Lord Something (Unexpected Heirs #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

“ W e cannot afford the slightest breath of scandal. Not after…” Lady Sophronia trailed off. “Well. I certainly do not have to tell you .”

Charles Keynsham, Sixth Viscount Alford, would have answered his grandmother, but he felt the same choking sensation that had been afflicting him ever since the library incident. He tried to swallow.

“And it could be worse, of course. At least she is an heiress.” Lady Sophronia nodded to Holt, her butler. He, in turn, opened the door and signaled the footmen to bring in the tea things.

Lady Sophronia’s posture was perfectly erect. Her pale blonde hair, now streaked with white, was perfectly coiffed. She was still wearing half-mourning for her son, the fifth viscount, and her lavender gown’s standing lace collar perfectly framed her delicate features. But the events of the past year had weighed on her, just as they had on Keynsham.

The footmen unloaded their trays. Lady Sophronia measured tea into a white and gold Meissen teapot and poured in the hot water. One of the footmen offered Keynsham a tray of macarons and petits fours topped with candied violets. “No thank you, Robert,” he managed to choke.

“Very good, your lordship.”

At another signal from Lady Sophronia, the servants withdrew. They were left alone in the drawing room, with its pale grey silk walls and enormous gilt-framed paintings. His grandmother’s miniature spitzes—Carlo, Duke, and Viper—wandered through this elegant setting, their toenails clattering on and off the edges of the thick Aubusson carpet. Carlo, the ringleader, kept snorting and giving Keynsham condescending looks.

He scowled back. Yes, it was his own fault that he’d been duped by Miss Spry. But to be judged by a dog ? That was the outside of enough.

He still couldn’t believe that it had happened at all. A ball… a note requesting a meeting in the library… the shadowy approach of a girl with whom he’d scarcely exchanged two words in his life…

Oh, God. What a fool he’d been. And it wasn’t even as though the plot had been original! If he’d been on his guard—as he ought to have been—he’d never have been taken in.

But he hadn’t been on his guard. He was exhausted after months of late nights poring over the estate ledgers. And so, when he’d received the unsigned note, he’d assumed that it was from one of his late father’s many unsavory creditors, prepared to threaten public exposure unless Keynsham met with him at once.

It certainly wouldn’t have been the first such note that he’d received. In fact, the irony was that if Miss Spry had had any idea of his family’s real financial circumstances, she’d never have set her cap for him at all.

“Well, at least the money will not go amiss.” Lady Sophronia sighed and handed him a cup of tea. “Though one could wish that the family… Well. They say that the father is a hard man. But then, I suppose that he has had to be. No matter how rich he is now, we cannot expect from him the manners of a gentleman.” She took a sip of tea and sighed again. “Have the solicitors reached an agreement?”

That was what Keynsham didn’t understand. “Er, no. There seem to be… sticking points. Mr. Spry asked to see the estate’s books. The marriage settlements have not been signed.”

“How irregular.” She frowned. “But you have bought the ring.”

“Yes.” It was in his breast pocket—a large and rare pink spinel of spectacular clarity, surrounded by diamond brilliants and set in a gold band.

“And tonight is to be the night.”

“Yes.” Tonight was the night when his future would be sealed to a giddy, spoiled girl eleven years his junior, with whom he had nothing in common, and to whom he had nothing to say.

It wasn’t what he’d hoped for. But then, hope was for fools. He ought to have learned that by now.

After all, he’d spent the past year living on the hope of a future with a very different lady—a lady named Miss Catherine Ryder. That hope had sustained him right up until last week. In fact, he’d clung to it until the very moment that he’d been stupid enough to open the library door.

And now there would be no Miss Ryder. Now, he would marry Miss Spry.

“It is most unaccountable.” Lady Sophronia rang the bell. “In cases such as this, the engagement is always announced immediately, so as to hush up any talk. But Spry seems to be more concerned with protecting the girl’s financial interests than her reputation! I suppose that is because he is a cit.”

Mr. Spry had invented Spry’s Rose Lotion, which was sold in bottles with pink labels and touted in advertisements as the secret to a pimple-, wrinkle-, and freckle-free complexion. He was a widower, and his daughter, Miss Arabella Spry, was the heiress to his fortune.

Miss Spry always dressed in pink, to match the Rose Lotion label, and claimed to prefer pink above all other colors. And so, as the marriage settlement was being hammered out by opposing teams of solicitors, Keynsham had pink orchids and pink roses delivered to his future bride in order to preserve the appearance that this was a real courtship. Appearances were everything to the ton .

His most successful gift had been a pair of pink coral earbobs. Given the several minutes that Miss Spry had spent unwrapping and cooing over them, he’d managed to stave off excruciating silence for almost half of the fifteen-minute call.

The clocks struck half past six. He rose and made his grandmother a bow. “My appointment with Miss Spry is set for seven. I must take my leave.”

His grandmother rose as well and surprised him by taking his hands. “None of this is what I had hoped for you, of course.” Her piercing blue eyes searched his face. “But I know that you will do your duty. You always do.”

The carriage swept north toward Grosvenor Square. A fog was coming up from the river, and the passing buildings were growing hazy… unless that was Keynsham’s vision. He blinked to clear it.

The trouble with his breathing had come back, only worse than before. He cleared his throat. He put two fingers between his neck and his neckcloth and tugged. It seemed too tight. He was becoming lightheaded.

Was he dying? After all, his father had died young—of an apoplexy, in the arms of his mistress. That pointed to a constitutional weakness. Perhaps Keynsham had inherited it.

He felt briefly hopeful. Dying wouldn’t be so bad. At least then he wouldn’t have to stand up with Miss Spry in St. George’s, Hanover Square, and be joined together in holy matrimony, and…

Dear God. He pounded on the ceiling. “Stop!” His voice was hoarse. “Stop the carriage! Stop! ”

The carriage stopped. A moment later, the coachman opened the door. “Your lordship?”

“Let me out,” gasped Keynsham.

He all but tumbled onto the pavement, where he stood with one hand on the side of the carriage and the other at his neck, fighting for air. He was bathed in sweat. His skin prickled. He tore at his neckcloth and succeeded in loosening it. It didn’t seem to help.

“My lord! Are you ill? Do you need a doctor?”

With difficulty, he focused on the worried face of his coachman. Young. George Young. He was hardworking and kind and reliable. He didn’t take unnecessary risks or curse at other drivers, and he never grumbled—as some coachmen did—at having to take the family out in foul weather.

And George Young was just one of the hundreds and hundreds of people who depended on him—Charles Keynsham, Sixth Viscount Alford—for his livelihood. He couldn’t fail Young. He couldn’t fail any of them. He couldn’t fail the housemaids, the footmen, the grooms, the stable boys, the gardeners, the groundskeepers, the housekeeper, the scullery maids, the cook, the gamekeepers…

Dear God. It was starting again.

He forced himself to breathe through the choking sensation. It was nothing. It would pass. It was his duty to take the chance that fate had thrust upon him. He must marry Miss Spry and use her thirty thousand pounds to un-mortgage the farms and pay the servants’ wages and make the estate profitable again and find a husband for his sister and…

“Sir! Sir! Can you speak?”

He took a rattling breath. It didn’t seem to fill his lungs. “Yes.”

“Shall I drive you home?”

Home . He wanted nothing more. “No. I must keep this appointment.”

“But, your lordship, if you are unwell…”

“I am not unwell.” What was the matter with him? “I—I was in need of air.” He forced himself to straighten up—and caught sight of his reflection in the carriage window. His face was drawn and yet somehow puffy at the same time. His forehead was shiny with sweat. His neckcloth hung limp and loose.

He couldn’t call on Miss Spry looking like this. Her father would assume that he was drunk.

But… he was expected.

He pulled out his pocket watch. He had less than twenty minutes before he was due in the Spry sitting room, pink spinel ring in hand.

“I shall walk.”

“I beg your pardon, your lordship?”

He cleared his throat. “You may follow with the carriage. I shall walk the remainder of the way.”

“Very good, your lordship.”

Young waited on the box while Keynsham, with fingers that were trembling to a degree that made him furious with himself, did his best to re-tie his neckcloth.

He was not ill. He was fine. He’d led his men into battle at Waterloo. He’d had his horse cut out from under him by rifle fire. This was nothing. Nothing. He’d always done his duty. He would continue to do his duty now, and that was final.

He mopped his face with his handkerchief and replaced his top hat. The foggy air was damp and cool. Perhaps it would put a stop to this dreadful sweating. It must. This disgraceful loss of nerve could not become known.

He set off. Young followed, keeping the carriage to a walking pace.

To the outside world, Keynsham appeared to be a most eligible bachelor. He was young, titled, and—so people said—handsome. And as far as most people knew, he was rich.

Few suspected the truth. Keynsham himself knew only as much as he’d been able to unravel. He hoped that he’d come to grips with the worst of it. But it had cost him a year of tense meetings with managers and solicitors, and sleepless nights poring over the estate ledgers. And—because his late father had had the habit of cramming random invoices and dunning letters into drawers and folios and even the backs of books—it was always possible that there was still some unpaid bill awaiting discovery.

What he knew for certain was that his father had secretly sold several terraces of houses whose rents had provided the estate with a good income for nearly a century. He’d sold the stock in the East India Company that the third viscount had bought. He’d mortgaged the estate’s farms at ruinous rates of interest.

And then—just when he’d apparently been certain that he would become the first man in history to borrow his way out of debt—he’d died.

Since then, every day had been a juggling act in which Keynsham moved the remaining money around to try to stave off disaster. A partial payment here, a renegotiation of loan terms there… even the calculations required to balance the trickle of money coming in with the torrent still going out were exhausting.

But he had to keep doing it. If he were to fail, the full extent of the debt would become known. All their creditors would demand payment at once, and the whole desperate enterprise would collapse.

He glanced ahead. Mount Street. He checked his watch. He had six minutes. There was the corner of Grosvenor Square. If he cut across it, he’d arrive exactly on time.

A few smart equipages rolled past, their lanterns already lit against the early gloom. Fog hung between the buildings, rendering the far side of the street indistinct.

“I shall walk directly across,” he called to George. His own voice sounded oddly muffled by the fog.

“Very good, your lordship.” George clucked to the horses and the carriage sped up to meet him on the far side of the square.

The gate in the iron railing that surrounded the square’s central park was not yet locked. As he opened it, he had the odd feeling that something was about to happen.

But nothing was about to happen. Or at least, he knew exactly what was about to happen: He was about to shackle himself to Miss Spry… for the rest of his life.

The footpath led him into a dense grove of evergreen rhododendrons and laurels. Above, the bare branches of the elm trees were ghostly in the fog. Fat drops of water dripped onto his hat and jacket. At the center of the square, the paths converged beneath the familiar gilded statue of George I. He chose the path that led north toward the Sprys’ impressive foyer.

Or at least, he thought that he did. Instead of leading straight out of the square, the path took him into heavy shrubbery. He stopped in confusion. He must have taken a wrong turn.

But that was impossible. One could not become lost in Grosvenor Square—fog or no fog. If he continued in a straight line, he was bound to reach a street—any street, it didn’t matter. He set off again.

He realized that he could call to Young—who must by now be stopped before the Spry mansion. The answering halloo would tell him if he were walking in the correct direction. Yet some sixth sense made him suddenly reluctant to reveal where he was.

He forced himself to be rational. “Young!”

The fog seemed to muffle his voice. There was no answer.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “ Young! ”

Still no answer. And this time, the skin between his shoulder blades began to creep. What was the matter with him? He wasn’t walking into a French ambush! He was in the middle of Mayfair—the wealthiest, most civilized neighborhood in the wealthiest, most civilized city in the world.

A wet branch slapped him across the face, temporarily blinding him. At the same instant, he collided with someone—someone warm and solid in the cold fog. He staggered back. “What the”—

The person said, “Shh!” and made a shushing gesture with one hand. All he could see of her—she was a woman—was the back of her shabby bonnet and pelisse.

“I beg your pa?—"

She made another shushing gesture, this one more violent.

What? He was a viscount! He had an important appointment! He would not be stopped or shushed by a random, shabby woman lurking in Grosvenor Square! “Madam, I really must insist?—"

She whirled around. And everything changed. Because it was her. Her heart-shaped face, the sweep of her long lashes, the curve of her lips, her warm gaze…

Her eyes softened. Her expression transformed—from tight anxiety to shocked disbelief to happy recognition. Her lips moved soundlessly, forming his name: Keynsham ?

Relief and joy flooded him. For the first time in days, weeks, months—maybe his entire life—he could breathe properly. “ Miss Ryder? ”

He reached for her. She took a half step toward him. In another moment, they would be touching.

And then she froze. Her face went still. She raised a gloved finger to her lips and held her other hand up, palm out, in the gesture that meant stop .

Stop? At the very moment when he’d finally found her again?

And then, from the fog behind him, he heard the crunch of a boot on gravel.

Miss Ryder grabbed his hand and whispered a single word: “ Run. ”