A Gentleman of Very Few Words

Chapter One

“A wedding journey by the sea!” My beloved gazed southward, as if the crashing waves and brisk shore breezes lurked behind Caldicott Hall’s home wood rather than miles away. “What a marvelous idea, Julian. We can take Leander and Atticus and they will recall the happy memories for the rest of their lives.”

A wedding journey by the sea was not to my taste. A wedding journey by the sea with a couple of fidgety boys in tow struck me as a month’s worth of disasters waiting to happen, which I would recall for the rest of my life.

“Might I not have you all to myself, Perry? A forced excursion to the shore, much less for both children, might hold little appeal for them. They are hardly boon companions.” And Hyperia, fair-minded to a fault, would not choose between Atticus and Leander.

We occupied the gazebo along a slope in the Hall’s park. Beyond the hedgerow at the foot of the hill sat the stables and various other outbuildings. Above us, the Hall reposed in all its springtime, neoclassic glory.

“Who could object to time spent by the ocean, Julian? No vista is as imposing, no sunlight as bright as morning sun upon the water.”

The very same bright sunlight that literally hurt my eyes. “The sea has tempests,” I said, gaze upon the solid reality of the Hall’s eastern façade. “Those tempests sink ships. People drown in the sea, and as for the shore, it frequently smells like rotten eggs and is rife with flies. Great and terrible waves rise up from the sea and wipe out entire villages, for no discernible reason. Rip currents bear the unsuspecting to a watery death if they are foolish enough to swim the shallows.”

Hyperia rummaged in our picnic basket and produced a pair of oranges. “You list all the reasons why little boys would be fascinated with the ocean, and rightly so. The sea is one of creation’s most impressive wonders, and no son of Britannia should go his entire life without beholding it.”

The sea had taken so many of Britannia’s sons off to war, sons who never again beheld their native land, that the sea should beg Britainnia’s eternal pardon. Bad enough that the rubbishing sea was no longer any safeguard against invasion, but must it speed so many good men to their deaths?

My intended passed me an orange, which I set about peeling. “I grant you the sea is an impressive sight.” A daunting sight—a heartbreaking sight—as the shores of one’s homeland grew smaller and smaller. “Supervising two small boys on holiday will require impressive resources.”

“That’s easy. We take Miss Hunter and a pair of nursery maids. A couple of the younger footmen will be delighted to accompany us, and I’m sure Lady Ophelia’s staff will aid the cause.”

I ripped off a strip of peel too precipitously and got a squirt of juice on my fingers for my heedlessness.

Hyperia took my hand and put my fingers into her mouth. “Delicious,” she said, running her tongue over the tip of my index finger. “I promise not to neglect you on our wedding journey, Julian, but we must find something to do during the day while we recover from our nightly connubial exertions.”

Was there ever a more luminous phrase than nightly connubial exertions?

I was in the middle of debate, and marshalled my wits accordingly. “I thought, wherever we journeyed, we might picnic, go for a stroll, nap, read, nap, hack out, nap some more.” I’d contemplated long, lazy days spent mostly in bed or in deshabille, and long lazy nights spent celebrating the joys of the married state.

Nattering children, rotting seaweed, and bad memories had not figured in my fantasies at all. For that matter, neither had imposing on my godmother’s hospitality, much less taking an entourage of staff who would report the details of our excursion to my mother, and to the larger community at the Hall.

“Hyperia, what I seek most of all on our wedding journey is privacy with you. The sort of privacy we haven’t had much of, for various reasons. I want time to talk about trivialities and read the newspaper to each other over breakfast. Time to pretend to fish while I ogle your ankles as you wade barefoot in some obliging steam…”

“My ankles are simply ankles, Jules.” She took the orange from me and finished peeling it. “We will have a lifetime to read the newspaper to each other over breakfast. We need not accept Lady Ophelia’s offer, but we have seen little of her lately, and she was instrumental in bringing us back together.”

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Hyperia, perhaps unknowingly, had just fired some heavy artillery.

At Waterloo, where seasoned officers had been in perilously short supply, I’d acquitted myself adequately. That effort on my part had been not only my irrefutable duty, but also a futile attempt to atone for earlier failures in uniform.

While serving in Spain, I’d been taken captive by the French, which would have been disgrace enough for several eternities. While imprisoned, I had also accomplished exactly nothing to protect my older brother Harry, who’d been taken prisoner as well. That sequence of events had sent me into a melancholic spiral at the bottom of which lay the ultimate act of surrender.

Former officers were notoriously prone to accidents while cleaning their pistols. I had been contemplating such an accident a year or so after the final battle, when Lady Ophelia had demanded that I escort her to a house party.

The notion had struck me as bizarre. What mattered pall mall and polonaises when one’s brother was likely rotting in a shallow grave on some French mountainside?

And yet, one did not lightly refuse her ladyship, who had herself been acting at Hyperia’s prompting. I would not consign my godmother to unescorted travel on Albion’s rutted roads, and thus my duty had been clear.

Perry had been among the guests at the party, and that encounter had begun my slow climb from the Slough of Despond back to a semblance of normal functioning.

So normal had my functioning become that I was soon to marry the most wonderful female personage ever to grace a man with her smiles.

“If we spend our honey month along the southern coast,” I said, “we might look in on her ladyship as we journey back to the Hall. The idea of imposing on her, and expecting her to play hostess to the children as well, might be asking a bit much.”

“She is inviting us, Julian, and she specifically asks after the boys.”

She would. Godmama had lost two children to the vagaries of illness, and she blamed herself for her son’s death in particular. She had two other children enjoying healthy adulthood, but the losses were yet carried in her heart.

For all I knew, she was more interested in renewing her acquaintance with Atticus and Leander than she was in hosting a newly wed couple.

“Eat your orange, Jules.”

I tore off a section and did as I was told. “Delightful,” I said, gazing like a fool in love at Hyperia’s mouth. “Delectable and delicious.”

“A lucky orange, so late in the season.” She started peeling the second orange. “Her ladyship writes that she’s surrounded by interesting people for once. She says her patch of the seaside usually attracts governesses on holiday and pensioners, J. Worthington Pierce has decided to take a house in the vicinity, and all manner of literary fashionables are in evidence as a result.”

Literary fashionables. Spare me, Great Jehovah. Fops scribbling fiction. Etiquette aunties. The marquess’s memoirs.

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“Pierce writes children’s books.” The sum total of my knowledge regarding Mr. Pierce.

“I am astonished that you recognize the name, though half the realm has bought his tales. They are written to appeal even to boys, and have succeeded enormously.”

“He’s mentioned in the society pages, and I read those.” A former recognizance officer never lost the habit of vigilance. “His characters are intrepid, plucky, and tiresomely dauntless.” Also bratty, proud, and foolish. “They have loyal dogs for pets or sagacious cats that never chase Miss Verbena’s loose canary.”

“Miss Verbena?” Hyperia dropped her peels over the side of the gazebo and tore off a section of orange. “I must have missed that one.”

The nursery collection held six Pierce titles, though the author was always referred to as the notably prolific Mr. Pierce. Considering how short the stories were, six was doubtless only a sampling of his work.

“Miss Verbena is my own invention. Her Grace added some J. Worthington Pierce titles to the collection in the nursery. I might have read one or two to Leander.”

But not to Atticus, who having come from humble origins, had attached himself firmly to the stable. He had a rudimentary sort of literacy acquired through Hyperia’s tireless tutelage. Atticus would not have made the same strides for me, but for Hyperia, he would do battle with even the hazards of proper English.

And like my intrepid tiger, I would take on any foe at Hyperia’s behest.

“We could be married by sea, Jules.” Hyperia’s tone became wistful. “To the music of the waves, in the sparkling light, the fresh air wafting about.”

The scent of rotten eggs, clouds of flies. Pestilential sea gulls threatening the buffet. A grim horizon that led to death and disgrace.

“You’d like that?”

She nodded and took another section of orange. “I am not fanciful by nature, but a seaside wedding would be different, as we are different. I’m sure Her Grace would understand.”

We had completed our last investigation agreeing to wed within a week. The duchess had suggested we wait a month, lest our wedding breakfast menu consist of cold eggs and day-old bread.

Neither Hyperia nor I had cared one whit for the menu, but we did esteem the duchess, and wanted to get off on a good foot with her.

“Her Grace will join our royal progress,” I said. “She enjoys the seaside.” Though in the name of all that was reasonable, what new husband wanted his mother underfoot on his wedding journey?

“She speaks highly of Mr. Pierce.” Hyperia passed me a section of her orange. “I gather their paths have crossed socially. The duchess says if books such as Mr. Pierce’s had been around in your childhood, Harry might have turned out to be a much better scholar.”

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Harry’s name was not the blight on our conversations that it would have been even a year ago, but nothing about my late brother was a happy thought.

“Leander would enjoy meeting Mr. Pierce, I’m sure,” I said, then regretted the words. What was I doing, making Hyperia’s arguments for her? She was blazingly capable of holding up her side of any debate.

“I was thinking more of Atticus,” she said. “He disdains letters, but if he could see that skill with the pen can make a man respected and well set up, he might revise his stubborn opinion.”

Atticus simply lacked Leander’s aptitude for book learning. He did not disdain literacy, so much as reading and writing were hard for him, and had thus far failed to yield him any noticeable advantages. Skill in the saddle, a willingness to work, and to do a reliably good job were respected in Atticus’s equine world.

Perhaps I could persuade Pierce to write some horse stories.

I recognized the thought for the surrender that it was. “Do you want to make this journey for the sake of the boys, Hyperia, or for your sake? We can invite Pierce and his family here to the Hall, and he will likely come out of respect for Her Grace. If it’s the wedding by the sea you long for, that’s a different matter.”

“I want both, Jules. I want that wedding by the sea, and I want the boys to have a memorable holiday. We have been so busy investigating in recent months that we haven’t had a proper holiday ourselves, and that does not bode well for our married habits.”

“A valid point. Children should not be expected to endure endless toil.”

Hyperia popped the last of her orange into her mouth. “Neither should grown men who spend hours every day on estate business when they aren’t investigating every potentially scandalous conundrum polite society tosses at them, because Lord Julian Caldicott will never fail what he sees as his duty.”

“I like investigating.” In fact, I needed the occasional vexatious puzzle to… to what? Keep sharp skills earned in wartime? To feel useful and necessary? To feel important? To feel alive?

“You don’t rest enough, Julian, and we must undertake to reform that sorry habit immediately.”

“Beloved, I strongly suspect that once we are married, I will be spending a great deal more time in bed, and that the effects of this change will be deeply reviving whether or not I am resting in the strictest sense.”

I was flirting, also dodging Hyperia’s accusation. I did not rest enough—I could not sleep well most nights—and my record in this regard was unbroken well before Waterloo. Marriage was more likely to have detrimental effect on Hyperia’s sleep than a salubrious effect on mine, if she preferred that we share a bed.

“The sea is marvelous for rebalancing the humors,” she said. “If you would rather have a quiet little ceremony in the family chapel, we can do that. We can do two ceremonies, if you prefer, but I fear that Lady Ophelia’s offer might not be repeated, and not because she lacks the generosity of spirits to extend it.”

I considered what facts I knew, and kicked myself for my oversight. “The Season is reaching its crescendo, and her ladyship has already repaired to the seaside. She would hardly quit Town early for anything less than her health.”

At my last sighting of her, Lady Ophelia had seemed slightly diminished. Not aged so much as faded. The sparkle was still there, the inherent grace, the snap and energy of a vivacious mind, but the bodily temple was growing less robust, even frail.

Lady Ophelia was at least of an age with my mother, a daunting realization.

I stood no chance against Hyperia’s arguments when taken together: Lady Ophelia’s delicate health, the need for the boys to have some leisure, the appeal of the seaside to Hyperia’s imagination, and my mother’s insistence on a bit pomp and forethought regarding the wedding particulars.

“We shall be wed by the sea,” I said, “and make lasting memories for every member of the wedding party, including the bride and groom.”

“Thank you, Jules.” Hyperia deposited herself in my lap, and treated me to such passionate kisses that all thoughts of tempests and troubles flew from my head, replaced by thoughts—if one could call them that—of a very husbandly nature.