Chapter Two
Tom walked into the private gaming room at the Lyon’s Den, where a small crowd of gentlemen had gathered, all waiting on their hostess.
It wasn’t the first time he’d graced the infamous rooms of the establishment, but today’s visit was far more about business rather than pleasure.
An undercurrent of anticipation ran through the room, not unlike those days in Spain when the company was waiting on orders that might send them into a battle or on a march.
Tom was greeted by a finely dressed, lanky gentleman with light-brown skin and thick black hair.
“Mr. Worthington, sir,” the man said, nodding to him. “Mrs. Dove-Lyon will be here shortly. There are brandy and port on the sidebar. Please help yourself while you wait.”
Tom acknowledged him with a nod. It had been three months since he’d learned Worthington was his name, and he was only now learning not to stare like an imbecile or look over his shoulder when someone called him by it.
Until he joined the army, he’d only ever been called by his first name.
For two and a half decades, he’d been known as Tom, or Thomas Henry if he’d been in a modicum of trouble, and Thomas Henry Blakey the day he’d decided he’d had quite enough of England and joined the army with his best friend, Gabriel Hawthorne, whom he could only address publicly as “my lord.”
He’d spent four years in the army, acting as soldier valet to Hawthorne, marching through Spain, enduring boredom and terror in equal measure.
Tom had gone to make a name for himself and to put his life in England behind him, possibly forever.
In that time, he’d been shot at more times than he had fingers and toes, and a hole in one of his forage caps attested to his luck in surviving to his twenty-fifth year.
But luck could not begin to describe the January day he’d received a special post calling him back to England.
Tom, who’d always known he’d been adopted, had been raised by Robert Blakey, steward to the Earl of Ashcombe.
But that day, he’d found his sire. Or rather, his father, the Viscount of Worthington, had found him.
For three months, he’d become acquainted with his new family and the world of privilege he’d only seen from the outside looking in.
His arrival at Worthington House in Mayfair had been met with great celebration, and to his relief, both his father and his stepmother had greeted him with open arms. Still, it was not all smiles and champagne.
While Tom hadn’t been exactly born on the wrong side of the sheets, his mother—rumored to be a cousin of the Duke of Bloomsbury—had not married his father before she’d given birth.
His grandmother, the dowager viscountess, smelling a scandal two and a half decades in the making, had been much more reserved in her ardor for her long-lost grandson.
She had been relieved, of course, that he hadn’t married…
as marriage to a woman of common birth would have been problematic in the extreme.
Still, that relief had barely registered, as she managed to be impatient that he hadn’t yet chosen a society bride.
“You must make an impeccable match, or the title will go to some distant cousin that neither of us care for,” she’d said, somehow managing to look down her nose at Tom even though she was a foot shorter.
“And your grandfather, God rest his soul, had insisted you marry before the end of your twenty-fifth year, so you had better make haste.”
Considering his birthday was the middle of May, and Easter had just passed, any whimsical notions he might have entertained about finding the perfect woman to be his bride had been immediately set aside.
Not that he’d had any. The last time he’d had a whimsical or romantic notion about being with a member of the opposite sex, he’d had his heart handed back to him as battered as his forage cap.
Soon he’d been invited to parties and balls.
There had been tickets to Almack’s and the opera.
It had been a flurry of social engagements, young ladies in their first season, and negotiating scheming mothers that somehow made dodging musket balls seem easy in comparison.
His grandmother’s concerns, as it turned out, were not completely unfounded.
The taint of scandal attached to his birth was enough to scare away many potential brides.
Further, there was the challenge of his common upbringing and manners that been deemed lesser.
It reminded him far too much of that horrible evening, under a bright summer moon, when Georgiana Hawthorne, Gabe’s sister and the worst mistake of Tom’s life, told him that poetry and wildflowers were for romantic, lovelorn girls who might settle for the son of nobody-knows-who, but she was made for better.
She’d been promised since she was in leading strings.
It was just how things were, she’d told him.
Tom helped himself to a glass of port, taking a large swallow as he tried to rid himself of the bitter taste of the heartbreak that still lingered after all these years.
He’d been a fool to believe a girl so tied to tradition as Lady Georgiana Hawthorne could have been persuaded to gamble on the notion that he might have been able to make something of himself.
To break away from the iron grip that Whetherby and her father had on her.
But that was his past. That was Tom Blakey. He was Thomas Worthington now, and he didn’t need a romantic, lovelorn girl either. He needed a wife. A wife who would make him good enough to be welcome in any room, worthy of any company.
After yet another disastrous evening in so-called polite society, he’d visited the scandalous gaming hell where, for the right price, nearly every kind of pleasure might be had.
It was then he’d learned more about the scandalous marriage mart run by the owner, Mrs. Dove-Lyon.
With another day behind him, and his twenty-sixth birthday looming in the calendar, Tom wasted no time in making his needs known to the mysterious Black Widow of Whitehall.
She’d looked him up and down, asked him some direct questions about his character, his finances, and his need for a wife.
An hour later, while sitting at table playing vingt-et-un, he’d received his invitation to today’s affair.
A dozen gentlemen now stood in the room with him, some of whom he recognized from the plethora of public and private events he’d attended. By the way all eyes tracked him from the moment he’d entered the room, however, they clearly recognized him—the soldier-valet who was now a lord.
“Good afternoon.”
The pleasant greeting pulled Tom out of his own thoughts, as he was approached by a gangly gentleman with an unruly mop of blond curly hair who held out his hand, which Tom took.
“Mr. John Osbourne, of Farnsworth,” he said, shaking Tom’s hand vigorously before releasing it. “I believe you are Mr. Worthington?”
Tom grimaced, preparing for the regular inquisition about his parentage. “That I am. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I understand your father owns some very fine thoroughbreds, including one directly related to the Byerley Turk,” he said, with the same excitement once might expect from a child having received a new toy. “As soon as I saw you here, I knew I had to ask you about it.”
“I believe he does,” Tom said, smiling at the gentleman’s enthusiasm. “I admit I’ve been spending so much time going over ledgers and estates that we haven’t gotten to the horses yet.”
“I’ve seen him race last year, at Newmarket,” he said. “You are so very lucky to have him.”
Tom nodded in appreciation, about to ask Mr. Osbourne about his own stables, when a bell rang, drawing everyone’s attention to the door, where a small figure, dressed head to toe in black, entered the room. The conversation lulled as she walked to the center of the room.
“My lords and gentlemen,” she began, her voice clear and commanding.
“I see your glasses are full, so we will dispense with the usual introductions. Suffice it to say you are all terribly important and terribly interested in finding a bride. It just so happens, I have not one, but three young ladies who have come to me looking for a husband.”
“But there are far more than three of us here,” protested a gentleman from a far corner of the room.
“Your powers of observation are truly something to behold, Mr. Martin,” she said, and though her face was covered, the sarcasm in her tone was unmistakable. “Does anyone else have a keen observation to share before I continue?”
Properly scolded, the men fell into silence.
“Courtship, as we all know, is a game,” she continued.
“For both sexes, it can be a tedious one, fraught with rules so numerous books have been written on the subject. However, I have three very eligible, very rich young ladies who, like yourselves, wish to dispense with the normal trappings of courtship.”
Whispered voices spread through the crowd. Like Tom, each gentleman here was interested in pursuing a more direct path to marriage. But the potential husband to bride ratio was more than a little lopsided.
“If you please, madam,” Mr. Osbourne said, “but there are eleven of us here by my count. With three young ladies—”
“The odds are far better than being in a ballroom, would you not agree?” she asked.
That brought a low murmur of approval from the crowd.
“I have three ladies who long for a husband,” she said. “This is a gaming hell after all, so you are invited to participate in a matchmaking game. For a small entry fee of one hundred pounds, you have the chance to win a bride who, at a minimum, is worth ten thousand.”
“That’s a wager I would make,” said a third gentleman standing near Tom. “What is the game? Is it cards or dice?”