Chapter 5 #2
Color flooded the younger man’s sharp cheekbones—those high bones, along with the rest of Tremaine’s classical good-looking features, a gift from the faithless duchess. It was as if that mother reserved all she had for the only son she had ever wanted.
“Surely you understand why I gave my consent, Hart.”
“To please your wife.” Another name popped into his head, and he swiftly wrote it down. “How does that benefit Tremaine shipping?”
Tremaine turned to Kilmartin for support.
Quartermaster and man-of-affairs put his hands up.
A telling muscle jumped in Tremaine’s jaw.
“And do not come to me about how it improved our alliance. We already sealed that when you married a McQuoid,” Hart said, circling his pen in the weak man’s direction. “Letting Culross in diluted our power.”
His brother sat contritely silent. Tremaine was no longer a pitiful babe and lad to be coddled—the pitiful part remained, where Tremaine’s wife and loyalty to the lady’s family were concerned. The coddling? That had come and gone.
“Something I surely do understand, Tremaine? This will be the first and last decision you make regarding Tremaine shipping without my consent.”
Tremaine curled his fingers into the leather arms of his chair.
“What happened to your logic, little brother? Where am I wrong?”
“We are off topic,” Tremaine said tightly.
Hart briefly considered the list Kilmartin had assembled.
“I wasn’t clear before? Forgive me. I decline to help make the McQuoids’ lives easier. Let them stew in their mistakes.”
“Damn it, you’ve always been pig-headed, Hart, but never at the expense of what stands to benefit you.
The Tremaines and McQuoids achieving civility helps both families.
It is…” Tremaine stared with the same horror he might if he ever learned of his bastardy—which he never would. “It never occurred to me…”
Kilmartin shook his head. “Do not.”
“You actually loved Meg—”
Amusement burst from Hart. “Love that long-in-the-tooth, tiresome chit?” He laughed harder. God, his brother had never failed to amuse him. Falling back in his chair, he got himself together. “By jove,” he said, when his mirth faded to a chuckled, “you’re a droll fellow.”
Tremaine scowled. “If you had a heart, I would think your response was nothing more than a show.”
“Oh, no. I assure you. There’s no heart. You received one for each of us.” Thank God.
“But then, why not simply dance attendance some with my in-laws? You who care about your sterling reputation and title above all surely sees this is the finest way to put the gossips to rest.”
Passionate and persistent.
Hart leaned forward in his desk; he lay his forearms atop the immaculate mahogany surface. “Do you want to know why, little brother?”
“I do wish you would stop calling me that,” Tremaine muttered.
“The moment you stop conducting yourself like a child, I will.” He didn’t let the younger man get a word in edgewise. “I have given that ignoble family far more than they deserve.” He inhaled slowly through his nostrils in the calming technique he’d used since lad-hood. “Too much.”
“Bah.” Tremaine exploded to his feet; the leather screeched under the sudden shift in pressure. “As if your brief non-courtship of Miss McQuoid-Smith in the off Season required—”
“I was referring to you, Jeremy.” The quiet use of Tremaine’s given name, reserved for calming his brother, had the same affect it in the nursery nearly twenty-eight years earlier.
Tremaine froze mid-fight, and then sank back into his chair. “I love my wife. I am happier than I’ve ever been. I—”
“That does not erase the fact you are joined to a scandalous, noisy, unfashionable lot who, even with an earldom find doors opened to them not because there is any real honor in the peculiar Earl of Abington’s title but because of the matches their unruly lot made.”
“The most auspicious of which would have been to the Duke of Hartwell.”
Hart shrugged.
Tremaine flashed a crude gesture with his fingers. “Pompous bastard.”
“I possess one of the oldest titles in the kingdom, acres of land which bring in enough funds”—he grimaced around the crude mention of money—“to see the next ten generations of Hartwell dukes live like kings.”
Just recalling the Marquess of Arbuthnott, he picked up his pen and dipped it into the intricate crystal well, etched with Hartwell’s crest, correcting his and Kilmartin’s oversight.
When finished, Hart spoke quietly. “I am not pompous, little brother. I am realistic and logical.”
“Tiringly so.”
Satisfied the list was complete, he sprinkled powder from his pounce pot.
“I am already long past the point of when I should have married. By now, I should have an heir, a spare, and a backup to that one.”
“God, it is going to be delicious when you fall, Hart,” Tremaine drawled.
“I would never be so gauche.”
Hart turned his book around.
His brother leaned over and read the concise but acceptable list aloud.
“4th Duke of Oxfuird
9th Marquess of Mountgaret
16th Viscount Arbuthnott
14th Earl of Cobham
20th Baron de Ros”
“Not with that list.” Tremaine grinned. “Personally, with your stringent expectations and lofty view of your title, Oxfuird would make you a suitable partner, but Cobham has a decent wit, which given your preference for a chap with a sense of humor—”
Kilmartin doubled up in a fresh fit of amusement.
Captain and quartermaster collected their glasses and gave them a clink.
“Oh, sod off,” Hart said. “Both of you.”
“I was surprised you would lower yourself by wedding a mere baron’s daughter,” Kilmartin said, finishing off his drink.
“The de Ros title is the premier barony in England, with an inception of 1224—”
“Ah, the duke forgets the complete inception date: the Eve of Christmas, 1224.”
“Reassuring you know that detail.”
“I did pay attention to my studies.” Tremaine wagged his eyebrows. “I also only noted it because of how you hated the Yuletide season.”
His brother dropped his insouciant air. His expression contained the same somberness as when he spoke about Lady Tremaine’s nightmares from the sea. Hooking his hands under his seat, he dragged his chair the rest of the way.
Hart winced at the screech as he scraped the hell out of the polished floor.
He waited for Tremaine to make another appeal on behalf of the McQuoids.
“Hart, leaving off the lady’s names in favor of their esteemed papas hardly promises to offer you any kind of meaningful match.”
“It offers him exactly what he wants, Tremaine,” Kilmartin interjected.
“My responsibilities are to the line, little brother. The only meaningful match for me are the bride’s pedigree, that her virtue be intact, and she is capable of being faithful and bearing my future sons.”
His brother reconsidered Hart’s list.
Snide, mocking comments he expected did not come.
“It is a fine list,” Tremaine concurred. “You might want to add the Duke of Talbert.”
Not for one moment did Hart trust that helpfulness. He narrowed his eyes.
“You have all the finest pedigrees. I wonder how these nobles and their Diamond daughters will feel about a match between a man who is still pining over his betrothed’s defection.”
Kilmartin converted his laugh into a cough.
A muscle rolled along Hart’s jawline. “One formal dinner and a soiree.”
“Two formal dinners: one on Tremaine territory, one on the McQuoids; a soiree and a ball, and a visit to the theatre,” Tremaine countered.
“You’re cracked in the head.” Hart reduced his earlier offer. “Two formal dinners.”
“Two formal dinners, one ball, and a shared theatre box.”
“Bloody fine,” he muttered.
Grinning, his brother lifted his glass. “Deal.”
“And when this is done,” Hart said, “aside from business as it pertains to the shipping line, I am done with your in-laws.”
And what a happy day it would be when the McQuoids were well and truly out of his life, once and for all.