Chapter 25
“Well, well, well,” Thomas said as he dropped into the chair opposite without waiting for an invitation. “You look like a man who’s lost a fortune at cards.”
“I can’t remember the last time I was at a card table,” Frederick retorted dryly.
The brandy at White’s was good, and Frederick had resolved, somewhere around his third glass, to take advantage of it.
It is not an admission of anything. A Duke might drink in his club on a Tuesday evening for any number of perfectly ordinary reasons, none of which have anything whatsoever to do with pale rose silk, or a laugh that had been dispensed to another man.
“Fair enough.” Thomas signaled for his own glass and settled into his seat with the clear intention of staying a while. This scowl you're wearing is most interesting, then.”
“I am anything but interesting.”
“Well, I have an interesting question, and wonder if you might satisfy my curiosity on a small matter…”
“What?”
“So… The widowed Lady Birchall is back in town.”
Frederick’s hand went very still around his empty glass. “She is.”
“Goodness, I hate using that name… and it’s a good thing I understand she’s come up for the Season properly this time. Looking for a husband, from what I gathered at your dinner party.”
“You gathered that?” Fredrick said, his voice sharp as he signaled for another drink.
Thomas grinned, ignoring the question and feigning ignorance of the tightness that had settled across Frederick’s shoulders. “Is it true, then? She means to marry this Season?”
“You would have to ask her.”
“I might, at that.” Thomas’s grin didn’t dim in the slightest as he sipped his glass. “She always was a beautiful woman. More beautiful now; her time in the country has been good to her…”
Frederick’s jaw tensed.
Thomas smirked. “Well, good luck to whoever catches her, I should think there’ll be no shortage of men trying. I think I’ll have a gamble tonight after all. You should try it, Fred.”
He rose, clapped Frederick once on the shoulder, and wandered off toward the card room, whistling.
Frederick finished his glass and signaled for another.
This will make five, but who is counting? Not like Percy will be up waiting for me.
He had not finished even half of his drink before two more chairs scraped up beside him. Lord Steffon and Lord Daughtry both wore the bright, interested expression of men who had caught the scent of gossip and meant to run it to ground.
“Your Grace! How wonderful to find you here,” Steffon said as he sat. “How have you been?”
“Fine,” Frederick said and motioned for them to sit down, as that was the polite thing to do.
They were both old friends from Eton, though a few years behind him and Thomas. They were competent and good enough company, though he had no desire for their camaraderie.”
“You seem upset, Your Grace,” Steffon said as he sat down.
“This is my usual grimace.”
“Fair enough,” Daughtry said, clapping him on the back. “Mind if we ask about…”
“Daughtry! You can be more elegant than that. We just thought, Your Grace, being old friends and all…”
Daughtry didn’t even pretend at preamble, picking up where Steffon trailed off, his immaturity as ostentatious as his cravat. “Being Birchall’s widow and all, I’ve heard she is a woman of… some means. Is that true?”
“I am not in the knowledge of Lady Birchall’s finances,” he said, though it was not entirely true. “This is very uncouth, even for White’s.”
“Oh, but you know her well enough,” Daughtry cut in. “Friend of your sister’s, isn’t she? They’re two peas in a pod, those two. You must know if she’s serious about the marriage mart this year, or only come up to enjoy the parties…”
“She is serious.” The words came out clipped, and Frederick reached for his glass to give himself something to do with his hands that was not curling them into fists.
“Serious.” Daughtry exchanged a look with Steffon that Frederick did not at all care for. “Well, that’s encouraging. A woman who knows her own mind is a rare enough creature in this town, and with her own means.”
“And handsome with it, from what I recall,” Steffon added, taking a sip of his drink. “I danced with her once, years back, when she had first come out of her cousin’s household. Lovely manners. Lovelier face. Though I heard Pemberton has his sights set on her…”
Frederick drank rather more of his glass than the toast warranted, the jealousy that coursed through his veins at the thought of Steffon dancing with her, or Pemberton courting her.
“Her fortune truly is quite substantial, I understand,” said Lord Steffon, gesturing with his glass. “One of the better matches this season.”
“Indeed,” replied Lord Daughtry. “Though one wonders if it will be sufficient to overlook her circumstances.”
“True enough. Still, her prospects seem promising enough. She has connections, at least,” Lord Steffon said, a raised eyebrow to Frederick.
“As for serious contenders, I have heard Lord Pemberton mentioned, and possibly Lord Elton. Both respectable enough, though I’d be surprised if she chose an old merchant like Elton.”
“Lord Elton a contender?” Lord Steffon seemed surprised. “Do you truly think so? He seems rather too new money. My bet is on Pemberton.”
“One never knows,” Lord Daughtry said with a shrug. “Stranger matches have been made.”
He sat through the entire performance with his jaw set and his glass refilled twice more, offering nothing beyond the bare minimum required to avoid open rudeness.
“Well, I think I see Lord Irving, Your Grace,” Daughtry said as he rose to his feet and motioned to Steffon. “We must depart.”
“Good evening, Your Grace,” Steffon said as they wandered off in search of fresher gossip, and Frederick was left briefly, blessedly alone with his brandy and his temper.
It did not last.
“Your Grace!” Lord Wilson’s voice carried across the room before the man himself arrived, trailing two companions and an air of a man already several glasses past his own good sense.
He dropped into Thomas’s abandoned chair without ceremony, reeking of cigar smoke and motioning toward Daughtry and Steffon.
“I couldn’t help but overhear the two of them.
Is it true the mysterious little Birchall girl is back, and hunting for a husband? ”
“Her title is Lady Birchall,” Frederick said, very evenly, although he hated the fact that the name was associated with her. “And I would ask you to refer to her as such. With the respect a lady deserves—”
“We’re at White’s, it’s just a bit of fun—”
“Lady. Birchall.”
“All right, Your Grace,” Wilson said as he waved it off, entirely unbothered. “The Lady Birchall, then. Can I get you another drink?”
“I am quite fine.”
“Well, I remember her, you know. Pretty little thing, even prettier now I’m told, and a year alone in the country with nothing but her own company to keep her warm.
” He grinned at his companions, who laughed obligingly.
“A woman that desperate to be married… Well, a man could have considerable fun finding out just how desperate, before he commits himself to anything so permanent.”
The room did not go quiet, as other men went about their games and their drink.
The room did not need to go quiet, because Frederick was no longer aware of the room at all.
He was aware, distantly, of his chair scraping back hard enough to topple, of his hand closing around the front of Wilson’s coat and hauling him up out of his seat with a strength he hadn’t known he possessed until that exact moment.
Wilson’s smug expression collapsed into shock, then alarm as Frederick’s other hand found his throat and pressed.
“Say that again.” Frederick’s voice came out low and entirely unrecognizable to himself. “Say it again, and I promise you, you will not finish the sentence.”
Wilson made a strangled sound, his face going an alarming shade of red. Somewhere behind Frederick, voices were rising, one of them Thomas’.
“Rathbourne, for God’s sake!”
“You’re going to suffocate the man!”
“What is His Grace thinking?”
Hands were grasping at his shoulders, his arms, trying to pull him back, and he held on a moment longer than he should have, a moment longer than any reasonable man would have.
It took the combined effort of three men to tear him loose.
Finally, Wilson dropped, gasping and red-faced, back into his chair.
The room was utterly silent now, every face turned toward him. Glasses hung suspended halfway to mouths, cards were forgotten on green baize tables.
Frederick stood in the middle of it, breathing hard, his cravat askew, and found he did not care in the slightest who was watching. His face was still so hot; he was so angry and mostly at himself.
“Lady Birchall,” he said, to Wilson, then to the rest of the room besides, in a voice that did not shake despite the violence still humming through his hands, “is a lady of better character than every man in this room combined. And I will not stand by while she is spoken of as though she were goods on display for the amusement of men who haven’t half her worth between them.
The next man who speaks of her as Lord Wilson just did will answer to me.
I trust I have made myself sufficiently clear. ”
No one answered him, not even Thomas. Wilson, still wheezing, did not so much as lift his eyes.
Frederick straightened his coat with unsteady hands, set down a coin for his unfinished brandy, and walked out of White’s without looking back.