Free Barbara Metzger by An Affair of Interest Page A

but he’d suffered enough pulling Bren’s chestnuts out of the fire. Let the stripling dig himself in deeper. “Cut line, Mother,” Brennan started. “You know the governor ain’t in the petticoat line, never has been. And he don’t play more than a hand or two of whist or drink overmuch. Gout won’t let him. Besides, this last scrape wasn’t all my fault.”
    “Of course not, you’re too stupid to get into so much trouble on your own! I know exactly who is to blame. When I get my hands on that—”
    “As a matter of fact, Mother, none of it would have happened if you had let me join the army as I wanted.”
    “Are you saying it is my fault?”
    Forrest moved to stand in front of the buhl table; he’d always admired that Sevres vase on it.
    “Of course not, Mother. It’s just that, well, London’s full of chances to drink and gamble and, yes, meet that kind of woman. There’s nothing much else to do.”
    “My dogs have better sense. You are supposed to spend your time in town at parties and museums and plays and picnics, meeting the right kind of woman. And as for the army, you lobcock, you can’t even keep yourself in one piece in London! Imagine what might happen to you in Spain. Go to your room.”
    “Go to my room? You cannot send me to the nursery like a child, Mother. I am twenty-two.”
    “And you can come down to dinner when you act it.”
    Bren wasn’t in shape to put on the formal clothes the duchess required at her table, nor make the long trek up and down the arched stairways. Still, to be dismissed like a schoolboy in short pants rankled. “But, Mother ...”
    The duchess picked up a potted fern from the side table. Bren left.
    Lady Mayne turned to her eldest. “I’m going, I’m going,” he surrendered, starting for the stairs to help Brennan.
    “And I,” she pronounced, still holding the plant, “am going to the greenhouse.”
    Forrest spun around and dashed down the hall after her. “Not the greenhouse, Mother! Not all that glass!”
    * * * *
    A few hours later the duchess relented. Maybe she had been too hard on Forrest. He had brought Brennan home, after all. She decided to forgive him and listen to the whole story, perhaps hearing some news of the duke. She would even bring Forrest a cup of one of her special brews of tea. The poor boy looked like he needed it.
    When the duchess knocked on Forrest’s door and received no answer, she thought he might be sleeping. She turned the handle and tiptoed in to check. The bed was empty, so he must be feeling better. She’d just go along to Brennan’s room to see how he was faring.
    On her way out, the duchess chanced to catch sight of a foul piece of linen on her son’s otherwise immaculate dresser. She knew that new valet of his was a slacker! Not in her house, Lady Mayne swore, yanking on the bellpull. She went to pick up the offending cloth, to demand its immediate removal, and that of the person responsible. Sweet mercy, the linen was bloodstained, and wrapped around ...
    If Forrest thought going down to Sussex would have stopped the talk in London, he was wrong. The duchess’s shriek could have been heard in Hyde Park. If he thought his injuries would heal quicker in the country, he was wrong. Flying up those stairs did not do his ribs any good. Taking a flying teacup on the ear did not do his face any good. Listening to his mother berate him in front of his valet, the butler, two footmen, a housemaid, and his grinning brother did not do his composure any good.
    And that was after the duchess realized the bundle was a woman’s hair and not a Pekingese pelt.
    “Well, old boy,” the viscount told Nelson in the cold dower house library, “it’s just you and me again.” And a bottle of Madeira. “You’re the wastrel and I’m the womanizer. No, I’m the ruffian and the rake. You’re just the rat catcher.”
    Tarnation, how could his own mother think he’d ever take up the life of a libertine? Gads, that’s the last