The Wyndham Legacy (Legacy 1)

“Ha,” Marcus said, gave Lambkin a sour look, and clicked Stanley from the stable yard.

On his ride he didn’t see Trevor or James, even though he rode to the ruins of St. Swale’s Abbey. Not a hair of him to be seen. Where was the damned bounder? Where was James? He found that he began searching for the dell and the oak tree and a well and something that could resemble a nine. A bloody nine. A Janus-faced nine. What the devil was that? Two nines back-to-back? Why did folk insist on leaving clues that were so obfuscated that even a brainy fellow like himself didn’t stand a chance of figuring them out?

He saw a lone female on the narrow country road close to the drive leading into the Park, saw that it was Ursula, and pulled up Stanley beside her. “Good morning, cousin. Why aren’t you riding?”

“The day is too magnificent. When I ride I’m too afraid I’ll fall off and I wanted to see everything today. Even the leaves on the trees look greener today, don’t you think? This is a day to treasure. It rains a lot here, my lord, a lot more than back home, although Baltimore is nature’s blight. That’s what my papa used to say.”

He grinned at that. “You miss your home, Ursula?”

“Yes, but England is also my home since my papa was born here. Chase Park is the most incredible place. There are no houses like it in America. Oh, there are mansions, but they’re new and shiny, not centuries-old with hidden passages and hidey-holes and clues for the Wyndham legacy if we could just find them.”

He dismounted, looped Stanley’s reins over his hand, and walked beside his cousin.

“Legacy? Why do you call it that?”

“Mother says it isn’t just a treasure but rather a legacy meant for the younger son since the elder son becomes the earl and gets the Park, the properties, and all the money. Thus, it’s a l

egacy for her husband and since Papa died, it’s now hers.”

“I see,” he said, wanting to applaud Aunt Wilhelmina’s circuitous logic. “Well, I fear that if there is a treasure or a legacy, it must belong to me, the earl. Sorry, my dear, but I shan’t hand it over to your mama. Now, James and Trevor are out somewhere but I haven’t seen either of them.”

“No, nor have I. Trevor is getting impatient to leave. He keeps giving Mother harassed looks. As for James, he wants to find our legacy, but I don’t think he wants to steal it from you, not like my mother does, if it truly is stealing, and as of yet, I’m not certain who it should belong to. I think I should like to have it though.”

“Your mother,” he said carefully, “is a very unusual person. Has she always been so very unusual?”

Ursula cocked her head to one side. “I think she has but she’s become more unusual as I’ve gotten older, or as she’s gotten older. It’s difficult to know which when one is young. Do you think the Duchess is upset at what she says? She doesn’t seem to be, though perhaps she should be, for mother is many times quite unaccountable. She does odd things, then forgets them. Or perhaps she doesn’t forget, just pretends to.”

“The Duchess is far too intelligent to be cast down by insults, no matter how smoothly couched. As for your mother forgetting things, that’s interesting.”

“It wasn’t, until she mistakenly served some spoiled food to a neighbor and he nearly died.”

“Did she, ah, dislike this neighbor?”

“However did you know that?”

“Wild guess. Look over at that oak tree. By heaven, it’s older than you are, surely.”

“Older than me, Marcus? More likely your age or my mother’s age, but surely that’s too old, even for a tree. Come now, it would be a mere sapling were it my age. Oh yes, Mr. Sampson said that a Major Lord Chilton was coming today.”

“Oh good lord, I clean forgot, what with all the excitement.”

“What excitement?”

“Er, Miss Crenshaw’s brief visit.”

“I heard Trevor and James laughing about that. James said the Duchess pinned your ears back on that one. Trevor said you did try, which was a good thing for a man to do occasionally, and that you did have her going wild for just a little while. Then he said something about her beating you with her boot, but that doesn’t sound at all likely. What did he mean, Marcus?”

“I haven’t a notion, the damned impertinent bastard. Excuse me, Ursula, for speaking so improperly within your hearing.”

“It’s all right. My brothers always do. Who is this Major Lord Chilton?”

“Actually, his name is Frederic North Nightingale, Viscount Chilton, and one of my best friends, though I didn’t know him well until two years ago when our small party was ambushed by the French. You want to know what he said when I shot the soldier whose sword was barely an inch from going through his back? He said, ‘Well, by God, saved by the man who has more sense than to touch Portuguese vodka.’ I left him in Paris over a month ago in the care and keeping of Lord Brooks.”

“What’s Portuguese vodka?”

“Well, er, you don’t want to know. I suppose I shouldn’t have told you that.” Oh Lord, thank God it was such an ambiguous idiom, for Portuguese vodka referred to the whores from southern Portugal.

“Oh no, how am I to learn if people don’t tell things in front of me? Is he as nice as you are, Marcus?”