Page 3 of The Language of Love

I told you, the voice in his head gleefully crowed. I told you it was some sort of trick.

Henry couldn’t argue—even if he’d been capable of it.

“Get dressed you—you—disgusting swine!” Charles flung Henry’s scattered boots and garments at him.

“What’s going on?” a new voice demanded.

Ah yes, his cousin Edmund.

Henry laughed, although it came out a choked, garbled sound.

“Henry sneaked into Julia’s room and—well, you can see what the degenerate pig had in mind. I said get dressed,” Charles shouted again.

Finally able to draw a breath, Henry pushed himself up until he was sitting, ignoring the shouting and accusations coming from the doorway, which was now at his back.

He fished his shirt out of the tangled pile and pulled it on first.

The farce was almost finished, lacking only one actor to make Henry’s humiliation complete.

As if on cue, his Uncle Robert’s—the Earl of Rotherhithe—voice came from out in the corridor, “What the devil is this commotion?”

“Henry sneaked into Julia’s room and tried to force himself on her.” Charles’s voice was almost as deep and commanding as his father’s, even though he was only a year older than Henry—whose own voice was still prone to squawks and squeaks.

Julia sobbed louder and gave a little shriek when Henry stood, his bare arse pointed in her direction while he struggled into his breeches.

“Take her out of here, you fool,” Uncle Robert said.

Julia’s sobbing and his cousins’ soothing voices faded, along with their footsteps.

“Hurry up,” his uncle ordered.

Henry shrugged into his vest and coat. When he sat to pull on his stockings and boots his uncle said, “Carry those and follow me.”

Out into the corridor he saw the steel gray hair of his Great Aunt Millicent in one doorway, her cap askew as she stared wide-eyed at the activity.

“Rotherhithe, what is—”

“Go back to bed, Millicent,” the earl barked.

The door shut immediately, as did the others that had opened—all rooms occupied by various aged relatives who lived off the bounty of the head of their family, the Earl of Rotherhithe. All Henry’s aunts and uncles, although not even one of them had ever acknowledged him in twelve years.

As they passed from the family wing into the part of the house where his uncle kept his study, other heads appeared—servant heads.

Henry’s people.

He ground his teeth when he saw Mrs. Jenkins, the housekeeper and also the woman who had raised him, although he would never have called her mother.

“My lord?” she asked, pulling a fleecy gray shawl around her heavy flannel dressing gown. “Is ought amiss.”

“Go pack the boy’s possessions,” the earl snapped, not stopping to look at her. “Get cook to put together a bag of food and rouse Falkirk and tell him to prepare the gig. He will go to the village in one hour.”

Mrs. Jenkins cut Henry a terrified glance but spun on her heel to obey her master’s bidding.

The earl flung open the brass-strapped door to his study and stalked over to his massive desk.

Henry dropped into a chair and put on his stockings and boots, his mind numb, his body going through the motions.

He heard the jingle of keys and absently identified the sound of a drawer opening, the distinctive clang of his uncle’s strong box, and then the squeak of his uncle’s chair when it took his weight.