Page 4 of Falling for a Footman

“Blast,” he exclaimed out loud as he sat down.

“Now what?” Harrowby who had also sat down asked.

“Clementia. She is going to give birth within the next couple of weeks,” James told him.

If there was one thing that Harrowby and James agreed on it was their love of dogs. Clementia was the third generation of James’s attempt to breed the perfect hunting dogs for bird hunting. He had been given her grandmother, Ava, as a puppy from his father’s dog run when he was ten and had handpicked the dogs that he allowed to breed Ava with. He had picked the best of Ava’s pups from her five litters, Bella, who was the mother of Clementia. She was expecting her first litter now and James was very excited to see the result as well as make sure that Clementia made it safely through the birth.

Harrowby had no regard for the pedigree of this, but he understood why James cared for the dog. Harrowby’s own dog was a scrawny grey bastard called Fang that James would not want anywhere near Clementia or his other dogs when they were in heat.

“A couple of weeks is fine. You should be home well before that,” Harrowby told him and turned back around towards his desk to indicate that the conversation was over.

***

The next night Jamesshowed up early at his parents’ house. The large house dominated a considerable part of Green Street and with its sandstone and columns it clearly stated the wealth and good fortune of the marquis’s of Riplingham.

Their butler, Black, greeted him at the door and took his hat and gloves and James walked to the drawing room to find his parents without waiting for Black to introduce him. The drawing room that was kept in colors of green and cream felt almost as much as home as his mother’s embrace a moment later.

Despite being six-and-twenty James still found her soft lilac-scented hug comforting and soothing. She smiled at him as he stepped away and his father briefly gave him a one-armed, much more awkward, embrace. But it was an embrace though and not a formal handshake that James knew was how some of his friends greeted their fathers. And James’s father had always insisted on being called “Papa” or “Father” and never “Sir” or “Riplingham” as a stiffer man might have.

“It’s been so long,” his mother gushed as she led him to a chair in the seating arrangement in the middle of the room. He had his dark colors from her, but his height and blue eyes from his father. His older brother Adam looked like him, but their sister Eleanor, the middle child, was blonde, despite both of their parents having darker hair.

“I am busy with the Runners, Mother,” James explained and moved in the seat to make himself more comfortable.

“You can’t expect a young man to be hanging around his mother’s skirts all the time, Beth,” his father teased her good-naturedly from his seat beside her on the dark green sofa.

His mother sent him a scathing look.

“I had simply hoped that now that we are actually living in the same city, we might see each other more often,” she told his father, but James knew that the comment was as much meant for him as it had been his sire. James saw his father’s expression soften. He knew that both of them had been worried when he had been fighting in the peninsular but had not been able to see it fully until he had returned home.

“I will make more of an effort, Mother,” he promised, which made both of them turn towards him. His mother smiled gratefully; her eyes almost disappeared in her round cheeks. “Is Adam and Marcia at home? I should like to greet them now that I am here.”

“No, they are out. They had a prior dinner engagement that they did not feel they could alter to suit your needs,” his mother responded. “And the children are all asleep by now. You really should have come sooner, Jamie.”

If guilt had been a substance, his mother would have applied a rather thick layer by now.

“I will, Mother, but I will not be able to within the next couple of weeks. I am off to Somerset on an assignment,” he told them.

Harrowby had not said that he could not tell his parents where he was and it would be a comfort for them, especially his mother, that she knew where in the world he was.

“Oh, do you need us to take Clemmie?” his mother offered.

James’ other dog Bella lived at their estate in Suffolk. The dog was not a great traveler and he found it cruel to drag it around the country. Clemmie however did not suffer the same problems as her mother.

“No, I am hoping to bring her,” he answered.

“To Camborne’s estate?” his father asked.

James nodded as he met his father’s blue eyes. On his request, his father had invited the duke to join them here later to discuss how James’s assignment and his wish to keep his identity secret from anyone but the duke and duchess.

“I do hope you meet his daughter. The eldest. Lady Charlotte. She is very intelligent and entertaining in a subdued way. I am certain the two of you would like each other,” his mother stated in a joyous voice.

The urge to roll his eyes was so strong that James had to blink several times and avert his eyes for a moment. He should have known that this would come; he had just not expected his mother to ladle it on so heavily: first guilting him for not visiting more often and now with finding a wife. The woman had six grandchildren; she could hardly be in acute need of more at the moment.

“Beth, I hardly think that James will have the time to court young ladies when he is working,” his father amended.

James sent his father a grateful smile.

“No, as a matter of fact, the family will not even know that I am there. Or at least not the duke and duchess’s children as well as the staff. I am to pose as a footman in order to catch a thief,” James confided in them, feeling a surge of butterflies in his stomach at the thought of how proud his parents would be that he had finally been allowed to go undercover.

His mother threw back her head and laughed.

“You? A footman,” she exclaimed.

James looked confused at his father, who – thankfully – was not laughing, although smiling broadly. By the way the corners of his mouth kept quivering it was clear that he had a hard time not to give in to the laughter.

“Yes, a footman,” James repeated in a contrite voice that sounded more like a ten-year-old trying to convince his tutor that the dog had in fact eaten his paper on Henry VIII. (It had not, no matter how small strips James pulled the quarter page that he had been able to write on the topic, he had not managed to coax Ava into eating it. In the end he had thrown it in the fire.) “As a Bow Street Runner, I need to be able to impersonate all sorts of different people.”

His mother stopped laughing just as abruptly as she had started and dried her eyes with her hand.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I was just... surprised. Of course, you will do well to impersonate a footman.” She was not in any way able to hide the placating tone in her voice.

James decided right then and there that he would be the most perfect and excellent footman that had ever worked at Great Farleigh Hall. Even the duke would come to forget that James was in fact the son of a marquis and simply view him as a loyal and faithful servant.