Chapter 2 #2
The marquess shook his head. “The Queen won’t have you at court, and George thinks you’re worse than his sons.”
“No one is worse than George’s sons,” Darien said, shocked. “Prinny has bastards all over the place, not to mention a certain Mrs. Fitzherbert.”
“He is the Prince of Wales,” the marquess said. “You are not.”
“There’s a levee this afternoon, some stuffy function,” Darien said. “I’ll go. Queen Charlotte will acknowledge me—I’ll wager you anything.”
His father’s sad smile pained him more than anything else that had transpired in the last hour. “Not a betting man, you know. Too much bad luck.”
Darien was glad he was sitting or he would have buckled at this glimpse into his father’s grief.
His own losses were still too much to bear.
First had been their beloved Princess Pip, taken by tuberculosis while Darien was up at school.
Then Lucien abandoned him, trading their childish tricks for war.
Horace, gone in an instant. Lucretius, lingering in agony.
The 4th Marquess of Langford had borne the losses nobly. Darien, regrettably, had not.
“I shamed you, and Celeste’s family as well.” Darien drew to his feet, back straight, hands at his sides. “I ask your forgiveness for that. But I beg you, sir.” He took a deep breath and met his father’s gaze. “Do not bring this suit. Lucien will come back.”
A light of calculation entered his father’s eye. The marquess plucked the wig from his desk and placed it on his head, as if the attire of judges, court goers, and the Lords assembled in the House made theirs an official transaction.
“Very well. If you will see fit to keep this house and my name out of further scandals, I will refrain from bringing a suit this year. You can play about with your drawings and your hey-go-mad friends, and Ratty—Rathbone can continue at Bellamy Hall. But you have till the end of this session of Parliament, no later,” the marquess said.
“Be received. Become respectable. Better yet, find some well-bred woman to wed and bed. I won’t consider any of your foolish improvement projects, but I will give you time to come to a sense of your duty. ”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “And pray every night, as I do, that Lucien will come back to us, wherever in God’s name he is.”
“I already do.” Darien bowed.
“A rich bride,” his father called as he left the room. “Good family, fertile stock. Stop this business of ruining good girls for other men.”
“Enough that you’ve ordered my reform, sir,” Darien said with a grimace. “Don’t press me into the parson’s mousetrap as well.”
“No more scandals,” the marquess repeated, “or I won’t wait till next Season. I’ll bring my suit before the King’s Bench this year, and you’ll have to hope your wretched cousin hasn’t reduced Bellamy to sticks and dirt.”
Darien decided to walk to his house in Jermyn Street and tossed ha’pennies to the sweepers who cleared the streets for him. He wished it were as easy to clear his head. The conversation with his father had left him gutted.
The marquess thought it another insult that Darien didn’t live at Langford House, but the family townhouse held too many memories.
Winters in town while his father took his seat in Lords.
Romping with his brothers about various pranks while their mother attended to her meetings and projects.
Later, when Horace brought down his family for the Season, the house echoed with new laughter as Lucretius and Darien bowled in the ballroom or, playing pirates, tied Horatia to the grand stair.
Darien didn’t dare sleep under the same roof as those ghosts. He’d bought premises of his own from a friend he bailed out of the River Tick and filled the place with his own things, books and drawings, odds and ends from his travels, assorted friends who were as reckless and unattached as he.
Voices drifted from his library, but there were fewer old friends calling since he’d returned from his last trip abroad. Some had married; some could not keep up with Lord Daring’s lifestyle. It was possible a good many shared his father’s belief that his latest scandal had put him beyond the pale.
Well. Looking into the library, Darien saw there were at least two men left who would acknowledge him, possibly because they had him to thank for the roof over their heads.
One was his old schoolmate, Peregrine Empson, at loose ends because his uncle refused to buy his colors so he could join the regiment as an officer.
The other was his weedy cousin, Rutherford Bales, Rathbone’s younger brother, who had been ordained into the priesthood but had no living and no prospects.
“What! Still have your head attached, I see.” Perry slouched in an armchair next to a decanter of brandy. “Disinherited at last?”
“Not yet, though he considered it.” Darien accepted the glass Perry handed him. “He threatened to have Highcastle force Celeste to take me.”
Perry choked on his liquor. “Tenant for life? With that baggage?”
“Can’t see how she refuses me, prize that I am,” Darien drawled. “Jilting Havering, that I can understand.”
“Pestilent harpy,” Perry grunted. “Know yet whose babe she carries?”
“Not Havering’s, and it may not be mine.” Darien swept up the brandy decanter. “I’d very much like to know who else she had on the line.”
“They say the duke is threatening to send Lady Celeste to a nunnery if she won’t name the father.” Rutherford spoke from behind the afternoon paper.
“Rufie, please tell me that my valet was not responsible for that atrocity around your neck. Also, tell me how you manage to hear gossip about Celeste when you live in my library.”
Rutherford cast a self-conscious eye over his attire. “I beg your pardon. You said your servants were at my disposal. Lady Celeste is under discussion in all the coffee shops, when they’re not talking about France, that is. Or you.” He fussed with his cravat, crumpling it terribly.
“Perry, remind me when I get up to deal Rufie a facer,” Darien said. “By the by, cousin, his lordship wants me to take over Bellamy. In fact, he wants to have Lucien declared dead and have me made heir.”
Rutherford lowered his paper. A dreadful silence filled the room.
“It has been seven years, Darien,” Rutherford said finally. “It is not out of bounds for him to do so.”
Darien stared into his drink. “He could be rotting in some Hindoo hovel. He could be chained in a galley plying the coast, carrying silk and spices.” His fingers whitened around the glass.
“He could be in some sultan’s prison, blinded and trapped, not knowing his own name.
” They’d sent inquiry after inquiry, with no result.
Perhaps it was time Darien went himself, now that the latest war in Mysore had ended.
“It’s a simple process,” Rutherford said. “A death certificate from the coroner, and it’s done.”
“Not with the estate involved.” Darien topped off his drink. “It will entail legal action. My father came to town to start hunting up support for his cause.”
Again, that terrible silence. Perry avoided Darien’s gaze. Rutherford, called by his pastoral profession, made an effort.
“Your father is concerned—”
Darien held up a hand. “Stow it, Rufie. Perry, what’s to do this evening?”
Rutherford had suffered their family losses with dignified solemnity.
He had come pious and black-garbed when they laid Horace to rest in the tomb at Bellamy.
It wasn’t Rufie who lost the brother he loved, their solid, respectable Horse, whom his younger brothers led around by the nose and blamed when they were caught out in a mischief.
Rufie came again to officiate when they ferried Horace’s son to the family tomb, laying that slender, laughing, mischievous boy beside his father.
Rufie had his studies and the cold promise of his faith to console him.
Darien, with no such recourse, tried to escape his sorrows with travel abroad and, when that didn’t work, returned to his London townhouse and commenced drowning himself in the clubs and theaters, pleasure gardens and gaming hells, trying to obliterate the sense that he had failed his brother and his brother’s son.
Waiting for the family curse to cut him down too.
“To do tonight?” Perry yawned. “The usual, I suppose. Card party at Sharp’s, or we might take our mutton at the club and see what’s playing at the theater. Isn’t there an opera dancer you’d like to visit?” He waggled his brows.
“She’s moved on,” Darien said from the bottom of his glass. “What invitations have we gotten?”
“Your man put them there.” Perry pointed to the mantel, where a small silver tray sat next to the clock.
There were three envelopes. Darien could usually expect a mound of invitations during the height of the Season.
He read them aloud. “Dinner at Grafton’s—not to be borne.
Musical evening with the Snellings—hideous.
And a conversazione at Ellesmere House. Fitz must have purloined some new marbles that he wants everybody to admire. ”
“Show your face in a drawing room? Are you loose in your top hatches? No—you’re out to curry favor with the marquess.” A look of horror crossed Perry’s face. “Can he make you marry the shrew?”
“He wants me married. That much was clear.” Darien grimaced.
“Well, find some unsuitable gel, then! Put his lordship’s nose out of joint.”
“And how is my cousin to conduct a courtship,” Rutherford asked, fumbling with his neckcloth, “when any young woman he addresses at a social function is considered ruined on the spot?”
Perry took refuge in his glass. “An ugly girl! Questionable family, or a Long Meg. We’ll know you won’t make an offer, but his lordship won’t.”
Rutherford looked down his nose at the other man. “Or perhaps Darien would prefer to pursue connections that will restore dignity to the name of Bales, which, if you will allow me to point out the obvious, I share.”
The words came too close to his father’s chastisement. Darien advanced, and Rutherford drew back, no doubt recalling the earlier promise of a facer.
“I’ve had my father rattle me off already,” Darien said. “Now come here.”
He yanked Rufie’s neckcloth out of its knot and rearranged it with a few elegant tucks. “Stop fussing and it will last the night.”
Rutherford looked surprised. “I didn’t know—”
“That I could dress myself?” Darien smiled without humor. “I’d be ruined if I let my man have the dressing of me. He’s a poor lad from my estate who wanted to try his luck in the city, but he can’t get a post without a character, and he can’t establish character without having a post.”
Rutherford met his cousin’s eyes but said nothing.
The two men had never been close, and not just due to their difference in age.
Rutherford resembled Lucien, tall, rangy, with oil-black hair and the same noble, well-shaped features.
Horatia, Horace’s surviving daughter, had the same striking coloring.
But Rufie’s shoulders bore a noticeable stoop, the Bales blue eyes were disguised behind eyeglasses, and he had none of Lucien’s deadpan humor or ready, contagious laugh.
Really, a man could put up with only so much from a cousin born of a second son, and one who had gone into the priesthood to boot.
Darien picked up the decanter. “Wish me well. I’m off to prostrate myself before the Queen and beg for redemption.”
“St. James!” Perry exclaimed. “That bad?”
“My father thinks so.” Darien drained the second glass—or was it his third? “If I’m banished, where should we go this time? Rome again? Greece? The fighting is over in Turkey.”
Perry’s eyes slid away, and Darien sensed that, for the first time, his friend would not merrily go to hell in a handbasket with him, though Perry had been, since Lucien had left, the instigator for most of their madcap schemes.
Perhaps Perry, like the marquess, felt that in blundering about shackled in misery, Darien was sinking everyone else with him.
“Very well.” Darien put down the glass. “I hope that miserable valet of mine can find my court costume.”
“Would it be so bad, Darien? Taking over Bellamy?” Rufie asked. “You’ve been a good steward for The Revels, but that’s a tiny farm in comparison. It would ease your father’s mind to know you can oversee the marquessate when the time comes.”
“Bellamy is not mine to administer,” Darien snapped. “Langford and the marquessate will go to Lucien, and I will not take a pebble that is his. Whatever my faults—and I’m aware there are many—I do not steal from my kin.”
He downed the last of the liquid in his glass. “Now, to our more pressing matter. Anyone want to lay odds that the Queen will call for my head?”