A Fine Gentleman Read online

  Cover image: Couple © Lee Avison / Trevillion Images; Butterfly © thawats, courtesy istockphoto.com

  Cover design copyright © 2017 by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  Author photo: copyright © Annalisa Photography

  Published by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  American Fork, Utah

  Copyright © 2017 by Sarah M. Eden

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without the written permission of the publisher, Covenant Communications, Inc., P.O. Box 416, American Fork, UT 84003. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Covenant Communications, Inc., or any other entity.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are either products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously.

  First Printing: March 2017

  ISBN 978-1-52440-234-1

  To Ranee`,

  who offered a desperately needed ray of hope in a

  difficult time and has stood as my friend again and again,

  for giving me reason to hold on to this story and

  believe it had a future

  Acknowledgments

  A heartfelt thank you to . . .

  The British Postal Museum & Archive for invaluable insights and incredibly specific information, without which I could not have hoped to make this story anywhere near accurate.

  Graham Bradley for coming to the rescue on the unexpectedly complicated matter of a very crucial Castilian expression, a seemingly small endeavor but one I greatly appreciate.

  James Blevins for a thorough and expert check of my admittedly inexpert Spanish. Your insights and willingness to help made all the difference in the world. This story would have been a mess without your generosity.

  Christina Parks for double-checking the French phrases used in this story and making certain I didn’t make an utter fool of myself. Thank you.

  The incomparable Pam Howell, who has been a cheerleader, an advocate, a listening ear, and a source of indispensable wisdom.

  Bob Diforio, whose knowledge, professionalism, patience, and determination never cease to amaze me.

  Sam Millburn, who takes these stories I craft and mold and makes them far better than I ever could on my own.

  My family, for supporting me in this often ridiculous undertaking, for encouraging me, cheering for me, putting an arm of consolation around my shoulders when need be, and loving me through all the chaos and stress. You make life beautiful.

  Chapter One

  London, April 1815

  The commotion outside his office ought to have served as something of a warning, but Jason Jonquil, barrister and proud perfectionist, had done nothing more than glance up from his ruler-straight stack of papers when the first noises had drifted through his closed door. Thus, he was entirely unprepared when Hansen, his long-suffering clerk, hurried inside, a bit short of breath, to announce the arrival of a client.

  “Miss Mariposa Thornton.” The name rushed from Hansen’s lips at precisely the instant a young lady Jason had never before seen glided into his office.

  He stood automatically.

  “And Mrs. Aritza,” Hansen added as a second lady stepped inside. Hobbled inside was a more precise description, and Jason was nothing if not precise.

  “You are Mr. Jonquil?” Miss Thornton asked, a hint of an accent in her words. She raised an ebony eyebrow in inquiry.

  Though far shorter than he was, she somehow managed to look down her nose at him. Being the son of an earl had its advantages—Jason found he could quite easily squelch such pretensions. He might be a barrister and obligated to work for a living, but he was born to the aristocracy. “I am Mr. Jonquil,” he replied repressively. “And I shall inform you now that I do not take on new clients without a recommendation.”

  “Sí.” She seemed to sigh. “You are definitely Señor Jason.” She made the realization sound oddly like an insult. The woman beside her shook her head of white hair as if in disapproval. “Siéntese, Abuela,” Miss Thornton said to her companion, who shuffled to a nearby chair and sat, her wrinkled eyes narrowed on Jason.

  “As I said, Miss Thornton,” Jason repeated himself calmly. “I have a very full clientele and do not accept new clients without—”

  “A recommendation, sí.” She waved off his words and sat as well. “You have come very highly recommended, so we need not worry on such a thing.”

  That was not at all what he had meant. Jason straightened a stack of papers that had shifted askew when his office door had burst open so unceremoniously. The task allowed him a moment to push down his frustration. He was something of an expert at maintaining his calm.

  “Miss Thornton,” he said, “you are the one requiring a recommendation.”

  “What need have I for a recommendation? I am not a barrister.”

  “You misunderstand me—”

  “Not a very reassuring example of your skills of communication.” Miss Thornton looked rather unimpressed with him as she cut him off. Again. “I would think it importante for a barrister to be able to bring others around to an understanding of his position on any given issue.”

  “This conversation is in no way, I assure you, Miss Thornton, an example of my professional abilities. It is more a display of your own inability to understand what is said to you.”

  “Oh, I understand what is said in more than one language, Mr. Jonquil.” He would wager one of those languages was Spanish. The other was clearly English, spoken nearly perfectly, with only the slightest of accents. How was it, then, that she struggled so much to understand him? “I find myself much concerned over you, sir.”

  “Over me?” Jason raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes,” she answered, seeming to study him. “You are something of a disappointment, if you must know.”

  “A disappointment?”

  “I was told you were a very skilled barrister. Quite talented, I was told. And yet I find you cannot even hold up your end of a simple conversation.” Miss Thornton shook her head in much the way a nursemaid would at a small child struggling with the smallest of tasks. “Perhaps, Mr. Jonquil, you are a bit simple.” She whispered the last word as if it were a well-kept secret she was reluctant to disclose.

  “A bit simple?” he asked, his exasperation growing by the moment.

  “And you have a most disconcerting habit of repeating everything that is said to you,” she added. “I am not at all certain that is what I wish for in a man of the law.”

  “I do not accept clients without a recommendation.”

  “Yes, you said that already,” she answered extremely patiently. “A most unprofessional habit of yours. It is no wonder you have to be recommended in order to acquire clients.”

  “I am not the one who is recommended—”

  “But you were recommended, which is particularly confusing, for I cannot imagine why. I had assumed I would, at the very least, find you competent. Perhaps advice given by one who is biased is not to be trusted.” She said the last as if more to herself than to him. “Strange. I thought he was quite dependable.”

  “You thought who was dependable?” Jason asked, feeling a headache coming on.

  “The gentleman who recommended you,” she answered as if he ought to have known as much.

  “And this was a close acquaintance of mine?” Jason hoped to get around to the identity of the ingrate who’d sent this babbling package of confusion to his office. He had every intention of locating the
mischief maker and “thanking” him.

  “Of course,” Miss Thornton replied in that same tone of condescending exasperation.

  “And who is he?”

  “Mr. Jonquil”—she shook her head once more—“if you do not even know who your ‘close acquaintances’ are, I cannot see how you can possibly handle the many intricacies of the law.”

  “Again, you misunderstand me.” A soft pounding began in his temples.

  “Not a promising sign.” Miss Thornton drew her eyebrows together, concentrating. “I am sorry, Mr. Jonquil, but I am afraid I am going to be forced to fire you.”

  “Fire me?” Jason was on his feet again. How utterly ridiculous.

  “It is nothing personal, I assure you.” She rose calmly. “I am certain you are a fine individual. You are simply a horrible barrister.”

  “I will have you know I am a fine barrister, and you cannot fire me—”

  “But I must.” She pressed a hand to her heart in a continental display of regret. “I am needing someone with experience, intelligence, and ability. So I absolutely must fire you, as much as it pains me.”

  “Experience? Intelligence? Ability?” Jason felt his patience slip further.

  “You are repeating things again.” She spoke gently, as if assuming he was unaware of it.

  “I realize that,” he snapped back.

  “Then perhaps you can in time overcome that difficulty.” A ponderous look crossed her face. “Maybe that is what you need, Mr. Jonquil. A chance to conquer your shortcomings. If I allow you to be my barrister again, could you accomplish what I am in need of?”

  It was a rhetorical question, Jason felt certain. Yet he valued honesty above all character traits, save, perhaps, dependability. He would answer her question and without hesitation. “Of course I could, and I would do a far better job than any other barrister you could find in all of London.”

  She looked ever more doubtful. “I suppose I could give you a chance to prove yourself, though I am not entirely certain it would be a wise thing for me to do.”

  “On the contrary, it would be an extremely wise decision.”

  She shrugged, obviously still unconvinced, then resumed her seat and fished through her overlarge drawstring bag. “So long as you understand that I may, qué lástima, be forced to fire you at any time.”

  Of all the ridiculous notions. He’d never been fired in all his life. “I sincerely doubt you will find it at all necessary, Miss Thornton.”

  She smiled at him then, but it was not a companionable smile, nor necessarily a cheery smile. Once again, she put him in mind of a nursery maid indulgently watching over a particularly bumbling charge. “You did not even repeat anything that time, Mr. Jonquil,” Miss Thornton said as if he ought to look on such a feat as a significant accomplishment. “That is promising.”

  Jason caught himself very nearly rolling his eyes, something his eldest brother, Philip, did quite regularly and, therefore, something Jason was quite careful never to do.

  Miss Thornton produced several sheets of heavy paper. “These are papers,” she said to him, her words enunciated quite carefully, her eyes focused on him with a hint of a pitying smile tugging at the corners of her unfashionably wide mouth.

  Mrs. Aritza, who had remained silent and almost entirely still during the exchange, shifted quite abruptly in her chair, her foot striking Miss Thornton’s shin in the process. A tiny, muffled yelp escaped Miss Thornton’s throat, indicating the strike had carried more force than it had seemed to.

  Miss Thornton patted the older lady’s hand soothingly. “Está bien,” she said gently to her companion. Then, turning to look at Jason, Miss Thornton said under her breath, “Old age, I fear, has taken its toll. She twitches now and again. It is, at times, most inconvenient, but she is such a dear old lady that one must overlook such things.”

  Another twitch sent the older lady’s foot into Miss Thornton’s shin once more. Jason could do little but nod his understanding and, for the briefest of moments, feel a twinge of sympathy for the exasperating young lady.

  “What is the significance of these papers?” Jason asked, steering the conversation back to the topic at hand. “I am assuming these relate to the legal matter with which you require my assistance.”

  “Oh, yes. This is my father’s will.”

  “Will?” Jason very nearly dropped his head into his hands. Barristers did not, in general practice, handle such trivial matters of civil law.

  “Oh dear.” Her black, arching eyebrows shot together in discouragement. “The repeating has begun again.”

  “Allow me to explain, Miss Thornton. Matters of estate and inheritance are the domain of solicitors. I, as I know you are aware, am a barrister.”

  “Oh. Then solicitors are far superior to barristers.” She nodded decisively as if a great mystery had been solved.

  “On the contrary, Miss Thornton,” Jason interrupted, unable to let such an untruth go unchecked. “The distinction is quite the reverse. In fact, solicitors often are employed by barristers. To consult a solicitor rather than a barrister would be something of a step down.”

  “But if I understood you correctly,” Miss Thornton said, “you suggested I take my pressing problem to a solicitor because you are unable to address this issue. Such an action does seem to indicate you feel your abilities lacking.”

  “I—”

  “Just as I had originally suspected they were.” Miss Thornton did not even pause for breath. “I truly must fire you, Mr. Jonquil. If you do not have confidence in yourself, how can I possibly have confidence in you?” She rose, placing her father’s will inside her reticule once more.

  “Allow me to be frank, Miss Thornton.”

  She nodded, but the wariness did not leave her expression.

  “I can perform any legal service a solicitor can,” Jason said. “And, I might add, would be far better at it.”

  She looked excessively doubtful.

  Jason found it absolutely imperative that he count—slowly—before answering. He was very close to losing his calm, something he would never have believed right up until the moment Miss Thornton had entered his office.

  “Have you ever even seen a will, Mr. Jonquil?” Miss Thornton seemed to expect him to deny it.

  Of all the absurd! “Certainly, I have.”

  “Professionally, I mean.”

  That, at least, was slightly less insulting. Jason nodded, mentally working the tension out of his jaw.

  “And you did not bungle the assignment too monumentally, I hope?” she pressed. A tiny oof followed when Mrs. Aritza’s twitch resurfaced. Miss Thornton offered a tight smile to her companion.

  “I did not bungle the assignment at all,” Jason said.

  “But if you had, you likely wouldn’t tell me as much.”

  She doubted his honesty? Anyone who knew anything about him would never question his integrity. Though he had his failings, being a liar was not one of them.

  “If you wish to consult Lord and Lady Cavratt on the matter, I am certain they would give you a full account of their satisfaction with my abilities.”

  “Ah yes.” Miss Thornton nodded. “You require recommendations.”

  “That is not what I meant.”

  Miss Thornton placed her pile of papers on Jason’s desk, very nearly upsetting a tidy stack. Jason carefully moved his other work to one side and took her papers in hand.

  “My father’s will is on top,” Miss Thornton said. “Below it is my birth certificate and my parents’ marriage lines. Below that is a signed statement from a priest, witnessing that my father has died.”

  “Not a death certificate?” Jason asked, surprised that she did not have anything more official than a letter. “What is it, Miss Thornton, you wish me to ascertain on your behalf?”

  “Whether or not I have received any i
nheritance from my father.”

  “A simple reading should reveal that,” Jason said.

  “Wonderful.” Miss Thornton rose once more, and Jason did as well, civility as ingrained as breathing. “Then I should not have to fire you after all.” She pulled a calling card from her reticule and held it out to him. “If you would kindly send word when you have finished and inform me of whatever you discover, I would be most obliged.”

  Hardly believing he was to be so easily freed from the exhausting lady’s presence, Jason eagerly accepted the card, placing it on her stack of papers. “I will, Miss Thornton.”

  She said something in Spanish to her companion, who rose a little shakily. Jason came around his desk to offer the older lady his arm, keeping enough of a distance to hopefully stay out of range of her twitch.

  The look Mrs. Aritza gave him was very nearly commiserating. Jason chuckled silently to think that perhaps she realized Miss Thornton was exasperating.

  He walked them to the door of his office before giving them over to Hansen, who was waiting quite properly to do his duty by his employer and accompany his clients to the front door.

  Jason shook his head as he closed his office door. At least the problem she had presented was an easy one—a solicitor could easily have seen to the matter. It was not the area of law he generally worked in but would be simple enough.

  As he added her papers to his stack of work to be completed, he couldn’t help wondering with a disconcerting amount of confusion precisely how he had come to take Miss Thornton on as a client. He absolutely had not intended to.

  Chapter Two

  “These are papers.” Abuela repeated Mariposa’s earlier words, though she repeated them in her native Spanish. “Was it necessary to be quite so condescending?”

  “Was it necessary to kick me quite so hard?” Mariposa countered.

  “Which brings me to another grievance.” The conversation continued in Spanish, Abuela not being nearly as comfortable with English as Mariposa was. “I have a twitch?”