your way?”
Pierre stared at his father unblinkingly. “There are times when I actually believe I could hate you, Father,” he said, unable to hide a wry smile.
“Yes, of course,” André replied silkily. “Truthfully, I believe I should be disappointed in you if you were to fall on my neck, thanking me. Shall we go in to dinner?”
CHAPTER TWO
PIERRE LINGERED in the country with André for another two days, the two men rebuilding their former good relationship on a sounder, more solid base before the younger Standish reluctantly took his leave, his father’s admonition—to find himself a humanizing good deed as soon as may be for the sake of his immortal soul—following after him as his coachman sprung the horses.
“A good deed,” Pierre repeated, settling himself against the midnight-blue velvet squabs of the traveling coach that was the envy of London. “What do you think of that, Duvall, my friend?”
The manservant gave a Gallic shrug, shaking his head. “Il vous rit au nez.”
“Father doesn’t laugh in my nose, Duvall; he laughs in my face, and no, I don’t think so. Not this time,” Pierre corrected, smiling at the French interpretation of the old saying. “This time I think he is deadly serious, more’s the pity. My dearest, most loving father thinks I need to—”
“Tomber à plat ventre,” Duvall intoned gravely, folding his scrawny arms across his thin chest.
“Not really. You French may fall flat on your stomachs, Duvall. We English much prefer to land on our faces, if indeed we must take the fall at all. And how will you ever develop a workable knowledge of English if you insist upon lapsing into French the moment we are alone? Consider yourself forbidden the language from this moment, if you please.”
“Your father, he wishes for you to fall flat on your face,” Duvall recited obediently, then sighed deeply, so that his employer should be aware that he had injured him most gravely.
“Bless you, Duvall. Now, to get back to the point. I have been acting the fool these past years, a fact I will acknowledge only to you, and only this one time. There’s nothing else for it—I must seek out a good deed and perform it with humble dedication and no thought for my own interests. Do you suppose the opportunity for good deeds lies thick on the ground in Mayfair? No, I imagine not. Ah, well, one can only strive to do one’s best.”
“Humph!” was the manservant’s only reply before he turned his head to one side and ordered himself to go to sleep in the hope that the soft, well-sprung swaying of the traveling coach would not then turn his delicate Gallic stomach topsy-turvy.
Standish marveled silently yet again at the endless effrontery of his employee. The man, unlike the remainder of Pierre’s acquaintances, had no fear of him—and precious little awe. It was refreshing, this lack of deference, which was why Pierre treasured the spritely little Frenchman, who had been displaced to Piccadilly during Napoleon’s rush to conquer all the known world. Reaching across to lay a light blanket over the man’s shoulders, for it was September and the morning was cool, Pierre sat back once more, determined to enjoy the passing scenery.
It was shortly after regaining the main roadway, following a leisurely lunch at the busy Rose and Cross Inn—Pierre being particularly fond of country-cured ham—that it happened. One of the two burly outriders accompanying the coach called out to the driver to stop at once, for there was something moving in the small mountain of baggage strapped in the boot of the coach.
“How wonderfully intriguing. Do you suppose it is an animal of some sort?” Pierre asked the two outriders, the coachman, and a slightly green-looking Duvall a minute later as the small group assembled behind the halted coach. He lightly prodded the canvas wrapping with the tip of his cane, just at the spot the outrider had indicated. “I do pray it is not a fox, for I will confess that I am not a devotee of blood sports. Oh, dear. It moved again just then, didn’t it? My curiosity knows no bounds, I must tell you.”
“It’s a blinkin’ stowaway, that’s wot it tis,” decided the second outrider, just home from an extended absence at sea, a trip prompted not by his desire to explore the world, but rather at the expressed insistence of a press gang that had tapped him on the noggin with a heavy club and tossed him aboard a merchantman bound for India. “Let’s yank ’im out an’ keelhaul ’im!”
Pierre turned to look at the man, a large, beefy fellow whose hamlike hands were already closed into tight fists. “So violent, my friend? Why don’t we just boil the poor soul in oil and have done with it?”
Raising his voice slightly, Pierre went on, “You there—in the boot—I suggest you join us out here on the road, if you please. You can’t be too comfortable in there, knowing the amount of baggage I deem necessary for travel through the wilds of Sussex. When did you decide to join us? Perhaps when my baggage was undone to unearth my personal linens and utensils back at the so lovely Rose and Whatever Inn? Come out now, we shan’t hurt you.”
“Oi can’t,” a high, whiny voice complained from beneath the canvas. “Yer gots me trussed up like a blinkin’ goose in ’ere!”
Pierre tipped his head to one side, inspecting the canvas-covered boot. “Our unexpected passenger has a point there, gentlemen. It really was too bad of you, wasn’t it, even as I applaud your obvious high regard for the welfare of my personal possessions. Perhaps one of you will be so good as to lend some assistance to our beleaguered stowaway before he causes himself an injury?”
Less than a minute later the canvas had been drawn away to reveal a very small, very dirty face. “Hello. What have we here?” Pierre asked, peering into the semidarkness of the boot.
“Yer gots Jeremy ’Olloway, that wot yer gots!” the young boy shot back defiantly, pushing out his lower lip to blow a long strand of greasy blond hair from his eyes. “Now, stands back whilst Oi boosts m’self outta this blinkin’ ’ellhole!”
“How lovely,” Pierre drawled. “Such elegant speech. And a good day to you too, Master Holloway. Obviously, my friends, we have discovered a runaway young peer, bent on a lark in the country. Gentlemen, let us make our bows to Master Holloway.”
“That’s no gentry mort,” the burly outrider corrected, narrowly eyeing the young boy as he climbed down from his hiding place and quickly clamping a heavy hand on Jeremy’s thin shoulder as the lad looked ready to bolt for the concealment of the trees on the side of the road. “This ’ere ain’t nothin’ but a bleedin’ sweep!”
“Oi’m not!” Jeremy shot back, sticking out his chin, as if his denial could erase the damning evidence of his torn, sooty shirt and the scraped, burned-covered arms and legs that stuck out awkwardly from beneath his equally ragged, too-small suit of clothes.
“Of course you’re not a sweep,” Pierre agreed silkily, suppressing the need to touch his scented lace handkerchief to his nostrils as he looked at Jeremy and saw a quick solution to his need to do a good deed. “But if you were a sweep, and running away from an evil master who abused you most abominably, I should think I could find it in my heart to take you up with us for a space, until, say, we reach London? Listening to your speech, and detecting a rightful disdain for those so troublesome ‘aitches’, I believe you might feel at home in Piccadilly?”
Jeremy, who had begun eyeing Pierre assessingly, positively blossomed at the mention of Piccadilly. Quickly suppressing his excitement, he scuffed one bare big toe in the dirt and remarked coolly: “If Oi wuz a sweep—which
