Tempting Fate (Providence #2)
Alissa Johnson
Prologue
1796
There is no messenger quite so unwelcome as the one who comes bearing the news of death.
William Fletcher rather felt he ought to know.
To date, he had been present at more than a dozen such deliveries.
But he hadn’t been made to feel unwelcome at Haldon Hall. On the contrary, upon his arrival William had been told by the countess that the earl was out—as he almost inevitably was—then she had sat him down, poured him tea with a generous splash of whiskey, and politely turned her head when his young voice cracked with grief.
It was no mere colleague’s death he heralded today. It was a friend’s.
“Will you speak to the boy, or shall I?” the countess asked from where she’d taken up a position by the window.
He knew what, or rather who, she was watching—her son, Whittaker Cole, heir to the Earl of Thurston. Whit was lining up tin soldiers on the lawn with Alex Durmant—the newly orphaned Duke of Rockeforte.
“I would prefer…” He cleared his throat. “That is, I would very much like to speak to Alex myself, if you could see your way to allowing it.”
She shot an annoyed look over her shoulder. “You are as much his family as I, William.”
“I…I should have been quicker. I could have—”
“Posh and nonsense. The duke knew the risks of working for the War Department, just as every Rockeforte has”—she returned her attention to the children outside—“and will. Do you mean to honor his final wishes?”
“I do. I gave my word.”
“It’s ridiculous you know, a grown man playing matchmaker.” She crossed the room to sit beside him.
“I’m aware of it,” he grumbled. “As was he, I assure you.”
Her lips curved into a fond smile. “He was a consummate jokester. It seems fitting that he should have died with a laugh. He neglected one small detail, however.”
“What detail would that be?” And if his voice betrayed some hope at the possibility of being released from a very troublesome vow, it couldn’t be helped.
“Two of those children have a mother…with definite plans of her own.”
William was spared from a response when the front door swung open and an argument poured inside.
“You crushed them to pieces, imp!”
“Well you shouldn’t have left them scattered about willy-nilly in the grass, cretin!”
“They were not scattered willy-nilly. They were positioned!”
“Positioned for what?”
“For the advanced raid, you—!”
“Whittaker Vincent!”
At the countess’s surprisingly robust shout, the voices quieted and moved off down the hall.
She cleared her throat delicately and picked up her cup of tea for a sip.
“As I said, I have plans of my own.”
One
1813
There was some disagreement regarding the origins of the long-standing and bitter feud between Miss Mirabelle Browning and Whittaker Cole, the Earl of Thurston.
The lady in question was of the opinion that the discord had begun the first time the gentleman—and she used the term most loosely—deigned to open his mouth and thereby proved himself to be an ass.
The gentleman—loathe to be outdone—argued that the dislike had appeared directly upon sight, which was an obvious indication of fate. And as providence was the domain of the Heavenly Father himself, any and all unseemly behavior toward Miss Browning on his part was clearly an indication of the Almighty’s disfavor with the lady, and he but an instrument of God’s wrath.
The lady felt this opinion argued strongly in favor of the gentleman being an ass.
Some said it all began when a young Mirabelle caused the slightly older Whit to fall headfirst out of a rowboat in front of the lovely Miss Wilheim, who promptly slipped and fell overboard herself, putting an end to their brief but dramatic romance. Others maintained that the whole business had started when a mischievous Whit had put a large bug down the back of Mirabelle’s dress during a musicale, causing the girl to jump, scream, swat madly, and otherwise endanger the people around her.
Still others insisted they really had no care for when or how it had all begun, merely that they wished it to end. Immediately, if not sooner. Everyone, however, was in accord over the fact that the two, quite simply, did not get on.
So infamous was their rivalry, that had anyone been watching as the two of them scowled at each other over a dandy horse on the back lawn of Haldon Hall, the Thurston estate, he or she would have sighed in resignation even while beating a sensible, and hasty, retreat to safety.