Trenton Lord of Loss (Lonely Lords) (20 page)

Trent chewed thoughtfully. “You were with a married woman, then. You couldn’t say anything without getting the lady in a deal of trouble, and Meggie probably knew it. Shrewd, but not shrewd enough.” 

“I wasn’t
with
the lady, not in the sense you implied.” Cato took another drink of wine, probably stalling, the better to choose his words. “She was merely lonely and in want of a friend. I obliged with my company only, because my affections were elsewhere engaged.” 

Trent pushed the decanter closer to his stable master. “This is what comes from crying wolf, or some such. You were hung for a ram and thus I find Glasclare’s baby earl in my stables.” 

Cato looked miserable and did not top off his wine. “Glasclare himself.” 

“My condolences,” Trent said softly. “When did your father die?” 

“About six months past. My cousin Brian is maintaining appearances, says I’m off on a sea voyage and will no doubt be back before seven years is up and I’m disinherited.” 

“You poor bastard. You’ll have to show up married unless you want Meggie’s papa to meet you with a shotgun. Has it been so bad, being my stable master here?” 

“Not bad at all.” Cato’s smile was oddly bashful. “Except for Cook’s idea of what the help should subsist on, but you’re putting that to rights.” 

“One hopes.” Trent poured more wine for his…his guest. Who outranked him. “Now that your personal peccadilloes are thoroughly dissected, Catullus, you’ve yet to explain what you meant earlier, when you said it’s about time I stopped letting a female’s eccentricities make an entire household miserable.” 

The exact words would not leave Trent’s tired mind.

“A thousand apologies, and please don’t call me out, but your late wife was a flaming horror.” Cato put his utensils down and crossed his arms over his chest. “The help at your town house talk. They talk more than they work, if you want the truth, and whenever I’d take a team into Town, to bring in a load of produce or firewood, all I heard was how lucky we were out here, free of Lady Amherst’s hysterics and sulks.” 

“She was sensitive.” Trent used a flaky, buttered roll on his extra gravy. “That’s all that need be said.” Lest he start drinking too much and too quickly, and ranting. 

“Amherst.” Cato’s voice became carefully even. “That is not all that need be said, and you know it.” 

“Another roll?” 

“Please.” 

What was the point of evading this difficult conversation? For whom was decorum to be observed in this library at the end of this day? 

“What else would you say, Cato?” 

“If you want to look for people who hold you in low esteem, people with a grudge against you, you need to include Lady Amherst’s family.” 

Trent stopped chewing and reached for his wine glass. “How much do you know?” 

“Enough.” Cato ran a callused finger around the rim of his glass. “They have to hold you responsible for her death, and for the fact that your nursery was full to bursting in five years flat and she was bloody miserable for the duration. The help was full of tales of her fits and pouts. She wasn’t a stoic woman, Amherst.” 

“One perceived this when wed to her. You have a point, nonetheless.” A point that Trent, preoccupied with his neighbor’s kisses, had missed entirely. 

“She was an hysterical female. That temperament can be inherited, which means it isn’t a rational set of grieving in-laws you’re dealing with, but instead, a pack of—” 

“Lunatics,” Trent concluded quietly. “I don’t know them well, particularly Paula’s mother, but her father seemed steady enough.” 

“Where does her family bide?” Cato polished off the last of his buttered green beans. 

“The seat is in Hampshire, not far from Wilton Acres. I can ask our steward at Wilton to look into it, make sure they’re all present and accounted for.” Though the notion of ill will from Trent’s former in-laws made a good meal sit poorly.

“All of them?” 

“Paula has—
had
—two brothers, both older than she—Tidewell and Thomas—still racketing around without benefit of marriage. Her father is the Baron Trevisham, though, so one of the brothers will wed eventually.”  
Trent did not envy their wives.

“How did her ladyship’s brothers take her death?” 

“I don’t know,” Trent said, thinking back. “We held the funeral before they could have come up, given it was winter, and my own situation was such that I haven’t kept more than perfunctory contact with them.” 

Which had somehow slid into perfunctory contact with his entire life, until Darius had taken him in hand.

“Her family doesn’t visit the children?” 

“The baron did, once, but Ford was the only one born then.”

“You English.” Cato reached for the basket of rolls. “You’re too trusting. You need to keep an eye on these people, Amherst. Their grief or indignation or what have you might be the source of your difficulties.” 

“Butter?” 

“Of course.” 

“And you Irish,” Trent replied. “You’ve been dodging bullets in your bogs for so long only the wiliest among you is left to breed.” 

Cato lifted his glass a few inches in salute. “And the most charming.” 

“Daft.” Trent lifted his wine in acknowledgement. “I’ll say something about Paula’s family to Heathgate when next I see him, but speaking of the marquess, he’s sent an epistle, which will no doubt include the secrets of the universe.” 

“He knew who I was?” 

“Does it matter?” 

“Yes.” 

“He strongly suspected.” Trent slit the seal on the note, read it, then passed it to Cato. “Delphey’s nowhere to be found, and Mrs. Soames thinks he’s been gone at least a week.”

 Cato set the letter aside. “Which means he could be your culprit, or he was paid by your culprit. In any case, Heathgate won’t get any answers out of him.” 

“Heathgate’s brother had connections among the Irish aristocracy, because they breed horses with particular success,” Trent said, going after the rolls himself because he’d cleaned his plate but wasn’t full. “He would not suspect who you are but for that connection.” 

“So both Heathgate and Greymoor know.” Cato blew out a breath. “I do not want to travel further afield than I have already, and I am bloody homesick.”

That a fit, muscular, handsome man would admit such a thing was at once touching and uncomfortable.

Damn all family intrigues anyway. 

“So go home. Tell the grasping little twit you’ll provide for her child, but she’d best recant her accusations if she wants your coin. Send her here. I can use a housekeeper, and the child would likely be about Michael’s age.”

“You’d accept an Irish bastard in your nursery?”

“I’d accept a young woman willing to work for honest coin, and last time I checked, toddling children ate little.” Trent slapped butter on his roll and wandered off to sit on a corner of the desk. “Do not scold me in my own library about dropping crumbs, either. You can’t drift forever, Catullus, and you’ve a duty to your papa’s title, too.”

Much as Trent winced to hear the very words. 

“I know.” The way a man new to a title knew and resented his unfulfilled duty.

“Are you married, Catullus?” 

“And if I were?” 

“It would be none of my affair, other than to wish you felicitations.” 

“If I were. But I’m not. Not yet.” 

“There’s time.” Trent shoved off the desk and tamped the cork back into the wine bottle. “The right wife would spike Miss McMahon’s guns. Still, we won’t solve all the world’s problems in one day.” 

“We won’t.” Cato finished his wine and headed for the door. “My thanks for the meal and for your discretion.” 

“Catullus?” 

“Amherst?” 

“Why did you send for me, in truth?” The question was not the product of any accusation, but rather of genuine curiosity and no little gratitude. 

“I have seven sisters I haven’t seen in two years,” he began. “Little ones, nieces and nephews I’ve never held. I wasn’t there for my father’s funeral, and my mother misses me like only an Irish mother can miss her firstborn prodigal son. But you…your brother and sister, your wife, your children, even your benighted excuse for a father, they can all count on you. I’ve watched, and you always, always rise to the occasion when called upon, or before, if you can perceive the need. I thought you could use somebody at your back for a change. I thought you might be able to use a…friend.” 

Spare me from honest Irishmen.
“You were right, Catullus.” Trent passed over the wine bottle, then extended his hand. “You were, and you are, right.” 

Cato looked at that hand, hesitated only moment, then shook it firmly. 

Chapter Eleven 

“I’m here to discuss with you certain aspects of my situation.” Trent wished that, of all people, he didn’t have to disclose his history to the dour, perceptive Marquess of Heathgate. 

“Any particular aspects?” 

“Who might wish me ill.” 

Heathgate regarded him with blue eyes so cool their impact eclipsed the warmth of a summer morning. Then the music of little feet thundered overhead, and those eyes softened. 

“We’re about to be invaded, Amherst. Prepare to repel boarders.” 

“Papa!” A little boy, perhaps five years old, followed by smaller siblings, a boy and girl each, charged into the study and clambered up onto their father’s chair. The girl assumed pride of place in his lap. The two boys flanked her more or less on the arms of the chair. 

The female child turned guileless blue eyes on Trent. “Papa has a guest.” 

The boys scrambled down and offered Trent respective bows, the elder, then the younger. Trent rose and offered them reciprocal courtesies, after which the children bounced back into their father’s chair. 

“We’re sailing away on a treasure hunt,” the oldest boy informed his father. “We shall be pirates, and Joyce will be our captive princess.” 

“Is there a sea monster?” the marquess inquired, “or is this to be a land-based mission?” 

“Uncle Andrew makes the best monsters,” Joyce said. “He isn’t coming, so no sea monster. Will you be our dragon?” 

“Alas, Lord Amherst and I must tarry here in our dungeon.” Heathgate looked genuinely regretful. “What is this treasure?” 

“Mama won’t say,” the younger boy reported. “But she was
baking
yesterday.” 

“We know what that means.” The marquess shared a look with his children. “Well, good luck, mates. Recall the Crown must have its share of the booty.” 

“Is that you?” 

“Heavens, no. I am merely the lowly papa, but your mother certainly should have royal honors, don’t you think?”

“If we want her to make more cookies,” Joyce agreed, hopping down with her father’s assistance. “Come on, you two, and take me prisoner.” 

The invading forces disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived, leaving Trent to regard his host in a far kinder light. 

“Heathgate, you are a fraud.”

“I am a parent, as you are yourself, so my secret is safe. Don’t suppose you’d like to play dragons and sea monsters for a bit?” The invitation was only partly in jest. 

“I’m on holiday from monster duty. My three have been with their aunt and uncle at Belle Maison for much of the summer. They’re due back next week.” 

“Is that wise?” Heathgate went to the French doors, which looked out over the gardens. The marchioness, two nurses and a footman progressed across the lawns with the small band of pirates. 

“Hear me out,” Trent said. “If you think it necessary, I’ll send word to Nick and Leah to keep the children with them awhile longer.” 

“I’m listening.” Heathgate turned his back on window and the pirate parade with every appearance of reluctance. 

“You inquired the other day whether I had enemies, detractors, people with a reason, real or otherwise, to take a shot at me at close range.” 

Heathgate settled in behind an enormous mahogany desk. “At you or the lady in your company.” 

“I could think of no one who’d have cause to shoot at either me or Lady Rammel, except perhaps Drew Hampton, who might want to ensure he inherits his late cousin’s title.” 

Heathgate reached for a silver inkwell topped by a rearing unicorn. Trent didn’t know the man well enough to decide if his scowl was thoughtful, ill-humored or both.

“Lady Rammel might bear a girl child,” Heathgate said, “in which case she’s no threat, and if the child is a boy, it’s far easier to kill a child of whom one is guardian than a grown woman obviously carrying your replacement. While I don’t know Drew Hampton well, neither have I heard he’s impulsive or prone to flights of irrationality.” 

“My wife was.” Oh, to be a pirate on the high seas of Surrey, battling monsters for fresh ginger biscuits instead of walking this particular plank. 

Heathgate set the unicorn down in the exact center of his blotter, the horn aimed at Trent like an admonitory finger.

“Explain yourself, Amherst.” 

“Paula was my father’s choice. She wasn’t stupid or mean, but she was prone to flights of many types. I did not know her well when we wed. In hindsight, I can see our meetings were few and carefully orchestrated to show the lady to her best advantage.”