The Summer of You (4 page)

The posting inn at Stockport had always boasted the most delicious honey rolls, and when they stopped to change horses, why, it was only natural that Jane would find herself rooting around in her reticule for the penny necessary to purchase such a treat.

Each of these, markers on a journey done over and over.

By the time the carriage of the Duke of Rayne passed the Bridgedowne Fell, where if one sat up very tall, they could see the first glimpse of the blue waters of Merrymere, the lake the Cottage was situated upon, Jane was sitting so high in her seat, she bumped her head on the window frame of the carriage door.

“Looking at the water?” Jason yawned from his perch aboard Midas. “I thought you weren’t excited by going back to Reston.”

“I’m not excited,” she countered. “But I must have something to do—these two snore too loudly for me to hope for sleep.”

Jason harrumphed, but he could not fool his ever-watchful sister.

He was sitting suspiciously high in his seat, too.

It was not long before they breached the trees and came into full view of the lake, called Merrymere after its crescent shape: someone a very long time ago thought it looked like a smile. Jason had pointed out on more than one occasion in his mournful youth that it could also be seen as a frown, and could have been called Sorrowmere, but their mother had been horrified. Sorrow did not suit Merrymere, the village of Reston, or the Cottage. It was a place of absolute joy to the Duchess: the calm, cool waters, lapping against the shore in lazy licks, sparkling like diamonds in the sun. A sky of pure blue turned the water into its mirror, with the occasional pleasure boat or fishing dinghy cutting its oars through the water the only sound made by man in a cool summer suspended in time.

At least, that’s how Jane’s mother would have described it.

The Cottage sat a mere hundred yards from the lake’s edge. It was, admittedly, a ridiculous name for any structure that contained twenty-six bedrooms, three parlors, a ballroom, a sunroom, and a full library, but out of all the Duke’s establishments, it had certainly the most home comforts. A sandstone and brick structure, Jane tried to remember if there was an ounce of marble in the place. Likely not—her mother made all of her improvements to the house with an eye toward the rustic.

They were at the door before they knew it. Greeted by servants, many of whom were newly hired within the last week to fill out a mostly retired staff. Their belongings unloaded, their clothes changed, luncheon laid out and eaten—a blur of everyday activities to prepare the family for what was to come. Once the trays were taken away, Jane pulled Jason to the drawing room.

And waited.

“What are we waiting for?” Jason asked, after about three minutes of watching his sister stare out the window.

“The onslaught.”

Jason’s head perked up. “What onslaught?”

And then they saw it, in the distance, at the same time. A coach, cresting the hill in the drive up to the Cottage.

“Are we expecting visitors?” Jason asked.

Jane shot her brother a look as if he were a very, very young child. “No, we are not expecting.”

“Then who could it be?”

“I would wager it’s Sir Wilton—he’s the head of the local gentry. Oh, and the carriage coming up right behind? That is probably either Mr. Morgan, Mr. Cutler, or Dr. Lawford. Although Dr. Lawford is likely to be attending to his business and not likely to make a social call in the middle of the day. Besides, he’d be on horseback.”

“Are we to be invaded?” Jason replied, alarmed.

“Of course. We haven’t been at the Cottage in five years, Jase. The whole village must be rampant with curiosity.”

“Surely they would give us time to . . . settle in?”

Jane snorted. “Not in Reston.”

Jason took a long look at what was now a line of carriages coming their way. “Well, I think that’s my cue. Ta, Sis.”

And with a perfunctory kiss to Jane’s head, he spun on his heel and went for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

“You mean to leave me alone with them?”

“Precisely.”

“But you can’t! Father has gone to rest, and . . . gentlemen make their calls to each other before the families do,” she pleaded.

“That only applies when introducing families,” Jason countered, a smile spreading across his face. “And we’ve known everyone in the village since well before you ran naked through the square that time when you were five.”

“I told you never to bring that up,” Jane responded hotly.

“And while you wager that those carriages carry Sir Wilton, Mr. Morgan, or Mr. Cutler, I would wager that they carry Lady Wilton and her daughters, Mrs. Morgan and her children, and Mrs. Cutler’s vast progeny.”

“You still can’t leave me to receive the entire village of Reston by myself!” Jane screeched. (She hated it when she screeched. It sounded so . . . screechy.)

But to said screechiness, Jason did not respond. He simply went to the door and, with a wink, stepped through.

Leaving Jane alone, just as the front door knocker echoed through the first floor.

Jane allowed herself one moment of hot anger before composing herself for her incoming guests. God help her, if it took her the rest of her life, she would make Jason rue this day. Taking her and Father out of London, only to abandon her (again!) to his own pleasures.

She would make Jason pay.

“I’D wager my sister is plotting my demise about now,” Jason said aloud to no one in particular.

The portly man behind the long chipped and scarred wooden bar looked up from wiping the remains of ale out of dirty glasses. With a lift of the hand from Jason, he flipped one over and poured him what could almost be described as a pint, before turning back to his wiping with the expected enthusiasm.

The Oddsfellow Arms was located a spare few miles from the Cottage, but it might as well have been a few hundred. And for Jason, that was its appeal.

He’d discovered this tavern—in the opposite direction from Reston—during his last visit to the Cottage, at nineteen. Before that, he had frequented the Horse and Pull or the Peacock’s Feather in the village, like all gentlemen with aspirations to a rowdy nature. He’d even once been talked into going to the Bronze Cat, in Ambleside, which had a reputation for its barmaids—namely, that its barmaids had reputations—which was utterly alluring to a randy seventeen-year-old whose largest body part at the time was his Adam’s apple.

But no one—absolutely no one—came to the Oddsfellow Arms.

It had no cozy hearth fire, no place to change horses. It had no barmaids with reputations . . . in fact, its only worker, other than the portly man behind the bar, Mr. Johnston, was his wife, Mrs. Johnston, a woman determinedly sour-faced and surprisingly good at cooking. Its location was neither in the village nor out of it—neither way station nor stop for the mail carrier. No one came here—no one bothered. It was only frequented by fellows who wished to be alone—which is exactly what the young Marquis of Vessey, Jason Cummings, wanted. For, you see, misery was quickly filling his frame, and he felt the need to replace it with something else.

How did he get roped into traveling to the wilds of the Lake District? Why couldn’t he stand up to his sister? He was the elder of them! Nearly four and twenty, and always bowing to Jane’s whims. He barely escaped the last time, and now—now he was back, saddled with more family than a nearly four and twenty-year-old gentleman should be responsible for, and blackmailed into exile, away from his friends to boot.

Responsibility. The very thought left him in shreds. Wasn’t it the prerogative of being young to do as you wish? Experience the world? And yet here he was—silently agreeing to the makings of his misery.

He truly believed he did the right thing by insisting they remove Father from Town. Whether or not Jane had exaggerated his symptoms (and, indeed, Jason had seen little to support her fears that the Duke’s forgetfulness had progressed into something worse), he knew that if it were the case, the Duke would be ashamed to be seen by his friends as anything other than himself. The Duke was proud—and so was his son.

Jason was mildly surprised to find his glass empty so quickly, but barely had his hand lifted before Johnston had it refilled.

“Excellent service, my man,” Jason spoke with a salute. “It reminds me of a little establishment on the streets of Copenhagen—” But the man turned away, back pulling a draft for the only other customer in the place—a plainly dressed man with a blank expression and a cane, who slurped his ale over a plate of kippers and eggs.

Jason shrugged this slight off—people didn’t come to the Oddsfellow Arms for conversation—and returned to his original train of thought. What had it been, again?

Oh, yes.

He was glad of one thing, he mused, as a smile pulled up the corners of his mouth. That removing his father from London had the added effect of removing Jane from the Ton. Jason loved his sister, he did—but during her first season, unleashing her on Society was like giving a cat catnip. And to find her running around London, basically unsupervised . . .

A shudder racked his body. No good could have possibly come from it.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. His glass was empty again.

The Oddsfellow Arms pints surely must be shorter than pints on the Continent. Why, when he was abroad, he never drank this quickly. Did he? Well, he certainly didn’t feel as if he had downed two whole drinks. As well as being short, he determined darkly, his drinks were watered down.

A black feeling arose in Jason’s breast. He was the Marquis of Vessey, son and heir to the Duke of Rayne. Did Johnston mean to bilk him? Or did he think he was such a green boy that he couldn’t handle his liquor? Well, he would see about that.

“Johnston!” Jason barked, putting on his most autocratic tone. “The ale is weak,” he announced to the room at large. “Bring me the whiskey.”

The next few hours were fairly predicable, as hours spent in taverns are. The owner and brewmaster, back set up by the accusation of weak ale, brought out his best whiskey for the young lord, high on his perch. Or at least, he brought out his best-looking whiskey bottle. Johnston realized quickly that the young lord was not well versed in the language of spirits, and as such, would believe that the higher the price and more elaborate the bottle, the higher the quality of its contents.

The sole other patron ate his eggs slowly. The front door opened and closed twice—once to let the cat out and once to admit another customer, equally quiet, equally anonymous, but much faster with his eggs.

Johnston wiped glasses.

And Lord Jason Cummings, Marquis of Vessey, became deeply inebriated.

Oh, of course his mind did not register this inebriation, certain of his superior handling of drink. In fact, his mind was convinced he was not merely sober but remarkably observant and eloquently clever, thinking such thoughts as: Would the universe look different if the earth were oblong, instead of spherical? And, I don’t care what Charles and Nevill say; I think Miss Austen’s work very agreeable. And, the idea that made him snicker aloud, I’d bet that Mrs. Johnston’s face wouldn’t be nearly so sour if someone took her for a decent tumble.

He was snickering in the direction of said lady as he watched her cross to take the long-suffering plate of eggs from the man with the cane at the back table. So her form wasn’t young—it was still female. Or he assumed it was; she and her husband had taken on oddly similar rotund frames over their marriage. But she still moved well, and he wasn’t picky—he assumed she had all the parts that would make a tumble worthwhile, Jason thought as his drooping gaze followed her back to the kitchen doors.

It was unfortunate that his wandering eyes had been noted by other pairs, however—most notably, Mr. Johnston’s.

Jason’s attention returned to his glass. “Johnston!” he signaled, rapping his knuckle on the scarred wood. But that good—and laconic—man did not come as called. Instead, he walked away!

From a Marquis!

He was nearly four and twenty, and Jason had never been treated thusly. Jason stood up off his chair, the floor moving unkindly beneath his feet. Damn floors.

“Oy—Johnston!” he called, the floor moving again, and this time taking his feet with him. Happily, he did not fall to the floor. Unhappily, he more or less fell into the gentleman with the cane, who, having left his coin on the table, was headed for the tavern’s front door.

“Oy!” he repeated, steadying himself. Clever though drink made him, apparently it robbed him of his vocabulary.

“Steady, lad,” the gent said, and with an annoyingly strong arm wedged Jason firmly against the bar—a solid object in a surprisingly fluid world. Jason raised his bleary eyes to the piercing gaze of the stranger and saw pity.

Pity.

Before he knew it, Jason had lurched himself away from the bar and followed the caned stranger out of the Oddsfellow Arms and into its small, muddy courtyard, where that gentleman was hobbling his way toward a plain black curricle.

“Oy!” Jason cried, his vocabulary still oddly short, causing the man to pause, sparing a glance over his shoulder.

“I . . .” Jason began, not at all certain of what would come next from his mouth, “am nearly four and twenty!”

The stranger raised a winged black brow. “Congratulations?” he drawled.

“Which means I am no lad.”

“Ah.” The stranger turned fully, resting his weight on his cane, which sank another inch into the mud. “My apologies.”

The stranger bowed stiffly, a small jerk of his shoulders—which in the sober light of, well, sobriety, Jason would remember as easily caused by a stiff leg and a sinking cane, but under the current circumstances, he knew in his veins it to be a bow of derision.

That—combined with the earlier look of pity—burst something inside of Jason. Maybe it was the headache from travel, maybe it was the realization that he was shackled into a position of responsibility. Maybe it was the fact that at that very moment, his house was being invaded by townsfolk eager to gawk at their lives. Maybe it was the fact that Johnston had first watered down his ale and then purposefully ignored him when all he was doing was admiring his wife’s form—something no one had likely done in nigh on a decade. Maybe it was that this stranger wrote him off just as easily.

But at that moment, Jason really wanted to fight.

Which was new, as Jason had never been in a fight. He didn’t even take boxing. He preferred the clean distance of a good fencing match. But his hands found themselves in white-knuckled fists, his head ducked with a murderous glare.

“You . . . you fucking cripple,” Jason spat, “how dare you dismiss me?”

Once again, the stranger turned. “For someone of nearly four and twenty,” he remarked coldly, “you seem to lack the life experience necessary for the amount of drink that you consumed. Go home, sir, and grow up.”

Red, blinding rage took his sight. He knew his feet were moving, and he knew his shoulders to be hunched down, ready to act as battering ram to his opponent, cripple or no.

Later, he would remember a surprisingly quick blur of movement as the man stepped to one side.

And then that the man had been standing directly in front of the curricle.

Then the white light and crunch of impact as his head hit the carriage door.

And fortunately, that is all he would remember.

“Nicely done, sir, if I may proffer that ’ere compliment.”

Byrne Worth gave a deep sigh as he gazed dispassionately down at the young idiot who had charged him with no skill and less aim. “Thank you, Dobbs,” he replied, looking up to the coachman’s seat. “Tell me, do you think the wheels will clear his body?”

“Oh come now, sir. Don’t tell me you’re gonna leave ’im here. In the mud?”

Byrne gave his valet, driver, cook, and body man a rare half smirk. “It’s where he landed.”

And he landed faceup, luckily, for Byrne did not know if he had the wherewithal to flip him over. His leg injury was acquired over a year ago, and in that time he learned that while he was able to move his own weight with occasional silver-handled, mahogany assistance, he was useless at moving much more than that.

“Mr. Worth, least make sure the lad is breathin’,” Dobbs admonished in no uncertain terms.

“When did you become a humanitarian?” Byrne questioned.

“When murder became a hanging offense,” the smaller man countered, then honked with laughter at his own good joke.

“He charged me, you realize. No seat in the county would convict.” But still, Byrne struggled to bend down far enough to check the steady rise and fall of the lad’s chest. But damn was his leg hurting him today. He was regretting that attempt at a morning ride—but he needed the air, the distraction.

Dobbs was far more nimble, jumping down from the coachman’s seat with the grace of a small woodland rodent—a squirrel or hedgehog. Assuming hedgehogs could jump. Byrne didn’t know. He landed with a splat, mud flying in all directions, but mostly on Byrne’s trousers.

Any other gentleman would have laid some short words at Dobbs’s door. But the fact that Dobbs did not say a word, or offer a hand, and let Byrne come to a standing position on his own, was what earned him a few lengths of slack. Dobbs knew his employer’s pride and determination.

“He’s breathing,” Byrne replied, fighting his breath back to steady. “In fact, I think he’s snoring.”

Dobbs knelt to examine the body, prodding his fingers into the lanky lad’s fleshy side, over the ridges of his skull, through the ginger hair, his fingers coming up clean of blood. Dobbs had always been thorough at triage in the field.

Then he began running those nimble fingers into and out of the lad’s pockets, emerging with the customarily expensive trinkets of the Town gentleman.

He had always been thorough at that, too.

“Dobbs . . .” Byrne said, warning in his voice.

The little man returned his reproachful look. “I’m merely looking for a card, a scrap of paper with his name.” As he said this, he pulled a silver card holder from the lad’s breast pocket. Opening it, he pulled out a pristine white card, squinting to read it. “Mar . . . Mark ...”

Byrne plucked the card from his hand. “Marquis of Vessey,” he read, flipping the now-smudged card back onto the lad’s prone form.

“A Marquis?” Dobbs’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Blimey.” Then he proceeded to attempt to heft the lad -er, Marquis, onto his shoulder.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m not leaving a Marquis in the mud of a coach yard,” Dobbs replied, struggling to get the weight of an over-tall, slightly paunchy Marquis balanced against his side.