The Golden Season (21 page)

Ned did not bother picking up his cards. Finally they’d come to the end. “In.”

In the three-card game they played, the player with the most tricks won. However, once there were only two people left in the game, a player would need to win all three tricks to take the entire pot. Otherwise it was split evenly between the two last players.

Staring at Ned, Tweed laid down a nine of trump. Ned calmly covered it with the ten, destroying Tweed’s chance of winning the entire pot. Tweed did not flinch. He only needed to take a single trick to split the winnings and that still represented a tidy sum.

The room grew quiet with intensity. Still staring at Ned, Tweed played an off-suit ace. Ned trumped it with a three. With a small smile, Tweed played the trump’s king and tilted back on his chair. “Ah, well, Lockton. We will have to share.”

Ned flipped over his remaining card, the ace of trump.

The tension broke amidst laughs of astonishment. The observers moved in closer, congratulating Ned.

“Well done, Captain!”

“Superior play, sir.”

“The evening is yours!”

The front legs of Tweed’s chair crashed to the ground. He surged forward, leaning half over the table separating them. “Are you telling me you were dealt three trump cards again?
Again
?”

“On the contrary. I don’t recall addressing you at all, Mr. Tweed.”

“It’s not possible!” Tweed exclaimed, spittle spraying from his lips, his face livid.

Ned was in no mood for this nonsense. “Obviously, it is.”

Borton swallowed. The men gathered around them shifted nervously, backing away. “Now, Tweed,” Borton said, “I am sure you did not mean that as it sounded.”

“I meant it exactly as it sounded,” Tweed declared, surging to his feet.

For a moment Ned considered rising, too. Tweed looked angry enough to try to strike him and he was a fit enough looking fellow, Ned conceded. Earlier in the evening he’d claimed to be a regular at Gentleman Jim’s establishment. Looking at the size of his knuckles, Ned could well believe it.

But he took the measure of the man and decided that a pretender such as Tweed would never physically assault a member of the
ton
. Not because he lacked the pluck. He would restrain himself simply because such an act would exclude him from the ranks of gentlemen he so desperately aspired to join.

“Blister me, Uncle!” Harry exclaimed, pushing himself out of his chair with an effort. He swayed, grabbing his cousin’s shoulder to right himself. “You ain’t going to stand to be insulted like that, are you?”

“At least I’ll be standing,” Ned answered laconically.

He should have been at the Youngs’ hours ago, teasing laughter from Lydia, watching the play of emotions on her expressive face, inhaling the subtle orange blossom scent rising from her glossy brown curls, wondering if her delicately peach-glazed cheeks could be as soft as they looked or her pale shoulders as satiny. . . . Blast Phillip, Harry, and this Tweed. Because of them he’d missed the opportunity to spend the evening in her company.

Had she looked for him? Had she been disappointed? Or had other gentlemen quickly filled the gap left by his absence?
Damn
and blast his nephews.
And
Nadine and Beatrice and Josten for breeding such clunches.

“I have insulted you, Lockton,” Tweed was saying, his voice vibrating with anger. “What sort of man are you that you let that stand?”

“A bored one,” Ned clipped out as he rose to his feet.

“Challenge the blighter, Uncle! I’ll be your second!” Phillip hiccupped from where he slouched.

“Ned can’t challenge straight off. It’s against the gentlemanly code. Has to wait until tomorrow, Pip,” Harry explained in a slurred voice. “I’m sure he’ll send round a challenge then, and since I’m the elder I’ll be his second.”

“You’re the future earl of Josten, you can’t be risked. I will—”

“Stubble it, Harry,” Ned said. “You, too, Pip. No one is going to be my second because there isn’t going to be a duel.”

Harry’s mouth gaped open and Phillip blinked in owlish disappointment. “No duel?” they said as one.

“No.” Ned reached down and swept the winnings from the table into his purse, though it grated against every instinct to do so. By winning he’d confirmed in his idiot nephews’ minds that one could win. And he hated taking any money off Borton. Added to which, he had no idea what Tweed’s situation was. He could only conclude from the fool’s willingness to court disaster that it was dire. He disliked being party to the man’s downfall. But to leave the winnings here would be a tacit admission that something had been havey-cavey in the game. Damn them all.

“Of course there will be no duel,” Borton said angrily. “Why would there be? Ned won fair and square and Tweed is angry about it. No gentleman would take umbrage at a poor loser’s ire.”

“Did he?” Tweed sneered.

“Good God, man,” Borton exploded angrily. “Captain Lockton has been generous enough to let your insult pass and this is the best you can do to thank him? I’ve half a mind to challenge you meself.”

“
Do not you dare
,” Ned ground out. All this situation wanted now was Borton getting himself killed over it. “Tweed is ale-blown.”

“But,
Uncle
,” Harry protested. “The family hon—”

He speared Harry to silence with a glance. “Harry, Pip, I would appreciate your company on my way home. I know you will not disappoint me.” He gave a slight bow in the direction of Borton and the other men in the room. “Gentlemen.”

He turned and in that moment Tweed, incapable of accepting his good fortune, grabbed Ned’s shoulder from behind, attempting to spin him around. But at thirteen stone, Ned did not spin easily. He did stop, however, only a brief tic in the bulge of his jaw indicating he took exception to be so handled.

“You can expect a visit from my second at first light, sir.”

Gasps met Tweed’s words.

Ned bit back his impatience. “For what?”

Tweed frowned. “What?”

“For what? I assume if you are sending a second it is to issue a challenge and I am curious as to how you intend to justify it. Are you intending to put it out that you challenged me to a duel because you lost? Come, sir, how will that increase your standing amongst your new . . .
friends
?” He raked the young bucks with Tweed with a caustic glance.

As Ned anticipated, the direct question flummoxed Tweed. He scowled thunderously as he hunted for a stinging reply, a sensible one seemingly being out of the running. It took him a few seconds to hit upon one. “
You
offend me, sir. To bloody hell with waiting on the morrow. I challenge you to a duel now.”

“And I refuse,” Ned replied.

Exclamations and mutters of astonishment met his statement.

“But you can’t refuse!” Phillip blurted out. “He challenged you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ned said shortly, finally losing his temper. “I fight wars. Not boys.” He knew he was risking damage to his reputation by refusing. To most members of the
ton
, it would be imperative to answer a challenge such as Tweed had issued. But Ned had seen men kill and be killed for real reasons, for home and family, for the sake of their country or the man standing next to them in battle. Killing or even maiming a man simply because he was stupid was something he could not do.

What the bloody hell was he doing here, anyway? Saving the ungrateful hides of two immature would-be dandies whose idea of sophisticated repartee invariably contained reference to farts and who manifestly lacked any innate ability to learn from previous mistakes. And now, rather than thanking him, they were disappointed because he refused to shed some idiot’s blood.

He left without another word, disgusted with his nephews, the evening, the situation, but most of all himself for allowing a sense of duty he was coming to consider misplaced to deprive him of a night in Lydia’s company.

The next day Ned paced up and down in front of the Stanhope Gate that led into Regent’s Park and pulled out his pocket watch. He checked the time once again. It was five thirty, half an hour past the usual time Lydia arrived for her daily drive down Rotten Row in her dark blue, lacquered barouche, its bright yellow wheels flashing behind a pair of handsome black horses.

He’d arrived on foot rather than riding the bay gelding Borton had insisted he make use of. Today he’d wanted closer contact with Lydia than simply riding alongside her as her coachman drove up and down the lane. Though he knew he presumed in hoping she would invite him to share her carriage, he had decided to take the chance. His experience of last night had made his path clear to him.

Far from being cowed, Phillip and Harry had been delighted by the melodramatic ending to the evening. They’d spent the coach ride to Josten’s town house drunkenly debating the relative merits of guns versus rapiers as dueling weapons. They had not noted that he’d absented himself from their discussion and a good thing, too. Had he spoken, he certainly now would be regretting having lost his temper to an even greater degree.

The only time his knavish nephews’ spirits had been dampened was when they’d reached their destination and he’d flung open the carriage door and issued the curt order, “Get out.”

The two had blinked at him in confusion, making no effort to move.

“Are you deaf?” he asked. “Get out.”

“But . . . but, what about our money?” Harry, either the bolder of the duo or the more simple-witted, had blurted out.

There had been no second request for “their money” and Ned took grim satisfaction in imagining the boy’s valet’s attempt to remove Ned’s boot print from the seat of Harry’s pants.

He’d little doubt that within a day or so he would be reproached by Nadine or Beatrice for his unnatural lack of avuncular affection and the outrageous manner with which he’d treated their darlings. He was not looking forward to that meeting. In truth, there was little in London to recommend itself to him. Last night’s events had brought home how little he had in common with his so-called peers, the members of the
beau monde
.

Too many were caught up in the minutiae of politesse and social pettiness that he found baffling. They valued things he did not understand and which he had no desire to understand. He found himself impatient with much of Society and vexed by the realization that he did not know his place in it. Perhaps he did not have a place in it.

And yet he had fallen in love with the
haute ton
’s reigning jewel. He was well aware of the irony of that. It didn’t matter, his heart had become a thing separate from his will. And now his heart was demanding more. Somewhere over the last weeks, keeping hush about his family’s financial straits had gone from being a strategic evasion to a sin of omission. Love, he’d discovered, abided no ulterior motives, no secrets, no challengers to its reign, not need, not expedience, not pragmatism. So tell her he would. But he mustn’t blurt it out. He must approach the situation with delicacy. Never had his choice of words mattered more to him.

Had she missed him at the Youngs’ fete? Who had taken her in to dine? With whom had she danced and how often? Had any one claimed more of her time than another? It was a role he’d enjoyed for the last few weeks and he disliked very much the idea that last night another had filled it and might seek to do so again. Was this unknown, phantom rival with her now?

He stopped pacing, amazed. Here he stood, racked by jealousy for a man he didn’t even know existed. Worse, there was no understanding between Lydia and him that would entitle him to an opinion about with whom she passed her time.

Except he wanted all of her time. He wanted her. He wanted her with a hunger that grew more ravenous with each moment they spent together.

Being at the mercy of such passion took him aback. He considered himself a gentleman, a Lockton of Josten Hall, an officer of His Majesty’s navy, and none of those personas allowed for this cataclysm of emotions—desire and possessiveness and uncertainty and jealousy. Such unworthy feelings would surely shock her. Even more crucial, she did not deserve to be the focus of them. She deserved nothing less than his finest self, a decent, courteous, and respectful man and by God, that is what he would give her.

He stopped pacing, alert to the sound of the approaching jingle of harness braces and the strike of hooves against the cobblestones. A moment later her carriage drove under the gate into the park. His pulse quickened at the sight of Lydia, the sun glinting off a small bonnet perched atop her dark brown curls. He moved off the footpath, crossing to the road to intercept her carriage.

She spotted him at once and her face lit with pleasure. She leaned forward on her seat to tap the coachman, but he was already pulling the barouche to a halt.

“Captain,” she hailed him, “you are afoot. Never say you were tossed overboard?”

“No, ma’am,” he answered with feigned sobriety. “I embarked on my current voyage without a vessel.”

“Ah!” she said. “Luckily for you, I am a patriot. I would never leave a naval hero foundering on dry land.”

“Is it so obvious?” he asked, taking hold the near horse’s headset to keep him from dancing in place.

“Only to me,” she said. “Climb aboard, sir, and let me deliver you to whatever port you are heading.”

“In truth, ma’am, I have no specific destination in mind. The day is fine, rare enough this summer, and I thought simply to enjoy a stroll.” He patted the horse’s neck. “Might I convince you to join me whilst I reacquaint my legs with the notion of walking on solid ground?”

Surprise widened her eyes. Walking was almost unheard of for the
ton
, for if one had the wherewithal for a carriage, one showed it off. But he did not have the wherewithal for a carriage and he needed to acquaint her with that fact, and others of a similar nature.