Page 11 of Deceiving an Earl
The boy was sitting in a chair, his arms folded on a table and his head resting on his arms. Oliver glimpsed blondish-brown hair and slim shoulders just beginning to fill out. His coat was of the finest material but bloodied and dirty.
The lad groaned and lifted his head to squint at Oliver and O’Leary.
“My lord, Lord Armbruster is here to take you home.”
The boy’s squinty eyes traveled to Oliver and seemed to take his measure. Oliver was pretty certain he had no idea how he even got there.
“Home?”
“Home,” Oliver said. “To your mother.”
The boy made a disparaging noise. “She’ll harp on me for weeks if she sees me like this.”
“As well she should.” Oliver didn’t like the boy’s tone as he was speaking about Ellen, and he was also thinking he didn’t want this odorous individual in his carriage.
Fieldhurst put his head back down. “I’ll just sleep it off here.”
With a surge of anger Oliver gripped the boy’s arm and dragged him to a half-standing position.
“Hey!” Fieldhurst blurted. “You can’t do that. I’m an earl.”
O’Leary rolled his eyes.
“I am, too, you ungrateful bastard, and I can do what I want to you right now. You don’t have the wits to do anything about it. Now I’m taking you home. We’re waking your mother, and you will feel her wrath, as you should.”
Fieldhurst seemed a bit cowed by that and closed his mouth.
Oliver marched him out of the room and down the hall. The boy could hardly stand. He was weaving back and forth and Oliver had to put Fieldhurst’s arm over his shoulder and support most of his insubstantial weight. He was almost as tall as Oliver, just a few inches shorter, but had not put on the weight that he would once he reached full manhood.
“You can take me back to your place,” the boy mumbled.
Oliver barked out a laugh. “No.”
“Aw, help a fellow out. My mother is going to be furious.”
“She should be furious.”
“She’ll complain and nag me.”
“It sounds like you need a good beating.”
The boy didn’t say anything after that. He seemed to be concentrating on dragging one foot in front of the other.
O’Leary led them back to Oliver’s carriage, but as soon as they hit the fresh air the boy started heaving. Oliver pushed him toward some bushes and he vomited in them while Oliver stood above him with his hands on his hips.
“I hoped you learned your lesson tonight,” he said as the boy wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve.
He shrugged a bony shoulder, and Oliver grabbed him up again and stuffed him into the carriage. He directed his driver where to take them, then sat opposite the lad.
“If you vomit in my carriage you will clean it up yourself. Do you understand me?”
The lad nodded, but his eyes were closed and he was resting his head against the window.
They rode back to Ellen’s house in silence. Oliver had no idea what he was going to say to her, and he hated that he had to wake her for this.
He wondered at the lad, a son of Ellen’s. The Earl of Fieldhurst, as he was quick to point out. He was certainly enamored of his title. Oliver tried to remember what it was like to be fifteen? Sixteen? He had not been an earl at that age. That had come many years later. He’d been a student at Eton, both the best and worst times of his life, when his father died. He had been devastated and would have gladly given up the title to have his father back. But that was not the way things worked, and immediately he had taken over the earldom while finishing his years at Eton.
Fieldhurst’s life was different, having come into the title at such a young age. Damn, but he wished he remembered how old the boy was. The late Fieldhurst had died about three years ago so that meant this Fieldhurst had been twelve or thirteen. So young to come into such a large title. Had the elder Fieldhurst prepared his son for the responsibility?
