Lord Sebastian's Secret (The Duke's Sons #3)(96)
“I thought you’d rather get on, even in this heap, than wait for a new chaise to be fetched, milord,” the man said when he pulled up. “Don’t rightly know how long that would take.”
Standing in the muddy road, Robert eyed the rustic equipage and the two large farm horses pulling it. No doubt the ride would rattle their bones.
The men moved his trunk from the chaise to the cart. He was going to have to perch upon it, Robert saw. There was no room for anyone but the driver on the seat. At least the rain had eased. Gathering blanket and puppy, he climbed up.
“You taking the animal?” asked the older postilion.
“You expect me to leave him here?”
“Well, I dunno. He ain’t a toff’s sort of dog, is he?”
“Would you like him?”
“Me? I got no use for a dog.”
It was just as well he refused, because Robert realized that he had no intention of handing the animal over. There was something curiously engaging about the small creature.
Lord Robert Gresham’s subsequent arrival at the Salbridges’ estate was quite uncharacteristic for a gentleman recognized as a pink of the ton. He was wet and muddy, his fine clothes horridly creased. He was worn out from the jolting of his disreputable vehicle. He had no hat—it had blown off during the last part of his journey and gone tumbling down an escarpment—and he carried a mongrel dog under one arm. Indeed, the grooms in the Salbridge stables very nearly turned him away. Thankfully, one who’d seen him in London came forward to confirm his identity.
“Broken axle,” said Robert.
“Ah.” There were general nods at this piece of information.
“Can some of you help me with these lads?” the postilion asked, climbing down from the cart and going to the massive horses’ heads. “They’ve done well, and I promised to have them back tomorrow.”
The grooms moved forward to help, and to retrieve Robert’s trunk. He followed the latter two as they carried his luggage through the stableyard to a back door. He didn’t intend to knock at the front in his current state and track mud across an immaculate front hall and staircase. He’d use the back stairs to find his assigned bedchamber and clean up before he greeted his hosts.
His luck was out, however. The Countess of Salbridge was in the kitchen, conferring with the cook, and so she was among the group that turned at his entry, blinked, and stared.
There was nothing for it. Robert smiled, swept off an imaginary hat, and gave her a jaunty bow. “Hullo, Anne.”
“Robert?” she said, incredulous. “What are you… Whatever has happened?”
“Long story. Started with a broken axle on my post chaise. And, er, went on from there.”
The dog chose this moment to pop his head out of the blanket and stare about the room, shifting slowly from one person to the next, and the next. A kitchen maid gestured. Robert thought it was a sign against the evil eye. The countess bit her lower lip.
“Go ahead and laugh,” Robert told her. “I live to amuse.”
She did. “Oh, Robert,” she said after several moments of mirth. “Only you could carry off such a…memorable entrance.”
He gave his audience another elegant bow.
*
Several hours later, bathed and changed and feeling renewed, Robert sat in a luxurious bedchamber reading a letter from his mother, the Duchess of Langford. The missive had followed him from Herefordshire, where his family had most lately gathered for his brother Sebastian’s wedding, to his rooms in London, and now here to Northumberland. Aware that he hadn’t behaved quite like himself at the wedding, Robert wondered how he would answer his mother’s inquiries about his well-being. The answer that came to him was—later.
Setting the page aside, he stared out at the sweep of gardens outside the window. Salbridge Great Hall might be at the ends of the earth from a Londoner’s point of view, but it was a fine old stone pile. Parts of it looked to date from Tudor times, others from subsequent centuries. The interior had been refurbished with modern comforts.
The rain had lifted. Rays of afternoon sun illuminated turning leaves and late blooms, a manicured autumn vista. From this height he could see the River Tyne in the distance. “I am very well indeed,” he tried, aloud.
From a cushion by the hearth, his newly acquired dog turned a steady gaze upon him. The pup’s small stomach was rounded from the large bowl of scraps he’d ingested. Any other young dog would be dead asleep after such a feast, Robert thought, but this one was keeping a careful eye on his surroundings.
Meeting those brown eyes, and for some reason unable to look away, Robert had the oddest thought. He felt like a man who had always lived in a fine house, pleasing in every detail, and then one day discovered that a great cavern lay beneath it. In all his years, he’d never suspected the cave existed. When he explored this new subterranean realm, he found it a marvelous place, full of things he’d never dreamed of. The expansion excited and challenged him. But then, after a time, he’d encountered difficulties, bitter disappointments. And he began to wonder if the cavern was undermining the foundations of the house above, threatening general ruin.
Robert shifted uneasily in his chair. What the devil? That was not the sort of thought he would have had a year ago. It wasn’t the sort of thought anybody had. “It’s a relief to be back in my own, er, natural habitat among the haut ton,” Robert told the dog. “I should never have ventured out into circles where my gifts aren’t valued.”