Brandon . . . Brandon. Of a certainty he knew the name, but until now there had been no faces to attach to it. He wondered with a questioning frown why his father had never spoken of the family or, for that matter, seen them socially.
Well, he planned to see them now. Indeed, he couldn’t wait.
Julien called out, “Enter” when there came a knock on the door.
Stokeworthy, the St. Clair agent, appeared in the open doorway, his long, thin face (rather like a horse’s, Julien had always thought) wearing an apologetic look.
Julien rose. “Ah, do come in, Stokeworthy. It is certainly good of you to come on such short notice. I do hope it did not inconvenience you.”
He took the older man’s bony hand in his and gave it an enthusiastic shake.
“I wish to apologize, my lord, for my tardiness, but you see, Mrs. Stokeworthy’s niece has come down with a chill and the house is at sixes and sevens. Very unsettling, everything is.” Stokeworthy fastened his watery eyes on his master’s face, hoping to see no displeasure. There wasn’t any, but Stokeworthy, being conscientious, continued quickly, “Perhaps the house is even at nines and tens. Such noise and commotion. It would drive me to the brandy bottle, if I had one.”
Unknown to Julien, he would have preferred to spend much more time than he did here in the estate room at St. Clair, and had welcomed his summons, albeit on short notice, with profound anticipation. He found invariably after his visits with the earl that Mrs. Stokeworthy quite fell over his words. The folk of Dapplemoor would pay his household unexpected visits, listening with avid attention to any tidbits of gossip he chose to relate about the earl of March.
“Given your niece’s illness, perhaps you would rather return home. We could meet again in several days, when you have no other worries on your mind. Nines and tens are difficult, I know.”
“Oh, goodness gracious, no, my lord,” Stokeworthy exclaimed, sorry that he had ever mentioned his niece. “I assure you, my lord, a man’s presence is never the thing in the sickroom. Or anywhere near a sickroom, perhaps not even in a room that is downstairs from a sickroom.”
Julien was hard put not to laugh. “If you’re certain, sir.”
“I am very certain, my lord, beyond certain even.” He quickly pulled a sheaf of papers from his timeworn case and poked them beneath his master’s nose.
Julien and Stokeworthy spent the next several hours poring over accounts and calculating the sums that the estate’s tenants’ crops would likely fetch at market. It had been a good year at St. Clair, not too much rain and not too much snow. The county had fared well, and the St. Clair coffers would prosper, as would the pocketbooks of the tenants.
Julien trusted Stokeworthy implicitly, as his father had before him. He was pleased, even more so than usual after Stokeworthy’s glowing account of St. Clair’s prosperity, that his father had brought this man into his employ. Many people had been surprised at his father’s choice, Julien had learned not many years past. It seemed that the garrulous Mrs. Stokeworthy bore a striking resemblance to Julien’s grandfather, and if the rumors were true, Mrs. Stokeworthy was but one of his grandfather’s by-blows.
It occurred to Julien that his father, a man of unwavering moral standards— indeed, nearly depressing moral standards— must have found it unnerving to be in contact almost daily with the several men and women who so closely resembled him. Julien had asked his father once about his grandfather’s vagaries, but he had received such a stern, uncompromising set-down that he quite vowed to take his inquiries elsewhere. Although Julien had never known his grandfather, he had believed all the stories since he first looked closely at the portrait of his grandfather that hung in a darker corner of the gallery. He could almost picture his bewigged grandsire, with his full, sensual lips and the lewd twinkle in his gray eyes, swooping down from astride a great black charger upon unsuspecting village maidens.
Julien was unaware that his grandfather’s exploits had become romantic legend in Dapplemoor and that the locals continued to embroider upon the facts to pass the time in the long winter months. Nor would it have pleased him to discover that they compared him more often with his righteous, moral father than his dashing, amorous grandfather. It would have been the deepest of blows had he only known about it, and doubtless if he had known about it, he would have hurled himself into an orgy of depravity.
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