Not Proper Enough (A Reforming the Scoundrels Romance) (14 page)

“No?”

She grabbed the lapels of his coat and leaned her forehead against his chest. “I can’t think when you’re this close. I say and do the most shocking things.”

He brought down a hand again and stroked her cheek. “Perhaps this is no great help, but I think you should do those shocking things more often.”

Two weeks later. 11 Cambridge Terrace.

A
T HALF PAST MIDNIGHT
, F
OX KNOCKED AT
A
IGEN’S
door. For longer than ought to be the case, he waited on the steps, cold fog sinking into his bones. There were lights burning upstairs, so he knew the man was home. Eventually, the door opened and Aigen’s butler admitted him. Since Fox was a frequent caller, all he needed to do was hand over his hat and coat and drop a coin into the man’s hand.

“In his bedchamber, milord.”

“Thank you.” He knew the way, for he and Aigen spent many a night in long conversation here. He headed up the stairs.

Aigen he found in his shirtsleeves, sitting at a secretary with pen in hand and paper before him. He blotted the page when Fox leaned against the doorjamb. “Good night, Fox.”

“Were you not going to admit me?”

Aigen sighed. “I thought about it.”

“It’s bloody cold out there.” Normally, they got on comfortably. Tonight, however, Aigen did not rise to greet him. He stayed at the desk, quiet for the moment. Fox headed for the side table. They spent enough time together, either here
or at Upper Brook Street, that they never stood on ceremony. “Whisky?” he asked, aware of Aigen’s loyalty to his country’s drink. He had his own private preference as well.

But tonight Aigen tapped the end of his pen on the desktop. “There’s a port breathing, if you don’t mind. Over there.”

“Not at all.” Fox poured them both three fingers and took one of the glasses to Aigen. He lifted his and crossed half the distance of the room so that he stood nearer the fire. A line of porcelain and brass chimney ornaments, horses mostly, lined the mantel. “To good friends.”

Aigen nodded. “To good friends.”

When they’d drunk, Fox turned a chair to face the secretary where Aigen still sat. “I haven’t come too late, have I?”

“Too late for?”

“At night, Aigen.”

“You haven’t.” He leaned a forearm on the writing surface, and some of the tension went out of him. But not all. “I’ve had another letter from the family rock pile, and it’s put me in a temper.”

“What malady does he have this time?”

“Chilblains. And gout. Something else painfully mysterious and likely fatal. Dead in a fortnight, he says, though I’m not to rush home on his account. He’s sent me the name of the stone carver he wants to chisel his headstone.”

Aigen’s grandfather, the possessor of one of the last of the Scottish dukedoms outside of Argyll’s holdings, had been dying of some disease or other for the last twenty years. The man was eighty-one, had outlived three wives and four sons, and had never once set foot out of the Highlands. “I thought you Scots were hardier fare.”

“He’ll outlive me—I own it.”

“Unlikely,” he said softly.

“If he doesn’t, I’ll be saddled with that damned dukedom, and I’ll go bankrupt. I’ve seen the way he lives. Hasn’t two pennies to rub together but what I send him.” Aigen had inherited a decent fortune from his mother’s family, monies he’d
immediately put in the five percents and in a ship sailing to the Orient that came home with a decent enough cargo to give Aigen relief from his most pressing debts. He downed half his port. “Now that he’s dying for certain, he says he’s given up on my marrying a female Scot.” Aigen glanced in Fox’s direction, a crooked smile on his mouth. “He must really be ill.”

“I’m sorry if that’s so.”

He put a hand on the letter he’d been writing. “He’s ordered me to find a rich Sassenach wife while I’m here in London. Bring her home to meet him before he’s off to lecture his Maker about all He’s done wrong.”

Fox chuckled. “All that in a fortnight?”

Aigen exaggerated his accent. “I’m to show the poor English lass all the riches the clan can offer. The Highlands—now there’s beauty, I won’t gainsay him that—and the castle falling down around his head. Our heads.”

Fox returned to the sideboard to fetch the decanter. He brought it to Aigen and refilled both their glasses. “It’s fortunate I came tonight, if only to rescue you from self-pity. Poor fellow, Aigen, to inherit a dukedom and your family’s honor. Even if it is a Scots one.”

“I like being Aigen. It suits me.”

“You’re suited to more.”

He bowed his head and grabbed his hair with both hands. “God, a wife. The worst of it is I was thinking of it even before I got his damned letter.”

“There are worse fates than to marry a fine woman.”

Aigen turned his head to him. “How would you know? You haven’t a wife.”

“Not yet.”

“Which one should I choose, Fox? Who do I take home to the old man before it’s too late?”

“Anyone you like.” Save one, damn it. Anyone save one. “The woman you find most suitable.”

Aigen took a long drink from his goblet. “There’s one who interests me. It’s odd the way she stays in my thoughts. Never thought that would happen.”

“Only one?”

“You know who.”

“Do I?”

Aigen let out a breath. “I’ve always admired the women you do. We’ve similar tastes. So I ask you, shall I ask Mountjoy’s sister if she’d like to live in a Scottish rock pile one day?”

His heart stilled. He’d hoped things hadn’t come to such a pass. “Why her?”

“A sad and lovely woman, Lady Eugenia.”

“Yes.”

“I see her at parties with that handsome girl she’s got with her. Trying so hard to find her a husband when it’s clear as day the girl’s not interested in anyone. Not even me, Fox.”

“Miss Rendell.”

“Yes, Miss Rendell. I don’t know why you two don’t get on.”

“Miss Rendell and I get on splendidly.”

“Lady Eugenia. You ought to get on better with her. Why don’t you?”

“Are you in love with her?”

Aigen sipped his port before he answered. “I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life making her smile.”

“Miss Rendell would suit you well.”

Aigen nodded, but not in agreement with Fox’s pointed suggestion. His friend slouched on his chair. “Doesn’t give a fig what anyone thinks of her, does she?”

“No.”

“A bit young, only not. Not a beauty, yet she is.”

“A fair assessment.”

Aigen stared at his port and after a bit of searching in the contents, took another swallow. “What brings you here, if I might ask?” There was only the faintest burr in his words. “Besides my wine cellar.”

“What else but a woman?” Fox, once again seated, stared into his port, too, aware that he might leave here having ended another friendship because of a woman. Again. He did not want to lose Aigen’s friendship. Leisurely, he took a sip. It was an excellent port.

“If you’ve come to speak out of turn about Lady Eugenia, I warn you I’ll not listen to you.”

“Not out of turn.”

“No?” Aigen tapped his finger on the tabletop. “Is there something I should know, then?”

“Yes.” Fox sighed. “When I was young and stupid—”

“When were you ever young? You’ve been old since the day you were born.”

“Young
and
stupid.” He lifted his glass in a mock toast and let irony invest his words. “I became unduly attached to a woman I believed was in no way my equal in rank or character. Naturally, I refused to accept that a man such as I could form a connection with a girl like her.”

“Bloody fool.”

“Yes.”

Aigen pushed his port to the far side of the desk. He turned on his chair to face Fox. “Was the woman’s name, by any chance under the stars, as melodic to the ears as, say, Eugenia?”

Fox set his forearms on his thighs and stared at Aigen. “My friend Robert was already falling in love with her. And she with him, it turned out.” He shook his head. “They met, and I never once thought anything could come of it. She was fresh from the country, all life and passion, not an ounce of decorum.”

“Not proper enough for the bloody Marquess of Fenris.”

He laughed. “Not by half.”

“Her damned brother a farmer, too.” He tapped his fingers in a slow tattoo. “Used to be a farmer, though, isn’t that right?”

He waved that off. “My esteemed father had nothing kind to say about Mountjoy. Or his two siblings.”

“You didn’t have to listen to him.”

“I was yet several months away from that insight.” He lifted his glass to the lamplight. “They got on, Robert and her. I couldn’t understand how any two people could be so different yet feel they had anything in common. They
recognized something in each other. And I said to myself, how could
she
recognize anything about the fire that burns in Robert Bryant? I wish you’d met him. You’d have liked him better than you like me.” He shook his head. He keenly felt the difference between the green boy he’d been then and the man he was now. “They were meant for each other. Everyone saw it. Even I saw, though I refused to accept it until it was too late.”

“Her husband, you mean.”

“At that time, her future husband, but yes. I kept telling myself she wasn’t worthy of him. Not brilliant Robert. What woman could ever be worthy of him? She’d make fun of his deformity, I thought, his strange habits and mental flights—his genius told in his manner. He’d impale himself on her beauty and her joy of life and never recover when he learned she didn’t love him, or worse, that she was not the sort of woman with whom he could remain in love once he saw her for what she was. How could he be truly in love when she couldn’t possibly love him?”

“Bloody, bloody fool.”

He shook his head, still with his thoughts and soul in a past he could do nothing to change. “She never thought of him as a cripple. She never noticed, or if she did, she didn’t care. Not in the least.”

“She wouldn’t.”

“As I say, I was young and stupid then. I saw her shortly after he died, and she was wracked. Even I, fool that I am, could see his death had destroyed her.”

Aigen pushed his glass in a circle on the desktop. “She loved him. I never met the man. Never saw them together.” He let out a breath. “I hardly know her, but I know that much about her. She still loves him, you know that, I hope.”

“I was wrong.” He shrugged. “About a great many things. My grandfather—he was alive in those days—he and my father both disliked her. They disliked her elder brother, too, and I blindly adopted that opinion as my own. How could any present or future Duke of Camber be wrong?”

“Stupid of you.” What hung in the air now was what
Aigen hadn’t said. That he’d not be that stupid. He’d not make that severe a mistake with a woman like Eugenia.

“I discouraged Robert. I did everything in my power to stop him marrying so far beneath what I thought he deserved, and it broke us apart. He never spoke to me again. Never mind that for now, I told myself. For I’ll be there when he learns the truth about her. I’ll not say a word against her when that happens. I would offer up my friendship and everything would be the way it was before.” He touched a fist to his heart. “But I’d hate her, you see, for breaking him.”

“Which she never did.”

“I resented her because once she met Robert, she never cared for me. Not for me. Not for my rank. Not for anything. And everyone cared for me. Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t she, too?”

“I’m sorry.”

Fox sighed and thought of Robert and how bitterly he missed their friendship. “They were fortunate to have what time they did. I heard from others now and again, when someone forgot or didn’t know we’d once been close, that Robert was happy. I chanced to see his mother before she passed, and she told me she thanked God every day for bringing Eugenia into Robert’s life.”

“And?”

“And, I do as well. She made him happy, and I was wrong. In every respect. About them. About Robert. And about her.”

“Does she know any of this?”

“She knows I nearly convinced Robert to break it off. She knows I thought her beneath him and unworthy.”

Aigen leaned forward. “No wonder she dislikes you.”

“I was a fool then.” He leaned across the space between them and grabbed the bottle of port to refill his glass. “I’m not now.” He refilled Aigen’s glass, too. “The woman you marry will be fortunate indeed.” He set the bottle of port on the floor by his chair and lifted his glass. “I mean that sincerely. Whether it’s Miss Rendell or some other woman.”

Aigen draped an arm along the top of his chair and
grinned at him. “Fox. Fox, my stupid friend. Does she know how you feel now? To the point, does it matter?”

He gave Aigen a look that conveyed his opinion of that question. “If I told her now, she’d never believe me.” He stood. “I don’t want to drive another friendship to ruin over a woman.”

Aigen shrugged. “Then don’t. That seems easy enough.”

“I will if it comes to that.”

“That’s alarming.” Aigen kept his good humor but there was a tension now.

“You’ve called at Spring Street.”

“Several times. As you know, Lady Eugenia is working diligently to find a husband for Miss Rendell. She entertains a great deal. You might try calling on her yourself, you know.”