Texas Viscount (5 page)

      
If his lordship the earl thought he'd tether Josh Cantrell to a tea table, he had another think coming. He smiled at Edmund Whistledown and said, “Much obliged for seeing me here.”

      
Then before the young man could do more than mumble, “You're most welcome, my lord,” Josh jumped impatiently from the carriage. A footman, ready to open the door, stumbled backwards to keep from colliding with the striding American, and bowed awkwardly. Josh wasn't rightly sure whether the boy was embarrassed for failing to perform his job, or for the gauche Texan who didn't let him. Whistledown followed, almost skipping to keep up with his charge's long-legged stride.

      
Whistling, Josh bounded up the front steps, wondering how he would feel when he met his only living kin. He had no memories of either of his parents. “Garter” Gertie Greer had been the nearest thing to a mother he'd ever known. At the thought of Gertie sitting in some English parlor sipping tea, he broke into a broad grin. Now, that would be a sight to behold!

      
Would the old gentleman like him? What in the name of God would they have to talk about? Certainly not his real reason for being here. A note had been delivered to him before he disembarked from the ship. He was to meet a fellow named Michael Jamison sometime tomorrow. He would be contacted and informed of the details. This Jamison worked for the Foreign Office and would fill him in as to what was known of the assassination plot and Edward's nephew's involvement through his Russian mistress.

      
Women. Always trouble. An image of that bronze-haired spitfire flashed into his mind as the front door opened. Whistledown made his bow and scurried off, leaving Josh with a stern-faced man whose high starched collar looked about to choke him. The butler identified himself as Nash and extended his hand for Josh's hat.

      
Unable to resist, Josh shook it heartily. “Pleased as punch to meet you, Nash. Say, is that your first name or your last?”

      
The upper servant jerked back, then quickly recovered. “May I take your hat, my lord?” he inquired, ignoring the question about his name.

      
Obligingly, Josh shrugged and handed his battered Stetson to the butler, while he eyeballed the place. A lot fancier on the inside than he'd imagined from out front, he'd grant the earl that much. Huge mirrors with Louis XV gilt frames hung on either side of the entry foyer. Enormous sprays of flowers overflowing from Messien vases stood in front of the mirrors. The floor was polished marble, and the twenty-foot ceiling was hung with a crystal chandelier that glittered more brightly than pictures he'd seen of the crown jewels.

      
All this was definitely intended to impress visitors. But he wasn't a visitor. He was, by God, the earl's heir, and he'd be living in this magnificent mausoleum. Josh was not sure how well he'd sleep if his bedroom had a lighting fixture that size suspended over his bed, but he knew Gertie would have loved it. Personally, he'd rather have a mirror.

      
From the top of the curving staircase, the earl observed his young charge as Nash showed him into a sitting room. The boy certainly looked disreputable enough. The newspaper accounts of the brawl had been appalling. If the boy behaved half so badly, he'd never be received in polite society at all. That would put a period to presenting him at court, not to mention using him to ferret out those individuals plotting against an Anglo-Japanese treaty.

      
He'd take Joshua's measure and then decide what was to be done. Given the tendency toward exaggeration, even outright prevarication, in much of the press, their subject might be innocent of any misconduct whatever. The earl liked the boy's confident stride and the way he'd studied the interior of the house quickly, without gaping. If he was equally as adroit at judging people, the Foreign Secretary would be delighted. He would have to give Whistledown a good dressing-down about allowing Joshua to slip away and become involved in such a disturbance, but that could wait.

      
He descended the stairs and made his way to his study. After an appropriate interval, he rang for Nash to escort his great-nephew down the hall. In his limited experience with Americans, he'd found them to be notoriously impatient. It would do Joshua good to wait a bit. If he himself were the smallest bit apprehensive about this first meeting and the impression he might make on the boy, he would never admit it, even to himself.

      
Josh entered the dark, masculine room, impressed by the floor-to-ceiling shelves of books and the patina of age that gleamed from the wood-paneled walls.

      
The desk appeared well used, piled with papers much as his was at home, and the leather chairs looked inviting. The tall man standing in the center of the room did not. A thick silver mustache lined his upper lip, and his thinning hair was trimmed neatly with muttonchops brushed back so smoothly they looked as if nary a single hair would dare to move out of place. He was heavyset with bulldog jowls and shrewd gray eyes that missed little.

      
Josh could see the earl examining his ripped, dirty buckskin jacket and denims, swelling eye and bruised knuckles. “So, we meet at last, sir,” he said, waiting for some cue.

      
“I must say, it's taken long enough. Welcome home.” The earl stepped forward, and a broad smile suddenly changed his entire demeanor, tilting the mustache upward devilishly and making his eyes crinkle at the corners. He offered his hand.

      
Josh took it and they shook hands firmly. The earl's hands were large and fine-boned but soft, while his own were callused from physical labor. “I don't rightly know if this is home, sir,” he said quietly. “Are you sure you got the right Cantrell?”

      
He'd seen no family resemblance whatever until the old man threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Oh, I'm quite certain, you young scamp! My detectives were quite thorough.” He looked down at the ring on Josh's right hand. “That is the Hambleton family crest. Not too many of them floating about on either side of the ocean.”

      
“From what I've heard of my father, he could've won it in a card game.”

      
“Or lost it,” Hambleton replied as his smile dimmed. “But he did not. I knew him well as a lad. He was a few years younger than you are now when he and his bride left England. Here is the family portrait he sat for when he reached his majority.” The earl reached for a photograph amid the clutter on his desk and handed it to Josh.

      
The younger man paled as he peered at it, holding it as if he'd never let it go.

      
“Amazing resemblance, wouldn't you say?”

      
The face staring into the camera was his very own. Dark, slightly curly hair, square jaw, prominent nose and heavy slashes of eyebrow framing deep-set eyes that studied the world with heavy-lidded amusement. The wide mouth was sculpted, its smile revealing almost perfectly straight teeth whose only flaw was one slightly turned incisor.

      
“Any lingering doubts you're Charles James Justin Cantrell's son?” the earl asked dryly.

      
“How did they die—my mother—”

      
“I have the whole of it here,” Hambleton said, touching the bound tome of reports. “But this isn't the time to digest so much.”

      
“You know I was raised in a whorehouse in west Texas.” It wasn't quite a question, more of a challenge.

      
“After your father was killed in a shooting incident, your mother was destitute and in failing health. She turned to the only place where she could find shelter for you.”

      
“Gertie.”

      
“Just so. The Golden Garter, I believe Miss Greer's establishment was called. You've risen far beyond such...er, humble beginnings.”

      
“I'd never be ashamed to acknowledge Garter Gertie or any of the women who worked for her. They raised me,” Josh said with quiet defiance in his voice.

      
“I assume that was the reason for this morning's incident at the wharf,” the earl said, showing Josh several of the headlines: “Hambleton Heir Battles for Whore's Honor.” “Texas Viscount Rides to Rescue.” “Lord Wesley Truly is Westerner.”

      
“I knew what she was. Where I come from, it doesn't give a man license to hit a woman.”

      
“Admirable. I agree.”

      
Josh blinked. “You do?”

      
The earl smiled again. “We English may appear rather too formal at times, but we aren't ogres, I assure you. I rather imagine you could do with a hot soak to ease your battle wounds, and a change of clothing.” He eyed his nephew's swelling eye and raw knuckles as well as the torn jacket. “After you're settled in, we'll talk more over a quiet dinner. Just the two of us.”

      
“That sounds good, sir,” Josh replied with a grin.

      
“Oh, Joshua, if you please, would you mind leaving the firearm in your room when you return? If it should discharge in the house, my staff would all die of fright, and good help is dreadfully difficult to come by.”

* * * *

      
“Well, I would say your position is quite safe, to judge by this,” Sabrina crowed delightedly as she perused the note bearing the Hambleton crest.

      
“What does it say, Coz?” Edmund asked. He'd been trembling with dread from the moment the note had been delivered by the earl's footman. Was it his dismissal because the viscount had told the earl he'd failed to meet him at the dock? But why send it to his cousin's lodgings instead of his own? He breathed a sigh of relief when she beamed at him.

      
“The earl wishes to employ me!” she said. “I'm to meet with his secretary tomorrow morning at ten in the rose garden.”

      
“Employ you how?” Edmund asked, puzzled.

      
“Eddy, what have I been doing to earn my living for the past seven years? He must want me to teach deportment to some kinswoman of his, although he does not say whom.” Sabrina considered for a moment. “I have it!” she said with a snap of her fingers as her nimble brain quickly turned through the list of eligible young ladies coming of age for the spring season. “Sophia, I believe her name is.”

      
“Oh, you mean his lordship's niece, Isadora's granddaughter? A perfectly horrid child,” Edmund said with a shudder.

      
Sabrina laughed. “She can be nothing compared to that Liverpool steel magnate's daughter I tutored before her presentation at court last year. At least Sophia's of the peerage and has some idea of what's expected of her—and the knowledge that no amount of wealth will augment her status.”

      
“Rich Cits are worse than the aristocracy?” Edmund asked. He'd witnessed enough snobbery and arrogance among the peerage to doubt her claim.

      
“Some are. The very worst thing is when someone who has made an excess of money believes a fortune entitles him to do and say whatever he wishes. Things simply are not done that way in proper society.”

Chapter Three

      
Damn! Where does King Arthur sit?

      
The table was longer than the one in his dining room in Fort Worth. Amazing how much larger the earl's home was than it appeared from outside. The effect was elegant and intimidating at the same time. Light winked gently from a sterling candelabrum, and the fine china place settings were positioned so Josh would sit next to his great-uncle. A bewildering array of enough sterling flatware for a platoon of Rough Riders was arranged beside the plates. Half a dozen dazzling crystal goblets were carefully positioned, too.

      
But the size and opulence of the table and the room's furnishings were not what daunted Josh. The antiquity did. He sensed instantly that history had been made around this dining table. Sometimes such insights came to him out of nowhere, just like “blue northers” boiling up on the horizon. Normally he knew how to use the bizarre talent to his advantage; but here, so out of his element, he was not at all certain what to make of it.

      
Did the old man do more than play cards at his club, attend balls and spend weekend at his country estate? From what little he knew of the British aristocracy, those were the pastimes of most of them. The exceptions were those who chose government service; but other than his hereditary seat in the House of Lords—not much work there in recent years—the earl was not involved in anything more serious than smoking fine cigars and drinking perfumey French brandy, as far as Josh knew.

      
He stood for another moment by the wide arched doorway, peering into the room. The odd feeling would not leave him. Shrugging off the mystery, he walked across the hall to his uncle's library He knocked and was bid to enter.

      
As he walked in, the earl greeted him, smiling broadly as he took in his heir's appearance. “A bit of a facer you received there, but the swelling's already going down.” Hambleton eyed Josh's clothing and made a mental note to send for his tailor posthaste.