When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,9

crossly, as if there’d been no interruption in their conversation. “He smelled.”

She wrinkled her small, straight nose as if assaulted by the odor of a cesspool.

“No doubt,” Julian muttered. “Come. Let’s go to Adders.”

Her carriage was standing before the croft. The driver and a footman were half-asleep on the box while a second footman leaned against the carriage, nodding. The men came awake, though, on sight of him. The footman by the carriage scrambled to hand Lucretia in.

Julian glanced at the driver. “Back to Adders Hall.”

“Sir!” the driver shouted, and the moment Julian was inside they were off.

He took the seat across from Lucretia and examined her. The early-morning sun made a nimbus of the fine strands of hair escaping the knot at the top of her head. “Where’s your lady’s maid?”

“I told Messalina to take Bartlett,” Lucretia replied. “After all, she couldn’t travel all the way back to London with just Mr. Hawthorne.”

Julian raised an eyebrow at this logic, which left Lucretia traveling alone with just the coachman and the two footmen, but didn’t bother replying.

Outside they passed more crofts—some occupied, some not. This had been a prosperous bit of land once, cottages full, fields teeming with sheep and cattle. But that had been before his mother’s death.

Adders Hall was west of Oxford, nearly at the Welsh border, on land that should’ve been prosperous. When Julian had inherited Adders Hall and the small amount of property surrounding it from his mother, he’d had high hopes of being a competent landowner. One who would follow modern methods of agriculture and husbandry. One who would care for his tenants and their families.

He’d been but seventeen, very young, unaware that his father’s will had left his parents’ wealth in the hands of his uncle, Augustus Greycourt, the Duke of Windemere. The duke was to manage his inheritance until Julian came of age and could take over the accounts.

But when Julian turned one and twenty, Augustus had given him a paltry amount. His uncle had claimed that there had never been any wealth. That besides Messalina’s and Lucretia’s enormous dowries—set aside by his mother and now in the duke’s control—nothing was left. Augustus had smiled when he’d told Julian that his father had run through his inheritance like a profligate.

The carriage bounced down a lane and into the Adders Hall drive. The beech allée to either side of the drive was in a shocking state—in need of trimming and replanting in parts—and the drive itself was rutted and overgrown.

Adders Hall came into view, and Julian suppressed a wince. It once had been a modest but stately house, built in worn gray stone, but now the west wing was closed, the roof leaked, and many of the windows were boarded up. Weeds grew around the front steps like mice nibbling at a matron’s hem.

A lone figure stood by the door, swaying slightly.

“Oh, good,” Lucretia said. “Quintus came home.” She glanced at Julian. “I found him in one of the cottages. I don’t know why you both lurk around the tenants’ cottages when you have a perfectly good house here.”

Julian turned to look at the approaching ruin pointedly.

Lucretia frowned. “Well, a house in any case.”

He snorted.

The carriage halted abruptly, nearly sending his sister into his lap.

Julian descended first, just in time to catch his brother, stumbling toward them. Quinn slumped heavily against him, making Julian brace himself. His younger brother was the same height as he, but Quinn was a good two stone heavier.

“Thought I saw Lu-Lu-Lu-cre-tia,” Quinn mumbled, sending a puff of stale breath into Julian’s face.

Good God. Quinn did indeed reek—a combination of alcohol, rancid sweat, and filthy clothes. He must’ve fallen in the mud at least once on his way home.

“You did see me,” their sister said, having exited the carriage. She might be a head shorter than both of them, but her expression suggested the severity of a nanny about to scold an errant toddler. “Messalina needs your help.”

Quinn blinked stupidly at her. How long had he been languishing in his cups?

Julian sighed. “A moment, Sister.”

He jerked his chin at the footman on the carriage, and the man jumped down. Julian took one of his brother’s arms, the footman took the other, and, with Lucretia trailing behind, they were able to drag Quinn into the house, down a dark hall, and to the kitchen, startling Vanderberg, Julian’s valet, who looked to be in the midst of a good gossip with Mrs. McBride, the cook.

Vanderberg was a small man—barely five feet—dressed elegantly