My Fair Gentleman Read online

Finally deciding he couldn’t avoid the inevitable, he paid the cab driver and made his way to the front door. It was a large, beautiful home on a beautiful street, and he hated it on sight. Raising the door knocker with a fair amount of distaste, he rapped sharply and waited.

  “Yes?”

  Jack eyed the stoic butler through the slightly opened door and, with an effort, tamped down the anger rising in his chest. “My name is Jack Elliot. I’m here at the request of . . .” He choked on the words, couldn’t spit them out.

  “His Lordship, the Earl of Stansworth?” the butler intoned.

  Jack nodded once and felt his nostrils flare with expressed air.

  “His Lordship is expecting you. This way, if you please.” Jack entered the foyer and endured the butler’s quick perusal. “I would offer to take your hat and coat, but . . .”

  Jack shot a look at the man, who stood a good foot shorter than his own six feet two. “But I’m not wearing either,” he said flatly, maintaining eye contact until the butler looked away.

  The man had enough sense to refrain from further comment and instead led Jack up a wide staircase that turned on a landing and then continued the rest of the way to the second floor. Jack took in his surroundings as they traveled the length of a long hallway, well aware that they should have been familiar to him. The house should have been one in which he’d spent countless hours as a child, running from nannies and being scolded for causing a ruckus in his grandparents’ home.

  He looked at the high ceilings, the crisp mouldings, the plants placed on side tables and at the end of the hallway beneath a cleaned and polished window that looked as if it had only just been installed and painted. He tried to envision his father walking that very hall and couldn’t draw forth the image. It was difficult to remember him clearly, though. Twenty years had done much to dull the memory.

  Finally, at the last door on the right, the butler stopped and knocked once, lightly, before opening it a crack. Jack heard a response from inside the room, and the door opened wider to reveal the little toad.

  “Clarence Fuddleston.” The man bowed slightly. “We met last night.”

  Jack looked down at him for a moment before finally responding. “I remember,” he said drily. He stepped into the room and, in spite of his best intentions, allowed his eyes to wander until he saw the object of his frustrations. The large doors leading from the dressing room to his grandfather’s bedchamber were wide open.

  “Come here, then,” his grandfather said from the bed, where he sat propped against a mountain of pillows. Fuddleston hadn’t exaggerated; the old man seemed to be knocking at death’s door as they stood there. As if reading his thoughts, the solicitor gave him a look of . . . what? Sympathy? Fuddleston beckoned in invitation and followed when Jack finally made his feet move across the thick carpet and into the bedchamber.

  Jack looked at his grandfather, not bothering to hide the distaste he knew was written on his face. He had to admit, grudgingly, that the old earl had probably once looked very much like Jack’s father, and in fact Jack himself would likely resemble the old man when it was his turn to die, if fate decreed he should live that long.

  The earl’s eyes clouded then, and Jack was relieved to find himself unmoved. “You are the very vision of your father,” Stansworth said.

  “A fact you might have known if you had bothered to look for us through the years.”

  The earl gestured to a chair that had been placed by the bedside. “Sit.”

  “I prefer to stand.”

  The earl coughed, the spasm overtaking him quickly, and he hacked into a handkerchief he clutched in his bony fingers. When he pulled it away from his mouth, it was liberally smeared with red, and he hastily folded it in half with hands that shook. “I didn’t have to look for you,” he said, his voice like gravel. He gestured toward a glass of water on the nightstand. Jack, seeing that he stood between the nightstand and Fuddleston, finally reached for the glass himself and handed it to the old man.

  The earl swallowed the sip of water and cleared his throat, as winded as if he had run a mile. “I knew where you were the whole time,” he continued. “I kept myself abreast of your comings and goings; I was even at David’s funeral.”

  “You have no right to speak his name.” Jack kept his voice even, pleased that it didn’t vibrate with the anger he was sure must be rolling off him in waves.

  “He was my son.”

  “Whom you disinherited. I do not have time for idle chitchat. Tell me what you want for my mother’s debts and we will finish this ridiculous charade.”

  The earl smiled. “Smart you are, well-spoken. It is in your blood.” He coughed again. “Your mother’s debts are more than you can pay, even now. Even as you are about to claim your own ship. The price for your mother’s debts is as I wrote in the letter to you: You take your place as my heir and accept the earldom when I die.”

  “My father wasn’t your heir, and neither am I.”

  “I’ve had the documents processed.” Stansworth broke into another coughing fit. The sound was horrid, and Jack took perverse satisfaction in the notion that the one who had been responsible for so much misery was now meeting a painful end.

  Jack felt the fragile tether he held on his patience begin to tear as he fully processed his grandfather’s statement. He’d already had the documents processed? “Why?” he ground out. “Why now? You cast out my father because he dared to marry a fisherman’s daughter and then suddenly decide you want her son to take your place?” He rubbed the back of his neck at the base of his skull—a fall from the ship’s rigging when he was a cabin boy had inflicted an injury that still throbbed when he was under stress. He caught himself and forced his hand back to his side, unwilling to show weakness or any sign of agitation.

  “My late brother’s son—your father’s cousin Percival—is the next in line.” The earl leaned back against the pillows, looking even more pale and drawn than when Jack had entered. “And he is an idiot. I will not have him in this home, bearing my title. I will see it passed to my own direct line before I die.”

  “I do not want it. I am finished—have Mr. Fussbottom here begin the process to change the documents. I will find another way to repay the debt. You find yourself another heir.” Jack turned and elbowed his way past the solicitor, who looked at him with wide eyes.

  “Your sister, Sophia, she is a ladies’ maid, is she not?” the old man said.

  Jack stopped cold. “Leave her alone,” he growled. He turned slowly on his heel.

  “Nineteen years old, prettier than any of the ladies she’s had the misfortune to wait upon. As is always evidenced by the unwanted attention of the master of the house. She’s quickly running short of options—isn’t she? Entirely innocent though she is, there aren’t many ladies left in town willing to hire her, and if she were to lose her current position, I fear she would be forced into a drudge’s work, or worse. Whitechapel is full of young women who have no choices left.”

  “If you were not already so close to death, I would hasten you there myself.” Jack felt a vein in his forehead throbbing. Indeed, it was all he could do to keep from vaulting up onto the bed and strangling the life out of the earl.

  “I can make things very pleasant for your family with a nod to my solicitor here. Would you like to hear the terms?”

  Jack’s hand found the back of his neck by itself and massaged the ache there that he knew would develop into full-blown, debilitating pain within the hour. “What terms?”

  “You relinquish your position as first mate aboard the Flying Gull and take up residence here immediately. By evening, I will have your mother and sister moved to a home less than a mile away from here that has already been secured and furnished for their arrival. I have an account established in their names that will pay them yearly from the estate—neither of them need work another day in their lives. This would be especially good for your mother, who seems susceptible to every illness that makes its way through her sewing clientele.
”

  Jack’s heart thumped in his chest. He hadn’t known . . . his mother had never said anything. She had always been thin; he knew the London air couldn’t be good for her, but weak, even ill? How had he not known? Feeling slightly sick, he fought to keep from bracing himself against the huge bed’s four-post frame. The silence that roared through the room was deafening.

  “Why would it be so horrible?” the old man finally asked, quiet and weary. “To be titled, with money beyond your wildest expectations, and your family well-provided for throughout the rest of their lives?”

  “Because it’s yours.” Jack met his eyes, hating the very sight of him. “My father worked his fingers to the bone, and it still wasn’t enough. He borrowed from creditors who had no intentions of ever setting him free, and in the end he died on the docks.

  “I went to sea as a child to provide for my mother, who had a new baby and no income, when I should have been living in a warm home, with both of my parents, not knocked around and abused by deckhands who had nothing better to amuse them.”

  “It has made you strong,” the earl wheezed, coughing.

  The earl was once again orchestrating events to meet his own desires, and it felt like a noose around Jack’s neck. And yet the threat was clear—follow the man’s directives, or Jack’s family would suffer horribly. He had absolutely no choice. He felt heated with the restraint it took to keep from tearing the room apart with his hands.

  “Your actions killed my father and nearly destroyed my mother,” he hissed at the old man. “I hope that when you leave this room, you find yourself in hell.” Jack turned, glancing at Fuddleston as he made his way to the door. “Give the orders,” he told the shorter man. “I want my mother and sister in that house by sundown.”

  Chapter 3

  It is always a pleasure to help those in need, especially as it concerns proper behavior and decorum; when a lady or gentleman is given an opportunity to instruct or lead by example, it is an honour to be executed with a smile upon one’s face.

  Mistress Manners’ Tips for Every-day Etiquette

  Ivy Carlisle’s brow knit in a frown. A delicate frown, but a frown nonetheless. “Nana, I’m not altogether certain that one month is enough time to teach a sailor proper behavior. Especially if he has, as you say, spent the bulk of his life aboard a ship in the consistent company of ruffians. Were he a military man, it would be infinitely easier, of course, but his experience is with merchant vessels.”

  Olivia Knightley Carlisle, dowager countess of Huntington, smiled at her granddaughter over her cup of tea. “He did serve two years in His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Perhaps the task will not be as daunting as it seems. At any rate, his grandmother was my dearest friend in my youth, and I’ve made a promise to her dying husband that I will do my best to see the grandson launched into polite society.”

  Ivy frowned again and took a bite of her fruit salad, chewing it carefully as she registered the familiar feel of the dining room that had been the site of her weekly luncheon with Nana for as long as she could remember. The servants moved gracefully, almost silently. Manners were observed to perfection; all was appropriate and familiar. Comfortable.

  And now Nana wanted her to instruct a merchant seaman in the ways of polite society? It might be too difficult a task for even the accomplished Lady Ivy Carlisle to manage. But then, she never had been one to back down from a challenge.

  “Ivy,” Nana said, wiping at the corner of her mouth with a linen napkin, “you could do with a little something out of the ordinary. Do you not ever wish for more variety in the day?”

  “I have plenty of variety.” Ivy felt suddenly defensive. The last time Nana had broached a conversation of this sort, Ivy had found herself submitting a sample advice column to The Fine Lady’s Weekly Journal, which, to her surprise, had met with success. She had thought her weekly contribution to the ladies’ magazine—although written under the unidentifiable pseudonym of “Mistress Manners”—would have quieted her grandmother on the subject of Ivy’s supposedly boring life.

  “I speak not of a succession of afternoon teas and evening soirees, giving advice and teaching decorum to debutantes approaching the Season.” The older woman leaned in a bit, her eyes sparkling. “Do you never want to cause a bit of a scandal, Ivy?”

  Ivy felt her eyes widen. “Nana!” She glanced over her shoulder, hoping the servants had not overheard. “You know very well I cannot afford to step a foot out of line after Caroline’s disgrace,” she whispered.

  Nana shook her head. “I am not suggesting you run off to the continent with a soldier who has abandoned his regiment. Something milder. Dance the waltz three times with the same gentleman in one evening. Or be fitted for breeches and learn to ride astride rather than sidesaddle.”

  “Nana,” Ivy sighed, “you are destined to be this family’s only Original. You are able to do and say things the rest of us cannot.” She scowled, knowing full well the wrinkles such an expression would produce over time. “I am a writer now—for pay, no less—at your prodding. I had rather hoped the subject of my ‘daring’ would be closed.”

  Lady Carlisle took another sip of her tea and studied Ivy for so long that the young woman felt the urge to squirm. If she had been the kind to squirm, of course. “There is much in life to enjoy,” Nana finally said quietly. “Ivy, it wasn’t so long ago that you bubbled over with joy; it was infectious. And your temper was as enthusiastic as was your happiness. You still have that fiery personality beneath your calm exterior, and I curse the day your sister ruined her own life and squelched the spirit in yours.”

  Ivy felt a stab of sadness but refused to acknowledge it. “You know it very nearly killed my parents. I will not be responsible for causing the family name an ounce of disgrace.” She fought hard enough for their approval as it was.

  Nana’s expression tightened fractionally, but she refrained from comment. Ivy found herself wondering what the older woman was thinking, but she decided it was probably better for her not to know.

  “Now, then, this merchant sailor.” Ivy’s tone was brisk. “Whose grandson is he?”

  “Lord Stansworth’s.”

  Ivy’s mouth dropped open for a moment, and she clamped it shut. “But the earl disinherited his son and family years ago.”

  “And he is now dying and wishes for his own direct bloodline to carry on the title.”

  “I suspect Lord Percival has much to say on the subject.”

  Nana grimaced. “He may indeed, but it is of no consequence. In fact, he no longer retains the title of ‘Lord.’ He has been officially written out, and John Elliot written in. I understand he goes by the name ‘Jack.’”

  “At sea, perhaps. He shall have to familiarize himself with his given name if this is going to work. Nobody is going to take him seriously as an earl with the name of ‘Jack.’”

  Nana’s lips twitched.

  “What is it?” Ivy finished the last of her meal and aligned the silverware neatly on her plate to indicate to the servants that she was finished. “Why are you laughing?”

  “I’m not laughing at all. So, you are agreeing, then? You’ll take him on as a client, of sorts?”

  Ivy frowned. “I suppose so, although we shan’t call him a ‘client.’ Mother would think it vulgar if I were to have clients.”

  Nana muttered something under her breath, but Ivy missed it. “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing.” Nana smiled brightly as she stood up. “We had best be on our way to the earl’s home. Mr. Elliot should be there—he met with Stansworth yesterday and agreed to the stipulations.”

  “And what were those?” Ivy asked as they made their way to the door.

  “I’m not certain, although Fuddleston insinuated that Mr. Elliot was less than enthused about his future.”

  Ivy’s bafflement knew no bounds thirty minutes later when she stood with Mr. Fuddleston in the earl’s second-floor receiving room that adjoined the bedroom. “He’s not here?” Ivy asked. “Well, where is he
?”

  Fuddleston rubbed a hand across his balding head and looked at her through round spectacles that gave him rather the appearance of an owl. His cravat was slightly askew, and a sheen of perspiration glistened on his upper lip. “I do not know,” the short man said through gritted teeth. He wasn’t much taller than Ivy’s five foot two, but in his present mood, she didn’t imagine an encounter in a dark alley would be a pleasant one. Although what one might be doing in a dark alley, she could hardly fathom.

  The solicitor shook his head. “I sent a note early this morning that Mr. Elliot’s attendance was requested at the earl’s bedside. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of him, and I must go back in there.” He motioned to the door, through which Ivy’s grandmother had gone the moment they had arrived.

  “Why not send a messenger or footman?”

  Fuddleston glanced at her askance. “I’m afraid Mr. Elliot would send such a person flying on his ear.”

  Ivy pursed her lips. Wonderful. Mr. Elliot was already proving to be difficult, and she hadn’t even met the man yet! He needed to be at his grandfather’s bedside—at least in the house, for heaven’s sake. What sort of man was this, really?

  “You go in,” she told Fuddleston. “My grandmother will keep you company, and I shall fetch Mr. Elliot.”

  Fuddleston shook his head. “Your grandmother hardly needs to remain at his Lordship’s bedside. He will pass at any time—it really is rather ghastly.”

  “Lady Olivia Carlisle does as she pleases. I would imagine she is right now issuing instructions for the earl to pass along her love to his deceased wife when he crosses to the other side. You needn’t worry on her account. And as for Mr. Elliot—is he aware that I am to instruct him in manners and decorum? That is, the sight of me will not be altogether unexpected?”

  “I . . . Lady Ivy . . . you should know that Mr. Elliot is quite, can be quite, that is . . .”

  Ivy waved a hand in the air. “Mr. Fuddleston, if you were to search for Mr. Elliot, where would you begin?”