Page 2 of Who’s That Earl

His voice drew the boy’s eye to the perilous situation of his commanding officer. The same faint streak of moonlight that had silvered the waves now gleamed along the blade of Thomas’s knife. The boy froze with the oar still upraised, swaying slightly beneath its weight and momentum. With a flick of his wrist, Thomas motioned for him to lay it on the ground.

“Do it, Perkins” Bancroft rasped. “I don’t fancy having a mad Scotsman fillet me with a rusty cane knife.”

Bewildered, the lad looked first to one and then the other before shaking his head and letting the oar drop. It landed with a dull thud, bounced off the hard ground, and struck Bancroft’s shin.

The string of profanity that flew from Bancroft’s lips marked him clearly as an Englishman—men almost always resorted to their native tongue when sick or in pain. Thomas was similarly convinced that no bones had been broken, else the man would have been neither so creative nor so coherent. “Cheer up, Captain.” He thrust the knife once more into its sheath, then favored the man with a lazy smile. “The lad might’ve been carrying a pistol.”

“I had hopes that the oar would be persuasion enough,” Bancroft ground from between clenched teeth, still clutching at his injury.

Despite the warm, humid air, a chill settled over Thomas. The captain had ordered the seaman to follow him—and to come armed. As if they’d expected trouble. Or resistance.

“Persuasion?”

Bancroft winced as he struggled to keep his feet, leaning heavily on Perkins and gesturing for the oar, which he pressed into service as a makeshift crutch. Dust streaked his once-spotless uniform, one sleeve was torn, and sweat slid down his face in rivulets, making tracks in the smear of dirt across one cheek. Still, he had not lost his haughty demeanor. “General Scott made it clear that you have never shown any particular fondness for following orders.”

Thomas shrugged gamely. Why else would he have been sent to this godforsaken spot to begin with?

“He asked me to make sure you understood that it’s imperative you follow this one.”

With the oar, Bancroft gestured toward the rough path their feet had carved between the spot where they stood and the beach, indicating that Thomas was to lead the way back to the boat.

Such a simple directive: Homeward.

But where, after all this time, was home?

* * * *

London in early January was still a bustling, hustling place. Though the great and wealthy overwintered on their country estates, the rest of the city went on about its business, oblivious to the gray skies and the cold, damp wind that cut right through a man’s coat. Even a red one.

Thomas tugged uneasily at the collar of his uniform and fancied he caught a whiff of camphor. No surprise there. He’d had no use for the flash of scarlet and brass while working undercover, and no use for wool’s sturdy warmth under a West Indian sun. In Whitehall, however, and for a meeting with General Scott, even he could muster a show of respect for authority.

Once across the almost-deserted parade grounds and inside the vast warren of offices and stables that made up the Horse Guards, he paused to shake the rain from his hat and tuck it under his arm. Directed down a northern corridor, he found himself counting his steps out of habit. It would not do for a man of his experience to get lost.

At last, he paused before an unmarked oak door. Before he could raise his knuckles to rap, it swung open, as if he had been expected. As if someone had been watching. But, of course, someone had been watching. Behind that sturdy panel—or rather, behind what he assumed would turn out to be a series of doors, each one more strenuously guarded than the last—sat the architect of Britain’s military-intelligence operation.

“Lieutenant Sutherland.” The officer who had opened the door wore a uniform that had never been sweat-stained, nor bloodied, nor stuffed in the bottom of a trunk, and he spoke as if there could be no question of the visitor’s identity. “He’s expecting you. Right this way.”

Thomas had less than a moment to get his bearings. The small room contained a cabinet, a desk, and a chair for the one who worked at it, none for visitors. Before he could decide whether the two neat stacks of paper on the desktop contained information vital to the nation’s security or were merely for show, the man had opened another door—just one, though it was the sort that was built into the wall in such a way as to make it easy to overlook—and ushered him through it. The latch clicked softly into place the moment he had crossed the threshold.

This office was larger than the anteroom, though not considerably so, and similarly furnished, though the desk was somewhat larger, and a pair of chairs sat before it in addition to the one behind it. Yet the dissimilarities were equally striking. In a word, the space was...cozy. A worn but gaily-patterned Turkey carpet covered most of the austere tile floor. Dark blue drapes had been looped haphazardly behind polished bronze hooks, inviting in what daylight could be coaxed through a single tall window. The desk, like the carpet, had seen its share of use, and its surface was positively littered with sloping and sliding piles of papers. Here and there, Thomas could see the corner of a map peeping out from the chaos, or the red-wax circle of some important seal. A cloud of smoke hung on the air, wreathing the white-haired figure who stood with his back to the door, looking out into the gray morning.

“Ah, come in. Come in.” General Zebadiah Scott spoke around the stem of his pipe as he turned from the window and extended a hand of welcome. “I’ve been expecting you. Thought you would arrive sooner, but my sources tell me you were delayed in Portsmouth by some, ah, personal business.”

At the twinkle in Scott’s eye, Thomas busied himself with settling into the chair the general had indicated. All things considered, it was not shocking to discover that the man knew how he’d spent the days after his arrival. Hell, Scott could probably name every pub he’d visited, which was more than Thomas himself could do.

But Thomas’s gaze had been driven to the floor by the unsettling sensation that Scott knew even more. Knew that for an hour, or even two, Thomas had been quietly weighing whether or not to return to London via a certain village in Sussex, just to prove to himself that the woman he’d met seven years ago had not been a figment of his imagination. Just to see if Miss Quayle was Miss Quayle still.

By morning, common sense had returned, along with a dry mouth and an aching head. Sternly, he had faced his reflection in the glass above the washstand and told himself that any such detour would be a foolish waste of time. Miss Quayle was no doubt Mrs. Somebody-or-other now, with children trailing from her apron strings. Better to remember her as sweet and seventeen and smelling of night-blooming jasmine.

He had not mentioned either his ill-considered plan or his far more sensible rejection of it to anyone. Had not so much as muttered her name beneath his breath. Yet, as Thomas discovered when he raised his head, Scott was still looking at him, with knowing eyes and a quirk about his mouth that could only be described as amusement. Some underling’s dutiful report of Thomas’s days of debauchery in Portsmouth would not have produced such a look.

“Ah, well. Welcome home, Mr. Sutherland.” The general set his pipe on a crystal ashtray, so near a stack of papers that Thomas feared they might catch fire. With his wispy white hair, slight build, and wizened features, Scott strongly favored a mischievous elf. No one would suspect him for a creative genius, a military mastermind. Unless, perhaps, he owed some part of his uncanny abilities to sorcery?

“But I forget myself,” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together and laughing. “I must say, ‘my lord’ now. Lord Magnus.” He sketched a bow and was still chortling when he took up the chair behind the desk.

Thomas had spent almost every moment of seven weeks at sea—seven weeks with very little else to distract him, not even a storm or a sighting of a French ship—trying to make sense of the message Bancroft had delivered. He’d tested every possible meaning in his mind, including the one Scott had just given: that he, Thomas, now bore a title.

Time and again, he’d dismissed it as impossible.