The Soldier by Grace Burrowes Page A

milord.” Stevens sounded less than enthusiastic about a schedule put forth by a man who could forget the day of the week.
    Well, thought the earl, suppressing a grin, when a man experienced his first conscious trouser salute in more than two years, the day of the week faded in significance by comparison.
    “My lord.” Steen bowed to him at the front door. “You have a visitor in the library. He, um…” Steen found something worth examining on the earl’s sweaty riding gloves. “He arrived with luggage, my lord.”
    “Did he leave a card?” Luggage?
    “He said he was family.” Steen’s entire bald head suffused with pink.
    “Ah.” For Steen to have asked exactly how this fellow was family would have been rude, of course, and one couldn’t be rude to the earl’s family. “I will see him; send along some refreshment—lemonade, sandwiches, a sweet or two.”
    His father, having suffered a heart seizure just weeks previously, would not have journeyed north. His brother Gayle, having just married, would not have journeyed two feet from his bride, left to his own devices. It had to be his youngest brother, Valentine.
    “So, Val,” the earl strode into the library then stopped dead. “ Amery? ” The man before him was not tall, green-eyed with wavy dark hair, as each of the surviving Windham sons were. He was tall, blond, blue-eyed, and the most poker-faced individual St. Just had ever met, for all that his features had the austere beauty of a disappointed angel. “To what, in all of God’s creation, do I owe the honor of a visit from my niece’s stepfather?”
    “Pleased to see you, as well, St. Just.” Viscount Amery put down the book he’d been perusing and turned his gaze on his host. “Or should I say, Rosecroft?”
    “You should not.” The earl frowned, advancing into the room. “What have I done to be graced with your presence?” He didn’t mean to sound so unwelcoming, but he was surprised. No cavalry officer liked surprises.
    “I am here at the request of the Duchess of Moreland and at the request of my viscountess, both of whom are fretting over you—and with some grounds, I’d say.”
    “Good of them, though I am well enough.”
    “You are thinner, you appear fatigued to me, and your fences, St. Just, are sagging.”
    “Ever the charmer, eh, Amery?” The earl arched an eyebrow, and Amery arched his in response. Douglas Allen was the most unflappable, steady, serious person St. Just had encountered. The man had had the balls to stop a wedding between St. Just’s brother Gayle Windham, the Earl of Westhaven, and Douglas’s present wife, Guinevere, mother to Rose, the only Moreland grandchild. The wedding had badly needed to be stopped in the opinion of all save the Duke of Moreland, whose conniving had brought it about in the first place.
    “I do try.” Douglas picked his book back up and put it in its proper place on the library shelves. “Rose is with your parents, and Welbourne is between planting and harvest, as most of the country is, so my lady could spare me. She suggested Rosecroft might be a bit of a challenge after three years in Helmsley’s care. I see she did not exaggerate.”
    “She did not,” the earl said, grateful for plain speaking. He was also grateful when a knock on the door, heralding the tray of refreshments, gave him a moment to collect his thoughts and get him and his guest seated.
    “So how bad is it?” Douglas asked as he took a long swallow of cold lemonade.
    “Bad enough.” The earl passed Douglas a sandwich. “The fences are indicative of the situation as a whole: sagging but still functional.”
    “You’ve established priorities?”
    “Haying, the roof on the manor, the stables, the tenant farms, a dock on the Ouse.”
    “What of your home farm?” Douglas reached for his lemonade and paused. “Assuming you have a home farm?”
    “I do. For some reason, my steward hasn’t seen fit to tour it with me.”
    “Best remedy that.”