Page 49 of Lessons for Marquesses
The urge to plant his fist square in the idyll seized him. He splayed his fingers.
A heavy thunk drew him back to his room.
His groom stood cross-armed at Nicholas’s trunk. “Figured you’d be wantin’ this. There ain’t a manservant from here to town except stable boys and that coffin dodger who barely unlocked the door. Odd place this is. Like a comely wench without teeth.”
The groom quit the room. Nicholas tossed his clothes from the trunk and regarded his hands holding a shirt. A gentleman’s shirt in a gentleman’s chamber in a gentleman’s home for a man who had strayed so far from a gentleman he could never return.
He found the whiskey bottle, slaking his discontent. He focused on the portrait of Wild Squire. What of it, if the happiness he had dreamed of hadn’t come to bear? He was here and Farendon would soon be his.
He opened the desk drawer to toss in a pouch of coins and Edmund’s miniature, and forgot his purpose. On the desk was an object wrapped in exuberant floral chintz, suspiciously nicked from the drapery hanging in1-Red Room.
Planting the whiskey bottle, he pulled out the folded note tucked in a red ribbon that readWelcome, Mr. Wolf.
Georgiana St. Clair had given him a welcome gift.
Dearest Mr. Wolf,
What could a man of your obvious experience and confidence possibly want for in this world? An adventure? I suspect that you have had many to rival those herein. A heroic, stimulating turn of phrase? Or what of knowledge? The superfluous kind which no man truly requires except to put him fast asleep and appreciate that his life was perfectly delightful without it?
Well, allow me to provide to you what will satisfy any doubts you have on the rightness of your path, your generosity in bestowing your wisdom to one who desperately requires it and vows to utilize it to its potential.
I bequeath to you the 1632 English translation of Homer’sOdyssey, replete with six years of childish annotations by George. Do please make my former tutor, Mr. Redgrave, proud and read with particular attention tothemes.
Alaomoi or wandering. Nostos, the hero’s homecoming, the triumph over his trials. Xenia, the rituals of hospitality. Testing, of identity and loyalty. Omens.
There will be lectures and examinations to follow.
Sweet dreams, Mr. Wolf.
~George, Georgiana, and Ana. And pardon my familiarity, Georgie.
Georgiana had tied the ribbon with a double square knot. Nicholas sliced it with his knife and flipped through the gilt-and-leather-bound book with scribblings and circles and underlines.
Annotations by George.
At an auction, collectors would pay handsomely for the tome, two rooms’ worth of furnishings or more.
And she had given it to him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nicholas stalkeddown the stairs under the watchful gaze of the feisty aunt. The diminutive woman in a lace cap had the stature of a mouse but the ramrod shoulders said volumes. She was not a mouse.
“Mr. Wolf, welcome.” She curtsied in a graceful motion. “I do not believe we were formally introduced the last we met. I am Miss Charlotte Philips. Miss St. Clair’s aunt.”
Miss St. Clairwas a polite reminder that Georgiana was female and deserved respect.
Nicholas bowed, relaying his pleasure. “And where is Miss St. Clair?”
“Taking her rest, sir. It has been a difficult day.”
Bidding a pleasant goodbye, an act with which he had fallen sorely out of practice, he walked out into the waning afternoon. His limbs forded toward the stable block.
The memories overtook him the closer he came, the path scored in his flesh deeper than his scars. A garden to the right with the urgent aroma of spring, the iron gate opening to the wide yard.
The gravel beneath his feet met up with the distant thundering of hooves in the pasture as he stepped into the block, passing the wheelbarrows of straw and muck, the boys busying themselves with their chores, humming tunes, bantering. They cast glances his way and hurried back to their labors.
They might not know who he was, but they knewwhathe was.
