A Difficult Disguise (3 page)

“I should say not! Ah, here we are, my favorite watering hole, as I have a good friend here who allows me to charge my libations against his personal account. Aren’t you coming in, Fletcher? My treat.”

Fletcher shook his head regretfully, for he truly enjoyed Henry’s company, but explained that he had much to do before quitting London for Grasmere.

“Grasmere? Wordsworth don’t live there anymore, does he?” Luttrell asked.

“William left Dove Cottage a few years past, yes, but Beck, my man of business, has told me William has moved yet again to a lovely home near Rydal, which is only four miles or so from Grasmere. But I have no fears about any adverse effect on his muse, for there is nothing unlovely about any section of the Lake District. I can’t tell you how I am looking forward to getting back there myself.”

“ ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils’,” Luttrell quoted dramatically, one hand to his heart. “William does have a way with words, doesn’t he? Yet all I really know of the Lake District is that it is rumored to rain there at least five times a day. Ferdie Johnstone was there last year and he tells me he very nearly drowned, and would have if he hadn’t had the extreme good sense to keep his mouth closed whenever he was out of doors. It’s hard to believe, for I’ve never known Ferdie to have any sense at all.”

Luttrell leaned forward to peer at Fletcher. “I hate to see you go, my friend. Are you convinced you need to see all this dubious glory for yourself? I could just as easily come by several times a day in my new yellow pantaloons and pour water on your head. It wouldn’t be any trouble, no trouble at all. You won’t even have to feed me.”

By the time Fletcher was once more in his bedchamber, watching as Beck bustled about in the midst of packing for the removal to Lakeview that was planned for first light the next morning, Belden was feeling the least bit ambivalent about his decision to forsake London for the quiet of the Lake District.

He would miss his friends, friends like Henry Luttrell, if not the mad carryings-on of society, of that he was sure, but the lack of companionship was not at the heart of his unease. It was the return to Lakeview, to the place where he and Arabella had grown up, that worried him—perhaps even frightened him.

It had been five years since Arabella’s suicide—five years and a lifetime of hurt and misunderstanding. Had enough time passed for him to be able to face her memory with fondness rather than horror and pain? And then there was the lovely Christine Denham, now the Countess of Hawkhurst and “quite desperately” in love with her husband.

“Women.”

Beck turned to look inquiringly at his friend. “Did you say something?”

Fletcher gave a rueful laugh. “I was merely thinking out loud. You know, Beck, between my disastrous misreading of Arabella and my failure to win the one woman I thought I could love, I think that I would be doing the entire world a service if I should decide to stay at Lakeview indefinitely and try my hand at poetry or something. Heaven knows everyone else is writing reams about the Lake District these days. Look at Wordsworth—Henry Luttrell actually quoted him to me this afternoon. But, regardless, I believe I have sworn off women.”

Beck closed the case he had just filled and shook his head. “You can’t do that, you know. You’re too pretty, Fletch, and the women all love you. Think of the hearts you would break if you vowed to lead a monkish existence. No, you’ll be back in London within the year, and most probably on the lookout for a young beauty with which to set up your nursery.”

Fletcher leaned back, considering his friend’s words. “Maybe, but if I don’t see another comely young female between now and then, I would consider myself a very lucky man.”

Traveling slowly, driving his curricle ahead of a coach containing Beck and a small mountain of baggage, Fletcher did not reach Lakeview until an hour before dusk four days later. The weariness brought on by long hours on the road lifted from his shoulders as he reined in the pair of bays at the top of a small rise and looked down on his home.

Built of stone, as were most of the homes in the area, Lakeview had been in his family for twelve generations. His holdings in the center of the thirty-five-mile-square Lake District were not vast, but they contained some of the best pastureland in the vicinity, and Lakeview’s production of milk, cheese, and wool had provided a considerable fortune that continued to increase over the years.

As the horses stamped, impatient to be moving again, Fletcher looked down the curve of the narrow lane, past the wide expanse of flower-strewn pastures to his holdings. His house, partially hidden by trees from this angle, rose to a full three floors, with wings jutting off either end. A large place to ramble about in alone, he thought; then he smiled as he remembered that Aunt Belleville was in residence. Perhaps thirty rooms were not enough.

His gaze slid to the barn and stables, which were located several hundred feet away from the house, and he smiled again. It was there, in the stables, that he and Beck had spent some of their happiest moments. Even after Beck’s hunting accident, when he could no longer ride, the two of them had spent long hours currying the estate’s horses and learning how to spit under the tutelage of one of Lakeview’s grooms.

Fletcher felt a momentary pang of sorrow at the years he had spent away from Lakeview, but he was not the sort to linger overlong on matters that could not be changed. It was enough that he had learned from his mistakes. He had been Arabella’s guardian for the last years of her life—and he had failed her. That was a fatal mistake he would not make again.

“Because I won’t be anybody’s guardian ever again—not that I can see a reason for anyone to ask me to be,” he said out loud, one of the bay’s pricking up its ears, as if on the alert for further orders from its master.

How long Fletcher would have sat at the crest of the small hill he did not know, but suddenly, without warning, the bright sun was lost behind a cloud, and the rain Henry Luttrell had spoken about so glibly came pouring down, effectively shaking Fletcher from his reverie.

He gave his horses the office to start and tooled the curricle down the lane, bypassed the drive that led directly to the house, neatly feather-edged the corner of the barn, and headed into the stable yard, preferring the team to be shifted to the dry stable as soon as possible. He, Fletcher thought, had been wet before, and he hadn’t been pulling a curricle all day.

“You, boy, go to their heads, if you please,” he called out to a slightly built black-haired youth he espied sitting just inside the open door of an empty stall, perched at his ease on an overturned bucket, safely out of the rain. He reined his pair to a halt. “Come on now, a little rain won’t hurt you.”

The groom shot him a darkling glance and remained where he was, a long piece of straw stuck in the corner of his mouth. “If it won’t hurt me, then it stands to reason it won’t hurt you either. I work for Fletcher Belden—not you.”

“I am Fletcher Belden, boy,” Fletcher announced, lightly hopping down from the seat and taking hold of the bridle of the gelding closest to hand. “And you’ll be out of a job and sleeping under a sheep if you don’t step lively.”

“Sure you are,” the groom said with great sarcasm, remaining precisely where he was. “And I’m Napoleon, lately escaped from Elba.”

“Insolent puppy, aren’t you? Where is Hedge?” Fletcher asked tightly. “I left him in charge of the stables, but I don’t remember giving him office to hire smart-mouthed fools.”

Fletcher was secretly pleased to see the color drain from the youth’s face as the groom hopped to his feet so quickly the bucket toppled with a hollow crash. A moment later the youth was working at releasing the bays from their harness, droplets of rain running down his freckled, upturned nose.

Obviously throwing out Hedge’s name had served to prove his own identity. Fletcher’s smile faded as he decided it was rather lowering to think he had been proven legitimate only because of his knowledge of the former jockey whom he had taken in ten years ago. His employees should know him by sight, as he should know them.

Not only that, but the youth’s insolence had made it evident that, indeed, Fletcher had been away from home too long. It was one thing to leave Lakeview in Beck’s capable hands, but it was quite another to believe that his estate could be run entirely without the guidance of its owner.

“My traveling coach will be here within the hour,” he told the groom, suddenly eager to get to the house, his mind already on the reception he would receive there. He certainly hoped it would be warmer than the one he had gotten from this cheeky employee. “See that the stables are ready for another six horses, as I’ve brought two riding horses with me.”

“I’ll tell Hedge, then,” the groom said, walking away, leading the two horses behind him. “If I can find him.”

Overhearing the groom’s last grumbled remark, Fletcher laughed aloud. Now he knew he was home. “Look inside the large cabinet at the back of the tack room. That’s where Hedge always goes to recover from his bouts with demon liquor.”

The groom turned his head about swiftly and Fletcher was momentarily taken back by the quick intelligence he saw in the lad’s clear green eyes. “So that’s where he slinks off to. I’ll do that,” he said. “Thank you, sir. I hadn’t thought to look there. And, um, welcome home, sir.”

“What’s your name, boy?” Fletcher asked abruptly, thinking to begin his campaign to reclaim Lakeview for his own.

“It’s Billy, Mr. Belden, sir,” the groom said, his small chin lifted almost defiantly.

“Billy,” Fletcher repeated, wondering how a junior groom had come by such clear, unaccented English. “And do you have a last name, Billy?”

The question seemed to startle the youth. “A last name? Why do you want to know?”

“Why shouldn’t I know?”

The chin lifted yet another fraction. “No reason, I suppose. It’s Smith,” the groom answered shortly. “Billy Smith.”

“Of course it is,” Fletcher agreed silkily as the rain stopped, just as abruptly as it had begun. “I think I knew that even before you said it. I’ll see you again, Billy Smith, and we will talk again.”

And with that, Fletcher turned and walked toward the house, wishing Beck was with him, as he was willing to lay odds the brazen young groom was pulling a face behind his back.

Chapter 2

“W
ell, fiddle-de-dee,” Billy Smith hooted with a dismissive shrug as Fletcher Belden disappeared around the corner of the stable. “Idiotic fop. One more cape on that ridiculous white driving cloak and his shoulders wouldn’t fit through Lakeview’s front door. And those absurd boots! Whoever saw such silly long tops on a pair of boots? I wouldn’t want the polishing of them, that’s for sure.”

As soon as the derogatory words were uttered, Billy gasped, suddenly sick with apprehension, and looked about, hoping against hope that no one had heard. Then he relaxed as it became obvious that no one had.

After all, “fiddle-de-dee” wasn’t exactly an everyday expression for a groom, a fact that could be overlooked when one considered the possibility that Billy Smith might not have been born into this world already cut out to be a rousing success as a junior groom. As a matter of fact, as Fletcher Belden had already made clear he suspected to be the case, the Lakeview boy probably wasn’t even named Billy Smith.