered the boy so solemnly that Brant chuckled. “Thunder will be ready the minute you call for him, and Jetty and Gus, too. You can rely on me, Your Grace.”

“Thank you, Simon. I shall.” Brant turned toward the house so Simon wouldn’t see his smile. Yes, all was well with the world, so long as the bond between boys and horses and dogs remained this strong. Too bad that wasn’t what had brought Brant here; his grin had disappeared by the time he reached the parsonage’s heavy oak door.

He’d scarcely begun to knock before the door flew open, with Mrs. Potter herself eagerly waiting on the other side. Clearly, Simon hadn’t been the only one to see him arrive.

“Do come inside, Your Grace, do!” she ordered, bustling aside with a harried curtsy. She was a county girl herself, the daughter of one of his tenant farmers, and even her giddy rise through the social ranks to become the reverend’s wife hadn’t given her airs or changed her cheery good nature. With four children of her own and a good many more from the parish running in and out, she was everyone’s mother, her thick sandy hair always slipping from beneath her starched cap and small sticky handprints pressed perpetually into the hem of her apron. “I won’t have it said that I’ve let His Grace the Duke wait outside on my step in the muck and the wet!”

“As you wish, Mrs. Potter.” Obediently, Brant stepped inside, shaking the raindrops from his hat before he let her take it. “Simon told me your husband is at home.”

“Of course he is, Your Grace!” She beamed, neatly smoothing the damp beaver felt of Brant’s hat with her sleeve before she set it on a chair with the greatest care possible. “He’s working on his sermon, Your Grace, same as he does every week at this time, but for certain he’ll see you.”

Briskly she ushered Brant back to the back parlor, where Reverend Potter was toiling over his next sermon. And he was toiling, his broad back bent and his brow furrowed and his shirtsleeves rolled up to spare them from the ink, with books propped open around him for inspiration. Seeing how tightly the quill was clutched in Potter’s ink-stained fingers, Brant could secretly sympathize all too well with his agony—not, of course, that he’d ever be able to confess his own miserable weakness, or find any comfort in commiserating. He was the Duke of Strachen, wasn’t he?

Mrs. Potter loudly cleared her throat. “Attend me, my dear. His Grace is here to see you.”

At once Potter looked up, startled, and groped for his coat as he jumped to his feet.

“Ah, ah, Your Grace, forgive me, please!” he exclaimed as he thrust his long arms into his coat sleeves. “I’ve never a wish to keep you waiting, but my sermon—you see how it is, how lost I can become in the writing of it. My meager talents are seldom worthy of the divine challenge ‘’

“It’s of no matter, Reverend,” said Brant as he moved more books from a chair to sit. “Once again I’ve come to consult your knowledge of the neighborhood.”

“Yes, yes.” Potter smiled with satisfaction; he was on more comfortable ground here than with the sermon. Little escaped his notice in his parish, and he’d helped Brant before to solve small problems among his people before they grew to large ones. “I’m always delighted to be at your service, you know. Ann, please, tea for His Grace. Now it’s not a problem with the Connor girl, is it? You know her mother was so pleased you’d found a place for her up at the Hall.”

“No trouble at all from that quarter,” said Brant, unwilling to be distracted. “Have you heard of any military men in these parts?”

“Military?” The minister frowned. “A regiment quartered in this county?”

“A lone soldier, I’d say, passing through on leave. Most likely an officer, a grenadier.” Brant made a little tent of his fingers, tapping the tips together as he remembered how the girl had spoken of such a rascal. “Have you heard of any such man visiting family or friends, or perhaps stopping for a can of ale at the tavern?”

Potter shook his head. “I cannot say I have, Your Grace. Not that I know of everyone’s comings and goings, to be sure, but I would have heard of such a man. Even the children in the schoolhouse would have spoken of a soldier in uniform. But is the man dangerous, wanted for some crime?”

“Perhaps,” said Brant, purposefully vague. Although he trusted Potter and his reticence, for the sake of the girl’s good name he’d keep what little he knew of her to himself as long as he could. “I have certain suspicions, that is all.”

“I’ll send word the instant I learn anything.” Potter sighed. “I know the Bible counsels us to be welcoming to strangers, Your Grace, but I agree that there are times when it is perhaps the wisest course first to question those we do not know.”

Ann Potter returned with a tea tray, setting it on the table between the two men. “So you have settled what’s to be done with the young lady, then?”

Brant looked up sharply. He’d come here looking for news, not to volunteer it. “The young lady, Mrs. Potter?”

“Aye, Your Grace.” Her round face flushed, but she didn’t back down, folding her hands tightly over the front of her apron. “The confused young lady what’s at the Hall. You scarce had to ask, Your Grace. We understood, and we should be quite happy to have her here to stay with us, as long as she needs.”

“Then you have misunderstood me, ma’am,” said Brant briskly, surprised that she’d even consider such an arrangement. The girl would stay at Claremont Hall for as long as was necessary, and that was an end to it. “There is no reason for the lady to be moved here with you. All her needs are being tended sufficiently at the Hall.”