“What do you plan to do?” The man behind the bar asked.
“Dispose of Willowbrook and go back to my own life,” he said. If his determination to leave hurt, the old man gave no sign, but nagging guilt pushed Rob to say more. “I’ve been offered a position overseeing security details for the Russian, Prussian, and French ambassadors. Lord Rockford expects me in a week.”
The pride on the face of the man who raised him should have felt good. Why did it fill him with guilt?
“How do you plan to dispose of Willowbrook?”
“Sell it. Give it away. Hire a steward. The earl needs to remove his doxie from the place first.”
The old man’s brows shot up. “Doxie? You can’t mean Lucy Whitaker!” When Rob stared at him without denying it, laughter bubbled over until the old man had to hold his stomach. He wiped his eyes with one hand and breathed in to settle himself. “Dear God, Robbie, we need to talk. Get yourself decent—take a bath, for goodness sake—and meet me in my office in an hour.”
Before Rob could respond, his sister’s cheerful voice, chatting with another female, came through the door to the kitchen. It swung open, and Emma came through. “Da,” she called. “Lucy brought the order of cheese, and fine quality, I must say.” She stopped in her tracks. “Robbie! You look like you were drug through the livery before we mucked it. I would have Ellis’s head if he turned up looking like that.”
Rob stood up, but he ignored her, fixated on the woman who came in behind her.
“Lucy, this is my brother Robbie,” Emma said, eyeing him warily.
Her father looked from one to the other, glaring at each other. “Looks to me like they’ve met, Em.”
“Sir Robert,” Lucy said politely, dipping a curtsey, her sour expression showing exactly what she thought of his appearance.
“Miss Whitaker.” He inclined his head in a display of drawing room manners made ludicrous by his state of undress, setting off a shaft of pain.
“Her Grace tells me you paid her a visit after you left Willowbrook,” Lucy said through tight lips.
Perhaps he would be sick after all. His stomach rebelled. He disliked the glint in her eyes and hated the knowing sympathy in Robert Benson’s.
“You’ll have to excuse my son, Miss Lucy. He was about to go freshen up,” the old man said, giving him an escape.
He took it, but not before he heard the man say, “One hour. It’s time we talked.”
*
“You didn’t tellme you met Robbie,” Emma hissed. “How—”
“It wasn’t exactly an introduction. He rode up to Willowbrook, eyeing the place like he owned it. I thought he was going to demand to come in and count the silver.”
“You still have silver?” Emma asked, suddenly curious. The Bensons kept a bower by the river, shielded from the inn by willow trees, for their own use on pleasant afternoons. The two women sat at a little table on the bank, a pot of tea between them.
“David took the big pieces. He left me enough serviceable pieces to use,” Lucy admitted.
“He does, you know. Own it, I mean.”
Lucy stared into her tea and sighed deeply, grateful Emma let silence wrap itself around her, particularly because quiet, foreign to Emma’s makeup, occurred so rarely.
“I know he owns it,” Lucy said at last. “I can’t begrudge him. But Emma, he thinks I’m David’s mistress.”
Emma choked on her tea, turning an alarming shade of red. Lucy ran around to batter her on the back until Emma yelled, “Stop, stop, erg—I’m well.” Only after she saw her friend take four or five deep breaths did Lucy sit back down.
“Clarion? He thinks Clarion would make his sister-in-law his mistress?!” Emma gasped.
Lucy started to laugh, and soon both women were convulsed. “I honestly don’t think he has taken any woman to his bed since Marjory died,” Lucy said at last. “But who knows about men?”
“We all might be better off if he did. If your brother-in-law were laced any tighter, he wouldn’t be able to bend over,” Emma said. “He’s so busy being not his father that he’s forgotten that he’s human.”
Lucy sobered. “Poor David.”
Emma snorted unapologetically. “You’re his responsibility. So is Lady Mad and the hall.”
