Lord Harry's Folly (13 page)

Hetty struggled to find words to push him to anger. She didn’t understand him. Why didn’t he take her by the throat and shake her? She managed more coldness, more disdain. “Nay, your grace,” she said, chin as high as it would go, “in your case, I don’t insult a gentleman, but rather a nobleman. Even with my few years, I know there is a difference, is there not?”

It was beyond what he would take. Jason grasped the boy’s wrist hard, twisting the bones, realizing as he did so that the bones were delicate, that he could break the wrist with just a twist of his hand. But he didn’t twist the boy’s wrist. He saw pain in the boy’s eyes, but he made no sound, merely looked down at Lord Oberlon’s hand, his look cold and dispassionate. Jason didn’t want to be impressed, but again, he was.

It was all Hetty could do to keep herself from crying out. His fingers were long and squared at the tips, overlapping about her wrist. I’ve succeeded, she thought, her elation overcoming the pain in her wrist. He jerked suddenly on her wrist, pulling her within inches of his face. He said softly, “I deplore bad manners and scenes, Monteith. You push me. On purpose. I ask myself why. Why, lad, do you do this?”

Damien’s name formed on her lips, but she bit it back. He deserved no explanation, not until she’d put a bullet through his black heart. As his lifeblood flowed from his body, then and only then would he know the reason for his death.

“Hey ho, Lord Harry, what are you about? Are you brewing some mischief with his grace? Don’t tell me, Lord Oberlon, that Monteith has false-carded you at faro? It’s impossible, he’s far too good a gamester. He never loses.”

Hetty bit her lower lip in frustration. Lord Oberlon dropped her wrist. He didn’t even bother looking at her again. She wasn’t important enough for more of his precious time. God, she wanted to curse at him, tell him he was a murderer, without honor, responsible for her brother’s death, and how she would kill him. There would be another time, she promised him silently, watching him turn into a bored gentleman as smoothly as a chameleon.

“No, Brandon, Monteith does not, to the best of my limited knowledge, resort to such subtle tactics as cheating at faro. However, what he is I have yet to determine.”

Jason turned to look at the newcomer, Mr. Scuddimore. “I trust, Scuddimore, that your parents are well? Your father has recovered from his hunting accident? They survive without your presence?”

Scuddy bowed deeply, cognizant of his grace’s signal honor of speaking to him. “So kind of your grace to inquire. No problem there, your grace, my father goes along quite well now. They haven’t said that they miss me overly.”

The marquess merely nodded, saying now to Harry, “Brandon, give my regards to your charming sister and Julien. I shall call upon them presently. As for you, Lord Harry, doubtless we will chat again. Mind what I’ve told you, lad. Think before your mouth leads to your demise.” He flipped his hand in an indifferent salute and strolled away.

“What was that all about?” Sir Harry asked, looking after the marquess.

“Nothing at all. Now, tell me how much more champagne have you consumed for my celebration? I won only twenty guineas at faro. Ah, but let’s drink it down. Lead on, MacDuff.”

“MacDuff?” Scuddy said. “Don’t know him. Does the fellow like champagne? It wouldn’t do to bring him along if he don’t.”

Jason Cavander stirred a cube of sugar into his rich Spanish coffee and savored the pungent dark aroma before swallowing. Although it was after nine o’clock in the morning, it promised to be another dreary winter day, and the marquess wished he could have stayed abed. A howling wind was battering noisily against the long French windows in the small breakfast room, and heavy pellets of rain blurred the triangular park just opposite his town house in Berkeley Square.

A damned depressing day it would be, he thought, pouring himself a second cup of coffee. Poor Spiverson. He could picture his stooped gaunt man of business, walking hunched forward against the rain and wind, presenting himself to Lord Oberlon in a dripping shiny black suit, his sparse gray hair plastered about his small square face. He paid an extraordinarily generous fee to his man of business, yet Spiverson would sooner risk an inflammation of the lung than part with a few shillings to take a hackney.

The marquess cupped his hands about the coffee cup, rose from the table and strolled to the fireplace. He controlled the urge to inform his butler to send Spiverson away when he arrived. Although such caprice from a wealthy master wouldn’t be blinked at, the marquess had no desire to emulate his late father, who, with a snap of his fingers, blithely canceled appointments, leaving his house in chaos whilst he went off to drink with one of his cronies or inspect a new hunter. The marquess had returned order to the house, and he had no intention of allowing himself to slip into indolence at the sacrifice of his responsibilities. This once, though, he was sorely tempted, for his head ached from too much revelry the previous evening. The rest of his body was none too pleased either, for following a not-altogether-steady walk from White’s to Melissande’s apartment on Pemberley Street at two o’clock in the morning, he’d roused his sleeping mistress and turned her bed into a shambles before pulling on his clothes and staggering out into the dismal cold dawn back to Berkeley Square.

He knew in more objective moments that such orgies of excess could be viewed as an opiate, a not altogether satisfactory manner of burying unpleasant memories, but, perhaps, still better than nothing at all. It really was a pity that one couldn’t learn wisdom, maturity, and temperance without causing exquisite pain in the process. It was a pity that one couldn’t make the pain and the blackness simply disappear.

He turned at the tread of his butler’s catlike footsteps outside the breakfast room door. He could even hear Mrs. Gerville’s wheezing breathing before she got within ten feet of a closed room he was in. It was at times like this, attuned to every sound in the house in which he had reached manhood, that he was most aware of his aloneness. None of his friends or family knew what his short marriage had meant to him, and he, of a certainty, hadn’t talked about it. If they believed his abrupt departure to Italy after his wife’s death had shown he was distraught, that was fine with him. He knew that was what most of them had believed.

His butler’s cat’s feet drew to a halt and a muffled tap sounded against the door. The marquess looked at his watch. Damn, Spiverson was early. “Come in, Rabbell.” He set his empty coffee cup onto the table.

“Your grace,” Rabbell said, looking for the world like a Cornish piskey with his spiky red hair and his pointed nose.

The marquess sighed. “I know, Rabbell. Please tell Spiverson I’ll join him shortly in the estate room. Oh see to it he gets himself dried off. We don’t want him croaking from an inflammation of the lung.”

“It isn’t Spiverson, your grace,” Rabbell said, and gave his master a big impudent grin. “Oh no, it’s the earl of March and here he is right on my boot heels.”

“St. Clair,” Jason said, rising. “Good lord, man, whatever sends you out on this dreary morning?”

“You might well ask, Jason,” the earl said, shaking his friend’s hand. “Actually, I expected you to still be in bed, it’s where any sane man belongs this morning. Bloody nasty weather.”

“My man of business that has me up and about at this ungodly hour. Come, Julien, join me in a cup of coffee.”

“It’s your Spanish blend, I trust. Ah, yes it is.” He took a cup of coffee and drank deeply. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me the recipe for this blend for a Christmas present?”

“If I did, you wouldn’t have reason to visit me anymore.”

The earl just smiled and sat himself down. “How did you find Italy, Jason?”

He wanted to say that it was naught but a place, that he could have traveled to Russia and it wouldn’t have made a difference, that he’d simply wanted to exile himself. But he said instead, “Too warm for my tastes, if you would know the truth. One cannot fault the beauty of Florence, and yet, you know, I could not escape the feeling that I was somehow treading on an overripe fruit.”

“A peach perhaps,” the earl said. “Italy reminds me of peaches.” The earl knew that Jason’s extended trip was the result of his wife’s death. He and Kate had been in Paris when Jason’s wife had died in childbirth. It was odd, but Jason had never invited either of them to meet his wife during the months before her death. Since Jason was a friend, he wasn’t about to ask. But he wanted to. He was frankly tired of worrying about his friend.

“Your forbearance is alarming. Come, Julien, I won’t call you out if you speak your mind, which I can see you’re dying to do.”

“What would you have me say, Jason? That I’ve heard stories of dissolute behavior? That you took every woman who looked your way, and given that you’re not a troll, many did? I want to know the truth, damn you.”

The marquess was very still. He then smiled, a slow bitter smile that made the earl frown deeply at him. He said after a moment, his gaze fastened on the orange glowing embers in the fireplace, “I have an excellent notion of the drivel spouted from the gossips’ mouths. The truth, then, Julien. I did go to the devil himself. I am very lucky that I didn’t get the pox. It was an interesting experience, particularly hearing sex words I didn’t understand. I laughed many times, and yet” He paused, his spoken thought left unfinished.

The earl said slowly, “And yet, Jason, it was no balm for the soul.”

The earl was exactly right, only for the wrong reasons. Jason just shook his head. “Enough of this. More truth, my head aches from too much brandy and I have the most unpleasant notion that Spiverson will keep my nose in his damnable account books until the afternoon. Now you will tell me what you’re doing in Berkeley Square. Surely your mission wasn’t just to see if I still lived or not.”

“No, I have other ways of knowing whether your breathing is steady,” the earl said. “Actually, I was on my way to Tattersall’s. I want to purchase a sporting phaeton for Kate, and unfortunately I must rise with the birds, if I want to keep her in the dark. It’s a surprise for her.” The earl sat forward in his chair. “Congratulate me, Jason. Kate is pregnant.”

“My God, that is good news indeed.” He shook the earl’s hand, clapped him on his back, and grinned at him like a fool. “Ah, now I understand your problem. Kate balks at being a lady of leisure.”

The earl laughed. “She even went so far as to inform me of the fact in the middle of our fencing lesson. I remember wanting to strangle her and knowing that I couldn’t, when she was saved by her brother Harry and that new friend of his came to visit. Which reminds me, Jason, what do you think of my new protégé? I saw to making him a member of White’s yesterday.”

“What protégé?”

“Monteith is his name. Harry Monteith. An interesting lad, soft spoken, yet older than his years. I think he’s certainly a good influence on Harry.”

Jason stared at him. “You don’t mean to tell me that you are responsible for that young whelp running free in the club? No, that isn’t possible. The lad I’m thinking of is slight of build, has fair coloring, and a damnably sharp tongue.”

“Yes, that sounds like Monteith. What’s going on here? Have you already met the lad?”

“Met him? By God, Julien, I was sorely tempted to beat the fellow to a pulp. The arrogant puppy called me not a gentleman but a nobleman. He did it on purpose, too, for what reason I have no idea. I asked him but he wouldn’t say a word.”

“You say you didn’t kill the lad?”

“Not this time, but I’ll tell you, Julien, if he doesn’t keep his tongue in his head, he isn’t long for this world. You believe him soft spoken and mature for his years? I think he’s singularly stupid. God, and the bravado and arrogance. If Filey gets him alone, it will be all over for him. If I hadn’t stopped Filey, the boy would be dead at this moment by Filey’s hand.”

“Since he’s offended you, my friend, I wonder how I could have seen him in such a different way. But the fact is that I did. Is it possible that you didn’t push him in some way to retaliate in such a manner? Come, tell me what happened.”

“I didn’t push him at all. Monteith was playing faro with Sir Robert when I chanced to overhear that ass, Filey, blatantly draw the boy. Monteith rounded on him” The marquess paused, memory forcing him to grin. “Damned fine job he did on Filey, I tell you. Said something to Filey about the pot calling the kettle black. Then, with all the poise in the world, he told Filey that he was mistaken in his metaphor a pot de chambre was what he had intended to say. As you can well imagine, Filey turned quite purple, then nasty. The villain was on the point of calling Monteith out, when, fool that I am, I stepped forward into the fray and drew Filey off. Instead of gratitude, Monteith turned on me. He made unflattering comparisons between me and Filey called me a bully, a predator, and the like.”

“He’s young. Could it be that your interference wounded his pride?”

“No, it wasn’t that,” the marquess said slowly. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “If I could think of some likely reason, I would believe that the lad hates me. His insults were deliberate and vicious. He was pushing me to violence, Julien, of that I am certain. It was as if Filey were in the way. It was me he wanted. It was me he wanted to fight, not Filey, not anyone else, just me. Why? I haven’t the foggiest notion, as I told you.”

“Do you think there’s a seduced sister somewhere in the background? Monteith has no Italian relations hanging about Florence, does he?”

The marquess laughed. “I did wonder about that, so stop your laughing at me.” He shook his head. “No, I can’t believe that. There was purpose and design to his attack. Oh, what the hell. No doubt I’ll discover enough if there’s a seduced sister somewhere or if the lad just disliked the cut of my coats. Now, Julien, when is the future earl of March to make his appearance into this world?”

“Late summer or early fall, Kate obligingly informs me. Now, I must go. I’ll leave you now to the mercy of your man of business. You know, Jason, you’re always welcome at Grosvenor Square?”