* * *
There were a dozen congenial ways—at the very least—in which he could be spending an afternoon, Avery thought. Prowling about his own home waiting for a drunken ward to awaken was not among them, though it was what he had been doing. And trotting around to South Audley Street to escort his stepmother home was not one either. Casually fond of the duchess he might be, but he did not involve himself a great deal in her life. Nor did she in his. Very rarely did he escort her anywhere. Nor, to be fair, did she expect it. And if he did go there to fetch her home, he would doubtless find himself knee deep in Westcotts and seamstresses and French hairdressers—were they not all French?—and Lord knew what else. Probably the very proper and very properly elegant Riverdale, with whom he had no sound reason to be irritated, would be there, for he was very definitely the sort who would escort his mother. Avery had every possible reason to pursue one of those dozen congenial activities and give South Audley Street a wide berth.
But that was where he found his feet leading him, and he did nothing to correct their course. He would see how well she was bearing up under the combined influence of a formidable grandmother and three aunts, not to mention one very proper earl and his mother and sister and some fake French persons. And she would wish to know that he had found and rescued Harry. For some reason it seemed she cared.
He was admitted to the drawing room to discover without surprise that they were all present except Molenor, who was probably ensconced in the reading room at White’s or somewhere similarly civilized, wise man. Avery made his bow.
Something had been done to her hair, something that probably did not fully satisfy the aunts since there was nothing fussily pretty about it. For the same reason, perhaps, it ought to repel him too. But the knot on the back of her head no longer resembled the head itself in either size or shape and looked altogether daintier.
“Well, Avery?” his stepmother asked.
The whole room had gone silent as though the fate of the world rested upon his opinion. Anna was not wearing the Sunday dress today. She was wearing something lighter and cheaper and older. It was cream in color and might once upon a time have had some pattern on the fabric. But frequent washings and scrubbings in the orphanage laundry tub had worn it to near invisibility. Even so, the dress was a vast improvement upon the gloomy Sunday blue.
“Harry has been found,” he said, his eyes still upon her.
Her face lit up with what looked remarkably like joy. The aunts would doubtless work upon that until she learned never to display any emotion stronger than a fashionable ennui.
“I tucked him into a bed at Archer House late this morning,” he said, “after every inch of his person had been scrubbed and scoured and he had been forcibly fed by my valet, who also poured some concoction into him to counter the effects of an overindulgence in liquor. He will doubtless stir with the beginnings of a return to consciousness sometime soon, but he will be as cross as a bear and not willingly to be endured. I shall leave him to my valet’s care until later.”
“Oh.” She closed her eyes. “He is safe.”
There was a general murmur of relief from Harry’s relatives.
“Where did you find him, Avery?” Elizabeth asked.
“In company with an interesting collection of ragamuffins,” he said, “and a fierce, bald giant of a recruiting sergeant.”
“He has enlisted?” Riverdale asked with a frown. “As a private soldier?”
“Had enlisted,” Avery said. “I unenlisted him.”
“After the fact?” Riverdale said. “Impossible.”
“Ah,” Avery said with a sigh, “but I happened to have my quizzing glass about my person, you see, and I looked at the sergeant through it.”
“My poor boy,” the dowager countess said. “Why did he not simply come to me?”
“If the French but knew it,” Elizabeth said, “they would arm themselves with quizzing glasses instead of cannons and muskets and drive the British out of Spain and Portugal in no time at all with not a single drop of blood shed.”
“Ah,” Avery said, looking appreciatively at her, “but they would not have me behind all those glasses, would they?”
She laughed. So did her mother and Lady Molenor.
“Avery,” Anna said, bringing his attention back to her, “take me to him.”
“To Harry?” He raised his eyebrows. “He was not in the most jovial of moods before he went to sleep and will be worse after he has woken up.”
“I would not expect him to be,” she said. “Take me to him. Please?”
“Ah, but I will not force him to see you,” he told her.
“That is fair,” she said.
Nobody protested. How could they? She wished to see her brother, and the people gathered here were equally related to both.
Though he had come with the express purpose of escorting his stepmother home, Avery abandoned her to her own devices and stepped out for the second day in a row with Anna on his arm. Today, he thought idly, she looked more like a milkmaid than a teacher. One almost expected to look down and see a three-legged milking stool clutched in her free hand.
“What would you have done,” she asked him, “if the sergeant had refused to be cowed by your quizzing glass and your ducal hauteur?”
“Dear me.” He considered. “I should have been forced to render him unconscious—with the greatest reluctance. I am not a violent man. Besides, it might have hurt his feelings to be downed by a fellow Englishman no more than half his size.”