1
The Boys Are Back in Town
What happens on Earls Trip, stays on Earls Trip.
Usually.
In 1821, on the eighth annual Earls Trip, things took a bit of a turn.
When Archibald Fielding-Burton, the Earl of Harcourt, arrived at Number Seven Park Lane to collect his friend, Simon Courteney, the Earl of Marsden, Marsden was waiting in front of his town house.
“Hullo,” Archie said, hopping out of the coach. “Ready?”
“He’s been ready since seven this morning,” said Mr. Janes, Simon’s valet, who was stationed at attention behind his master.
“Of course he has.” Archie shot an affectionate look at Simon, then a placating one at the long-suffering Janes. “Has he also been standing here since seven this morning?” Archie took the valet’s sniff as affirmation. “Poor Janes. Marsden, you ought to wait inside like a properly bred person.”
“Well, remember,” Simon said mildly, “I’mbarelya properly bred person.”
Archie chuckled as small muscles in Janes’s jaw visibly tightened. “Mr. Janes, what will you do with yourself for a fortnight without your wayward earl and his wretched wardrobe to wrangle?”
“I look fine,” Simon said, and a muscle in Janes’s jaw twitched.
Strictly speaking, it was true. There was nothing wrong with Simon’s current ensemble or any other in his wardrobe. It was more that he tended toward the bland in all matters material, be they sartorial, culinary, or bodily. He always had. Today he was wearing a pair of buff breeches and a brown coat cut in a style that had been the height of fashion five Seasons ago when he’d ascended the earldom, and his hair . . . Well, his hair was best not discussed. Archie himself was no dandy, but he tried to keep up appearances.
As Janes supervised the loading of a small trunk into the coach, Archie picked up a valise resting on the bottom step of Simon’s house—and nearly tore his arm off. “Oof. What’s in here? Bricks?”
“Books.” Simon climbed into the coach.
“Ah, yes.” Archie was flooded with affection for his friend. Simon was so very much himself. He used to try to smuggle books out of the Winchester College library on term breaks. He was still doing it, apparently.
“Where’s Effie?” Simon asked when Archie joined him inside. “I’d’ve thought you’d have collected him first, as his house is between mine and yours. Now you’ll have to backtrack.”
Simon disliked inefficiency, but perhaps not as much as he appreciated a logical argument, so Archie made one: “Yes, but unlike you, he won’t be ready. He may not even remember that we’re to make the trip at all. Either way, he almost certainly won’t have done his packing. I’d rather go out of my way and have some company for the extraction process, since it’s likely to be laborious.”
“A fair point.” Simon heaved an enormous sigh and slumped back against the squabs.
Archie examined his friend, cataloging the darker-than-usual circles under his eyes and the paler-than-usual cast of his skin. “All right, then?”
“Yes, yes, but I am sorely in need of respite. I’ve been run off my feet of late. I’ve been—” He cut himself off. “It is of no mind.”
Archie smiled. He understood perfectly what Simon meant, because he understood Simon perfectly. The uneasy earl tended to reside in the caverns of his mind and had to be wrenched out of them periodically by his friends, which was a process he both abhorred and relished. It was as if something inside him knew he needed the respite he’d referenced, but somethingelseinside him resisted. He was a man at war with himself. He always had been, and it had only gotten worse since he’d unexpectedly inherited the earldom.
Janes popped his head into the coach and closed his fingers around a stack of newspapers resting on Simon’s lap. “Shall I take these, my lord?”
Simon’s hands flew to the opposite edge of the papers, and a polite tug-of-war ensued.
“It’s no use, Mr. Janes,” Archie said. “He shall have to be weaned slowly from them, like a man from the poppy.”
“Thank you, Janes. That will, uh, be all,” Simon said in the voice he used when he was trying to project authority in the domestic sphere, over the staff who would always think of him as the painfully shy, seldom-seen third son of their late lord. Archie had told Simon a hundred times to use his Parliament voice at home, but somehow Simon didn’t, or couldn’t, and he ended up sounding like a boy playing at manhood.
Janes shot a dismayed look at Archie.
“Worry not, Mr. Janes. I shall keep his lordship in line at the posting inns, and once in Cumbria, we shall be completely alone.” Archie couldn’t wait. Town made him jumpy and irritable. His lungs were crying out for fresh air, his trigger finger was itching for a good hunt, and, not to put too fine a point on it, his soul was in need of a prolonged dose of exposure to his best mates.
Speaking of. One down; time to collect Effie. He rapped on the ceiling, and the coach rumbled off.
“Shall we wager on how long it will take to wrest Effie from his papers?” Archie asked a while later, as they turned onto Berkeley Square. “Or his paints. Or merely the dark depths of his imaginings?” He chuckled. “Surely there will be some manner of wresting required, is my point, and shall we lay a wager on it?”
