Chapter Two #3
To that end, he wished to warn Adrian of Willard’s true character.
Urgently. A formal courtship would require Asquith, as her guardian, to give permission, but, since Millie resided with Adrian, Neville wouldn’t put it past Willard to attempt to ingratiate himself with the marquess before Asquith was able to express misgivings.
But how could Neville communicate to Adrian the danger he sensed without betraying Asquith’s trust?
Willard was always careful to maintain his facade of perfection with older, more powerful men.
And the only real evidence Neville could provide against Willard concerned how he had treated Asquith back in school.
He could not reveal that secret without Asquith’s permission.
He glanced across the table, attempting again to catch Asquith’s eye.
By now, he’d hoped to have a chance to speak with Asquith, but the game of Vingt-et-un Daughtry had suggested kept dragging on, and Asquith’s dithering rendered private conversation impossible. Soon, Neville would have to give up, go home, and face his own silent halls.
Halls empty of his younger brother and his once-incessant questions. Empty, too, of the constant chatter of his estranged mother, who had elected to remain at her house in Brighton this Season as Neville was, as she’d put it, “far too much like his managing father.”
Finally, Asquith made his choice.
Carefully, Asquith aligned the Queen of Heart’s bottom edge with the table’s inlay with unnerving precision…
further indication he, too, was both present and far away.
He hadn’t displayed that kind of behavior in a long time.
Neville thought he could identify the hunted look behind his friend’s mask of concentration.
Both of them had Willard on their minds.
Blackwell whistled low. “Bad luck, Nev.”
“Indeed. I cannot top that hand.” Neville drummed his fingers. “You’ll take a vowel, no?”
“Of course,” Asquith replied, frowning.
The amount Neville had wagered wasn’t very large. The other men likely had more coin on their persons. Prior to his brother’s troubles, Neville would have as well.
But ready coin was—a-hem—more than a little difficult to obtain right now. And until he found the witness or recovered the evidence, his stash would continue to dwindle with every clandestine inquiry he made on his brother’s behalf, at least until Lady Day, when the quarterly rents would come due.
“You’re good for it,” Asquith responded. “I know.”
Neville pushed back from the table.
Lucky for him, this was only a game among friends. Not that he would have wagered otherwise. He was a man of honor. He never ventured what he could not pay, just as he never gave his word and then refused to do his duty.
Cards clicked behind him as he wandered over to the window.
Outside, the streetlamp flickered, dimmed by increasingly hazed glass.
He cupped his neck, squeezing the corded muscles beneath his collar and cravat.
The tension relief was worth the scold he’d catch from his valet for causing unnecessary wrinkles in his clothes.
“Come back,” Blackwell called. “Sit down.”
“I’m out,” Neville replied. In more ways than one.
He was out of ideas. Out of advantages. Nearly out of unallotted coin. And, given his Uncle’s pending move and Willard’s sudden interest in Millicent, almost out of time.
“You can still provide advice,” Blackwell reasoned.
“Leave Neville alone,” Asquith said. “Clearly, his mind isn’t on the game.”
Blackwell snorted. “You don’t say.”
No, his mind wasn’t on the game.
Neville’s mind was clouded, not just by ever-present concern for his brother, but by his feelings toward a certain lady. He wanted—for very different reasons—to shake them both. Almost, in fact, as much as he wanted to shelter them from harm.
Or, perhaps, the reasons weren’t so different, after all.
Millicent, his brother, and, for that matter, his mother, too, all shared a tendency to rashness, an outspoken nature, and an unshakable belief in their own opinions. And, right now, a mutual dislike of him.
Nothing worse than he deserved, perhaps.
If he’d just been able to keep away from Millicent, none of this might have happened.
Some women, he remembered his father saying, are seductive Delilahs. Stay away from them.
His father had always spoken with repugnant loathing of the gentler sex.
Why, with such a disdain, he’d chosen to marry a stylish duke’s daughter who, could never have met his father’s shy and retiring ideal, had always been a mystery.
His father had been as sober and serious as his mother was, even now, outspoken and ruled by sentiment.
Neville had always believed himself to be more like his father, but now he had to wonder if, like his mother, his passions ran deeply. Tonight, he’d struggled to contain his protective rage. And that wasn’t the first time Millie had driven him to the edge.
Was Millicent Wainwright a Delilah?
She was alluring, fascinating.
She took joy in poking at his pride. But she was also quick to laugh, full of unexpected insight, and as devoted to her sisters as he was to his brother. And he couldn’t imagine that she’d use feminine wiles to bring a man to harm.
Then again, if, like his brother John, she came under the wrong influence…
A rowdy chorus sounded from the streets. Neville strained to make out the words. The drunken men were not, as he first thought, singing a bawdy pub song, but chanting a children’s rhyme.
“Boys, me boys, Come out to play/ The moon doth shine as bright as day/ Leave your supper, and leave your sleep/ And come with your playfellows into the street.”
He frowned.
They’d chanted the first line incorrectly, and yet the twisted words sounded familiar.
Suddenly, he remembered where he’d heard this version—Willard had once used it to taunt Asquith, back at school. Alarm spread through his body. He leaned up against the glass, searching the street for the source.
All he could make out was the rear flap of a young man’s coat, a man on the fringes of a group that gathered just beyond his field of vision.
Beneath the coat, the young man wore knee breeches, a clear sign he and his companions, like Neville and his, had just come from the Assembly at Almack’s. These days, no town buck worth his salt would be caught in breeches for any other reason.
“Boys, me boys, Come out to play…”
His chill deepened. He glanced back at Asquith.
Asquith, at least, was too deep in concentration over his cards to have heard. And Blackwell and Daughtry, too, had failed to notice the disturbance.
Not that the rhyme would mean anything to them.
“I’ll be right back,” Neville said, heading for the door.
Neville grabbed his coat on a ready peg hidden inside the paneling in Blackwell’s entry, just one example of the many conveniences the man was so fond of installing in his home.
In a thrice, Neville was down the steps, still stuffing his arms into his sleeves as he rushed through the cold night air.
“And he’s here!” The buck who spoke had wide, astonished eyes. “Willard, you’re a genius!”
Genius, my foot.
Neville searched the crowd for the rogue. He didn’t dare insult the pack’s leader aloud…not with all his puppies standing guard.
Drunk puppies, too.
From the way the young man had slurred his words, Neville suspected the group hadn’t come directly from the Hall but had made a stop or two—he caught the scent of gin in the air—or ten.
No one reacted so strongly to the tepid drinks served at Almack’s. They must have been at the blue ruin. Hard.
“Just as I predicted—”
Willard, judged by sound at least, was completely sober. Typical.
“—we’ve been joined by the ton’s most tediously dull earl.”
The group parted, revealing Willard. He leaned, knee bent, against the lamppost, wearing that same infuriating, enigmatic half-smile he donned whenever he was up to mischief.
Meaning any time he wasn’t fully occupied with cold vengeance.
“Boys, me boys, Come out to play…” Willard repeated.
“Still haven’t learned the proper words, have you?” Neville asked cooly.
“Preston here agrees with you.” Willard gestured to one of his cronies. “Says that’s not how the rhyme is supposed to go. Now that I consider, I think he may be right. It’s boys and girls, is it not? One must never forget the girls. What say you, Nev?”
“I say, ‘Come with a good will or not at all,’” Neville gritted out a later verse.
“That’s it,” said the man Willard had indicated as Preston.
“That’s the next line—Come with a whoop, come with a call, Come with a good will or not at all!
” He beamed at Neville. “I say! Good of you to tell us. We were having a devil of a time. Will here told us to just keep chanting and the rest would come back.”
“Willard.” Willard’s lip curled in a subtle fashion. “Lord Willard, to you, you sloppy disgrace.”
Neville wasn’t surprised he’d lashed out. Willard had always been driven to disgust by any sign from another man that he might think themselves equal to him.
And by anything that reminded him of the poorer classes.
And by the sight of anything he deemed ugly or unkempt.
“Only you forgot the words,” Willard continued, curling his fists. “I never admitted as much.”
Several of the young men distanced themselves from Preston.
“But—” Preston started.
“Quiet!” Willard interrupted.
The pup looked confused. Confused and hurt.
Like he’d been kicked by a usually benevolent master.
Only Willard hadn’t a single benevolent bone in his entire elegant body.
And, like Willard’s father, Lord Eltenham, Willard was not the type of man to let any obvious slight go unanswered, even when he was in the wrong.
Especially when he was in the wrong.
“Go home, Preston!” someone in the group called out.
The young men began stomping their feet—a sign of agreement.