Page 19 of Brave New Earl (The Way to a Lord's Heart 1)

“All right.” The boy lifted a foot and felt about as if trying to find to place to put it. Lord Furness reached up futilely, then waited with spread arms. Geoffrey found no purchase. He frowned. “I can’t,” he said in a much more subdued tone.

“I’ll go up,” repeated Tom. “I was supposed to be watching him.”

“That won’t work,” Lord Furness replied.

Words burst from Jean. “You can’t leave him up there!”

She received a searing look in response and a turned back.

After a moment, Lord Furness gave a nod and said, “All right.” He strode away. “Jack, help me saddle Blaze. Quickly.” The servant jumped to aid him.

“My arms are tired,” said Geoffrey.

In a few moments, Lord Furness sprang onto his horse and guided it over to the cliff beneath his son. He still couldn’t reach him. Jean didn’t see what he’d accomplished by mounting up. “Tom, get up behind me,” he said. “And then climb onto my shoulders.”

The youngster grinned. “Yes, my lord.” He leapt onto the horse’s withers and then drew up his feet. Carefully, he stood. Lord Furness controlled the nervous horse as Tom maneuvered onto his shoulders. Seated there, his ankles hooked in the other man’s armpits, Tom reached upward. His fingers brushed the heels of Geoffrey’s boots. “You’ll have to let go,” he said to the boy. “And I’ll catch you.”

“No,” said Geoffrey. He was clinging to the cliff now, and he looked like a scared little boy rather than a triumphant scamp.

“I’m right here,” said Tom. “I can almost reach you. I won’t let you fall.”

“No.” Geoffrey’s voice trembled.

“Geoffrey,” said Lord Furness.

The boy twisted his head around to peer down at him.

“Look how bravely you climbed up.” His voice was soothing, encouraging. Startlingly so, Jean thought. “Now you must be brave again and help yourself down,” he added. “We’ve done all we can.”

“Just let go and lean a little,” said Tom. “Easy. No jumping.”

Briefly, it seemed he wouldn’t. Then Geoffrey tipped back and away from the ledge, falling into Tom’s waiting arms. Jean cried out as the human ladder wobbled with the impact. But Lord Furness kept them steady. “Hand him down to me,” he said.

Tom lowered the boy into his father’s grasp. Controlling his mount with his knees, Lord Furness took him. “Now you climb down.”

Tom eased himself off his perch and onto the ground.

Benjamin held his son to his chest. His small frame—fragile as a bird’s, it seemed—was trembling. His hands clutched Benjamin’s coat; his face was buried in his shoulder. A visceral reaction shuddered through Benjamin, as strong as anything he’d ever felt. Fear and relief, protective ferocity and tenderness muddled together until they choked him.

“Shall I take him, my lord?” asked the nursery maid at his stirrup.

Benjamin didn’t want to let him go. But Geoffrey’s trembling had eased. He raised his head and noticed his audience. “I didn’t cry,” he declared. “I wasn’t scared.” He wriggled in his father’s grip, eager now to be free.

Torn between laughter and exasperation, Benjamin let the maid help the boy down. “I should take you home and confine you to your room for that little trick,” he said.

The flash of apprehension in his son’s eyes, along with a hint of resignation, shook Benjamin. His intrepid, reckless child looked braced for disappointment. Was he really so accustomed to it? That was a curiously lowering reflection. Yet Geoffrey did need to learn obedience.

“I’ve got a better idea,” said young Tom. He’d gone over to the pack saddle, and now he returned with a length of rope. “We’ll leash you, ya mad imp, so you can’t get up to any more mischief.”

Geoffrey eyed the rope. “Like a guard dog?”

“More like a sheep that won’t stop straying.” Tom made a comical face.

The boy laughed and submitted. Indeed, he surveyed the rope as if imagining the opportunities for mayhem it might provide. Benjamin started to object that they couldn’t throttle his son, then watched with interest as Tom looped the tether over the back of Geoffrey’s neck, around under his arms, crossed on his back and then his belly, only to knot it unreachably behind. He fastened the loose end to his own wrist. Once again Tom was unexpectedly ingenious. Benjamin looked up, encountered Miss Saunders’s equally fascinated gaze, and nodded.

Geoffrey tested the limits of his bonds with a flying leap. When he was brought up short, he laughed, spreading his arms and swinging from side to side like a pendulum. “You could hang me down into a cave,” he cried. “Like a bat.” He flapped his arms.

Benjamin tensed at the picture, calculating the distance to the nearest cavern in his mind.

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