Brant was pleased that Thomas simply nodded. The boy’s expression implied that he thought Brant had no idea of what needed to be done, but at least he did not voice his doubts about Brant’s intelligence aloud. For someone who had been no more than a boot boy a very short time ago, young Thomas had become quite confident of his place at Brant’s side. Under better circumstances, Brant knew he would have found great amusement in the way Thomas was striding out of servitude into the world of being an openly acknowledged bastard brother of an earl. It was not a particularly kind world for one born on the wrong side of the blanket, but, with every passing moment spent in the boy’s company, Brant suspected young Thomas would do just fine.
As the carriage wound its way through the streets to the Warren, Brant thought about the new half brothers he had met as well as the ones who had gone missing. He had always known that his father had been consistently unfaithful to his mother yet had never considered the possibility that the man had bred a small army on the women in the countryside. That had been surprisingly na?ve of him. He now wondered what he would find in the city as his father had been just as great a rogue when in London as he had been everywhere else.
Upon meeting what appeared to be a stable staffed mostly by his father’s offspring, only Thomas had really cared to attempt to step away from the life of a simple country lad. Brant was determined to make life better for the others as well, appalled that his father had left nothing for the children he had bred so carelessly. There was a lot he could do to help the others step up from the rather lowly place of being no more than stable hands yet allow them to remain in the simple country life that they so obviously preferred. According to Thomas, Ned and Peter would also be wanting to better themselves. Brant just hoped the boys truly understood what they would face as children born on the wrong side of the blanket, even if that sire had been an earl.
“This be where her ladyship lives, m’lord,” said Thomas, breaking into Brant’s thoughts as the carriage rolled to a stop.
The Warren was looking much better than it had the last time he had visited it, Brant decided as he paid off the carriage driver. He had paid little attention to the place when he had stopped to ensure Olympia was settled and sent his carriage home before hurrying off to find a place to stay in a rented carriage. Penelope and Ashton had brought the house back to all its former glory. Looking up and down the street, he could see that many of the other homes were also looking much better than they had been when he had been here two years ago, the air of slow decay almost completely banished. A few more acquisitions and repairs and the little street would no longer be the less respectable neighborhood it had become.
He suddenly smiled. Of course it would also be packed with Wherlockes and Vaughns. As he rapped on the door, he decided it might be wise to look into other areas that sat unobtrusively on the edges of society’s chosen neighborhoods to see if they, too, could be brought back to the higher standards that society had. It could be a very profitable venture. He was startled out of his thoughts when Olympia herself opened the door.
“So, do you stay or do you go?” Olympia asked as she waved both Brant and Thomas inside and closed the door behind them.
“I cannot stay and well you know it,” Brant said as Pawl arrived to take his coat, hat, and cane.
“But you have no place else to stay, either, I wager.” Before Brant could reply, she said, “Come into the drawing room. Enid will soon bring us some tea and cakes and then we can talk.”
It was going to be embarrassing to have to tell her what had happened to him, but Brant followed her, sensing that she would not be too surprised by it all. He felt a brief flash of anger that she had obviously kept secrets from him but easily banished it. Whatever had turned him into a person no respectable citizen wanted in their home was probably not something she would have been comfortable telling him. He was not sure he would have fully believed her anyway.
Out of the corner of his eye he watched Thomas disappear down the hall toward the kitchen. Enid would spoil the boy with treats just as she was thoroughly spoiling young Merry. Brant could only pray that he would be able to find the girl’s sister, Thomas’s other aunt, who had disappeared about the same time as Ned and Peter.
By the time the tea and cakes were served, and he and Olympia were alone again, Brant was prepared to discuss the humiliating fact that he had nowhere to stay. He now believed he could do so without complaining, something he felt he had no right to do. It was by his own actions that he was no longer accepted anywhere. If he had paused to consider the consequences of his deep plunge into debauchery at all, it had not really included the possibility of being utterly banished from the society he had been born into. He was, after all, that most cherished of English gentlemen. He was unwed, titled, without debt, and with a very respectable income. Even more in his favor, he was young, modestly handsome, in good health, and had all his teeth.
“Something amuses you?” asked Olympia.
Brant had not even realized that his last thought had made him grin but he quickly grew serious again. “I was just thinking on how I should be all any mother would want as a husband for her daughter.”
“Ah, well, yes, you are.” And the fact that she absolutely loathed the thought of him with any other woman alarmed Olympia a bit.