The Wicked Wager (4 page)

The earl had not been this happy or excited
since the time he had been a student. The social whirlwind irked him, and the
last few years of the same old rigmarole had been unbearable.

He did like people and enjoyed being
friendly, but it was the rules of the ton that chafed at him.

He threw himself into creating the perfect
image of a gardener. The head gardener could not be a young man, so his
excellent valet had procured a number of beards and moustaches of all shades
and sizes. The earl eagerly tried one after the other.

His clothes had to be appropriate; he
wondered if adding a walking stick and a clay pipe was too much. He decided to
keep the clay pipe.

He was not a good actor, his honest face
showing more than he liked. Hence the need for a prop; he could puff away when
he wanted to avoid answering a question or pretend to fill it to buy time.

Except his valet, no one would be aware of
his real identity.
This was his chance to be
free and do as he pleased. As an earl with a large, flourishing estate, he had
to be responsible and project a certain image.

He could not afford to have his workers
find him in his cups, dancing
au naturel
in the streets. He could no
longer cavort with the local wenches or try and spike his great aunt Agatha’s
drink just to hear her croon bawdy songs in the village church. Those days were
long gone.

Yet now was his chance to throw off his
aristocratic mantle and once more live life as he wanted.

Four long weeks of sheer pleasure and
freedom awaited him.

Smiling, he ordered his valet to carefully
pack his bags and add nothing of value, not even his expensive tobacco. The
scent could alert anyone, and the earl wanted to do things right.

His persona would be perfect, from the top
of his powdered hair to the dirt artfully added under his toe nails.

***

Over the next few days, Emma tried to
convince the earl to give up the entire foolish escapade. This was not a play
but real life, where if things went wrong, the result could be disastrous.

The earl assumed Emma had no faith in his
skills or his intelligence; hence, his need to prove her wrong grew stronger
day by day, and soon whatever iota of doubt that had remained in him vanished
in response to Emma’s scepticism.

“We leave at eight in the morning
tomorrow,” Emma said grudgingly.

“Tell me, who is accompanying you?” the
earl asked.

“My maid Bessie, a few male servants for
our safety,” she paused, and added slyly, “and my mother … who will stay with
us for an entire week.”

“You never mentioned your mother’s stay
before?”

Emma noted that the earl did not look
agitated at the news. He had been expecting something of the sort.

“I may have pushed her a little bit. After
all, I will not have much time to spend with her once I am married,” she said
defensively.

“In order to discourage me and foil our
plans before we even start,” the earl remarked shrewdly.

“Did it work?” she asked hopefully.

“On the contrary, my dear, it will allow me
to travel in leisure and see to decent accommodations for my valet, as he will be
staying in the village nearby. You have been most unhelpful in answering my
queries regarding the duke except to say he is wonderful. It will give me a
chance to investigate a little. Servants at times know a lot more, and they
talk.”

“He will be suspicious as to your identity
if you arrive after us. He may decide to investigate. I mean, he is a cautious
man, and he couldn’t be sure that you are not an imposter who has done away
with the real gardener to steal the family jewels. Once he finds you have no
history except my father to recommend you, he will ferret you out before you
even start work.”

“My dear, I will not be found out. He can
investigate to his heart’s content. My head gardener retired a year ago, and I
have adopted his complete persona. If the duke does try and investigate, then
he will write to me to clarify as his previous employer. I will give the man a
glowing recommendation, since he was a truly excellent gardener. My valet will
keep me up to date about letters and such. The gardener now lives in a remote
village, and except for me and my valet, no one has bothered to learn of his
whereabouts. I will also confirm, should the duke ask, that I had recommended
the man to your father, since he wanted to live in the country. The London air
was depressing the man, and I could not see a faithful employee suffer so.”

“How can he know that you recommended him
to father? Father is unaware of our charade, remember?” she said triumphantly.

“That is where you come in. You will steal
all the letters the duke writes to your father and reply to them if needed. You
can reply to the letter and say that I recommended the gardener.”

Emma glared at him. ”I will do no such
thing. What of my poor delicate nerves? They would never be able to handle the
suspense.”

The earl laughed outright at that.

Emma left him spluttering in mirth while
she made her way home. She had a lot to finish before the day was over, and she
had done her duty in warning him.

He could behave like a child and play games
if he wanted to. She was washing her hands of the entire affair. Feeling calmer
once the decision was made, she went about her day in a much better mood.

***

The earl had all his gardeners lined up in
a row.

They watched him nervously. The last time
the earl had requested their presence had been to conduct an experiment.

He had just begun studying medicine at
university, and botany happened to be an important part of his studies. He had
requested the gardeners to provide him with certain varieties of herbs.

He had then pounded, poured, strained, and
mixed together various tinctures. The gardeners had been bid to drink the
various multihued liquids.

The poor fellows drank the proffered
concoctions and gave their names to be written on the labels of bottles that
they had partaken of.

The results were duly noted by the earl and
were the following:

Gardener one - Excessive gas – Was
thrown out of bed by his wife for three days straight.

Gardener two - Skin turned an unsightly
orange – May have a remedy, though the deuced man runs every time he sees me.

Gardener three – His face seems to have
taken on a queer visage. It looks like tiny fish with extremely sharp teeth
have made a feast of him.

Gardener four – Has not yet emerged from
the privy.

Gardener five – Could have given the man
the pox.

… and on the list went. Twenty gardeners
had avoided the earl for the next five years. This was the first time they had
been called to his presence once more. As he was the earl now, they had no
choice but to comply.

The earl was sympathetic, as their
nervousness was understandable.

“Now, I have not asked you here to conduct
any sort of experimentation,” he said soothingly.

They did not look convinced and eyed him
warily.

“I simply need a list of your duties and a few
hours of your time. I want to learn a little bit about what you do.”

The faces changed to alarm. Did the earl
doubt their expertise? Was he planning to let some of them go? Was he in some
sort of financial trouble?

“The reason I want to know a bit about the
sort of work you do is because I intend to have a patch of my own. I find
myself drawn to the magic of plants. I want to see them grow and nurture them
as they bear fruits. It is a beautiful hobby to have, and I request your help.”

The gardeners eyed him sceptically.

They had heard of ladies tending to flower
patches. The head gardener had a devil of a job sneaking to the chosen garden
plot and fixing the disaster that had been unleashed upon the plants.

The ladies, in turn, believed the health of
their beautiful blooms lay fully in their own green hands. While they boasted
to fellow ladies of their accomplishments in their latest hobby, the poor
gardener sweated and toiled to keep up such appearances.

If his interests were encouraged, the earl
would be a terror. Silently, the men vowed to deter the earl from choosing any
such leisure activity.

In the end they gave him a highly
exaggerated account of all that was involved.

The earl dismissed the men and sat down to
think. He, as the head gardener, would be required to tend to the most
sensitive plants. He had to inspect the entire estate for plant diseases,
destructive insects, weeds, and fruit eating birds.

He was also responsible for under-gardeners
numbering twenty to forty, depending on the size of the estate. He had to
resolve petty disputes, provide the kitchens, keep account of fruits and
vegetables, and ensure the flowers bloomed when they should and not a minute
sooner. It was a daunting task, to say the least, and he wanted to give up
there and then.

A vision of Emma rose before his eyes,
bringing his negative thoughts to a screeching halt.

He was no coward, and a few sprigs of grass
would not keep him away from attempting this charade. He could always delegate;
after all, everyone under him knew what to do. He may not know as much as a
gardener would about soil and seeds, but he did know something of politics.

“You any good with ’em plants? The duke
doesn’t hire riff raffs, mind you.”

“Some say, I am a doctor of plants. My roses
are the finest and the fruits I grow, the sweetest.”

“Hear this lads, he says he is the doctor
of plants. You take ’em and put their broken branches up in slings and dose ’em
with some Laudanum, eh?”

“Mayhap you sing the wee ones some
lullaby!”

The pub roared with laughter while the earl
scowled through his beard.

He had expected the dirty mugs and the flea
infested bed, but he had not expected to become the butt of all jokes.

It had all started with choosing the wrong
sort of name. He should have chosen some other gardener to impersonate, but his
own retired man had seemed so perfect. He was conveniently far away with no one
aware of his whereabouts.

He had often wondered at the fierce
expression on his gardener’s face every time he had encountered him. Lord or
lowly servant would be all treated to that same angry expression. He scared the
maids and terrified the housekeeper.

Had he not been such a wonderful gardener
the earl would have let him go. Instead, he had worked for him until the ripe
old age of sixty.

The earl felt a twinge of sympathy for the
old man. He no longer blamed the man for his severe visage, since he was doing
a darned good imitation of it at that moment.

His plan had worked beautifully up until
the time they had taken up lodgings at the inn nearby the duke’s residence.

Every time he was introduced, the game of
lets pull the new gardener’s leg began. He could hardly hold a decent
conversation for more than a minute before striding out in anger.

His valet had proved to be a treasure,
since his own investigations were coming to naught. Burns, with his perfectly
respectable name, had gone out to glean what information he could.

“Why are we packing, Burns?”

“Sir, we are going back to London.”

The earl took out his snow white handkerchief
and placed it on a chair. He then perched his bottom carefully on the cloth.
Once done, he turned back to his valet, whose countenance resembled the peeling
yellow walls.

“And why are we going back?”

“Sir, that man, the duke, is a terror. The last
time he caught a man trying to cheat him he made him wear his housekeeper’s
skirts, sat him upon a donkey, and took him for a ride around the village.”

“Hmm”

“My Lord, they … the little girls … they
threw flowers at him.”

“Stop trembling in emotion. He wouldn’t
dare do that to an earl.”

“The man who cheated him had been a baron.”

The earl gulped. The valet resumed packing.

“This is the test of true love, Burns. The
duke is my personal dragon, standing in the way of my claiming the beautiful
princess. I will not allow him to kidnap my beautiful Emma, even if it means
facing my death.”

“Sir, didn’t she go to him on her own?”

“Dash it, you fail to see the romance of it
all.”

“After ten years of being married to my
missus, forgive me for forgetting what romance is like,” Burns retorted.

This entire business of telling Burns to
treat him as an equal was simply not working out. He had wanted to get into
character and had threatened and cajoled his valet to speak his mind. Now that
Burns was getting into the spirit of things, the earl was not feeling
particularly happy.