Tragically enough, it had been the elder of those two terrifyingly healthy boys who had died, making the younger the new earl.And Isbourne, doggedly defeating the wagerers and the worst fears of his uncles, guardians, doctors, nurses, and tutors, who was still clinging onto life.Though God knew why.
“You want me to marry Lily Lisle,” Isbourne said with deliberation.“When?”
“Oh, the sooner the better, we think.”
Do you?“What does Lily think?”
Uncle Hazlett blinked.“She is an agreeable girl, sweet-natured, dutiful, and submissive.Of course she is happy to marry you.She will be a duchess.Her son will be Duke of Isbourne one day.”
“I would like to see her before we agree to this.”
All three uncles gaped at him.This was only the second time he had ever argued with them.The first had been about going to Oxford.He had won that one although the subsequent experience had been somewhat...disappointing.Not to say humiliating.
“Well,” Uncle Deptford said dubiously.“It is only right that we should arrange a meeting.I shall ask Lady Sark to bring her here for a night or two.Perhaps next week.”
For no obvious reason, the little victory did not please the duke.He envisioned a slightly more adult version of their previous meeting, constrained and chaperoned, where he could never establish what she wanted, let alone what he did.
No, that was not true.He was not ready to wed anyone.Marriage would not give him the freedom he craved like a starving man.It would only substitute one lot of fetters for another while the powder keg continued to burn.
In fact, if anything, the idea of being chained to a silly girl for the sole purpose of begetting children, appalled him.He could not marry her at all unless he knew the girl was willing to be sacrificed, and who would truly choose to be chained to an invalid until he had the good manners to turn up his toes?Leaving a nursery full of boys behind him, of course.
It all felt so bizarre that he didn’t know whether to laugh or run screaming from the room until they sent for the doctor.Which would not be hard since the man still lived in the house.
As he gazed from one uncle to the next, he thought longingly of his old boyhood fantasy of escaping the lot of them, of ignoring the hurt and the panic that he would leave behind him, shrugging off all he owed to them and to his name, just to go somewhere else,anywhereelse, blissfully alone...
This vision had got him to Oxford, thoughnotalone.In order to achieve his goal, he had made so many concessions that he might as well have stayed at home, despite the first- class degree he had attained.He had been seventeen then.Now he was two-and-twenty and surely anything was possible.And he needn’t do it by quarrelling.
“I have a better idea,” he said, as the sudden excitement caught him by the throat.“I shall call on Lady Lily on my own, and she and I will decide if we should suit, and when.”
The uncles exchanged glances, but they had never been cruel.By their own lights, they had devoted themselves selflessly to his person and his interests.They must have recognized that the wedding—to say nothing of the begetting of children—would be a far quicker and less fraught affair if he and Lily liked each other.
“We could possibly arrange for that,” Uncle Hazlett said cautiously at last.
“No, I shall do it myself, Uncle,” Isbourne said, springing to his feet.“As you say, it is time.”
They could see the sense in that too.In fact, after his original reaction, they were probably relieved to have won him over so easily with such a minor concession.They probably imagined that an uncle and a doctor could easily be added to his entourage when he departed.What they did not grasp until later was that he did not saywhenhe would arrange to call on Lady Lily.
In fact, he slipped away from Isley Place that very night, leaving a gracious note to Lord Hazlett to explain that he was going away for a month or two, during which time he would most certainly call on Lady Lily.There was another note for his kind old valet, and for his groom who had taught him to ride very carefully the gentlest of well-mannered horses.
Saddling, bridling, and grooming, were, of course, the safer lessons in horsemanship, and Isbourne was particularly skilled in them, so he had no trouble at all in preparing his own mount and riding quietly off into the night.
A massive relief, a sense of freedom that was almost joy began to build up inside him as he approached his own lantern-lit gates.The land beyond was still his, of course, but it was the open road, and he took it with huge excitement, in search of his first, long-awaited adventure.
He was no longer the Duke of Isbourne.To himself and everyone else he encountered, he would be merely Jack, which had been the name of his remote childhood before everyone had addressed him only by his title, as if he existed in no other form and with no other meaning.
Well, Jack was back, and he intended to have fun.
***
SOME THREE WEEKS LATER, he was seriously discommoded for the first time.He stood by the side of the road watching a plausible ruffian ride off at the gallop, taking his horse, his pistol, and all the cash in his pocket.
Jack did not much care for the highwayman who had robbed him, but it was certainly another experience to add to his growing list.Plus, it was a long walk to the next town, and he wasn’t convinced he could achieve it before nightfall.A glance at the darkening sky warned him that rain was on the way.
Shrugging philosophically, he strode out, feeling slightly bereft without his horse.Not that it was his own nag.He had changed horses frequently on his erratic journey—almost as often as he changed his surname—so that he would be harder to trace.But he had developed some kind of friendship with each of those equines, the difficult and the obedient, the tired and the frisky.He had met a number of interesting people, too, many of whom he had liked a great deal, and would never have encountered in the normal course of his life.
The highwayman was not one of those.
He had only been walking for about a quarter of an hour when a travelling coach pulled by four matching chestnuts swept past him in a cloud of dust.There were two coachmen on the box, and two outriders bristling with weapons.
