Formidable Lord Quentin

FORMIDABLE LORD QUENTIN

A Rebellious Sons Novel

Patricia Rice

www.bookviewcafe.com

Book View Café Edition
March 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61138-444-4
Copyright © 2014 Patricia Rice

Late July, 1809

“I hate to abandon you in this horrid hot town, Bell,”
Abigail Wyckerly, Countess of Danecroft, protested. In her traveling gown and
bonnet, she descended Belden House stairs, trailing her gloved hand over the
banister. “The Season is over and you’ll be all alone in this old house. I wish
you would come with us.”

Isabell Hoyt, dowager Marchioness of Belden, in hastily
donned morning gown, declined the use of the rail, following her friend with
naturally graceful poise. Both in their late twenties, the countess’s more
matronly, but properly draped figure played counterpoint to Bell’s slender one
in dishabille.

Despite Bell’s worldly ennui, Abby’s wisdom found its target.

Not acknowledging a pang of loneliness at the reminder of
the empty months ahead, Bell languidly waved away her friend’s suggestion.
“Dearest Abby, I am not the sort to pamper your charming menagerie of children
and pets. The country has been bred right out of me, I fear. I will be fine. There
will be enough of us left in Town to sit about roasting those who abandon us.”

Bell’s words rang hollow, even in her own ears. Once upon a
time, her life had been built on children and pets. She’d outgrown that
infantile phase, she assured herself.

“Gossiping with a bunch of old biddies,” Abby declared with
scorn, much too perceptively. “You are in dire danger of becoming one of them.
You are too young to bury yourself in trite nattering.”

“Boredom trumps the constant hullabaloo I once lived with,”
Bell countered with a trace of aspersion.

Undeterred, Abigail beamed at her former mentor. “You are
too clever to live so idly. You need another project. I will think on it. But
in the meantime, I must confess that I’m eager to return to my menagerie.
Should you change your mind, we’ll put you up in our highest tower, and you may
descend only when the children are out of the way. The stable is yours, and you
know it.”

Bell’s investment had helped Fitzhugh Wyckerly, the earl of
Danecroft—Abby’s husband—to build his stable so his impoverished estate could
start producing an income.

Bell considered money to be something one invested in
happiness. Just seeing how happy Abby and Fitz were together had paid off
better than she’d dared hope.

But the mention of horses reminded her of why she would
never return to the country, where animals were a way of life. “Perhaps if
there is a pleasant day, I might take the carriage out. We’ll see,” Bell lied
politely.

A sharp rap at the townhouse door sounded from the foyer
below, bringing them to a halt on the upper stairs.

“Were you expecting company at this early hour?” Abby asked
in surprise. “Or have I lingered longer than I thought with my farewells?”

As if in answer, the tall clock at the base of the stairs
chimed ten in the morning. Bell was most generally not out of bed at this hour.

“I thought you were the last to leave town,” Bell said,
leaning over the rail to be certain a servant had heard. “A puzzle! Let us spy
and see who it might be.”

A sturdy footman wearing a stiff mien of disapproval hurried
down the hall below to unlatch the massive entrance doors. Stepping out of
sight, Bell gestured for Abby to join her in the shadows of the landing.

“Perhaps a new protégée?” Abby asked teasingly. “It’s time
for one.”

“Nonsense, you saw all the pleas Belden ignored, as he
ignored yours.” Bell was still incensed over that cache of unanswered letters
in her late husband’s files. “I believe I have succeeded in finding and aiding
all the impoverished relations he abandoned. There are no more who need
introductions to society.”

Bell diverted her interest to the opening door below.

A disheveled boy of roughly six years rushed in, then
skidded to a halt and gazed in shock at silk-covered walls, gilded mirrors, and
polished Chippendale. Behind him followed a young woman wearing a black, baggy
gown ten seasons old, and a hooded bonnet so large, her face couldn’t be
discerned. She carried a wriggling infant of indeterminate sex and stopped
woodenly just inside the door.

Bell had to grab Abby’s arm and hold her back. The
big-hearted countess loved babies and would have run straight down to welcome
the strangers with open arms and coos and cuddles. Bell, on the other hand, had
learned to fear surprises. This was why she hired large, reliable footmen. A
woman living alone needed security.

A more slender female with the yearling gait of an
adolescent bounced in. She, too, was garbed in sackcloth and virtually
invisible. Bell had just started to wonder if they came from one of those exotic
countries that hid their women behind walls when two black crows followed them
in.

The man wore the most hideous flat black hat that had ever
afflicted Bell’s gaze. He was dressed entirely in ebony except for his
neckcloth. The woman with him was large and buried in enough dark broadcloth to
dress an entire orphanage.

“This is the home of the marquess of Belden?” the man
intoned in a broad American accent.

The home of Lachlann Hoyt, the
current
marquess, was in Scotland. Belden House was the home of Edward,
the
late
marquess, but the footman
had been trained not to divulge the slightest bit of information to strangers.
He stiffly held out a silver salver to deposit a card on.

The stranger laid a rectangular packet on the tray. “Then
our charges have been safely delivered.” He turned to the youngsters.
“Godspeed, children.”

He was about to turn and usher out his companion when the
boy broke into wails. Bell could no longer hold Abby back. The countess flew
down the stairs to hug the child and rebuke his elders.

With amusement, Bell listened to the petite countess scold
like the farmer’s daughter she’d once been and the mother she was now.

“It is utterly rude to simply abandon children like errant
parcels! Let the servants fetch the marchioness. Go sit in the parlor. Young
man, stop the crying. If something is wrong, you must use words, not wails.”

Laughing silently as the tall Americans were herded by a
nagging banty hen into the visitor’s parlor, Bell waited for the footman to run
up the stairs to deliver the packet. He startled a bit at finding her hiding on
the landing, but he made a dignified recovery, bowed, and held out the tray.

“Have cook send up tea and biscuits,” she said, gesturing
carelessly and trying not to reveal her eagerness to discover if this missive
contained a new challenge.

Abby had been right. Bell always dreaded the loneliness of
Town after everyone had fled to the cooler countryside. During the busy months,
Bell didn’t have time to miss the fields of her childhood. In summer, however . . .
She plotted. Only this summer, she had run out of ideas, and weeks of boredom
stretched ahead.

Bell’s dislike of boredom had been the reason she had spent
her first summer as a widow searching through her late husband’s files in hopes
of discovering the whereabouts of her family, a fruitless search, as it turned
out.

Instead of finding her father’s whereabouts, Bell had
learned to her disgust that the husband she had once admired as all that was
superior in men— had entirely abandoned his many impoverished female relations.

That had given her a new mission to mask her loneliness and
disappointment at not finding her sisters. Giving her husband’s money back to his
deserving family members had kept her entertained these last years and been
well rewarded by friendship with the late marquess’s many and scattered relations,
like Abby.

Bell hid her anticipation until the servant had run back
down the stairs. Biting her bottom lip, she opened the oilcloth packet, and
frowned at finding only a single sheet of vellum inside.

As executor of the
estate of Glendon Boyle, recently of Boston in the state of Massachusetts, I
have been requested to deliver the deceased’s worldly possessions to the
Marquess of Belden. Guardianship of his unmarried descendants under twenty-five
is hereby bequeathed to the marquess in deference to all that gentleman has
done for the family.

Bell’s vision blurred, and light-headed, she grabbed the
stair rail. It could not be so.
The
estate of Glendon Boyle . . .

She struggled to comprehend the rest of the verbiage, but
she could not read past that first sentence.

Daddy was
dead
?

In all those years of not knowing, she had hoped and prayed . . .

She clutched the rail and tried not to shatter. She’d had a
decade to develop a formidable control over her volatile emotions, and she
desperately employed those measures now. Her eyes remained dry. She didn’t wail
like the child below. She didn’t call for smelling salts she didn’t own.

Still, she couldn’t shut out a sudden rush of images of
Irish skies and emerald fields, a laughing lilt, and strong hands holding her
on her first pony . . . Unwelcome tears threatened. She hadn’t
cried in eons—probably since the last time she’d seen her family. She’d cried
buckets then. Cried and cried until she’d been certain her soul had shriveled
to a dried-up walnut.

Those had been futile tears. She refused to waste more.
Stiffening her spine and taking a deep breath, she re-read the missive, hearing
the sarcasm as her father consigned his heirs to the man he most despised.
There had always been method to her father’s madness.

Hands shaking, Bell proceeded downward, listening to the
voices carrying up from the parlor. Could this letter possibly mean . . .
Despite her despair, her heart dared to pound harder in anticipation.

Perhaps sensible Abby could make sense of the gibberish in
this missive. Her father,
Glendon Boyle,
had been the
Earl of Wexford
, but
there was no reference to his title. Perhaps the letter was from a fraud.

Yes, with the aid of her late husband, her father had run
off to hide in the Americas after a series of disasters, but . . .

She couldn’t think further than that. Recalling the young
people below, she felt hope thumping like a drum in her ears.

Impostors
, her
head said scornfully.

Tessa, Syd
, her
lonely heart cried.

Impossible
, said
her cynical head.
Never. Tess and Syd
here
?

Oh, please, Lord . . .

She’d thoroughly crumpled the letter by the time she arrived
at the door to the visitor’s parlor. Abby had the boy and the toddler in hand
and had been about to lead them from the room. Bell scarcely noticed. Her gaze
traveled directly to the two younger females, who had quite improperly thrown
aside their hideous bonnets.

Two heads of chestnut-red hair lifted expectantly. Two
identical sets of velvet-lashed emerald eyes flashed. They’d been born with
their father’s coloring, so similar to Bell’s own. The last time she’d seen
them, they’d barely been older than the boy who accompanied them—but she’d
recognize her sisters anywhere.

“Tess, Syd,” she whispered, and tears flowed despite all
she’d done to defeat them.

“Isabell?” they asked in unison, standing uncertainly.

“Is it really you?” the elder asked. Tess had been almost
ten when they’d parted, the more likely of the two to remember her.

Swallowing the huge lump in her throat, Bell glided toward
them, eagerly drinking in every aspect of their grown-up faces. Gently, she
touched a tiny scar on Tess’s hairline. “It still shows,” she said in wonder.
“I’m so sorry.”

Openly weeping, Tess— Lady Teresa Boyle— flung her arms
around Bell. “It’s you, it’s really you! I didn’t think we’d ever see you
again!”