The Elusive Earl

Chapter One

“How is it possible that London reeks even more intensely than it did nine years ago?” Graham MacNiel hung his hat on a wall hook, nodded to the harried tavern maid, and took a seat. “You’re looking well St. Didier.”

St. Didier, always a considerate sort, had chosen a corner table, meaning both he and Graham could sit with their backs to the wall.

“We’re to believe that’s the smell of progress.” St. Didier had been nursing a small pint, or pretending to, based on the amount still remaining in his mug. “One might say you’re looking robust, MacNiel, and rather formidable. Please stop glowering as if you’d delight in starting a melee.”

“No melees until I’ve had a drink.”

St. Didier had dressed for the occasion, meaning the hat on the chair beside him was a dusty, low-crowned beaver, his cuffs frayed, and his jacket worn at the elbows. He smelled faintly of horse, suggesting the jacket had been stored in the stable by design. All the careful costuming in the world could not disguise the watchful look in St. Didier’s dark eyes, the slight looseness of boots that allowed for a knife or three to be kept discreetly from sight.

He was leaner than Graham recalled him being, and his features were more sharply defined. Of all Graham’s acquaintances, St. Didier alone might have fared well in the Antipodes.

Not necessarily a compliment, given that St. Didier was an English gentleman of aristocratic origins.

“Is the ale drinkable?” Graham asked.

“Of course. I would not poison you after spending two years trying to lure you home.”

Engaging in polite blackmail, more like. Dropping hints, letter by letter, and leaving innuendo between each line and next.

Graham’s drink arrived, another small pint. He set a coin in the tavern maid’s tray, then another. She’d give them privacy, or what passed for privacy in this dank, malodorous, dockside watering hole. St. Didier watched that transaction with unreadable eyes.

“This isn’t home,” Graham said, blowing the head off his ale. “Home is a good four hundred and fifty miles north. Perthshire is ever so much more fragrant, and one encounters a lot fewer English aristos there.”

The comment was intended to test St. Didier’s self-possession. St. Didier’s family had boasted of a viscountcy in his uncle’s day, but no male heir of the body, anywhere, of any description, had been available to succeed the old boy, and the title—along with a significant pile of wealth—had reverted to the crown.

“No aristos here, MacNeil. Perhaps your travels affected your eyesight.”

His travels. Hilarious.

“My travels damn near put an end to me, St. Didier. New South Wales boasts a wee spider that can kill you with one bite. Sydney harbor’s denizen include a jellyfish that can literally sting you out of your mind the pain is so unbearable, and then you die of the shock. The crocodiles can snap your spine when they bite, and if I start maundering on about venomous snakes we’ll never get around to discussing the reason for your summons.”

A subtle puzzlement infused St. Didier’s features. “You’re not exaggerating.”

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“I understate the matter, and only the English could believe such a land suitable for civilizing. You’re in for a challenge, you lot, though I grant you, Governor Macquarie—a Scotsman, of course—has some worthy ideas and the determination to see them through.” Macquarie would be toppled eventually by the contingent of prosperous settlers who saw the free labor of a penal colony as a greater benefit then a thriving, open society, but Macquarie’s radical ideas would not be recalled to England with him.

“One has the sense that the terrors of Terra Australis must be exaggerated,” St. Didier said. “Here, there be dragons, but on land.”

Beneath somebody at the bar launching into a foul ditty about the queen’s privy, and a lot of inebriated fools toasting the tavern maid’s ankles, Graham let a silence stretch. Once upon a time, he’d considered St. Didier a friend.

A warning was in order. “Do you ever miss your family seat, St. Didier? That grand, lovely estate, carefully tended for generations by your ancestors, now going completely to ruin in the hands of some royal tenant who’ll bleed the place dry in a decade?”

“Of course, I miss it.”

“Now imagine,” Graham went on, “that you’re put on a ship that could well be your coffin, and consigned literally to the other side of the world. You are sent as far from your home as it’s possible to go this side of death. Throw in the spiders and snakes, the unending disdain of people who wouldn’t dare look you in the eye back home, and add the even worse contempt from the honest criminals you were transported with. All the while, your home, your birth right, the land you were bred to cherish and protect is in the hands of solicitors.”

“They are honest men, MacNeil. I made sure of it.”

“They are English lawyers who know nothing about maintaining an estate in Perthshire, the court made sure of that. Thanks to that same court, I was banished for seven years on pain of death, but the court never counted on poor John drowning in the loch, did they? Now I’m the earl. Such a pity.”

St. Didier took a dilatory sip of his ale. “You’re angry.”

“I’m in the presence of a clairvoyant. Last time that happened, I was in India. One doesn’t get over being convicted of murdering one’s beloved granny, St. Didier. Not if one is innocent.”

“Not murder, involuntary manslaughter, and you pled guilty, MacNeil.”

“A trial would have killed my grandfather.” As it happened, grandpapa hadn’t lasted out the year. “He saw me off.” More to the point, the old earl had seen ensured that both comforts and necessities had accompanied Graham on the transport ship, along with tools, books, and a few luxuries.

Grandpapa’s generosity had been literally life-saving. Even the Royal Navy’s seamen hesitated steal cargo that was technically the property of an earl. Good old Highland height and heft had improved the odds considerably too.

The rest had been sheer, unwavering cussedness, always an asset among the forcibly transported.

“You’ll go to Perthshire, then?” St. Didier asked, as the singer at the bar turned into a passable quartet, though the counter-tenor was flat.

Graham spoke more quietly rather than compete with the noise. “I did not come back to Merry Olde out of sentimental attachment to Fat George. I’ve served out my sentence, and I’m the rubbishing earl now. I’ve doubtless some traditional Scottish penury to enjoy. Worse yet, if I know my neighbors, at least three feuds will have all but lapsed for want of some reiving and drunken insults. One does one’s duty, St. Didier, or traditions go entirely by the wayside.”

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St. Didier’s expression became broodish, or reverted to its naturally thoughtful inscrutability. “That’s a yes.”

“I leave in the morning. I’ve met with the solicitors, obtained their final report and best wishes, though of course, they refrained from shaking my hand. You’d be welcome if you chose to travel north with me, though I appreciate that the notice is short.”

Short enough that St. Didier could refuse politely, or demur until a later date that would never come around.

“Are you going by land or sea?” St. Didier asked.

“Overland. I’ve had a bellyful of the briny deep.” To Rio by way of mind-shattering heat and doldrums—whoever clad British naval officers in wool had been in Lucifer’s pay—then down to the Horn of Africa for some horrendous gales. The knife fights on the final push across the Roaring Forties had turned deadly, and the drinking water brackish. Mountains of ice had floated by on horizons as forbidding as they were monotonous.

On the return journey, Cape Horn had been a nightmare wrapped in a hellscape tied up with banshee winds and bargains with the devil.

St. Didier finished his ale. “I can accompany you, if that is truly your wish.”

“You want to come with me. That’s what this little tête-à-tête chez L’Odeur de la Thames is about. You’re afraid I’ll commit some premeditated manslaughter once I get back to Perth, aren’t you? St. Didier, you are not my nanny.”

“Will you?” St. Didier asked. “Commit manslaughter or homicide of any variety?”

“I would not know with whom to start. You can come along, St. Didier, but don’t push your luck.”

The ale was surprisingly good. Graham left half of it in the tankard for the gaunt lad trudging with his rag and bucket from table to table, and put another coin under the tankard for the boy to slip into a pocket.

“Why?” St. Didier asked, as he and Graham stepped out into the damp and chilly spring night. “Why bring me along?”

“I saved you asking to come along, of course.”

“You intended to request that I travel with you. I’m slow, MacNeil, but I do get there eventually.”

St. Didier wasn’t slow, he was thorough. A very different matter entirely. “I was convicted of accidentally killing my grandmother, whom I loved. I did not kill her, accidentally or otherwise.”

“If you say so.”

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“I do say so, and you question my word on that matter ever again, I will accidental bash you into the next shire, St. Didier.” The night air reeked of the sewage in the river, fish, tar, and piss.

“You’re taller and stronger, I’m faster. That hasn’t changed.”

Yes, it had. “I was wrongly accused of accidentally killing my grandmother. You are along to ensure the same misery does not befall me again. No telling who I might be wrongly accused of tossing down the garderobe or heaving from the parapets.”

“I’m your body guard?”

“You are my spare eyes and ears, laddie, and mind you fulfill that office with your usual attention to detail, faultless recall, and complete lack of humor.”

The footsteps were light, almost lost in the slap of the water against the wharves, and the generally raillery along any dockside street. Too light. Too furtive. Not another patron ready to sleep of some indulgence in a cozy bed.

Trouble, and so soon.

“You haven’t asked about the ladies, MacNiel.”

Technically, Graham was a lordship now. An accidental earl. St. Didier was doubtless being delicate by refraining from proper address.

The distance to the footsteps closed to a few yards. “The ladies are thriving, I’ve no doubt. Peter would have told me otherwise. He’s very fond of them.”

Between the words of and them, Graham turned, withdrew a knife from his boot, threw, and shoved St. Didier into the nearest doorway. A satisfying oath sounded in the darkness, followed by an uneven tattoo of boots disappearing in the darkness.

“MacNeil, what in the name of…” St. Didier cocked his head. “How did you know? I realized we were being followed only as you started blathering about extra eyes and ears. You meant to warn me with that reference, didn’t you?”

“I meant to warn the poor sod who will have a very sore arm come morning—as well as possession of one of my cheaper knives. Move along, laddie, we don’t want him coming back with his friends to return my blade.”

St. Didier set a brisk pace toward more genteel surrounds. “I was wrong.”

“I shall notify the Times. What were you wrong about?”

“You are faster. That shouldn’t be possible.”

“And I should never have found myself on that transport ship.” No steps followed as the stench of the river faded and the lamplighters’ diligence was more routinely in evidence.

“Nobody else calls me laddie,” St. Didier muttered. “Your women folk worried about you, MacNeil.”

Not half so much as I worried about them. “They are not my womenfolk. They can inspect me to their hearts’ delight when we reach Perth. You’ll be ready at first light?”

“Of course.”

“Then I will leave you to enjoy whatever passes for dreams in that hard head of yours, St. Didier. Expect to travel with more swiftness than comfort.”

“We will travel with both.”

“As long as we travel north. I’ll bid you goodnight.” Graham sauntered off in the direction of his temporary abode, and was calling it an adequately dignified exit at the end of a successful meeting when St. Didier’s voice cut through the darkness.

“MacNeil!”

Graham turned to see the pride of the St. Didier’s standing under a streetlamp, his attire that of a middling groom stable boy.

“A man of your lordship’s station cannot indulge in random rudeness.” St. Didier extended a bare hand. “Goodnight, Dunhaven.”

The proffered handshake was actually quite a presumption, from a commoner to a peer. Also a test.

Graham shook, touched a finger to his hat brim, and left his body guard, spare eyes and ears, and self-appointed governess in the circle of dim light.

Body guard, governess, et cetera and so forth, and just possibly, maybe, after a fashion… but no. A convicted killer knew better than attempt friendships, accidental or otherwise.