The Problem with Seduction (5 page)

Tony cracked a smile. “It’s hard to be a good MP if you can’t make a persuasive argument. Come. Montborne is in the library. Unless you want to have this discussion in the kitchen?”

Con pushed his mug away and rose. “At least there will be brandy there.”

Tony’s half-smile remained plastered on his face. He shook his head and preceded Con from the room. “We’re all happy about your new situation, you know,” he said over his shoulder. “You’re the one acting as though we’re dragging you to the guillotine.”

Maybe that’s because I don’t want to be held accountable for raising some other man’s bastard.
Con scowled at his brother’s back, but he still couldn’t blame Tony for his current predicament. “I don’t see any of you running out to procreate.”

Tony laughed outright this time. “That’s because we’d have the decency to marry first, which is a completely unnecessary punishment when there are so many of us to carry on the family name. But you bring me back to my point—” He rapped once before opening the library door and waving Con inside. “Lady Elizabeth Spencer deserves to be married.”

“You must be joking,” Con said at the same time their eldest brother, Roman Alexander, Lord Montborne, turned his curly blond head from the long window and said, “God’s teeth, Tony, but you do have the worst ideas.”

Relief coursed through Con. It wasn’t always this easy to find an ally in Montborne. If Bart and Darius decided to weigh in, there could be an out-and-out brawl, with the best case being Tony and Bart teamed up against Darius and himself. The two sets of twins pitted against each other. Con regarded his oldest brother hopefully. If Montborne took Con’s side, that would make three against two. When one argued with an MP and a barrister, any help was appreciated.

Montborne
tsk
ed and went to his sideboard. He hated choosing sides.

But there
was
hope. Con waited, more patiently now that Montborne had voiced an opinion in his favor, as his oldest brother poured stiff drinks for all of them. Maybe this wouldn’t be as painful as he’d feared.

Tony raised his snifter after they each had one in hand. “A toast. To Constantine’s young son. May he have as happy a childhood as we did.”

The dry bread from Con’s quick repast must have stuck in his throat. He suddenly couldn’t swallow.

Montborne tipped his own glass, but an odd look came into his eyes. A little too similar to Tony’s hollow smile, actually. “To Con’s son. He should be so lucky to enjoy a boyhood like ours.”

Con raised his glass in an attempt to look pleased. After tossing back a mouthful, he felt fortified enough to take the offensive. “How kind. And I appreciate your concern, I really do. I can only imagine how much fun we’d all have with a little one toddling behind us.” Actually, that was the last thing he could picture. “I know this feels a bit sudden, and I haven’t really worked out the details yet, but I think Oliver belongs with Elizabeth. What do I know about little babies?”

He didn’t need to elaborate on that point. That much, at least, had to be obvious. “No, the best thing is to leave him with her, at least until he’s old enough to learn a thing or two from me.” Or until everyone forgot about him, because that would be good, too.

Tony perched his booted foot on an ottoman and leaned his elbow against his thigh. “What would you
do
with a baby? You’re supposed to raise it. Love it. Bring him up in your image—no, don’t do that. My image. Make him a part of this family. Isn’t it bad enough that you’ve brought him into this world on the wrong side of the blanket? That is to say nothing of what you’ve done to the poor woman herself.”

Montborne collected their empty snifters and returned to the sideboard to pour a second round. “You’ve always been one to see more good in people than exists, Tony. That flaw has worked in my favor, as no one in this family is a bigger muck-up than I. But really, Con marry Elizabeth Spencer? Have you lost your senses completely?”

Tony didn’t flinch. He must be used to the constant pricks at his belief in justice. As the second oldest and heir presumptive, he filled a gap created by a marquis who refused to act like the head of the household. In point of fact, Tony’s desk in the corner was riddled with paperwork, estate books, and correspondence, work he’d apparently interrupted to hunt Con down and bring him to heel. Montborne’s desk was a stately monstrosity commanding the window, its immaculate condition established in those weeks per year when they had servants to see to such things. The rest of the year it collected dust, or if a drawer was opened at all, it was in a vain hope of finding forgotten pin money.

“Look,” Con tried again, “I know I’ve made a mess of things, but I don’t think marrying her is going to make amends. Why would she even agree? She’s completely independent and wealthier than all five of us put together. No woman in her right mind would marry a penniless fourth son, even if she were as pure as the driven snow. Especially not a woman who can pay for the best tutors and buy a comfortable little house and has already spurned the idea of marriage.”

“You know that last bit for a fact?” Tony asked with an earnestness no other man could have pulled off.

Con took a seat on one of the dark green sofas angled before the fireplace. Standing was beginning to make him feel defensive. He crossed his legs and settled his elbow on the arm of the chair, brandy in hand. “Are you suggesting she’s reformed? A reformed courtesan? Maybe she wants a husband and a houseful of little children?”

Tony regarded him with that smug superciliousness that made Con want to plant him a facer. “Maybe she’s never had a problem with marriage. Did you stop to think that maybe it wasn’t her fault she ended up in her situation in the first place?”

“No, I never thought that maybe one day she accidentally fell on a man’s—”

“You both misunderstood me,” Montborne intervened. “I wasn’t trying to say it’s ridiculous for Constantine to marry Elizabeth, whatever her history might be. I merely meant our young brother is the last of us I’d expect to own up and propose marriage to a woman just because he’d planted his seed in her. As in, ‘Con marry Elizabeth Spencer? I will eat my best stocking the day I witness him right one of his mistakes.’”

It wasn’t the full-fledged support Con was looking for, but at least Montborne wasn’t pressing him to marry a lightskirt he barely knew. He couldn’t help but be a little disappointed, though, to hear his brother declare him just the kind of man who walked away from his responsibilities. Especially when,
in this instance,
he’d actually managed to keep himself out of debtors’ prison, all by himself.

That had to be the worst defense imaginable. But he was drawing at straws. “Most men wouldn’t be expected to marry their mistress and raise their bastard as if he were a legitimate heir,” he tried. “Am I right?”

“No,” both of his brothers said together.

“You didn’t get some common whore with child,” Tony said. “You managed to find an earl’s daughter. So that’s one difference. Whether or not she was pure when you had her is beside the point. You made a mockery of our family by approaching Captain Finn in a crowded gaming hell and shaming him with his mistress’s infidelity while airing your own indiscretion. You thoroughly ruined
her—
don’t shake your head like her fallen state is any defense. How many men do you think want to take on a mistress who is both unfaithful and the mother of a small child? What you did to her was unconscionable, but that only scratches the surface. You ruined an innocent man’s life so that you could claim your son.
How
was he to be any wiser if you’d just kept your trap shut? It was the right thing to do if you were going to raise the boy yourself, but now you don’t even want your baby
or
the mother. What was your point, then, in destroying all of those lives?”

“You’re laying it on a bit thick,” Montborne said. “Con’s never been one to think through his actions. Do you really think he had a plan?”

The odd look came into Montborne’s eyes again. He turned away before Con could examine it more thoroughly.

“Don’t go easy on him just because you’ve enjoyed your own share of scandals,” Tony said.

“I always know what I’m doing.” Montborne didn’t take his gaze from the window. “I’d be happy to go through a catalog of my foibles later, but such an inventory would almost certainly require more brandy than I can afford this month.”

 “I can’t believe you both hold our family’s reputation in such low regard.” Tony blackened each of them with a scalding glare. “And I suppose Darius would side with you two, gambler that he is.”

“It’s just that responsibility is such a weighty word,” Montborne said, returning to the center of the room. His regular devil-may-care expression was back in place. “Constantine can’t be expected to start owning up by picking his biggest foible and fixing it. Maybe something smaller, like arriving home on time to take Mother to church after he’s said he would. If I have to hear one more sermon on chastity, my ears are going to bleed.” He slanted Con a rakish grin that didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I intend to bill you for a new cravat if mine is stained by rivulets of blood.”

Con drew up in annoyance. “I’m not as bad as that.”

Tony raised a shoulder, then dropped it. “I suppose it could be worse. I suppose you could be in the gaol again.”

Con went cold. He
hated
remembering King’s Bench. “I don’t know what you want me to do. She wanted her son back. I see no way for the three of us to keep house together, for she’d be a fool to marry me and I can’t afford to be her sole protector. I can’t even afford a child. Is that it? Do you need me to admit that? I made a mistake and I have no idea how to fix it. There. So what
do
you want me to do?”

His brothers looked at him with the same weary disappointment their mother had cast on him the previous week.

He’d really made a mess this time. It wasn’t even as though he could just tell them the truth and pay Elizabeth back. The money was already gone, save a very small amount of pin money. It would take years, if it wasn’t entirely out of the question, for him to scrape together enough to repay a sum of that magnitude. The depths of his debts were why he’d accepted Elizabeth’s bargain in the first place.

The problem was…he’d never earn his brothers’ respect, so long as he left Elizabeth alone. And she very, very clearly wanted to be left alone.

Chapter Four

LORD CONSTANTINE CALLED three days later. Elizabeth gently bit the tip of her finger as she considered her options. Have him tossed on his arse again? See him? What could he possibly want that she hadn’t already denied him?

She walked the short length of the nursery, then doubled back. A familiar path she’d worn in the carpet over the last three days as she’d paced like a caged tigress. But she wasn’t entirely cornered, not yet. Nicholas had backed her against a figurative wall and now Lord Constantine was in her drawing room, but she
could
escape. She could pack her things, gather Oliver to her breast, and leave through the mews.

She had every reason to leave.

Then why didn’t she?

She cast Mrs. Dalton a reassuring glance. The new nursemaid had watched Elizabeth’s behavior over the last two days with a calm sort of understanding at odd with her youthful appearance. She knew nothing of Elizabeth’s plight, yet she didn’t seem the least surprised to learn that her employer wore her carpets like a barrister making his case before the Recorder.

In that sense, Elizabeth’s reassurance might have been more for herself than for her servant’s. With her teeth gritted into a semblance of an indifferent smile, she forced herself to sit in her rocking chair. “It is always good to make a man wait,” she said, as if she were ignoring the man in her drawing room because she desired him
too
much, rather than because his arrival inserted yet another cog into her rattling wheel.

Truthfully, she’d barely had a thought to spare for Lord Constantine until this moment. She’d been too torn by the need to decide between staying in London and risking another meeting with Nicholas, or leaving London, and maybe even England, altogether.

But why stay? Why debate about it, even for a moment? Nothing held her in Britain; the strings most people used to keep themselves anchored to their homeland had been severed long ago, due to a different mistake, one that had set her on her path to ruin. Her parents hadn’t replied to her letters in ten years. How foolish was she, if she felt bereft at the thought of her son never meeting his grandparents, when she’d destroyed any tender feelings they’d ever had for her when she was but a child, herself?

Remaining in England so Oliver might be close to his forebears was entirely unreasoned when he was unlikely to ever have the opportunity to even be introduced. But she’d never given much credence to logic. She’d honed her intuition, and though sometimes it failed her, she liked feeling that she made her own decisions.

An inexplicable force urged her to stay. So, she would stay. Her mind was at last made up. One day, maybe, she would stop acting on impulse.