Chapter 9
“YOU HAVE TO help me, Jamie.”
This time, when Everett came into his library, James was ready for him. After putting an end to last night’s confrontation—no easy feat when Everett and Louisa were the most stubborn people he knew—James had guessed his friend would come to him for help.
The only thing he hadn’t known was how long it would take before he arrived.
Everett practically threw himself into a chair, which skidded several inches across the floor upon impact. “Miss Denham is going to drive me to an early grave, and you’re the only person who can prevent my untimely demise.”
James rolled his eyes. “You have always been dramatic, Everett, but this feels excessive, even for you.”
Everett grunted. “She expects me to let my father’s legacy fall to ruin to maintain her life of leisure, as if I have any choice in whether I sell Bramblewood.”
James had been subjected to Louisa’s side of the argument during the drive home from the Spencers’, and it had sounded much the same.
I can’t afford anywhere else! He’s choosing the easy route and leaving me with nothing.
Both Everett and Louisa had valid reasoning behind their stances, but James rather thought the real problem was in their stubbornness. Not in the circumstances.
“And where were you throughout dinner?” Everett asked, glaring at James.
“The least you could have done was take me with you. Not only did I have to endure Miss Denham’s barbed tongue, but also my aunt has taken it upon herself to foist upon me any unsuspecting woman she comes across.
As if I could ever choose to settle in England,” he added in a mumble.
That last thought was the one point James couldn’t agree with, no matter how much he wanted to support Everett.
America was too far away, and James missed his friend.
Except for the few years they were both at Cambridge, James and Everett had been apart for more than fifteen years, and somehow James still saw Everett as a brother.
An entirely frustrating brother who was far too prone to avoid difficult feelings, but still. James missed him.
That was likely why he said, “I’ll agree to help you with Louisa if you help me with Miss Faircott.”
Everett sat up in an instant, his eyes bright with mischief. “The woman from the road. Help in what way?”
“My mother has someone in mind for me when it comes to a wife.”
“Yes, and you have mercilessly plagued her with your absence.”
“I need your help to continue to ‘plague’ my mother, as you say.”
Everett’s mouth twisted into a dangerous grin. “Because you’re more interested in Miss Faircott than you are in your intended.”
“Miss Faircott could very well be my intended,” James admitted. He explained the situation, including what Mother had told him about the mystery woman’s financial situation.
Humming, Everett scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “I see the problem now. You are an irritatingly good person,” he said and waved a hand toward James, “so if Miss Faircott is not the woman your mother wishes for you to marry, you’ll be leaving a poor girl in the lurch.”
Preemptive guilt churned in James’s stomach. “Precisely.”
“How does delaying the inevitable do her—or anyone—any good?”
Though James had agreed to Miss Faircott’s plan, this was the part he had yet to reconcile. Surely knowing the truth would be better, but he would do as Miss Faircott wanted. “At the moment, I am relying on the hope that Miss Faircott is the only young woman whose fate is in my hands.”
“You will never rest easy if you are wrong,” Everett warned, and a shadow crossed his visage.
Hopefully he was thinking the same thing of himself and reconsidering his determination to sell his estate and put Louisa’s future at risk. James could only do so much to protect both his friends; he was too busy worrying about Miss Faircott and the possibility that someone out there needed him.
“How can I help?” Everett asked when James had no reply for his last comment.
“I need more moments with Miss Faircott, preferably without either of our mothers seeing us connect.”
Everett lifted an eyebrow, looking far too intrigued as he asked, “Is Sir James Hartwell planning clandestine meetings with his paramour?”
“No!” James coughed and lowered his voice. “I would never put Miss Faircott in a situation that takes her agency away from her, and she is not my paramour.”
“Yet.”
“Never. If she and I are to form a match, it will happen in a proper courtship.”
“So, naturally, you are planning ways to whisk her off to secret alcoves and forbidden meetings in empty music rooms.” Everett’s smirk insinuated that he was well aware of the circumstances of the last time James had spoken to Miss Faircott, though the only way he would know was if Louisa had told him.
As long as no one else knew they had been alone last night, Miss Faircott wasn’t in danger.
“Jamie, this entire scheme is the last thing I would have expected from you.”
James sighed. “I know, but—”
“It’s brilliant, and I will help however I can.
It’s a matter of getting the two of you into situations apart from your mothers’ interference, and that…
” Everett pursed his lips, tilting his head to the side in the way he always did when he was sorting through his many thoughts.
His distant expression was a familiar one, and it almost always led to mischief or adventure. Sometimes both.
James held his breath, wondering what schemes were forming in his friend’s mind and whether he should be worried about what would come of them. He could see the instant Everett’s plan came together, when a fire burst to life behind Everett’s eyes and he sat up straight.
“As you said, we can help each other,” Everett said with enough enthusiasm that it pushed him to his feet. “You need moments with Miss Faircott, and I need to find Miss Denham a husband.”
“I know, but— Find her a what?” James stood as well, gaping at the grin slowly growing on Everett’s face.
“A husband. Miss Denham is leasing my estate because she doesn’t have her own land.”
James groaned. “I am well aware of her situation, Everett.”
“If she marries, she will then live with her husband.”
“Louisa has no interest in getting married.”
“Louisa doesn’t know what she wants,” Everett argued.
James’s thoughts were too jumbled for him to argue that Louisa very much knew what she wanted, and therein was the problem. “How does Louisa marrying help me with Miss Faircott?”
“It doesn’t.” Everett clapped a hand on James’s shoulder and smiled wide.
“But Miss Denham can’t marry if there’s no groom, which means I need to find someone who could tolerate her.
” He snapped his fingers as something else sparked in his mind.
“And my aunt is determined to introduce me to anyone remotely marriageable.”
“I hate to tell you that those two things do not overlap,” James said, pulling his eyebrows low.
“Of course they don’t,” Everett agreed, “but my aunt would be more than happy to host a gathering or two for the single occupants of Upper Lambourn. Men and women. I’ll be able to appease my aunt, who thinks I will die alone in some gutter in Boston.
I can send eligible bachelors flocking to Miss Denham, who is certainly beautiful and charming enough to tempt one of them into proposing to her. And you…”
Though James wanted to focus on the oddly dreamy look Everett had gotten in his eyes when calling Louisa beautiful, he needed to finish Everett’s thought. “I can interact with Miss Faircott without our mothers revealing the truth of things before we are ready.”
Everett looked as if he had just been handed a fortune. “Exactly. And perhaps we’ll also find a man for the may-or-may-not-exist other woman while we’re at it.”
“You’re mad,” James breathed, but he found himself matching his friend’s beaming smile. “You’re a genius, but you’re mad.”
“That isn’t the first time you’ve said that to me,” Everett said with a chuckle. He squeezed James’s shoulder, then headed for the door. “Expect an invitation in the next day or two, Jamie.”
If anyone could pull together such an event in a short span of time, it was Weston Everett. All James could do was hope that it would work and get everyone what they wanted.