“You’re so pretty when you’re desperate.”
Julian gasped. “Nobody has ever called me pretty. Or desperate.”
“You’ve been keeping terrible company, my dear.”
Courtenay felt his light mood evaporate with every furlong as they got closer to Carrington Hall. Looking out the window of Medlock’s predictably first-rate carriage, he saw a road that he remembered all too well. It wasn’t so very long ago that he had happily traveled along this route to visit his mother and Isabella. Even then, his mother had blamed him for his father’s death, but she still received him, albeit grudgingly and with a good deal of drama. Isabella had been a different story. He remembered her half hanging out the schoolroom window, awaiting his return.
Medlock must have noticed Courtenay’s quiet, because he was babbling nervously in a plain attempt to fill the silence.
“If you don’t want to toss your mother out part and parcel, do you perhaps have a dower house you can put her in somewhere on the property and let Radnor have the main house?”
“I daresay Radnor and that secretary of his want more privacy than that. They’re used to rattling about in that old pile down in Cornwall. They most certainly won’t want my mother and her family poking in the windows, which is exactly what she’d do if she knew she had the famous Mad Earl on the premises.” Only after the words had left his mouth did he realize he shouldn’t have exposed Radnor, even though he knew Medlock shared the same secret. “Let’s forget that I said anything.”
Medlock made a frustrated noise. “Give me some credit, Courtenay. But Radnor and the secretary,” he said musingly. “I wouldn’t have thought Radnor needed privacy of that sort. But the secretary. Yes, I can see that. I met him before, you know.”
Courtenay looked over at Medlock with some interest. “Did you? I tried to find out who he was, since Simon seemed terribly fond of the fellow and I wanted to make sure he was all right. But he seems to have materialized out of thin air.”
“He was using a different name when I knew him. He duped an acquaintance of mine. Poor fellow had to go to South Africa.”
It took Courtenay a second to realize what Medlock was saying. “Are you telling me my nephew is being raised by a confidence artist?”
“He seems aboveboard now.” Medlock said this with the naive certainty of a man who still believed that a person could change his ways.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Courtenay might have used that information to barter in exchange for time with Simon.
“Because I can’t see how it’s my business what Radnor’s pretty secretary did to keep his bread buttered. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of,” Medlock snapped. Courtenay wasn’t sure whether to ask what Medlock meant. Then, in his earlier offhand tone Medlock asked, “But he and Radnor, you say?”
“Can’t be sure. I never saw them together. But I used to know Radnor rather well. Radnor, was, shall we say, inclined as we are. And nobody would go to that dilapidated rabbit warren of his in Cornwall without damned good reason, so I’m deducing that there’s more to their dealings than that of a typical employer and secretary.”
They drove on for a moment, their silence only interrupted by hoof beats and carriage wheels. “Well, then,” Medlock said blandly, “nothing for it but to toss your dear mama out. And,” he added with relish, “the rest of them. Disown, indeed.” This last he muttered under his breath.
Courtenay bit back a smile. He would never get tired of trying to figure out Medlock’s strange code of ethics. Lingering kisses were improper, almost shocking; the fact that these kisses occurred between two men was entirely unremarkable. Confidence artists were nothing to be too terribly concerned about; Courtenay’s mother, on the other hand, was a villain of the rankest nature for having cast off the child who sent her money. Courtenay himself was a worthless scapegrace, or at least that was the decided impression Medlock had given him at first. But now...
He chanced a sideways glance at Medlock. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He had sensed less rampant disapproval from Medlock since that night at the opera. Perhaps he had grown on Medlock. Perhaps Medlock believed that Courtenay, like Radnor’s reformed criminal lover, was capable of change, was capable of good intentions despite the mischief that seemed to trail in his wake no matter how hard he tried.
The idea that Medlock might approve of him, respect him even, gave him a warm sort of feeling. God, he had thought his need for acceptance had petered out years ago. And maybe it had—he still didn’t give much of a damn what people in general thought of him. But the idea that Medlock—fussy, high-hat Medlock, with his rules about cats and his penchant for soporific wallpaper—might see something worthy in Courtenay gave him a peculiar feeling.
Whatever it was, he knew he was very glad to have Medlock with him on this trip, on this road, to the house where he had been raised. To see the woman who had cast him out.
The closer they got to Stanmore, the more familiar the landscape seemed. There were the predictable markings of time—a tree that had been felled, a gate repaired, an inn’s sign repainted in new, bright colors. But overall the terrain was familiar. It was his. This was where he was from, and no exile could change that. No matter how much he wished it.
“Have the coachman turn onto that lane,” he said, indicating a divergence from the main road.
“But the map—”
“Trust me.”
Medlock surprised him by rapping on the roof of the carriage and doing as he was told. Courtenay felt the carriage turn.
“This will take us back behind the house, so we’ll approach by way of the stables, rather than the main gates.”
Another silence, interrupted only by hoof beats on soil that somehow even sounded familiar. His soil. He owned this land, this dirt, these trees. Another shirked responsibility, but he was dismally certain he’d bollocksed up Carrington as much as he had bollocksed up everything else he’d ever tried to do.
“I hate going back to places,” Medlock said, as if reading Courtenay’s thoughts. “I’d swallow lye before going back to Madras.”
Courtenay sighed, relieved to be understood, if only partially. Behind a copse of trees, he could see the game warden’s cottage, now half tumbled down. “Bad memories in India?” He knew this to be true, but hadn’t quite considered that Medlock might be running away from something, that his flight to England might have had as much to do with starting fresh as it did with social climbing.
“Some bad, some good, but I’d rather not think of any of it. I prefer moving forwards.”
