“God grant you long life, Douglas,” Ryder said with fervor. “I respect you and am grateful to my toes that you are the eldest son and thus the Fourth Earl of Northcliffe, the Sixth Viscount Hammersmith, the Ninth Baron Sanderleigh, and therefore the target of all their cannon.”
“I respect you too, Douglas,” Tysen said. “You make a fine earl, viscount, and baron, and I’m certain Uncle Albert and Aunt Mildred think so too. All the family agree if only you’d marry and—”
“Oh God, not you too, Tysen! Well, there’s no hope for it,” Douglas added as he rose from his chair. “Ah, Tysen, your gratitude will make me endure, no doubt. Pray for me, little brother. Our meeting for this quarter is adjourned, Ryder. I believe I’ll speak to your valet, Tinker, and see if he can’t sew your randy sex into your breeches.”
“Poor Tinker would be appalled to be assigned such a service.”
“Well, I can’t ask one of the maids. That surely would defeat the purpose. I vow you would break our pact if one of the younger ones did the task.”
“Poor Douglas,” Ryder said as his brother left the room.
“What did Douglas mean about your pact?” Ryder asked.
“Oh, we have both vowed that any female in our employ is not to be touched. When you are safely out of love, and thus your wits are yours again, we will gain your assurances as well.”
Tysen decided not to argue with his brother. He was above that. He would be a vicar; his thoughts and deeds would be spiritual. Also, to the best of his memory, he’d never won an argument with either brother, and thus said, “This girl they’re going to batter at him about is supposedly quite wonderful.”
“They’re all wonderful with pillow sheets over their heads,” Ryder said and walked out of the estate room.
Leaning against a dark mahogany Spanish table was Sinjun, her arms crossed, looking as negligent and indifferent as a potato, and whistling. She stopped when she saw that Ryder saw her, and said with a wonderfully bland voice, “So, how went the meeting?”
“Keep your tongue behind your teeth, brat.”
“Now, Ryder, I’m young, true, but I’m not stupid.”
“Forget it, Sinjun.”
“How are all your Beloved Ones?”
“They all do very well, thank you.”
“I’m silent as a soap dish,” she said, grinned at him, blew him a kiss, and walked toward the kitchen, whistling again, like a boy.
CHAPTER
2
THE EARL WASN’T frowning. He was anxious and he felt in his innards that something was going to happen, something he wasn’t going to like. He hated such feelings because they made him feel helpless and vulnerable; on the other hand he knew it would be stupid to ignore them. Because the government was in disarray, and that damned fool Addington was dithering about like a headless cock, he thought that this anxiety in his innards must spring from his fear of Napoleon.
Like all Englishmen who lived on the southern coast of England, he worried about an invasion. It didn’t seem likely, since the English ruled the Channel, but then again, only a fool would disregard a man of Napoleon’s military genius and his commitment to the destruction of the English.
Douglas dismounted from his stallion, Garth, and strode to the cliff edge. Surf pounded at the rocks at the base of the cliff, spewing plumes of white-foamed water thirty feet into the air. He sucked the salt air into his lungs, felt it gritty and wet against his face. The wind was strong and sharp, blowing his hair about his head, making his eyes water. The day was cloudy and gray. He couldn’t see France today, but when the sky was clear, he could see Boulogne from this vantage and the bleak coastline to the northeast toward Calais. He shaded his eyes and stared into the grayness. The clouds roiled and overlapped, but didn’t part, rather they thickened and seemed to press fatly together. He didn’t turn when he heard the horse approach and halt near him.
“I thought you would be here, Douglas. This is your favorite place to think.”
He smiled even as he was turning to greet his young sister seated astride her mare, Fanny. “I see I shouldn’t be so predictable. I didn’t see you at breakfast, Sinjun, or at lunch. Was Mother punishing you for some infraction?”
“Oh no, I forgot the time. I was studying my—” She broke off, lightly slipped out of the saddle and strode toward him, a tall, thin girl, with long legs and wild pale hair that swirled thick and curly around her face, hair once held at the nape of her neck with a ribbon, no doubt, a ribbon now long lost. Her eyes were a vivid sky blue, clear as the day was gray and filled with humor and intelligence. All of his siblings had the Sherbrooke blue eyes and the thick light hair, though Sinjun’s was lighter and filled with sunlight. All except him.
Douglas was the changeling, his eyes as dark as sin, his old nanny had happily told him many years before, aye, and he looked like a heathen Celt, all dark and swarthy, his black hair making him look like the master of the cloven hoof himself.
When he was very young, he’d overheard his father accusing his mother of cuckolding him, for his son looked like no Sherbrooke in either their painted or recorded history. His mother, Douglas recalled, had apologized profusely for what she accepted as her error in the production of this, the implausible Sherbrooke heir. Ryder was fond of telling Douglas that it was this un-Sherbrooke appearance that made everyone obey him instantly, for it made him appear so austere and forbidding.
But as Douglas looked at his sister, his expression wasn’t at all severe. She was wearing buckskins, as was he, a loose white shirt, and a light brown leather vest. Their mother, he knew, would shriek like a banshee when and if she saw her young daughter thusly attired. Of course, their mother was always shrieking about something.
“What were you studying?”
“It isn’t important. You’re worrying again, aren’t you?”