Formidable Lord Quentin (2 page)

Bell held out her arms to include her younger sister, who
was still stunned to speechlessness. With both her sisters in her arms again
after ten long years, she could scarcely breathe from joy and weeping.

“You smell the same,” Sydony whispered in wonder. “Any time
I smell lily of the valley, I remember you. You just don’t look like you
anymore.”

Since the eighteen-year-old girl her sisters remembered had
worn her hair hanging to her waist and roamed boldly about her father’s lands
wearing a stable boy’s gear, her baby sister had reason to complain. Bell
laughed and choked on tears at the same time, hugging them harder.

“You don’t know how much I’ve missed you!” Bell cried. “I
cannot believe you’re here. Papa never wrote. I didn’t know where you were. I
didn’t even know you were alive!”

“Papa said the marquess forbade him to write ever again. He
said he’d be ruined all over if we tried to write to you.” Tess hugged her
tighter, then stepped back. “I did try a couple of times, after we moved from
Virginia to Boston, but I never received a reply. We didn’t know if you were
alive either.”

Bell cursed her parsimonious husband for the thousandth
time. Edward must have destroyed
her
letters! He’d kept all the other pathetic begging letters he’d received from
his family, but not the ones that would have reunited her with her sisters. Had
he even opened them or just cast them directly upon the fire?

Remembering the angry man who had saved her and her sisters
from her father’s debtors, she had a glimmer of understanding of why he’d keep
her from her drunkard of a father. But to keep her from her sisters . . .

It was too late to castigate the clutch-fisted old goat now.
She’d thought she’d loved Edward once. He’d bought her gowns and jewelry,
offered her entrée into the highest society, and given her a marvelous new
life. He really hadn’t owed her or her family more. Bell understood that better
than her younger self had. She didn’t have to like it.

Looking uncomfortable and out of place in the airy pastel
room, the grim black crows rose stiffly from the blue brocade sofa. “We’ll be
going then. Our job here is done,” the man said.

The boy in Abby’s hands began to wail again.

Bell hid her impatience with the odd couple who had safely delivered
her most precious dreams. “Don’t be foolish. We haven’t even been introduced.
May I have the pleasure of the acquaintance of the generous protectors who have
returned my family to me?” With the practiced decorum learned in a decade of
London society, Bell released her sisters and held out a welcoming hand.

“Thaddeus and Lucretia Gibbons.” Tess hastily introduced
them. “Daddy’s lawyer recommended them as they were coming this way anyway. Mr.
and Mrs. Gibbons, this is our half-sister, Lady Isabell Hoyt, the Marchioness
of Belden.”

Isabell was proud to know that her little sister remembered
some of her etiquette, even if she hadn’t quite got the introduction right.
Americans didn’t have titles, so Tess might be excused her small lapse until
Bell had time to brush up their memories a little.

The Gibbonses didn’t accept her hand but stiffly nodded.

Abby whispered, “The little ones need a water closet. I’m
whisking them away. I’ll return shortly.”

“If you will show me the way, I’ll help you, my lady,” Tess
said politely, taking the youngest child in hand. “Beebee is only just two and
barely trained.”

Still lightheaded, Bell dropped into the nearest chair,
finally acknowledging the younger children. She was not maternal, like Abby.
“Beebee?” she asked faintly as a maid entered with a tray of tea and biscuits.

“Short for Beatrice. Tess is a widow,” Syd explained as the
little ones were led away. “We thought she was safely settled, then Dawson—her
husband— caught some fever and died in Jamaica not long after the babe was
born. Tess was devastated. She still cries.”

Syd, the younger of Bell’s sisters, studied an embroidered,
bow-legged chair, then lowered herself into it as if fearful of sullying the
cloth. The Gibbonses finally gave up and settled back on the sofa.

Hands shaking too hard to lift a teapot, Bell indicated that
Syd take charge. The girl did so awkwardly, as if unaccustomed to using one of
the major skills young ladies her age were proud to show off.

They were the daughters of an
earl
. Bell didn’t wish to contemplate what kind of life her sisters
had led in her scapegrace father’s care. She forced a smile and waited for her
guests to sip their tea before asking one of the ten thousand questions buzzing
through her exceptionally light head.

“You were an acquaintance of our father’s, Mr. Gibbons?” she
asked politely.

“Only indirectly, my lady,” Mr. Gibbons said, sampling one
of Cook’s strawberry tarts.

“He means the Methodists sometimes brought Daddy home from the
tavern,” Syd said without an ounce of shame, as if a father who got too drunk
to walk was a common occurrence. “Daddy took our step-mama’s death hard.”

Bell bit her tongue. Glendon Boyle, the scapegrace Earl of
Wexford, had taken
her
mother’s death
hard and his second wife’s death even harder. And there were some who said his
drinking had led to their deaths in the first place. But their father was dead,
and the girls didn’t need a loving memory tarnished. Bell was the one who had
learned the hard way to scorn the weaknesses of the male of the species.

“Your step-mama?” she inquired in trepidation. He’d killed
off
three
wives?

“Kit’s mother. Papa had to find someone to look after us
when we arrived in America. Charity was our nanny, and then they got married.
You would have liked her. She was from Ireland too.”

Bell kneaded her brow. She didn’t know a great deal about
children, but she knew quite a bit about the ways of men and the laws of
inheritance. She would very much like to ask how old
Kit
was and how long ago her father had married the nanny, but she
already knew the answer. Her father had always wanted an heir. He’d marry any
female he got in the family way.

The grubby urchin that Abby was leading back to the parlor
was now the Earl of Wexford.

Lord Quentin Hoyt, fourth son of the current marquess of
Belden, handed his lathered gelding to a stable hand. He checked his pocket
watch as he strode down the mews to his back gate. Satisfied at the time he’d
made, he handed his hat to a footman who hurried to greet him. Still wearing
his muddy boots and the filth of the road, he eagerly took the stairs two at a
time to his study.

In a house blessedly quiet and now free of the twittering
females his family foisted upon him during the Season, he could finally settle
in and tend to neglected tasks. Work was the reason he rose in the morning. He
whistled as he entered his book-crammed study.

Acton Penrose, an old friend and his newly hired aide,
appeared as soon as Quent dropped into his desk chair. “You made good time,
sir.”

“Leave off the ‘sir’ bit. You’re the one with society
connections, not me.” This was mainly because Quent’s impoverished Scots family
had scorned England, their English relations, English schools, and even the
title his father now possessed. That was water well under the bridge and never
a source of regret. He had little use for society except as a means of making
money.

Quent lifted a stack of new leather books from his chair,
their pages uncut and beckoning to be read. He looked around and found a stack
on his shelves that wasn’t quite full yet. He sneaked a peek at a map in one
particularly tempting volume before reluctantly stashing them away.

“I don’t know why you keep ordering books you never read,”
Acton complained.

“It’s August,” Quent said in satisfaction. “I have no
sisters to escort about, everyone is out of town, so I have few meetings. I can
spend my evenings with books I’ve only heard about all year.”

Acton wrinkled up his nose in distaste but wisely held his
tongue. From good family, with the sound education and social acquaintances
that aristocratic relations and Cambridge brought, Penrose had lost his small
inheritance to a scoundrel. He’d nearly died at Trafalgar attempting to earn a
living as a naval officer. He still limped and favored his injured arm, but his
mind was sharp, and he was always eager for action. Books weren’t action in
Acton’s young mind, Quent understood.

Quent loosened his wilted neckcloth and unfastened his
waistcoat as he flipped through the correspondence waiting on his orderly desk.
“Do we have the information on that steamboat investment yet?”

The tall, ginger-haired ex-officer slid one set of documents
out from beneath the others. “In here. It looks promising.”

Quent had only just hired him but had found his friend’s
insight invaluable already. With luck and Penrose’s aid, he could double his
accomplishments. He’d need to. Now that his father had inherited the title of
marquess of Belden, the family responsibilities were seemingly limitless, while
their fortunes remained quite confined. Quent’s older brothers had chosen
farming to cover the estate expenses. They depended on Quent’s business acumen
and London acquaintances to generate the capital needed for major improvements.

“Excellent.” Taking the papers, Quent lit a lamp to better
read them. The steam engine had an auspicious future, the kind of imaginative
investment he enjoyed.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of investment that
generated quick cash. His father’s aging fortress needed a new roof, if his
many siblings and extended family weren’t to drown this winter. Quent grimaced
as he read. The design of this engine looked promising, but manufacturing
experimental engines would drain more cash than he had and might not generate
income for decades. Damn.

“What will happen in the future if we begin traveling about by
steam?” Acton ventured to ask, distracting Quent from his numbers. “Think of
all the stud farms and stablemen who make horses their business. And
sailors—how will they earn a living? It seems impossible to imagine.”

“And it will happen many years after we’re moldering in our
graves, I should think,” Quent said, setting the papers aside and reaching for
the next batch. “Unfortunately, now that my father is responsible for both the Belden
and Hoyt properties, he needs more wealth than Croesus possessed. So I can’t
afford to take risks on that future.”

Painfully aware of the vagaries of fortune, Acton couldn’t
argue. “It is a shame the late marquess left his wealth to his widow instead of
to his estate. Then you could enjoy investing as you’d like, and your family
would be provided for.”

“Edward was a miserable miser and made that fortune on his
own, albeit with the aid of Belden coal,” Quent said, speaking of the late
marquess. “The error was on my great-grandfather’s part in not demanding that
his heirs sign an entailment on the mines as well as the farms. Edward was
within his rights to leave his funds anywhere he liked.”

“Marry Lady Bell and reunite fortune with land,” Acton
suggested with a grin, knowing he hit a sore point. Lady Isabell Hoyt, dowager
marchioness of Belden, enjoyed spending the fortune her husband had left her.

“Your diplomacy needs work,” Quent said dryly. “But you
remind me . . . Send round a note to the lady telling her I’m
back and at her disposal.”

It didn’t hurt to remind Lady Bell that he existed, just in
case she should grow bored with her empty bed after these years of widowhood.
Marriage wasn’t his goal, but the lady was.

“Ah, I was saving the best for last,” Acton said with a
self-important nod. “Lady Belden’s sisters have arrived from the Americas.
They’re currently on the hunt for a nanny.”

Quent dropped the documents on the desk and stared at his
aide. “Her
sisters
? What about her
father?”

He’d made it his place to learn Lady Bell’s history. Quent’s
family had been horrified when Edward, the old marquess, had come home with a
new wife. As long as Edward had no sons, Quent’s father had been his only heir.
A new wife had meant the potential loss of estate and title. At the time, Quent
had wanted to believe that Bell was no more than a fortune hunter.

But Bell’s credentials had been impeccable, even if her
father had been a dissolute gambler. She’d doted on her husband while he was
alive and behaved with perfect circumspection in the years since his
death—except for spending Edward’s wealth as generously as Edward had hoarded
it.

Personally, Quent suspected the old marquess had married
Bell just to spite his irascible Scots heir. The Hoyt family wasn’t known for
its loving generosity.

But Bell had been grateful to the old curmudgeon for saving
her family from disgrace and had never said a word against him. So it was
Quent’s own jealousy at the old man’s good fortune that colored his views now.
He’d only been twenty-five at the time Edward had married Bell. Quent had been
living on luck and looks then and couldn’t even earn a glance from the
vivacious young Irish bride.

Over this past decade, Bell had grown more beautiful—and
sophisticated and cynical. The wide-eyed young innocent was gone, replaced by a
dignified marchioness who commanded the small portion of society she deigned to
acknowledge. Quent preferred the sensual widow to the naïve child.

If she had lovers, she was damned discreet about it. The men
at his club had taken to calling her the Virgin Widow. That was a challenge he was
prepared to meet—should she give him the slightest hint of interest. Which,
admittedly, she hadn’t. Perhaps, now that his sisters were out of the way, it
was time to escalate his pursuit.

“Her father has apparently died,” Penrose explained. “He
must have left an estate sufficient for his executor to ship her sisters back
to Lady Bell. I’ve only heard the news third hand, so I don’t know all the
facts yet.”