Prince of Ravenscar (Sherbrooke Brides 11)

Yes, he did need new boots, but—

She rose from the blue brocade settee opposite him, patted his shoulder, leaned down to kiss his cheek. “I truly wish to go. There has been so much rain here, and to be blunt about it, I am growing mold, not an elevating sight. It is time for a change of scene—specifically, it is time to visit London, for the Season this time, not for your wretched man of business.”

Julian felt the earth shifting beneath his boots, his old boots. At last he was home. He wanted to settle in, manage his property, play with his spaniels on the dog run that ended at the low cliff above the beach. He knew it was time to see if Richard Langworth and his father, Baron Purley, still blamed him for Lily’s death. “You really don’t need me, Mama. You could as easily travel to London, open the town house, and do whatever pleases you. Why do you want me along?”

She said, with a good deal of hauteur, “Do you forget you are my son, my only son, and I have not seen you for three—three—years? I wish all of society to gaze upon your exquisite self, admit there is no finer-looking a young man in all of England, and be jealous of me.”

What was going on here? He said slowly, “Don’t forget the other Monroe lady, namely, Lorelei, your stepdaughter-in-law. She will doubtless be there. You know you would rather have your eyebrows plucked than have to deal with her.”

His mother had thick black brows like his, and he’d heard her shriek when her maid, known as Poor Barbie, had to pluck them every week and a half.

“I shall firmly plant myself above Lorelei this time; I shan’t allow her to give me the headache with her obnoxious little observations on my looks and health and how you should never have been born and how your dear father turned into a pilchard-headed old moron when he turned seventy-five, and just look what came of it—namely, me—and would you look what I did—brought you into the world. And then, naturally, she will go on and on about you, her chins quivering all the while—a duke’s son, even though you should never have been born in the first place, and you’re obviously deficient, since you sprang from an old man’s tired seed, and not the healthy, intelligent seed of a vigorous man, as your dear father was many decades ago. Worst, you indulge in trade, and what a horror that is.”

She paused to take a well-earned breath. She tapped her long fingers against her teacup and brightened. “If I recall, Lorelei had gained flesh when I last saw her, and I haven’t, and I’ll wager she still persists in wearing all that purple.” She gave a small shudder.

Julian said nothing.

She eyed him. “Devlin is always in London for the Season. I know his father is beginning to agitate for a daughter-in-law, since Devlin is now twenty-seven—can you believe that?—and he needs to get himself wed and set up his nursery.”

“Both Devlin and I are to be consigned to leg shackles?”

She ignored that. “Really, Julian, do not concern yourself about my dealing well with Lorelei. I shall give her my most regal nod and continue on my way.”

Julian gave it one more try. “As I said, you really don’t need me with you, Mother.”

To his surprise, her small rounded chin began to tremble, and those beautiful dark eyes of hers sheened with tears.

“All right, I see you will have the truth out of me, Julian.”

3

The truth?

Before he could find out this truth, Julian heard barking outside the drawing room and rose. “I have a surprise for you.” He opened the door and motioned to his valet, Pliny, to release the King Charles spaniels he’d brought back from Genoa.

Freed, the spaniels ran to him, yipping, leaping about, their long silky ears flopping up and down. They didn’t jump on him, but they circled him, dancing, as he’d taught them.

He went down on his haunches and gathered them all to him. He said, pointing, “Mother, I would like you to meet Cletus, Beatrice, Oliver, and Hortense. They are a year old. You might think they all look the same, but their personalities are as different as ours. Since my estate room gives onto the dog run, that is where they’ll spend most of their time.”

“Ah, that is fine, dearest. Goodness, they do leap about, don’t they? Look at that one.”

“Cletus.”

“Why, I think he would like to meet me.”

Julian picked up an excited Cletus and carried him to his mother, the other three spaniels barking madly behind him. She petted his soft hair, received a dozen enthusiastic licks.

“Cletus,” she said. “I fancy you are a very well-behaved little fellow, are you not?”

Cletus wriggled free from Julian’s hands, yipped and barked, and relieved himself on the Aubusson carpet.

Corinne said, “Yes, your estate room is an excellent place for these charming little dogs. Call for Pouffer, dearest, to clean up little Cletus’s accident.”

Soon the four spaniels were racing after Pliny, barking, tails wagging, to visit their new home in the estate room, and Pouffer was directing a maid to clean up little Cletus’s accident, after which he burned two feathers to eliminate any possible odors.

“Pliny is looking well,” Corinne said.

“As much as his poet’s brooding soul allows,” Julian said. “He should have trod the boards, I’ve told him. He adores drama and being in the center of it. I’m pleased, though, he didn’t cry when Cletus relieved himself on the carpet.” Pliny, a dapper little man of forty, blessed with a full head of white-blond hair, had been selling boots in Portsmouth and fair to starving when Julian had hired him away as his valet. Eleven years, he thought, he’d been so young. On the other hand, Pliny had been young as well.