“There you are! Scarpered out of Lady Albright’s? Well I knew where I would find you. Come home. We are to have a quiet dinner this evening where we can rationally talk about your future.”
As his father so little liked to talk in a rational manner, Percy thought that was a pipe dream. It would be a dinner full of rants and raves, his mother’s taunts, and shouts of “I warn you!”
However, he had a way out of it. He picked up the sheet of paper that Magnon had set down on the table. “Unfortunately, I am already engaged. Otherwise, it sounds as if it would have been a delight.”
The viscount snatched it from his hands. He very reliably began huffing and puffing.
“Why should you go to that lunatic’s house? Why did you agree to it?”
“I have no idea why,” Percy said. “I suspect it was the laudanum.”
“Cancel it! Tell him you’re not coming! Tell him you would never have accepted if you had not been drugged out of your senses!”
“It is too late to cancel attending a dinner, as you well know. In any case, I suspect I am just brought in to even out the numbers. As well, I am certain Lady Marchfield will be there and we would not like to offend her in the process of offending the duke.”
“Harumph, I don’t like it.” The viscount said.
Of course, Percy knew he’d complain and complain about it, but in the end the viscount would have no wish to insult Lady Marchfield. Not even if he wished the duke would throw himself in the Thames. Or the oft wished-for idea that he would be discovered dead on the moors. There was something about being a fairly new-minted, titled gentleman that made one cautious about crossing a well-regarded matron. Especially a countess who was the daughter of a duke, even if that countess did not like the current duke very much.
As for his own opinion of apparently having accepted the duke’s invitation, his feelings were rather mixed. He wouldnot mind encountering Lady Felicity again after their recent adventure. Though, he ought not make it a habit.
Was his heart attempting to tell him something his head was not interested in hearing? No, that was ridiculous, He would not be chained. He’d said so many times.
*
Mrs. Right waswell-pleased with how things were progressing in the plan to send Mr. Sykes-Wycliff screaming from the house. Her girls had seemed to have done their part, considering the questions she was just now being asked.
“Mrs. Right, I demand to know the full circumstances of what happened to this young footman—Jimmy was his name.”
Demand, does he? All right.
“Very naturally, Mr. Sykes-Wycliff,” Mrs. Right said smoothly, “I will happily answer any questions you may have. I am only trying to understand why there is a question. It was simply an unfortunate accident.”
“So I heard. I want to know how it occurred, exactly. How does a footman get shot in the leg?”
“Well, I suppose we might have predicted it, in retrospect. As always, the men-staff had been given a head start and set out for the moors at dawn. An hour later, the duke followed, the idea being to hunt them down as they ran this way and that. When the duke spotted a servant, he was to fire over the fellow’s head and then they were out of the game and must return to the house. All very amusing.”
“How did it go wrong?” Mr. Sykes-Wycliff whispered.
Mrs. Right made a great attempt to peer at the butler as if he were not very fast on the uptake. “The duke became a bit too… enthusiastic. He was firing in all directions. Jimmy was situated on a cliff above the duke. So, when the duke attempted to fireover his head, he simply didn’t aim high enough. Naturally, he put his gun down instantly when he heard Jimmy scream in agony. The duke was very sorry over it, I can tell you.”
“I suppose he would be! I suppose Jimmy was rather sorry too! But certainly, Mrs. Right, after that disaster such an ill-omened activity would never be tried again.”
“Of course you are right—the duke is nothing if not full of good sense. This year, he’s only going to hunt the servants with his knives. The ones he would use to skin a deer. You know, the really big ones that look like they could chop down a tree.”
“Large knives?”
“He’s only to bring two—one for each hand. As long as everybody is quick on their feet, there should be no harm done.”
“Quick on their feet? Do you mean running?”
“Just so.”
“But Mrs. Right, I am not quick on my feet!”
Mrs. Right seemed to give that information some deep reflection. Then she said, “I know what you ought to do. You ought to practice. You could run round the square every morning after the duke has had his breakfast. That will build you up!”
As she watched Mr. Sykes-Wycliff actually consider this bizarre notion, Mrs. Right had great hopes that the neighbors of Grosvenor Square would very soon see the duke’s deranged butler running round the square to no purpose.
