The Care and Taming of a Rogue (7 page)

“I need to see Fennington,” he said, his jaw already tight. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d sworn to himself that he would never stand on this doorstep. Not for any reason. And then a brown-eyed chit with a nicely curved frame had said his Christian name, and he hadn’t even returned to Clancy House to borrow a new jacket.

The butler didn’t move. “Is Lord Fennington expecting you?” he asked. “Because I wasn’t informed.”

He was getting damned tired of being blocked from entering every house in Mayfair. And this one, especially. “No, he isn’t expecting me. He thinks I’m dead.”

With an abruptly hostile look, the servant took a step forward. “Not another one,” he grumbled, signaling behind him. A pair of footmen joined him in blocking the doorway. “The income from Captain Langley’s book that was granted to Lord Fennington will remain with Lord Fennington, and it will take more than acquiring a monkey to fool anyone in residence into thinking otherwise. Away with you.”

That answered a large question. Langley had paid the marquis for his silence about the journals. Bennett rolled his shoulders, attempting to ease the tension there. “If you and your two baboons think to intimidate me, then you’d best try harder than that. I’ve been in the jungles of Africa for the past three years, and you’re about as frightening as a kitten.”

His muscles grew taut, his senses expanding as he readied for possible battle. After nearly dying in the Congo and then returning home to find his work along with his reputation and hope for selection to future expeditions all now in question, he more than welcomed the chance for a fight. He wanted one.

“The earl is not home to charlatans,” the butler responded, though he took a half step backward. “For your information, you are the fourth Bennett Wolfe to appear asking for a handout since the Season began. I will grant that you have the shabbiest-looking boots of all of them, but I do not find that impressive in the least.”

Bennett glanced down at his well-worn boots. He’d become a fair cobbler in an attempt to keep himself shod during the expedition, but he could admit that these Hessians had seen better days. He looked up again. “I do not want a handout from anyone,” he said evenly. “I want a word with Lord Fennington. Go fetch him. Now.”

The man blinked, then swallowed. “Very well, sir. If that is the way you wish to proceed, then so be it.” With a muttered word to the footmen who then moved to stand shoulder to shoulder in the doorway and block Bennett from entering, the butler retreated into the depths of the house.

There should have been rumors about by now that he’d returned to London, but if Fennington didn’t want him to be alive, or if, as the butler had said, they’d already encountered men claiming to be him, the household might well have disregarded the news. He didn’t much care what the marquis thought of his return. What he wanted was some bloody answers.

Shifting to balance his weight more evenly over his feet, Bennett regarded the servants. If necessary he could more than likely take them both apart and be inside the house within a minute. He wanted to. At the same time, though, he was grateful that he’d sought out Jack Clancy first, and that he’d had a few days to let his surprise and anger simmer before he broached Fennington. If he hadn’t, someone would have ended up bloody, and he would have been willing to wager good money that it wouldn’t have been him.

He heard yelling from inside the house. A moment later a young face peered out from beneath one of the footmen’s arms. Bennett estimated him to be ten or eleven years of age, with the dark hair and eyes typical of his own mother’s side of the family. “You must be Geoffrey,” he said to the lad, keeping the reins tight on his growing frustration. “We’ve never met, but I’m your cousin, Bennett.”

The boy’s pale face folded into a frown. “No, you ain’t.”

“Geoffrey, move away from the door,” a new voice, deeper and more authoritative, ordered. “Go sit with your mother.”

As the boy vanished, the butler half stumbled back into the doorway, clearly pushed from behind. “His Lordship says he has no time for posers and that you’ll get nothing from him,” the servant recited.

Now he was finished with playing. And patience. He’d had less difficulty getting in to see the damned Duke of Sommerset, for Lucifer’s sake. Bennett lowered his shoulders, while Kero, apparently sensing his mood, leapt off him to scamper up a nearby tree. “I am going to count to three,” he said, keeping his voice low and even. “If I am not face to face with Lord Fennington by that time, several people will get hurt.” He fixed his gaze on the butler. “Beginning with you.”

“By you? Against all of us?”

Resisting the urge to spit onto the granite portico beyond his shabby boots, Bennett bent down, slowly drawing from his boot a long, curved knife blade affixed to a handle made of leather and polished rhino horn. “I think I can manage,” he murmured. “I killed a crocodile with this knife, you know. I doubt you’ll be as much of a challenge. One.”

“Hold there!” the deeper voice came again from inside the house. One of the footmen stumbled sideways, and a tall, sharp-chinned man with narrow shoulders and a stout middle took his place. “There’s no need for violence, my good man. Do you require a meal? Go around to the kitchen entrance and my cook will see t—”

“Two,” Bennett interrupted dispassionately, realizing that the man standing before him must be his uncle and waiting for the marquis to acknowledge that fact.

Lord Fennington opened his mouth to say something, then abruptly snapped it closed again. With obvious deliberation he took in Kero, the knife, the boots, and Bennett himself. As the dark-eyed assessment returned to Bennett’s face, the marquis paled. “You do look very like my sister, Sarah,” he finally uttered, his voice shaking just a little.

“My mother’s name was Grace,” Bennett corrected, keeping the knife loosely gripped in his hand, “as you know. She died when I was nine, so I cannot vouch for any similarity in our appearance. Is that sufficient?”

“Good God,” Fennington whispered. “Bennett Wolfe. You’re alive.”

“Do you wish to take a moment, or might I come in so we can chat?” He might have been more sympathetic if the man had given a damn about him when it might actually have meant something, but there was no mistaking that the marquis’s surprise was genuine. And that could be significant.

“I—no. Come in, come in,” Fennington said with a scowl. “Hayling, move aside. Do you have luggage? Where are your things? See that a guest room is prepared, Hayling.”

Bennett began to protest that, because he had no desire at all to sleep under the man’s roof. But then again, he wasn’t likely to find a better position from which to learn where his journals were and what else, if anything, Langley might plan to do with them. Amid the flurry of activity Kero chittered and returned to his shoulder. As the marquis motioned him to enter the house, Bennett was thankful yet again for the young vervet monkey. Yearling though she was, she seemed to have realized how effective a show of her canines could be in the supposedly civilized world, and she could sense when he didn’t like someone. And when he
did
like someone.

At any rate, she yawned widely at Fennington. Bennett wondered belatedly if that empathy was also why she’d taken the peach so gently from Phillipa’s fingers. Thank Lucifer he’d rescued the monkey as an infant; he would rather be confused for her mother than her mate. Especially when he had his eye on someone. He didn’t want Kero pulling Phillipa’s hair every time he looked in her direction.

The boy, Geoffrey, reappeared from the direction of the stairs, his skeptical look replaced by one of wide-eyed awe. The marquis stepped between them, though, before Bennett could attempt another greeting. The going was likely safe, now, but since the knife had gotten him into the house, he was disinclined to put it away. He knew quite well that no one stood in the way of the largest crocodile in the river. At the moment, he was that crocodile.

“I apologize for not recognizing you, Bennett,” his uncle went on, speaking quickly, “but you have to understand my suspicions. I—we—all assumed you to be dead.”

Bennett gave a short nod. “Understood. Is there somewhere we might speak in private?”

“Yes. My office. This way.”

At the moment Fennington seemed friendly enough, but he was likely attempting to determine how much trouble he was in for, and what, precisely, Bennett was after. Bennett was in no hurry to put him at ease.

The knife pointing at the floor but still in his hand, he followed the Marquis of Fennington a short distance down the Howard House hallway. The walls were decorated with paintings and bright wallpaper, the cornices outlined in gold filigree. A wealthy-looking household, but then he’d known that his mother’s family, and his uncle in particular, had money. And he also knew they didn’t care to part with it—even for a young nephew who’d lost his mother and whose father wasn’t even in the country. Had never returned to England, in fact.

“You have your father’s build,” Fennington said into the silence.

“Wouldn’t know that, either,” Bennett returned.

“He was a bear of a man,” the marquis continued, glancing back at him. “You’re not as broad, but at least as tall.”

“I might care for your theories about my appearance if you’d favored me with them twenty years ago, Uncle. Today I only want you to answer a few of my questions.”

“Yes, of course.” The marquis sat behind a fine mahogany desk and folded his fingers into a steeple beneath his chin. The fox back in his hole. Clearly he felt more secure here. Bennett meant to alter his perception. “Have a seat, my boy,” Fennington said.

“I’ll stand, and I thought I’d made it clear that I’m not your boy.”

Fennington cleared his throat. “Very well. When did you arrive back in England?”

“Three days ago. My specimens will have arrived at Tesling by now. Do I still own the estate, or have you inherited it already?”

“I…I signed the papers for it a month ago. I will of course return it to you immediately.”

Bennett wanted to snarl that he’d damned well better, but he held himself back. They could have
that
conversation after Tesling legally belonged to him once again. “Thank you,” he said instead.

“Do say you’ll remain here with us, for as long as you choose. It’s long past time we became acquainted.”

He’d spent the majority of his adult life in hostile territory. After three years in the Congo, a fortnight at Howard House in order to reclaim his reputation and his property shouldn’t be too difficult. “Thank you again.”

“My pleasure.” Fennington continued to eye Bennett, his expression cautious rather than either surprised or relieved—or even disappointed—at his nephew’s unexpected survival. Admittedly Bennett still held the knife, but at least his own conscience was clear.

“There’s one more matter,” he said, watching the marquis closely. “My journals.”

“They arrived safely home with Captain Langley,” his uncle returned, not even blinking.

Hm
. “Then I can go fetch them from him.”

Now came the slight flush of Fennington’s cheeks, the twitch of his steepled fingers. “He’s in Dover, I believe.” The marquis abruptly sat forward. “Look, Bennett. We thought you were dead. And that left David as the only one who could turn that mess you left him into something that would make sense. I wrote you a lovely foreword, and the sales have been phenomenal.”

Bennett drew a breath. “‘Left him’?” he repeated.

“Yes. A selection of your journals and sketches. Everything that you were able to salvage after the canoe overturned. It was all a jumble, hardly legible.”

His heart froze in his chest. “My journals weren’t in the canoe that overturned,” he said slowly. “How ruined were they?”

Fennington cleared his throat. “I…didn’t get a very thorough look at them. David said, quite correctly, that the less they were handled, the more information he would be able to recover for reference.”

Reference
. That was a laugh; or it would have been, if it wasn’t his reputation being trod upon. “Firstly, in the event of my death my journals should have gone to the Duke of Sommerset and the Africa Association. Secondly, I never gave them to Langley. He took them while I lay bleeding and half conscious in a mud hut, and then he left. Thirdly, I have read Captain Langley’s
Across the Continent
, and aside from the role reversal and the embellishments of his own competency,
I
wrote it.”

“But—”

“It’s taken nearly word-for-word from my journals. My complete journals, and my complete sketches, and my complete maps, all of which he stole.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re embarrassed by your inability to lead the expedition, so you feel the need to strike out at the man who is merely trying to do with this literary effort what you’ve already accomplished with your previous ones.” He sniffed. “Apparently accomplished, I should say.”

Bennett jabbed a finger into the desk directly in front of his uncle, sending the older man backward. “When Langley returns from Dover, see if you can get a look at the journals. Then you may insult me. And you’d best hope he hasn’t destroyed them. I prefer to have two choices in how I proceed, but if they’re gone, I’ll only have one.”