"Lancelot—" Nicholas rolled the name around on his tongue as he turned to see his half brother, the sunken-chested, pallid butler standing just behind him.
"Lance! My precious boy, what are you doing back in London? Richard told us you were visiting a friend in Folkestone."
Lancelot shrugged. "We had a wheel break on the carriage. No choice but to come back. So what? What is he doing here?"
"So you might easily have been the one to try to put a bullet through my brain this morning," Nicholas said, a blast of cold in his voice, wondering how long it would take him to strangle this supercilious little sot, and enjoy every second of it.
"Nonsense," Lancelot said, and frowned at a tiny speck of dirt on his burgundy velvet jacket. "I am an excellent shot. If I had been in London, if I had shot at you, you'd be lying dead on your damned back."
"You're not as good a shot as I am," the butler suddenly said. "Don't you remember our competition? And Master Richard is the best of all of us."
The butler was very free in his speech with his employers, Nicholas thought, and watched his stepmother gape at him. Nicholas asked, "What is your name?"
"I? I am called David Smythe-Jones."
Nicholas couldn't help himself, he laughed. "Davy Jones? Your parents are seafaring people then, with strong ties to irony?"
"No, they believe in treasure, trapped in long-ago sunken Spanish galleons, lying deep in the sea. However, since they live in Liverpool and haven't a groat to go searching for their prize, it isn't likely they will ever find it. Still my mother spends her life searching out old treasure maps and making plans."
Nicholas studied the young man, his petulant mouth, his nervous hands always moving. Then he looked at his two half brothers. So very different they were. And here, of all things, the third half brother, Aubrey, was a scholar. He wondered what his sire had thought about what his seed had produced. He raised his hand to get their attention. "No more bickering, no more insults, no more protestations of innocence. Including you, sir," he added to Alfred Lemming, who was standing on his tiptoes, ready to leap. "All of you will listen to me now. I am Lord Mountjoy, the Earl of Mountjoy. None of you will ever take that title. My son will follow me and his son will follow him down through future generations. If your mother taught you this was really your birthright, and not mine, if she taught you that you were the rightful hairs, than she did you a grave disservice.
"I will say this only once. If anything happens to me, I have several close friends who will avenge me." He turned to face Richard. "If I die, you will die, and Lancelot will die. Given my friends' rage were I to be murdered, I doubt Aubrey would survive either. Then there will be no Vails, the line will be dead as all of us. Do all of you understand me?"
Lady Mountjoy yelled, shaking her fist at him, "You're utterly mad! You are so mad you threaten my sweet boys who have never harmed you."
"Attend her, my lord, for that is the truth!" Alfred Lemming bellowed, his face now alarmingly red.
Nicholas sketched his stepmother a brief bow. "I will see that you are not killed, ma'am. I would want you and your fat lover to continue on; perhaps eventually you would feel despair that you taught them to hate me, taught them I was an enemy to be destroyed, rather than their brother whose responsibility it would be to protect them, to be at their backs, perhaps even to assist them. In the end, madam, you would realize you were surrounded by nothing at all."
There was stone silence for a moment before Alfred Lemming stepped forward on small well-shod feet and said, barely above a whisper, "I say, my lord, you should not make such a blanket statement as that." His very white brow was damp with perspiration, but he persevered. "Despite the venom and threats floating around the drawing room, it is no excuse for bad manners. I am Lord Heissen and I will personally vouch for the young gentlemen. That is the point, my lord. They are gentlemen, not hooligans. You have come from heathen places, doubtless tracked by heathen enemies with no sense of what is suitable in a civilized world. No English gentleman would fire a gun in the midst of traffic—to possibly be seen and identified. It is absurd that you would be suspicious of these fine upstanding boys."
Nicholas eyed the very dapper Alfred Lemming, Lord Heissen, whose white hands were as plump and beringed as his stepmother's. "I am pleased to hear your opinion, my lord. Since you appear to be slithering about in this pit of vipers, I have decided to add you to the list. If I die, this entire drawing room will be cleaned out, save for my venomous stepmother. I bid you good-bye. Oh, yes, madam, stay away from my betrothed."
"Betrothed! It is not to be borne. Why, I—" Nicholas took a step toward her at the same time one of Alfred Lemming's white hands gently pressed down over her mouth. Nicholas nodded at him, noted that despite its apparent softness, that hand of his looked, surprisingly, very strong. Nicholas said, "Keep it there, my lord, for her own safety."
When he passed by David Smythe-Jones, he said, "You really should consider a new name."
"What? It is a noble name, it is a name that carries countless unspoken tales of bravery and adventure."
"How long have you been employed here as the butler?"
The soft, white chin went straight up. "I took care of Master Lance at Oxford. I was ready to assume greater duties in London. I am now in charge of this magnificent house. All look to me to resolve difficulties, to train the tweeny, to ensure Master Lance's cravats are white as a virgin's spit, and well folded. I am perfection and that is what I demand from all the servants."
Nicholas had a sudden memory of actually smelling the rot eating away at the books in the library just down the corridor. It was odd for a five-year-old boy to remember that. He looked over the young man's head at Lancelot. "See that you keep your butler in line," he said, and he paused in the doorway, looked at each of them, his expression pensive. Then he left the town house, seeing their stony faces in his mind's eye. As he took the front steps, he heard his stepmother yell, "Why did you even let him in, Smythe-Jones? That is not perfection, that is serious bungling. What sort of butler are you?"
"But I wasn't even here! Master Lance and I were still at least a mile away when he shoved his way in. Had I been here he would have walked on my face. I didn't have my gun so I couldn't have shot him. He is dangerous, that big fellow."
Big fellow? Clyde nickered. Nicholas smiled.
25
An hour later, Nicholas was closeted with Ryder Sherbrooke. Thankfully the Earl of Northcliffe had escorted the wives and
Rosalind to Madame Fouquet's. It was a vast relief because Nicholas knew Rosalind would realize something was wrong, and then the three of them would hold him down and question him until he spurted out everything he knew or imagined he knew. And then they would all throw their opinions into the ring and it would be chaos. Rosalind, he thought, something of a fatuous smile on his mouth, would have gotten a gun and gone off to murder the lot of the half brothers. And his stepmother as well, he imagined.
He said now to Ryder, "One of them is behind the attempt on my life, I simply cannot prove which one it was and so I threatened all of them. Funny thing is, I do have friends who would gladly avenge me. If I leave word, as I most assuredly will, all that pernicious family would be wiped out were I to die.
"However, since I do not believe them stupid, perhaps that is the end to it." He paused a moment, looking toward the empty fireplace grate. "Still, I cannot be certain. Fact is, I don't know what to do, sir."