“Actually,” Huw intervened, “Annabelle came from an entirely different menagerie than the zebras.”
“Annabelle?” Lydia inquired. Her voice had grown slightly faint.
Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose. “Annabelle is the degu.”
Typically he did not regret letting Huw build a small menagerie in his castle. But these were not typical times.
Huw’s rock-solid system of ethics protested the mistreatment of any living creature, but neglected animals were his particular weakness. As stable master, he’d taken in several horses from the village that would have been put down for their health or temperament—Arthur’s own gelding among them.
Outside of his job at Strathrannoch Castle, Huw had developed a predilection for rescuing abused animals from traveling menageries. Abetted by the ever-crafty Bertie—whose Jamaican solicitor father had bequeathed to him a capacious knowledge of English legal codes—Huw had embarked upon several philanthropic (and slightly felonious) trips across Great Britain to rescue exotic creatures. All of which explained why Strathrannoch Castle was now home to sixteen zebras, two flying squirrels, six macaws, and the small and fuzzy Annabelle.
Arthur took a single despairing breath and then shoved Huw in the direction of Lydia’s door. “Relocate Annabelle,” he ordered, and then grabbed Bertie and dragged him down to the end of the hall.
“You needn’t be quite so peremptory, Strathrannoch,” Bertie said when Arthur released him. The older man straightened his cuffs, which looked as pristine as they always did, particularly in comparison to Arthur’s general dishevelment.
“I am not marrying this woman,” he hissed at Bertie. His voice was barely above a whisper, but he still looked nervously back in the direction of the countess’s—Lydia’s—hang it,Miss Hope-Wallace’schamber. She’d gone inside with Huw, presumably for the degu rousting.
“No one said you were.” Bertie had moved on to the neat fold of his cravat. He wore an air of beleaguered innocence, his London accent particularly crisp.
“I can see right through you,” Arthur growled. “You’ve thesame expression on your face as you did when you made me hire young Widow Campbell as castle cook—”
Bertie polished his spectacles on his handkerchief. “I could not possibly have anticipated that she would set the kitchen afire.”
“And when you trapped Polly Murray and me in the cold cellar together for twelve hours—”
“An unfortunate accident—”
“She nearly lost a toe to frostbite, Bertie!”
Bertie replaced his spectacles. “An exaggeration, surely.”
“When I hired you and Huw a decade ago,” Arthur snapped, “it was to help me run this damned estate and keep my people fed and housed, not ensure the continuation of the Strathrannoch line.”
Bertie’s eyebrows rose. He did not say anything for a long moment.
And Arthur, ludicrously, felt chastened.
He had been twenty-two when he’d hired Bertie and Huw. His brother had been away at school—he’d been sick with dread every time the bills arrived and too ashamed to tell Davis that he had to come home. He’d wanted to peel off his skin when he’d shown his account books to Bertie—terrified the older man would mock or pity him.
Instead Bertie had rubbed his hands together and nodded briskly. “Let’s get to work,” he’d said. “First, tell me what you possess that you cannot part with. And then I propose that we sell everything else and start fresh.”
Bertie and Huw had been at his side ever since, with the notable exception of occasional animal rescue jaunts about the island of Great Britain. Arthur had no right to question their dedication or their years of service.
“I am not especially concerned with the continuation of theStrathrannoch line,” Bertie said mildly. “Nor, I can say with some certainty, is Huw.”
Arthur blew out a breath.
It had been his father who had been obsessed with the Strathrannoch line, of course. He had never let Arthur forget what a disappointment he was as heir, and how infinitely preferable Davis would have been.
Arthur was dreamy, distracted, clumsy with his strength. He spoke too familiarly to the tenants. Was forever late to dinner after losing himself in piles of engineering books.
Davis was never late for dinner. Davis was easy and charming; he never had a black curl out of place, never addressed anyone too bluntly and accidentally caused offense.
“It is only that we would like for you to be happy,” Bertie said, interrupting the decades-old direction of Arthur’s thoughts.
“I am happy.”
Bertie’s mouth crimped at the corner, a tiny movement that Arthur was not certain how to interpret.
