Sherbrooke Twins

“You look charming, Mrs. Osbourne. I would like to thank you for taking care of my son and his friend.”

Friend? James, who had just drawn a nice deep breath, choked. Well, he supposed Corrie was a friend, but still, to hear it said that way-he coughed again. Corrie went immediately and dropped to her knees beside him, raised his head, and gave him lemonade to drink.

Jason looked at the two of them. It was obvious that she’d done this many times since James had become ill, so many times that it looked utterly natural. As for Douglas, he became very still. Then, slowly, he nodded.

“Och, my little Corrie, what a sweetie she is. Just this morning Elden was showing her how to milk old Janie, who gives the sweetest milk within fifty miles.”

James swallowed the lemonade, closed his eyes a moment, and said, “Did you really milk old Janie?”

“I tried. I haven’t quite got the knack of it yet.”

“Would yer lordship like a cup of tea? And yer other boy as well?” She stood there, looking from Jason to James, shaking her head. “Two such beautiful young men in my sitting room. No one will believe it. And now a lordship as well, not that yer not beautiful, my lord, it’s just that these two young gentlemen would make the angels weep.”

“Trust me, Mrs. Osbourne, they’ve made me weep as well upon occasion.”

James said loudly, “Corrie is the daughter of a viscount.”

“Och, so what does that make ye, Corrie?”

Corrie rolled her eyes. “It makes me the girl who tried to milk old Janie, nothing more, Mrs. Osbourne.”

Mrs. Osbourne wheezed with laughter, caught herself, and choked out, “I have real proper tea, my lord. James here has drunk two bucketfuls of lemonade, Corrie pouring it down his lovely gullet.”

“Tea would be very nice, thank you, Mrs. Osbourne.” Douglas turned back to James, picked up his hand, to touch him, to feel the life in him. “We brought a carriage. It’s a good two hours back to London. How do you feel about that, James?”

“This floor is very hard, sir. When I complained, Corrie tried to lift me up to put more blankets underneath me. When that didn’t work, she wanted me to lift my rump so she could slide the blankets in, but I swear to you I couldn’t get any part of me off the floor.”

Corrie said, gri

“And you’ve been kept warm too and that’s good.” The earl looked over at Corrie, who looked quite lovely with her scrubbed face and shiny clean hair. If Mrs. Osbourne’s gown hung off her, it simply didn’t matter. She’d dropped flesh, he could see it in her face, just as James had.

Two hours later, the Sherbrooke carriage rolled away from the Osbourne farm, leaving the occupants fifty pounds richer and short one employee, a foundling Mrs. Osbourne said they’d taken in five years before. Aye, Freddie was a good lad, slept in the Osbourne barn, did his chores right and proper. But no longer. Now, Freddie rode tall and straight on the tiger’s perch, dressed in Sherbrooke livery from Willicombe’s store of uniforms. The uniform bagged on twelve-year-old Freddie, but Freddie had admired himself so much that Willicombe didn’t have the heart to have him change back into his old clothes. Douglas had told Willicombe to have a half dozen suits made up for him.

Tied securely to the roof of the carriage was a keg of old Janie’s sweet milk, a lovely gift from Mrs. Osbourne.

James slept most of the way, propped up between his father and Corrie, Jason on the seat opposite them, ready to catch James if he fell forward.

Douglas had wanted Corrie to tell them exactly what had happened, but he’d no sooner told her he’d informed her aunt and uncle that she was safe, than she gave him a sleepy smile and her head fell against James’s shoulder. He looked to see that Jason was staring fixedly at his brother and the young woman sleeping so naturally against him.

Douglas wondered if James had yet realized the consequences of this mad adventure.

AUNT MAYBELLA AND Uncle Simon were seated in the drawing room with the twins’ mama, all three of them drinking tea and worrying endlessly until Douglas and Jason helped James into the drawing room.

There was a good deal of pandemonium until James, deposited on the long sofa by his father and brother, two blankets tucked lovingly around him, said to Maybella and Simon, “I was so careful to keep Corrie covered as best I could because I was terrified she would become ill-and look what happened. I was the one. As Augie would say-tar and damnation.”

And Corrie, on her knees beside the sofa, said without hesitation, “I wish it had been me, James. I’ve never been more scared in my life than that second night.” She said to the room at large, “He was burning with fever, thrashing about so I couldn’t keep the blankets on him. Then he fell on his back so still I was certain he was dead.”

“I’m too mean to die,” he said.

“Yes, you are, and I’m very happy about that, although stubborn is more the truth of it.” She looked up then and said, “But he drank down all the water and lemonade I put to his mouth. And then buckets of tea.”

James took a sip of tea, laid his head back against the soft pillows his mother had placed beneath his head, and said, “You should have seen Corrie riding that horse through the cottage door, a pitchfork held like a lance under her arm. She was, naturally, wearing a white ball gown.” He began to laugh. “Good Lord, Corrie, it’s something I’ll never forget as long as I live.”

“Whatever are you talking about?” Alexandra couldn’t help herself fluttering around her son, her relief was so great.

“Corrie sporting a lance?” Uncle Simon said, and turned to his niece. “Dearest, I remember when you were a little girl and going through your knight-in-Medieval-England phase. James taught you how to hold a long pole without impaling yourself. I remember he stood there laughing when you held that pole and ran full tilt toward a chicken. But you actually did it this time on horseback?”

“I’d forgotten that,” James said. “You missed the chicken, Corrie.”

“She was fast,” Corrie said, “really fast and then she had the nerve to run behind a tree.”

James said, “And you rammed the pole against the tree and the impact sent you flying back on your bu-well, on, you sat down, really hard.”

He cleared his throat even as his mother said, “James tries to be careful in his bodily descriptions. He knows it’s appreciated by his mother.”

“Ha,” Jason said.

James said, “Well, Corrie wasn’t ru

“She ran at a tree?” Aunt Maybella asked.

It took another hour before everyone had digested the entire tale. Douglas saw that his son was exhausted. He rose. “The man who paid the three villains said he was Douglas Sherbrooke. This gives me great pause. I don’t suppose that this man, Augie, used my name to taunt you, James?”

James shook his head, very nearly asleep. “He’d never heard of you, sir. He wasn’t making it up.”

“You’re ready to fall off the sofa, James,” Alexandra said, lightly stroking her fingertips over his face. “Ah, look. Your hair is all shiny and clean.”

“Corrie washed me, hair included, this morning.”

“Oh,” said Aunt Maybella and shot a glance at Simon, who wasn’t paying attention. He was staring at the oak trees, their leaves begi

He was out of the drawing room before Corrie could blink. She smiled after him. She saw several governesses with their charges in the park, and knew that they would be admiring her uncle, never realizing that he had no interest in them at all, just in those gold oak leaves.