Chapter Fifteen
Marchand paused at the foot of the long drive to take in the rambling, centuries-old house. He dismounted from his hired horse,
a patient bay gelding, and loosely tethered him to a shrub. He knew his visit would be brief.
As difficult as it was to intimidate him at the advanced age of thirty-six, the weight of the realization—less a realization
than a confirmation—that he and Guinevere Woodville had been raised in different galaxies required a bit of an internal adjustment.
It was helpful to be reminded that it was only through some perversion of fate that he’d come to be kissing her nearly senseless
in a cemetery.
Every glancing thought of that moment sent twin spikes of lust and fear through him. Hope had no business anywhere near how
he felt. But there it was, glimmering like daybreak on the perimeters of his life now, shortening his breath. He couldn’t
seem to stop it any more than he could stop the sun from rising.
But what would he hope for, anyway? Papa, the sky is green.
That was how outlandish it was to imagine a life with her.
There was a better than excellent chance that her family and friends would bloody well disown her if they saw her consorting with him, or anywhere near him.
And nothing meant more to her than her family and friends. He understood that painfully clearly.
That she rightfully belonged to him and with him felt like an inalienable truth. How could he know that after just a few days?
As surely as he’d known he would die for Michael from the moment he’d held him. Truth was truth.
The way she held him felt to him like truth.
The way she looked at him felt like truth.
The way she kissed him felt like truth.
And the way she’d held that baby last night felt like his destiny.
He did not know how to reconcile the ferocity of his possessiveness with the seeming futility of their circumstances.
But what did he really know for certain? He knew he’d only truly loved and been loved by one other person in his entire life,
and that was Michael.
The dangers upon which he’d been trained in his youth had mostly been immediate in nature—thieves, violence, hunger. He’d
seldom had the benefit of recognizing a danger so far in advance. And yet he’d still been almost helpless to avoid this one.
Because just like hope, devastation hovered on the periphery of his awareness, too.
Imagining making love to her sent need coursing through him so violently his limbs all but trembled.
But if he made love to her, it might destroy both of them.
He suspected she would never fully know peace until and unless she finally fulfilled her mother’s final wish.
And that meant she would live out her life ensconced in a house like the one he was staring at now, the word “Lady” instead of “Honorable” engraved on her calling cards.
She would probably sit across from a man named Francis at the breakfast table.
Then again, he may have already robbed her of a chance at peace, merely by virtue of existing.
And that gutted him.
Would he have forgone the experience of knowing her? Of holding her in his arms?
He was not that selfless of a man.
He had no map for any of this. He was fumbling in the dark, with only instinct to guide him.
But the enforced domesticity of the Grand Palace on the Thames had cornered him into an uncomfortable realization: He’d been
wrong about what he really wanted and who he really was. It had nothing to do with turning the Grand Palace on the Thames
into a gaming hell.
No matter how uncomfortable that realization, he was not one to take for granted the gift of that epiphany.
Discreetly but determinedly, nervously but with a sense of irrevocability, he’d already gotten a change of course underway.
That change of course was part of the reason he was here today.
He’d made his decision about this trip to Ginny’s family home sometime during the visit to Michael.
He’d known he’d needed to leave straightaway if he wanted a seat on the royal mail coach that afternoon, so he collected a few things in a valise from his residence, had a look to see how the repairs of his roof were going (slowly), then asked Mr. Ogden to send a message to the Grand Palace on the Thames to let Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand know he would be away.
He’d found a room in an inn in Sussex before the end of the day. That was where he realized he’d become a bit of a snob about
inns. There were no comfortable rugs on the floor, no little flower in a vase. He’d miss Helga’s magnificent morning scones.
But he did like how warmly the faces of the innkeepers lit up when he inquired how to find the Woodvilles’ residence. They
clearly thought highly of the family.
He walked up the drive.
A luxuriously woolly goat was nibbling the bright flowers growing with unchecked abandon around the perimeter of a fountain
in the center of it.
“You must be William,” he said to it. “Something tells me you’re not supposed to be out here eating those.”
William lifted his head and eyed him benignly with his wise, oblong amber eyes.
Marchand gently looped his hand under the rope collar around William’s neck and led him up to the door. The goat clopped behind
him complacently, right up the steps, as if he’d done it a dozen times before.
He’d needed to knock twice, much more emphatically the second time, before the door opened a crack.
A woman with chaotic eyebrows peered out and flicked her gaze over him.
“We already have a goat. We don’t need another one,” she said, and began to close the door.
He thrust his booted foot into the crack.
“Are you Mrs. Haddock?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m Gabriel Marchand. I hear you’ve been spreading rumors about me, and I’ve come for a reckoning.”
It was a wicked impulse, but he’d been unable to resist it.
She gasped so mightily she nearly sucked his cravat through the door crack.
“Forgive my little jest, Mrs. Haddock. My name is, however, Mr. Gabriel Marchand. I’ve come to call upon the master of the
house. The Earl of Highgrove. Is he in?”
“What do ye want wi’ that boy, Mr. Marchand? If you ’arm a hair on his head, I’ll put a curse on you that withers yer nether
regions.”
He rather approved of the unorthodox gate-keeping.
“As intimidating as that sounds, why on earth would I harm him when he owes me money, Mrs. Haddock?” he said matter-of-factly.
“How would I collect? I come in peace.”
They stared at each other.
“That makes sense,” Mrs. Haddock allowed, reluctantly.
“I think he’ll speak to me. Can you have someone take this goat back to his usual quarters? He was eating the flowers. I’ll
go have a word with his lordship.”
She opened the door with great reluctance, and Marchand stepped inside.
Mrs. Haddock led him up the stairs, and though he was very curious to see where Ginny usually slept, even he knew it would have been extraordinarily untoward to ask.
He saw no signs of her sisters. Perhaps they were out doing what fiancées of aristocrats did, tra-la-la-ing through the vast green grounds, making daisy crowns.
He didn’t know. He already suspected that he would do anything at all for them, if needed. If Ginny asked.
Hogarth was in shirtsleeves and stockings and leaning precariously back in his chair in the way young men often do, reading
a book.
“Mr. Marchand here to see you,” said Mrs. Haddock.
“Oh dear God!” Hogarth shot to his feet and the chair crashed to the floor. “That is, good afternoon, Mr. Marchand. What a
pleasant surprise.”
“Good afternoon, Lord Highgrove.” He bowed. “I hope you’ll forgive my intrusion. I don’t want to give the impression that
I’m collaring you in your den, as it were.”
“Not at all,” Hogarth said politely, though everything about his posture and expression suggested he was screaming inwardly.
Sometimes aristocratic manners amused Marchand.
Marchand turned and stared at Mrs. Haddock until she melted away. Then he closed the door.
“I won’t take up too much of your valuable time.” He said this only a little ironically. “I’m given to understand that you
excelled in mathematics and fencing whilst you were at university.”
Hogarth blinked, and hesitated. “Well, I don’t like to boast . . .”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you could impart this information to another human who is just learning mathematics and fencing?”
Hogarth looked puzzled. “To . . . you?”
Marchand sighed. For God’s sake. “To a room full of young boys and perhaps girls. Around the ages of nine and ten or so. Some older.”
“Certainly I could. I often tutored other students. I know how to, ah, impart information so that they actually permanently
learn it.”
“That’s everything we want out of learning. All right. Perfect. I would like to offer you a job doing that.”
“Er . . .” Hogarth looked awkward, sympathetic, and regretful, as if he didn’t want to embarrass Marchand by informing him
that earls simply didn’t take “jobs.”
“The pupils will be boys and perhaps some girls who are residents of the workhouse at Bethnal Green. And if you perform your
duties reliably and consistently for three days per week, for a period of three years, I will forgive your debt to Lucifer’s
Fall entirely.”
Hogarth’s breath rushed from him in a shocked gust.
“But, if at any point you shirk your duties, or miss them for any reason other than catastrophic illness, loss of limb, or
family death, your debt will be restored in its entirety, and I will not fail to collect it.”
“But . . . that’s extraordinarily generous of you, Marchand. How did you . . . why are you . . .” Comprehension flared in
his face. “Oh. I think I know.”
Gabriel could read very clearly the conclusions Hogarth was drawing about why he was visiting today.
None of the Woodvilles had any business gambling.
He admitted to what Hogarth probably already knew. “Perhaps this will come as no surprise to you, but your sister appeared
at Lucifer’s Fall and we had a conversation.”