Chapter 18
Damnation, damnation, damnation. Eamon berated himself with every step as he made for Oxford Street.
Of all the stupid, ill-conceived, miscalculating things he could have said, Eamon had to let the word love slip from his lips.
Caro had stared at him in utter shock. So still had been her face that Eamon couldn’t determine if she’d been pleased, outraged, or just surprised that the man literally beneath her feet had been presumptuous enough to fall in love with her.
Eamon, priding himself on reading people within a few seconds of meeting them, hadn’t been able to discern her thoughts at all in that terrible moment.
He’d found himself a soft job in a comfortable house with a vast collection and the pleasure of conversing with Caro and her son while he assessed it.
All Eamon had to do was comb through the chaff and find a few pieces of art worth flogging.
He’d sell the things, hand Caro the money, receive his commission from Cheswell, and be done.
Instead, he’d danced with Caro in a crowded ballroom, kissed and touched her, and then declared himself like a fool in a ridiculous melodrama.
Eamon couldn’t decide whether she’d been about to slap him or call Singleton to show him the door, so he’d saved her the bother of both.
Cheswell could send someone else to finish cataloging the artwork, and Eamon would bow out. He’d do something about that Rembrandt he’d found in Clive’s warehouse to help Caro and Leo, but stay far, far away from the pair of them.
Any more time tumbling Caro’s hair, kissing her mouth, or even being in her presence would destroy him.
He’d pretended to his friends that the asinine wager, made in a moment they all thought they might die, drove him to pursue her, but that had been an excuse.
Caro had delighted him from the very first, when he’d found her struggling to open that damned window. Eamon had told Wolfe he’d assumed her an upstairs maid, but he’d known she was not—his powers of observation weren’t so far gone as that.
No, he’d pretended Caro wasn’t a lofty duchess, far out of his reach, so that Eamon could indulge his senses and be close to her. He’d let the fact that her father and his had occupied the same class comfort him into believing they were alike.
But they were not. Eamon’s father and Caro’s might have shared the same level of birth, but Caro’s father had been a respectable gentleman, while Sir Benedict had turned into an outright charlatan. He’d no more deserved his knighthood than the lowliest criminal in the streets of St. Giles.
Caro needed someone in her life who would comfort and bolster her as well as be a good father to Leo. She didn’t need a man who was little better than an art forger and a confidence trickster himself to pull her into the gutter.
A connection with Eamon might ruin Caro utterly.
He also knew his virtuous thoughts about taking himself away from Caro for her own good was bollocks. Eamon had fled the house because he knew he’d not be able to stop himself if he stayed in there with her.
He wanted Caro with a madness he’d thought he could suppress. As a lad, his youthful passions had been difficult to manage, but war and maturity had conquered them, or so he’d told himself.
Caro had proved Eamon wrong about that. He’d only been numbed by war and survival, convincing himself that he suppressed his basic needs at will.
That was before he met Caro.
Now Eamon could think of nothing but her, dreamed of her in the night when he wasn’t awake, longing for her. He wanted Caro in his bed, and in his life.
What underhanded deeds would Eamon undertake to get her there? Already the wheels Sir Benedict had oiled in him were turning, suggesting scenarios where Eamon would conquer Caro and bring her running to him.
Best for everyone that he stayed the hell out of her life.
“Damnation,” he said again, this time out loud and explosively.
Passers-by on Oxford Street stared, but Eamon ignored them and strode on, awash in his own pain.
Four excruciating days later, Eamon ran Wolfe to ground at Gentleman Jackson’s boxing rooms, where Wolfe regularly went to exercise his injured leg.
The limb had healed enough for him to walk with only a slight limp and dance in a simple country set if it wasn’t too vigorous, but he needed a training regime to keep his muscles hard.
“Where the bloody hell have you been?” was Wolfe’s greeting to him.
In shirtsleeves and light-colored breeches, Wolfe braced himself on a bench, repeatedly lifting his left leg, which had an iron weight strapped to it.
“Tearing about London like a madman, trying to fix things.” Eamon plopped onto the bench next to Wolfe and accepted the pot of ale an attendant brought him.
In the center of the room, two spindly, middle-aged men tried to master jabs under Jackson’s tutelage. All attention was on them, leaving Eamon and Wolfe relatively alone at the wall.
“You won’t fix anything in this benighted city,” Wolfe growled. “I never realized, when I was a boy, what a pleasure it was to ride through the countryside for hours, never seeing another living soul.”
“Yes, our childhoods were idyllic.” Eamon nodded sagely. “That is why they shut us away in Hallbridge, the school for troublesome lads no one knew what to do with.”
“Mm.” Wolfe closed his eyes while he continued to lift his leg. He grimaced against the strain. “By the bye, I saw the Viking the other day.”
“Oh?” Eamon asked without much interest. Nothing piqued his curiosity these days except who Clive did business with and how, and how much chance Rudyard had to gain custody of Leo. “Is he still enormous and thick-headed?”
“Even more so.” Wolfe gave a final grunt and set his weighted foot on the floor. “About ten feet tall and bulging with muscle. He hailed me like a long, lost friend and wanted a chat about the old days. Reminiscing on what fun we had together as lads.”
“Strange how fistfights to the near death appear as larks to some, twenty years on,” Eamon mused.
“I spied a French veteran and an English one in a pub the other night, reliving the battle at Salamanca as though it had been a sporting country outing. Jolly good fun.” He finished the statement dryly and took a sip of ale.
“You are in a mood.” Wolfe unbuckled the weight and eased it from his leg in relief. “Where is your ever-chirpy and annoying cheerfulness?”
“In the gutter, with my dignity.” Eamon leaned his back against the wall.
He knew he could pour out his troubles to Wolfe, who would grumble and growl but listen sympathetically at the same time.
However, Eamon was already tired of self-pity.
“What do you know about Rudyard Berridge? First cousin to the current Duke of Aylesmore and his sole heir?”
“That little oik?” Wolfe asked in surprise. “What is your interest, besides the connection to your duchess?”
Eamon told him, in a few brief sentences, what Cousin Rudyard was up to. “Can he do it?” Eamon finished.
Wolfe nodded with a scowl. “Possibly he can, unless the young duke’s mother can prove the lad is better off with her.”
“The law will favor the cousin, oik or no,” Eamon said glumly. “I’ve concluded that the best way we can keep Leo at home where he belongs is to make it clear that Rudyard is the worst possible person to care for him.”
Wolfe shot him a glance. “We?”
“I need to borrow your solicitor, if you don’t mind. My father’s could prove day was night if he had to, but he’s oily, and I need a gentleman with an impeccable reputation. A judge might believe your man if he helps us prove that Rudyard is a terrible person.”
“I don’t know why you bother asking me,” Wolfe said.
“My man of business already had an inquiry from an art dealer asking if I could be trusted. Kennedy assured him that I could be, but since I’ve not spoken to a dealer since before Waterloo, we both concluded that the gentleman being asked about must have been you. ”
“Kind of Kennedy to recommend me,” Eamon said with true gratitude. “I ask you so that your solicitor will answer my questions without turning me coldly away.”
“You are a bloody nuisance, Stone.” Wolfe shook his head. “My first pact with you got my face bashed in.”
“I recall you holding your own quite well.” Eamon shook his head. “I can’t let Leo go to that idiot. It will be the death of the boy.”
“You think Berridge would go that far?”
“I do,” Eamon said grimly. “Cousin Rudyard wants the dukedom and has the look of a man who will do anything to get it.”
“We won’t let him then. My solicitor shall be at your service.”
“Good man.” Eamon relaxed in relief. “I also need to purchase a Rembrandt. A genuine one. Anything you invest in it will be paid back out of its sale.”
Wolfe’s look of sympathy dissolved. “What the devil are you going on about now?”
Eamon explained about Clive, his shop, and the Rembrandt in the back. “He wants five thousand, but I can talk him down to something more reasonable.”
“You’re certain it’s the one from Aylesmore’s collection?”
“Positive. He diddled them out of it somehow. If I can restore the painting to Leo and then arrange for a proper sale, the Duchess of Aylesmore can pay off some of the family’s debts.”
Wolfe’s eyes narrowed. “The Duchess of Aylesmore? Not Caro this time?”
“No.” Eamon blew out a breath and drained the rest of the ale. “I am a wretched man, my friend. A wretched, wretched man.”
“You must do it,” Jo insisted. “Mustn’t she, Louise?”
Caro set down her delicately thin porcelain teacup and surveyed her friends. Louise had summoned Caro to her home in Berkeley Square, where Jo had joined them for a repast in Louise’s tastefully elegant drawing room.