Boleyn’s worried expression cleared and he bowed. ‘Thank you, my lord. I vow, I despaired of ever hearing those words from your lips.’
Brody decided not to enquire which of his words met Boleyn’s approval. He’d just bask in the approval while he could.
‘So, my agenda?’ he prompted. Now he was in the right frame of mind, he might as well get a move on, just in case the mood dissipated. Not that he thought it would, but Brody had seen too much to assume anything.
‘Well now.’ Boleyn rested the tips of his fingers on his chin, an expression Brody recognised as Boleyn in pensive mode. ‘A shave first, for, not to put too fine a point on it, you look like a vagrant.’
Brody ran his fingers over his chin. The three-day-old growth was neither fashionable nor sculpted. It was merely facial hair. Untidy, stubbly, facial hair.
‘Point taken. First a shave. Then?’
‘Then you should take up the reins and re-immerse yourself in the estate. If that’s your idea?’
Brody nodded. ‘I’ve wallowed and been sidestepped enough. No more.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it.’ Boleyn smiled. ‘If I may suggest a visit to old Mrs Wiggins? She’s in Apple Cottage, since Joe, you remember her son, passed. He was in one of the foot regiments and was lost at Waterloo.’
Brody winced, and nodded. The carnage was all too fresh in his mind. Even though no one knew he was there, he’d been around, and seen more terrible things in one day than anyone would want to see in a lifetime.
‘And Miss Cinderford,’ Boleyn continued. ‘She’s next door. They both have fond memories of you and never fail to ask after you.’
‘Cinders?’ Brody used the nickname for his old nurse. ‘I thought she’d be long gone by now.’
Boleyn shook his head. ‘Hale and hearty. Still walks to church twice on Sundays, takes her turn on the flower rota and teaches the children their scriptures at Sunday school. She’s been looking forward to your return.’ He didn’t add, as he well could, ‘and you’ve been back months and seen no one’. ‘Chef will have some pastries for you to take to the ladies. It’ll save Mrs Loveage a detour when she goes to visit the pensioners on the other side of the river. She tries to get round them all once a week, now your mama is absent.’
Mrs Loveage, his housekeeper – known to Brody’s younger self as Lovey, and at one time an undernursemaid – was another stalwart who wasn’t in the first blush of youth. If Boleyn was trying to make Brody feel guilty, Brody knew fine well the man had more than succeeded. If he ever wed, that activity would fall to his wife. If. A little word with a big meaning.
‘Of course. Now I can help.’
Boleyn looked sceptical and Brody grinned. ‘Well not in everything but when you or she think I’m needed. What else?’
‘Cakes for the school. It’s the monthly treat for those who attend regularly. With cook laid up, Mrs Loveage is charge.’
It was the first Brody had heard of the cook’s illness. Guiltily he wondered what else his staff had kept from him because they thought – mistakenly – he was indifferent.
‘What’s wrong with the cook?’ He needed to know. Dammit she is my responsibility.
‘Cooking sherry.’
What? ‘The cook is addicted to cooking sherry?’
Boleyn shook his head and coughed. ‘Ahem, only for one week in each month, my lord. And we manage.’
Brody digested that somewhat puzzling statement for several seconds before the light dawned. Those damned days when the curse ailed Mercedes so badly that she took to her bed alone. Although he didn’t think the cooking sherry ever went with her. More likely the finest wine and a bottle of port. As ever, the thought of Mercedes hit him hard and sent a searing rush of anguish through him. Brody blocked his painful thoughts off and concentrated on what was being said.
‘Good, so, you were saying about the school children and cakes?’ He changed the subject hastily. He really didn’t want a conversation about a woman’s body at that moment.
‘This month all forty-seven pupils are eligible. Miss Grey is overjoyed with that.’
Brody supposed Miss Grey was the new schoolmistress. He vaguely remembered his mama saying Miss Pettifer, the previous incumbent, had left to take care of her widowed father. He wondered idly whose idea the cakes were but decided it might be best not to enquire. Just in case it was seen as a criticism. This Duke thing is fraught with pitfalls. He cast his mind back to the elegant lady his body had lusted over all those weeks earlier. He’d never seen her since, even though he’d kept an eye out for her on his sojourns around the area. Was she Miss Grey? Damn, definitely not in my league then. He certainly could not proposition someone who was, to all intents and purposes, in his employ.
‘Cakes then. Excellent.’ Brody had no wish to change anything unless he felt a need to do so. Cakes for attendance seemed a good idea to him. The more children who got an education, the better he – and whatever anyone thought it would be he – could ensure his estates were well maintained and prospered. ‘I’ll shave, change into my riding clothes and boots and meet you back here.’
Boleyn beamed. ‘I told Mrs Loveage you’d soon be chafing at the bit and raring to take up the reins again. Once you recovered.’ His majordomo turned on his heel smartly, and slipped behind the green baize door discreetly located under the imposing staircase.
Recovered from what? Brody pondered the question as he made his way up the stairs two at a time to swap his house shoes for riding boots and a jacket which, although more befitting his status, didn’t set him too far apart from anyone he might meet, and jeopardise his intentions to be a hands-on owner.
Hands-on. He wished.
Damn. That thought reminded him once more of his late mistress, Mercedes. Mercedes of the ‘black as a raven’s wing’ hair and deep blue eyes, which could soften into submission, or flash with anger. Their time together had been brief, tempestuous, and more than enjoyable. Mercedes insisted it was not for ever, she wouldn’t leave and go to England with him. Instead, she said, it would be best they part with affection before he returned to England.
A year or so earlier, Brody had been sent to another part of the country to reconnoitre a way for troops to infiltrate the area. On his return he had found her battered and bleeding, with her hair shaved and carved into her chest the word – in English – ‘traitor’.
She died in his arms, and Brody swore never again would he lose his heart. He’d closed in on himself and done his job with ruthless determination.
It was no wonder he’d taken so long to regroup.
Since then, Brody ruminated, his cock was in danger of forgetting what its mission in life really was, and was in trouble of seizing up through disuse. It had been a lowering realisation that to enjoy delights of the flesh, one needed to be where the ladies were. Sadly where those willing to play could be found, so also could their children or worse, their spouses.
Plus, those debs desperate for a husband, with all the ruthlessness needed to ensnare an eligible man by fair means or foul, appeared from nowhere. Usually it seemed… foul. At a soiree his mother had cajoled him to attend, he had to threaten one lady when she’d followed him into the antechamber of the gentlemen’s smoking room. Unbeknown on his side and with full, snare-intentions on hers. Brody been treated to an eyeful of bosom and a threat to say it was him who coerced her into the room. He had departed via the window, but not before he told her in no uncertain terms who would come off the worse if she tried any such thing. Indisputably, it wouldn’t be him, he’d make sure of that. His ire and determination left one very scared debutant to hightail it out of the chamber and him to go back