Page 36 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
“My point is that to you, Penkellis is a horrible, evil place, because you have seen and known horrible, evil things here.” Somehow Turner knew this without Lawrence ever having said so. “The child doesn’t share that understanding.”
“He’ll hear of it all soon enough if he spends any time here. He’ll hear about what his uncle and grandfather were. He’ll hear about me.” None of them were truly the child’s blood relations. The Browne legacy of evil and madness wasn’t Simon’s future, but he didn’t know that. “It would have been better for him to stay away.”
“Shove it.”
Lawrence instinctively drew himself up to his full height and raised his chin. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, it is very amusing how lordly you are when you choose to be. I might be intimidated if I didn’t know better. But you can shove it, nonetheless. Try and put yourself in the child’s place. He’s never been asked to visit here. Perhaps he’s already heard whispers of the mad earls from whom he believes he has descended. Surely you can see that he will be afraid. That is why we will make this house—and its master—as normal and friendly as we can. We will make it so he wants to come back.”
“No!”
“But he will come back, Radnor. Even if it’s half a century from now, when you’re dead and buried. He’ll come back. This will be his home. This is his future, and you need to make sure he is not afraid of it.”
Lawrence let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Damn you.”
“Quite. Still, Radnor, you understand that I’m here to help you get through this, don’t you?”
Lawrence swallowed hard. Then he moved to clap Turner on the arm, whether in thanks or acknowledgment or dismissal, he did not know. But at that same moment Turner stepped towards him, and the result was that Lawrence’s hand skimmed down Turner’s back. It might have been unremarkable, but for Turner’s slight shiver. Lawrence couldn’t help but grin wolfishly. Turner’s lips were slightly parted, and if it weren’t for the fact that the house and grounds were crawling with people, Lawrence might have bent his head and kissed the man.
God, he wanted more. The other night, that frantic coupling on the bare floor of Turner’s room, had been a revelation.
Sodomites had been a favorite subject of his father’s rage-fueled tirades, in which he lumped it in with other crimes against nature, such as Catholicism and being French. When he noticed—or thought he noticed—his younger son looking at the curate in an unnatural way, he had locked Lawrence in his bedchamber for a fortnight and prohibited him from attending church indefinitely. When Lawrence suffered one of his spells—heart racing, palms sweating, the abiding urge to hide—the old earl had declared it all part of the same madness that had the boy ogling clergymen. He had refused to send Lawrence to school, on the grounds that madness and depravity ought to be concealed. Lawrence’s one feeble protest had been met with threats of madhouses.
“Radnor?” Turner asked. He had a bit of plaster in his hair, and Lawrence reached out to brush it away, letting his thumb linger overlong on his ear.
“It isn’t mad to want to touch you,” Lawrence said, his voice hoarse.
Turner sucked in a breath. “No, indeed. I’m glad you know that.”
One of the French doors cracked open and the yellow-haired housemaid stuck her head out. “Mr. Turner, the mason is here to see about the front steps.”
“If your lordship will excuse me?” Turner spoke in a cordial, businesslike tone that Lawrence knew was meant for the housemaid’s benefit, so he didn’t complain about the honorific.
“Very well,” he said.
Lawrence watched him pass through the library and into the drawing room beyond, his slim figure silhouetted against the bright light that shone through the freshly cleaned windows.
“Surely there’s no need for all those extra servants, Mr. Turner.” Mrs. Ferris’s brow was furrowed as she looked up at the ladder where Georgie attempted to wrangle the new drapes into submission. “Another girl would have been more than enough, maybe a woman from the village to come help on laundry day. His lordship hates being disturbed, and with all these servants and workmen bustling about he’ll be in a terrible state.”
“I’ll see to his lordship,” Georgie said. “Leave him to me.” As far as Georgie cared, Lawrence could sod right off if he dared complain again about the preparations for this child’s arrival. Rendering the house habitable for a child who was legally and—as far as Georgie cared—ethically the earl’s own son was the damned least Lawrence needed to do. Even if Lawrence had only married the boy’s mother out of kindness, even if he had only been twenty when he had taken on the responsibility, it was his responsibility nonetheless.
Georgie couldn’t remember the last time he had thought in terms of responsibility. Or ethics, of all things. He felt like he was in a strange land, trying to make his way through a new city in a foreign language. But here he was, regardless, and he was nothing if not adaptable.
For God’s sake, he had even stripped to his shirtsleeves and set to work himself. He was likely filthy. They were running out of time.
“One more thing, Mrs. Ferris. If there are any local people you think ought to be engaged as servants, please do so. That’s within your purview, and I’m afraid I overstepped by taking on that task myself.” He had hired servants in Falmouth to go beyond the reach of whatever superstitions afflicted the villagers. But if Mrs. Ferris could persuade some tenants to serve at Penkellis—and he dearly hoped she would, because anything to gain the goodwill of these people could only help—then those servants could simply join the ranks of those Georgie had hired. It wasn’t as if there was any shortage of work to be done.
Mrs. Ferris appeared slightly mollified when she went back to the kitchens.
“She’ll come around,” said Janet, who was holding the ladder in place. “Can’t have the little lad sleeping in his papa’s workroom, can we? He’d blow himself up, or get into whatever mischief his lordship conducts up there.”
“He’d also believe his father to be stark mad, living in one tower out of a house this size. No, you’re right, Janet. We have no choice but to get this wing into a state of tolerable readiness.” He glanced around, suppressing a wave of dismay. The glaziers had not finished replacing all the cracked windows; the furniture had been taken away by the upholsterers, revealing badly worn parquet. The smell of paint and hartshorn lingered noxiously in the air. “There’s nothing to be done about the worst of the damage, not with such short notice. But we can have the place habitable for him.”
Janet looked skeptical. “Seems a strange thing, for a child not to know his own home.”
Of course young gentlemen were sent off to schools, nothing out of the ordinary there. It was no different from young boys from regular families being sent off as apprentices, or girls sent off to work as servants. For that matter, it was a hell of a lot better than being sent out to pick pockets, with the clear understanding that one must not return home without something to show for the day’s work.
But all those apprentices and servants knew they had a place where they belonged, people who claimed them as their own. Simon Browne, bounced between the homes of his schoolmate and his aunt and reduced to writing a pathetic letter to the stranger who was his father, might not even have that.
