LORD ETHAN’S COURAGE
When a young woman marches into an alley full of homeless former soldiers, Ethan Alcott feels something he thought dead stir to life: his sense of honor. Efforts at charity put the chit in danger; someone needs to take her in hand.
Lady Flora Landrum discovers that the mysterious one-armed ruffian she encountered in a back alley is Lord Ethan Alcott, son of the Marquess of Welbrook; her astonishment gives way to determination. As Ethan comes to admire Flora’s courage, perhaps he can reclaim his own.
CHAPTER1
The smell of fresh bread turned his stomach, as the smell of gin no longer did, but not as much as the unwanted sympathy of women too foolish to stay where they belonged. Ethan hunkered deeper into a corner of two walls that met unevenly in the back of a warehouse next to Finnegan’s Pub. Perhaps she would pass and leave him be.
She did not. Ethan Alcott, so old at heart that he no longer knew or cared if he was twenty-eight or twenty-nine in chronological years, looked at the fresh-faced babe in the woods and wondered vaguely where her keepers might be.
She stopped by the man slouched against the wall a few feet down, and handed him bread wrapped in paper.Not enough to trade for whisky. Perhaps she isn’t completely ignorant,he thought.
He folded his arms across his chest and stared at his knees, knowing from experience that if he ignored her she would pass him by; at least, she would if he waited long enough.
He could see the tips of two expensive-looking half boots peeping out from under what he suspected was her maid’s cast-off gown. Men in this alley would kill for the boots alone. Lady Bountiful went down on her heels in front of him and reached out to hand him her gift.Stupid, that.
His good hand—the remaining one—darted out and seized her wrist before he thought. “Don’t ever reach so close to a desperate man. Down on your haunches like that you are easy prey for any man who wants you on your back with your skirts up. Did your mother teach you nothing?” he snarled. His words may have been crude, but he spoke so fast he forgot to strip Mayfair from his voice and pronunciation. Let her make of that what she would. He shoved her hand aside and sank back into his defensive position.
The woman leapt to her feet and Ethan watched a pair of serviceable men’s boots hurry to her side.
“Lady Flora!” a young voice shouted. “Be you well?”
The youngest most easily persuadable footman, no doubt.
“Well enough, John. This gentleman doesn’t wish to accept our gift,” she replied, acidly. She had dropped her offering in his lap when he grabbed her wrist. He ignored it. Neither pair of boots moved. He glanced up through lowered lashes to see a pair of deep blue eyes studying him as if he were a puzzle to solve.
I’m nobody’s damned problem to solve. Go away, he demanded silently.
“Who are you,” she asked. He kept his eyes downcast.
“Come now, Lady Flora,” the lad said. “The earl won’t be pleased if you linger.” The footman may have been as young as he sounded, but his scared face and missing ear were utterly unexpected.
“Chadbourn would not be pleased if he knew I was even here, John, and you know it. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Chadbourn! Good God. A blasted earl. Ethan searched his memory. He served with the heir in the Peninsula. Will Landrum had been a good soldier. A decent man. Should keep a better watch on his sister.
“Besides,” the chit went on, moving down the line. “My brother doesn’t notice anything I do. He’s too busy figuring out his new duties.”
The earl then, not the heir. Neglecting one of those duties though.Someone needs to take this chit in hand.
Her voice trailed away, and eventually the two of them disappeared into the icy London fog. He reached down then and picked up the offering she dropped in his lap. He stuffed the bread in his mouth with shaking hands.Excess of gin or cold? The weather had gotten sharp; he didn’t remember a winter as cold as this one, but then, he’d never lived on the streets before. It must be approaching January, he thought. If he didn’t find shelter soon, he probably wouldn’t survive until spring.
Do I care?The question occupied him for a moment. He certainly had choices, as none of the other wretches sheltering behind the warehouse who hoped to beg at the rear door to Finnegan’s Pub did.
Choices. He didn’t deserve them and couldn’t be certain he still had them. Would his father welcome him if he saw his son like this? If he knew what Ethan had done? The thought of facing it all kept him in this alley; gin—when he could get it—kept the thought away.
He wrapped the remains of the blanket he had stolen around his shoulders as tightly as he could and tried to force all thought from his mind. The hardest thing to banish was the memory of the woman’s blue eyes and one final thought:Someone needs to take that chit in hand.
He squeezed his eyes shut and sought sleep. Somewhere deep inside him the desire to survive stirred to life, broke open, and began to plant roots in the dark.
* * *
Lady Flora Landrum, youngest sister of the current earl, arrived at Chadbourn House via the back gate to avoid the neighbors’ prying eyes. The knocker on the front had been removed from the door, indicating the entire family had departed. The neighbors all knew the earl wasn’t in residence, living as he did in bachelor rooms at the Albany, and they also believed Flora had left London when her sister’s family departed for the country. She hoped they would continue to believe it. Let them see a servant hurrying in via the tradesmen’s entrance. The empty rooms and skeleton staff in the supposedly-closed townhouse suited Flo just fine.
“Leave those boots here for the boot boy; you don’t want to tramp on the good rugs what with where those have been. I’ll have your bath sent up right quick, Lady Flora, and Martha will bring those rags down to me,” Mrs. Miller said, standing arms akimbo, frowning at Flo.
The boot boy has been sent to Chadbourn’s country estate, as had most of the servants; Flo took off her boots and left them by the door anyway. It had been ridiculously easy to stay behind when her sister’s family left for the country. She had simply walked to Chadbourn House with a valise. Emery, Sylvia’s husband, ignored her, and Sylvia had been too lost in her ’morning tonic’ to notice. Mrs. Miller— the cook and, when the house was officially closed, housekeeper—made no secret of her disapproval, but wouldn’t give Flo away.
