Andrew

279 Pages·2012·1.53 MB·English

by  Burrowes Grace

Copyright © 2013 by Grace Burrowes Cover and internal design © 2013 by
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Lonely Lords Family Tree II
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Douglas, Lord of Heartache
Lonely Lords Family Tree I
About the Author
Back Cover
To Delray the Wonder Pony,
and all the Wonder Ponies.

One
I will not run from the sight of my brother’s front door—I hope.
Andrew Alexander’s composure felt as tentative as if he were facing another
Channel crossing under stormy skies, though he nonetheless rapped the lion’s
head knocker stoutly three times against its brass fitting.
“Have you a card, sir?” The butler posed his question with that precise blend
of hauteur and deference appropriate in the household of an English marquess.
“I’m afraid you have me at a loss,” Andrew replied. “My cards went missing
somewhere between the Levant and Gibraltar.” He’d pitched them overboard at
a point in his wanderings when he’d been so homesick that, despite all his
misgivings, despite the sea voyages involved, and despite the prospect of
renewed proximity to Astrid Worthington, he’d turned his sights for England.
Not Astrid Worthington. Astrid Allen, Viscountess Amery.
Andrew had something better than calling cards, however. He had a pair of
dark eyebrows, which when lifted at a certain angle over eyes of a particularly
brilliant blue, proclaimed him—to those possessed of a modicum of perspicacity
—the younger sibling of the marquess.
The butler apparently numbered among such noticing souls. “My apologies,
my lord. I will see if the family is receiv—Lord Andrew?”
Andrew assayed a smile, though he did not recognize this man.
“It’s Hodges, your lordship. I was the newly hired underbutler when you left
on your travels four years ago. Welcome home! Welcome home, my lord!” The
fellow—whom Andrew still did not recognize—was bowing so enthusiastically
his wig nearly came down over his ginger brows.
“Thank you, Hodges. It’s good to be home.” Andrew had rehearsed that very
line, and thought it came out rather well.
To be on dry land was always good. Always.
“Lord Heathgate has been on a tear ever since we got your letter, my lord,”
Hodges declared as he divested Andrew of hat and gloves. “Her ladyship, too.
Please do come along. The master is in his library.”
Hodges bustled down the hallway, while Andrew sustained a sensory blow
that had to do with the scent of beeswax and lemon oil, the sight of red roses in a
silver bowl on the side table, and the jingle of a passing carriage.
He was as much at home as he was ever going to be.
Hodges tapped three times on the library door, a small sound that guaranteed
for a while, at least, Andrew would remain at home.
“We’ll surprise him, eh, your lordship? And I’ll let the marchioness know the
happy news.” Hodges was fair to bursting out of his silver and blue livery to tell
Heathgate’s lady that the prodigal was home, while Andrew felt a sense of frigid
waves closing over his head and brine filling his belly.
Though beneath those reactions also dwelled a stubborn joy. Andrew seized
the joy with both hands as Hodges announced, “a visitor,” then promptly
dropped it when he found himself standing in his brother’s library.
“You’ll have him to yourself,” Hodges whispered with a cheeky wink.
Which was exactly what Andrew did not want.
Will he, nil he, the door clicked quietly shut. Andrew’s only surviving brother
stood in quarter profile by a set of French doors that led out to the back gardens.
Gareth looked the same, no gray in his sable hair, no age creeping into his face,
no dimming of his icy blue eyes. If anything, the man looked… younger, and the
sight of him hale and whole comforted unbearably.
Gareth shot across the room and enveloped Andrew in a silent embrace, as a
queer feeling suffused Andrew’s chest, then his whole body, a kind of chill and
heat that left him weak-kneed and resting his forehead against Gareth’s shoulder.
He did not deserve this unseemly display, but he held fiercely to his brother a
moment longer.
“Squeeze me any harder and you will make me cry,” he said, stepping back
when Gareth’s hold eased. A boyhood taunt between brothers was nothing less
than the God’s honest truth now. Andrew tried for a smile—and mostly failed.
“You have damned near made your brother cry,” Gareth growled. “God’s
balls, you’re skinny. Between Felicity and Mother, you will soon be fat as a
market hog.” He went to the sideboard and gestured with a decanter. “A
celebratory tot?”
Andrew avoided strong drink as a matter of course, particularly whiskey,
because it—along with sea voyages and introductions to any woman named Julia
—seemed to fuel the nightmares.
“Of course,” Andrew said, still feeling strangely weak. “Brandy will do. I
have missed your cellar.” He had missed his brother far more. He propped
himself against Gareth’s huge desk in what he hoped was a nonchalant pose.
“We can drink to the health of your lady. Your last letter said Felicity is once
again blooming, to use your words, in anticipation of a happy event.”
Given her condition, Andrew would need the fortification of his drink before
he saw his sister-in-law again.
“She does the blooming, I do the anticipating,” Gareth said, handing his
brother a bumper of brandy and clinking his glass against it. “To homecomings.”
“And your wife’s continued good health,” Andrew countered, raising his
glass. The taste of Gareth’s bribing stock was more proof of homecoming, the
brandy smooth, fruity, and subtly complex. Andrew sipped once and set his glass
aside. “You do serve the very best.”
“Only to my most honored guests,” Gareth shot back. “Do you know,
Andrew, how badly I have missed you? Worse than that, Felicity missed you,
and Mother missed you, perhaps more than all of us put together.”
Astrid had missed him too. She’d put that in writing a time or two, and
Andrew still had those notes.
“And how fares our good dam?” Andrew rejoined. Yes, he’d missed them as
well, and he’d been gone too long—and not nearly long enough. On that
thought, he sank into the comfortable depths of Gareth’s sofa.
Gareth appropriated an armchair, looking very much the lord of the manor.
“Mother is well, having had great fun shepherding Astrid through two seasons
and a wedding. We’ve also had the sense to present her ladyship with perfect,
brilliant, adorable, et cetera grandchildren whose precociousness flatters her
endlessly. With another—at least—on the way, her cup runneth over. Seeing