Once Again a Bride

Two



Sir Alexander Wylde rode into the stable yard behind his town house feeling, as usual, that a morning ride in London was the definition of constriction. Small landscapes, slow gaits, and the tedious interruption of acknowledging acquaintances who also chose to ride early. It was almost, almost, worse than no ride at all.

Leaving his horse with the groom, he entered through the back door. He had taken only two steps along the corridor when he heard a crash in the upper regions, followed by pounding footsteps and inarticulate cries, and then a thump, as if some largish piece of furniture had toppled over. Another man might have started in alarm or run toward the stairs, but Alec merely frowned and walked a little faster. His main emotion was disappointment; Lizzy had promised.

He had to climb two flights to discover the source of the uproar. On the way he passed a housemaid with an apron full of broken china; she avoided his gaze. Frances Cole stood outside Anne’s bedchamber wringing her hands.

The moment she saw him, she began to wail. “The creature is filthy and vicious. It is absolutely out of the question. This is too much, Alec! She has gone too far!” The latter phrase had become something of a refrain in the last few months, since Lizzy’s third governess had decamped. “I will not go in there,” Frances added half hysterically.

Frances, a cousin of Alec’s mother, had had the main charge of Anne and Lizzy since their mother died soon after Lizzy’s birth, an arrangement that seemed to be rapidly breaking down.

Alec opened the bedchamber door and stepped inside. For some reason, Frances pushed the panels closed practically on his heels. He discovered his sixteen-year-old sister Anne lying in her bed, still pale but no longer so frighteningly listless. In fact, there was a bit of the old sparkle in her green eyes. He had brought his whole household up to town this spring because of Anne, who had coughed her way into increasing weakness through the winter. Nothing seemed to help, and he had finally bundled her into a carriage filled with blankets and furs and hot bricks to consult an eminent Harley Street physician. Just yesterday they had gotten the very good news that it was not consumption, a dread that had been hovering over them all for weeks. He suspected that relief was partly behind this latest ruckus, whatever it was. “Where is…?”

Lizzy popped up from behind the bed. “I got her to cheer Anne up,” she declared self-righteously.

“I’m all right, Alec,” Anne said at the same time.

With the ease of long practice, Alec went to the heart of the matter. “Her?”

From beneath the bed came a sound remarkably like a growl. Alec looked at Lizzy. It was a bittersweet irony that his thirteen-year-old sister so closely resembled their mother, as her birth had caused Lady Wylde’s final illness. Alec, Anne, and their brother Richard took after their tall, lean father, with wheat-colored hair and green eyes. Lizzy was shorter, already rounder, with their mother’s brunette coloring and deep blue eyes. He suspected she was going to be breathtakingly lovely when she got her full growth, and the thought of her eventual entry into society—when he dared think of it—terrified him.

There was no putting it off any longer. Alec knelt and peered under the bed. At first, he saw nothing. Then he became aware of a pair of yellow eyes glowing in the farthest, darkest corner. A gamy smell reached his nostrils. Gradually, the shape in the shadows revealed itself as a cat, a large cat. A sinking sensation, based on more than a decade’s experience, settled over him. “Where did you find it?”

“In the back garden, near the gate,” replied Lizzy.

An alley cat. Alec could not imagine how his sister had gotten this animal into the house and up the stairs. No doubt the crashes he’d heard were involved. He checked her for bites and scratches, and saw none.

“We have no pets at all here in town,” Lizzy pointed out. “Anne misses them so much.”

Alec looked at Anne. She was trying not to smile, well aware of her big brother’s descent into Lizzy’s toils. “Does Anne indeed?” Of course it was Lizzy who missed them. “Animals belong in the country.”

“Lots of people have dogs in town. I’ve seen them. Fashionable people.”

They had small fluffy lapdogs, Alec thought; yappy, annoying, but not creatures spawned in the gutter. “If Anne would like a kitten…” It sounded weak, and he knew it. But Anne’s smiles were so rare these days.

“But she has no home. She’s hungry; you can feel all her ribs!”

A pleasure Alec hoped never to experience. “Lizzy, it’s a practically wild animal. Who knows what sort of…?”

“I know she smells a bit,” Lizzy interrupted. “Well, who wouldn’t, being out in the street like that? I’m going to give her a bath.”

“You most certainly are not! She’ll tear you to pieces.”

“No, she won’t. Here, look.” Lizzy disappeared behind the bed. Alec stood and watched her, kneeling, hold out a hand and make a soft, low sound. There was a pause, and then the cat half emerged from under the counterpane. It was a calico, dirty, skinny, with a torn ear, but it pushed its head under his little sister’s hand for stroking. “See?” Lizzy gave him the angelic smile that all too often got her her way.

Alec took a step toward them. The cat drew back and growled like some much larger creature.

“She just has to get used to you. Don’t you, Callie? I’ve named her Callie, for calico, you see.”

Anne laughed—at the name or perhaps at Alec’s looming defeat. It hardly mattered; it had been far too long since he’d heard her laugh. Alec stepped back and wondered which of the two footmen could be recruited to help Lizzy bathe a feral feline. It would have to be Ethan. Ethan had time and again proved himself up to anything. Alec would sacrifice his leather driving gloves to the enterprise. “All right,” he conceded. “Just as long as…”

Lizzy leapt up and flew to hug him. “You are the very best brother in the world!” Anne laughed again, her eyes dancing when he smiled at her. Alec became aware of a painful tightness in the center of his chest—hope. Then Anne’s laugh turned to a hacking cough, and his spirits sank once again.

Though Alec’s university days had been cut short by his father’s death, when all the responsibilities of family and property had devolved upon him, those tasks had not seemed onerous until this winter. He had left Anne and Lizzy to Frances; kept an occasional eye on his brother Richard, currently cutting a carefree swath at Oxford; and managed the estates without undue effort. He was well trained for the role that had always been his future and had found ample time to establish himself in town during the Season and enjoy the many pleasures available to a man of wealth and station. For four years, all had run smoothly; then Anne’s illness descended, upset his routines, and showed him where his real priorities lay. Nothing came before his family.

Anne got her cough under control. “I’m all right,” she insisted, only too aware of her siblings’ worries.

“If that animal makes you worse…”

Lizzy’s deep blue eyes filled with tears. Despair showed in every line of her face and body. “If Callie makes Anne sick, of course she cannot stay.”

“It isn’t the cat,” Anne said, so weary she was angry with them both. “I was coughing long before she arrived.”

Lizzy brightened. “Once she’s clean, she can sit on your bed and keep you company, as I do.”

“Bring her along then.” Alec could see the fatigue. Over the last few months, it had become horribly familiar and frighteningly obdurate. They needed to leave and let Anne rest. He ushered Lizzy out—her arms overflowing with cat. Frances had disappeared, a new habit of hers. As he went ahead to inform Ethan the footman of his fate, the only bright spot he could see was the certainty that, like all cats, this one would undoubtedly object to a bath. With any luck, it would run away. And he would not be hunting it through the London streets, no matter how much Lizzy cajoled.

Cravenly, Alec snatched bread and sausages from the breakfast room and retreated to his study, safely distant from cat bathing mayhem and the reproaches of Frances Cole, or of the housekeeper who had known him since he was three years old. He had every excuse; his desk was piled with pleas from his Derbyshire tenants for reassurance and assistance.

Many had expected the state of the country to improve with the end of the long war against Napoleon, but not those who saw the new textile machinery putting more and more people out of work and watched rising food prices threaten Englishmen—Englishmen!—with starvation. Alec’s jaw tightened. Not on his land. He could not, like some landowners he knew, ignore such distress.

As he took a letter from the top of the pile, Alec had to restrain a sigh. Perhaps he should find someone to help with the cascade of correspondence. Lately, there seemed no end to the tasks that must be done, the decisions that could not wait. There were men—he knew them—who would toss this stack of paper into the fire and go in search of their own amusement without a thought of consequences. Alec opened the first letter and began to read.

He’d gotten through half the pile and begun to think of luncheon when Ethan knocked and entered the room. “There is a person to see you, sir.”

Alec observed a long scratch on the footman’s right cheek. “A person?”

“A matter of business, he says.” Before Alec could respond, he added, “Your gloves… I’m sorry, sir, but…”

Alec held up a hand. “I never expected to see them again, Ethan.”

The young footman looked relieved. “Er, the animal? Well, it’s clean.” He looked dubious. “Seems quite… fond of Miss Elizabeth.”

Alec decided he didn’t really want to know any more about the cat. “All right, bring this person in.”

Ethan returned with a small, elderly man whose stance and somber dress proclaimed solicitor or man of business. For some reason, he wore his hat and greatcoat, as if still in the street. Beside the tall broad-shouldered footman, he looked tiny. “Mr. Seaton,” Ethan announced, and closed the door.

The wizened man surged into the room. “I fear I bring you shocking news, Sir Alexander.” He shook his head, thin lips turned down. “Shocking.”

Alec came to his feet. “My brother?”

The snap of the words startled his visitor into taking a step back. “No, no, I know nothing of your brother. It is your uncle.”

“Lord Earnton?” Even as he said it, Alec knew that his aunt would send someone he knew to impart any significant news.

Seaton drew himself up. “Sir Alexander, I regret to tell you that your uncle, Henry Wylde, has been killed by footpads. In the very streets of London. Another outrageous example of the degradation of the lower classes. I blame the government…”

“Uncle Henry?” It felt odd even to call him that. For as long as Alec could remember, his father’s youngest brother had been practically a recluse. He never appeared at family gatherings or showed the least interest in any of his relations. Alec’s only real memory of him was nearly twenty years old—of a red-faced, cursing man who threatened him with a caning when he touched some dusty artifact in a case. He sank back into his chair. “Killed?”

“Murdered, sir, as he walked home from his club. I don’t know what this country is coming to when a gentleman cannot even…”

“And you have brought me word of this,” Alec interrupted.

“Naturally.”

“As a family member. I see. Thank you.”

The grizzled man stared at him. “As the executor of Mr. Wylde’s will.”

“I?”

Seaton pulled a thick document from his coat pocket. “He said you were the best of his idio… er… relations.”

In other circumstances, Alec might have been amused, but he was too much astonished. “I barely knew the man.”

Seaton nodded. “He mentioned that he was not in close touch with his family. Nonetheless, he wished these final matters to be handled by kin.”

And he had to choose me, Alec thought, but did not say. “Please sit down, Mr. Seaton.”

The man did so, placing the document on the edge of the desk. “As you know, Mr. Wylde was a… unique individual. And I must say his will is… eccentric.”

How could it be otherwise? Alec thought. He waited for the bad news that he was somehow sure was coming.

“The provision it makes for his wife is not what one would…”

“Wife? He wasn’t married.”

“Indeed he was, sir. Recently, in the last year.”

Alec tried to imagine the sort of woman who would marry his Uncle Henry—stout, pug-faced, sour, desperate, were the attributes that came to mind. He shook his head. “Eccentric in what way, exactly?”

“It might be better if you read the document yourself, sir.”

“I am asking you to summarize it for me.” His tone was meant to intimidate, and it did. Seaton looked quite cowed as he rose and scuttled toward the door. “Mr. Seaton!”

The small man gave a bow that was more like a flinch as he reached for the doorknob. “I have done my duty, Sir Alexander. Mr. Wylde was a most… difficult client.”

“And you are pleased to wash your hands of his affairs?”

The man’s expression was answer enough. He slipped out of the study; Alec strode after him. “Mr. Seaton!”

His visitor made for the front door. He had nearly reached it when the cat streaked out of the back hall, skidded on the marble floor with a rattle of claws, and careened toward the study. Alec hastily shut the door. Thwarted, the animal glared at him, spun, and sank its teeth into Ethan’s ankle.

“Callie!” called Lizzy’s voice from the rear premises.

With the look of a man escaping a madhouse, Seaton rushed out. Pain in every line of his handsome face, Ethan bent to extricate himself. Alec’s sister appeared through the swinging door at the back of the hall. “Callie, no!”

The cat loosed the footman.

“She is still a little angry with Ethan, I’m afraid,” said Lizzy, hurrying forward. Seeing her brother’s expression she added, “And a new place is so frightening at first, you know. Cats must learn their territory before they…”

“Her territory does not include the lower floors,” Alec said. “If you cannot keep this animal under control…”

Callie rolled onto her back, splayed her paws, and gazed at Lizzy with adoring yellow eyes. It was the finest impersonation of innocence Alec had ever seen, and netted him a look of deep reproach from his little sister. “Upstairs,” he insisted.

Pushing out her lower lip as if bending to the whims of a tyrant, Lizzy scooped up the cat and started up the steps. Callie watched Alec and Ethan from over her shoulder. It was difficult not to interpret her expression as triumphant. Spots of blood spread on Ethan’s white stocking. “Get someone to see to that,” Alec told him. “And Ethan?”

“Yes, sir?”

“If that cat bites you again, you have my permission to kick it.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Sir Alexander returned to the study, and Ethan allowed himself a grin. He hadn’t really minded bathing the cat, or blamed it for objecting. It—she, Callie—was only being true to her nature. And washing a writhing alley cat was actually better fun than arranging china and silver in proper table settings or opening the door to visitors, or any of his London duties, really. The “treat” of coming up to London was not a treat to him. He wished his mother had not pulled her strings to get him sent. Oh, he was good at his job and most likely would have been included this year. But others in the household had dearly wanted to come. A shame not to let them. His father would be just as angry when he got back home.

Ethan moved toward the back stairs and winced. That cat had a good set of fangs on her. She’d bit deep. The laundress would give him a rare tongue-lashing about the stained stocking, though it was hardly his fault this time. He went down to the basement and, limping more than was strictly necessary, into the kitchen. There, he found an ample audience for his afflicted ankle. “Miss Lizzy’s new cat,” he said, exhibiting the bloodied fabric.

The cook, housekeeper, kitchen maid, and second footman needed no further explanation; they’d heard all about the latest addition to the household. Witnessed her yowls from the scullery, too. “Bit me right in front of a caller,” Ethan added. “Sir Alexander, too.”

“That animal bit Sir Alexander?” Sparks practically shot from Mrs. Wright’s eyes. The housekeeper did not tolerate such breaches in her rule.

“Lord have mercy,” said Cook.

“No, bit me in front of Sir Alexander.” Ethan put on a pathetic expression. “Need a bit of nursing, I do.”

The kitchen maid, a likely lass, stepped forward.

“I’ll take care of it, Sally,” said Mrs. Wright. “No doubt you have work to do. And if you don’t, I’m certain I can find…”

“Sally could hold my hand while you patch me up,” Ethan teased.

The housekeeper, who had known him since he was two years old, gave him a look. “You may have grown up tall and handsome, but you’re not as charming as you think, Ethan Trask.”

“Yes I am.” He gave them the smile that had melted female hearts since he was fifteen. Well, fourteen if he counted Alice Ackerly, which he certainly did.

It swayed them, and made his fellow footman James grin in appreciation. “Away with your devilment,” said Mrs. Wright. She shooed him toward the door. “Come along. I’ll bind it up. And find you a new pair of stockings, I suppose. Or…” She paused in the doorway. “You kept the one that wasn’t ripped in your fool ‘cricket match’?”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Ethan quickly. Some things were best glossed over.

“Good. Fetch it then, and we’ll make up a pair.”

“All the way to the top of the house on my wounded leg?” he moaned.

The housekeeper snorted. “And count yourself lucky I don’t make you learn to knit. Stockings don’t grow on trees, you know.”

Twenty minutes later, Ethan was bandaged and back in the kitchen, where luncheon trays were being readied. Sir Alexander had chosen to go out. As he carried a tray up to Miss Cole’s sitting room, Ethan wondered how this spring in London would turn out. Miss Anne’s illness had turned the household topsy-turvy. With her sister gone all pale and tired, Miss Lizzy was jumpy as… as her new cat. And Miss Cole, who used to be steady as a rock—Ethan remembered this—twitched and squeaked if you came on her unawares. Which you couldn’t help doing, because she was lost in a fog half the time, and what with the apologizing and worrying she’d have palpitations like his gran… well, he was just glad it wasn’t his problem. Sir Alexander would figure things out; he always did. Bit of a brooder, but smart as a trained ferret.

Ethan’s family had been intertwined with the Wyldes for generations, in one capacity or another. The same age as Richard Wylde, Ethan had shared some games—and played some pranks—with the younger brother in their early years. Alexander, already off at school, was just an older boy—more serious and distant than his brother. But as time passed, Ethan grew to admire the current master of the house. He accepted service with grace and gratitude. More importantly, he managed the estates with an eye to the hundreds of people who depended on the land for their livelihood. He acknowledged their work and listened to their concerns, as many landowners did not. Ethan wouldn’t have cared to have that responsibility himself. He liked to feel he could kick over the traces at any moment, and no one the worse for it. And that’s the way it was, no matter what his father said.

He knocked on the sitting room door and waited until a vague voice told him to enter. Frances Cole sat on the small sofa, no fancywork in her hands, no book or newspaper. She looked at him as if she didn’t remember who he was. “Luncheon, ma’am.” He set the tray on the table by the window. “Nice pot of tea for you as well.”

“Oh… yes. Thank you.”

Yes indeed, he was very glad it was Sir Alexander’s problem, Ethan thought as he eased out of the room. He had plenty to do thinking of himself, and no taste at all for complications.