At Last Comes Love

Mary Balogh

At Last Comes Love

1

WHEN Duncan Pe

Claverbrook House was where Duncan must go sooner rather than later, though. His funds had been cut off, without warning and without explanation, at just a time when he was preparing to return home at last – home being Woodbine Park in Warwickshire, the house and estate where he had grown up and that had provided him with a comfortable income since his father's death fifteen years ago.

And he had not been going there alone. The Harrises, who had been in his employ for the past five years in various capacities, were going with him – the position of head gardener had fallen vacant and Harris was to fill it. Most important of all, four-year-old Toby was going there too. He was to be known at Woodbine as the Harrises' orphaned grandson. Toby had been wildly excited when told that he would be living henceforward at the place about which Duncan had told him so many exciting stories – Duncan's memories of his boyhood there were almost exclusively happy ones.

But then, suddenly, all his plans had gone awry, and he had been forced to leave the child with the Harrises in Harrogate while he dashed off to London in the hope of averting disaster.

His only warning had come in a formal note written in the bold hand of his grandfather's secretary, though his grandfather's signature was scrawled at the foot of the page, unmistakable despite the fact that it had grown shaky and spidery with age. At the same time the steward at Woodbine Park had grown suddenly and ominously silent.

They had all known /where/ to write to him, much of the need for secrecy having been lifted with Laura's death. Duncan had felt obliged to inform a number of people about that unhappy event.

It made little sense to Duncan that his grandfather would decide to cut him off just when a measure of respectability had been restored to his life. It made even less sense when he considered the fact that as the Marquess of Claverbrook's only grandson and only direct descendant, he was his heir.

But sense or nonsense, he was cut off, turned loose and pe

Hence this desperate dash to London, which was perhaps the last place on earth he wanted to be – and in the middle of the Season, to boot. It had seemed the only course of action open to him. The letter he had written in reply to his grandfather's had been ignored, and already precious time had been lost. So he had been forced to come to demand an explanation in person. Or to /ask/ for it, anyway. One did not demand anything of the Marquess of Claverbrook, who had never been known for the sweetness of his temper.

Duncan's mother did not have any reassurance to offer. She had not even known he had been cut off until he told her so. "I only wonder," she said when he went to her boudoir the morning after his arrival – or the early afternoon to be more precise, since mornings did not figure largely in her favorite times of the day – "that he did not cut you off five years ago, my love, if he was going to do it at all. We all /expected/ that he would then. I was even toying with the idea of going to plead with him /not/ to, but it struck me that by doing so I would quite possibly goad him into cutting you off even sooner than he pla

But his grandfather was not renowned for a poor memory either, especially where money was concerned. "Graham says he will not support your excesses for longer than a week at the outside," his mother added, returning her attention to her son as she arranged the flowing folds of her peignoir to show her figure to best advantage. "He told me so last evening after you arrived. But I would not worry about that, my love. I can wind Graham about my little finger whenever I choose." "You need not do it on my account, Mama," Duncan assured her. "I will not be staying here for long, only until I have spoken with Grandpapa and settled something with him. He ca

He could not decide between turning up una

The pot or the kettle.

The devil or the deep blue sea.

Which was it to be?

And there was a degree of urgency to the situation that threatened to throw Duncan into a panic. He had settled the Harrises and Toby in a couple of cramped rooms in Harrogate and paid one month's rent. There was simply not enough money for another month. And one week of this one was gone already.

Even so, he procrastinated instead of making a decision and spent one whole day reacquainting himself with London – and London with him. Much as one set of instincts warned him to lie low, to avoid being seen if he possibly could, another part of him argued that since he could not avoid the company of his peers for all of the rest of his life without becoming a hermit, he might as well sally forth now with all the nonchalance he could muster.

He went to White's Club, where he still had a membership and where he did not find the doors barred against him. He met a number of former friends and acquaintances there, none of whom gave him the cut direct.

On the contrary, a number of them hailed him with jovial familiarity, as if he had been there just last year or even last week and had never in his life dashed away from London and from society under a huge cloud of scandal. And if a few gentlemen ignored him, well, there was nothing so very unusual about that. One did not hail everyone one met, after all, at White's or anywhere else. Nobody made a scene and demanded that he be removed from the hallowed sanctum of the club.

He allowed himself to be borne off to Tattersall's with a group of equestrian enthusiasts to look over the horses, and then on to the races. He even acquired some modest wi