Chapter 8
Eight
The members of White’s were engaged in the usual: smoking, drinking, playing cards, placing bets.
“I should call the bastard out and kill him. Then this whole mess would be over,” Rafe said, expertly folding a deck of cards.
When Rafe Harcrest was truly angry, he didn’t drink, he stripped men of their fortunes.
Cole cast a glance around the room. “I’m told the betting’s running about even as to whether you’ll do that, or demand he marry Elizabeth, make an honest woman out of her.”
“My sister is an honest woman,” Rafe snapped. “That’s her damn problem. Too honest. Sees no harm in people, no harm in doing what she calls ‘experiencing life’—”
“Admit it, my friend,” Cole interrupted, “Elizabeth has the high spirits of your late father and brother George. She’s had them since she was a child.
Since she’s been under your care these last thirteen years, you’ve been determined to smother them.
” Cole raised his hand to silence a protest. “I thought you might have learned your lesson with Alix. Women are like high-spirited fillies, the more you rein them in, the more they want to run…”
“I tried to ease up on Elizabeth, and look where it’s gotten me. Did you see that scandalous rag this morning?”
Cole pursed his lips.
“Of course you did. Admit it, Davenport—the whole town’s seen it.” He nodded at a cluster of foppishly dressed men. “Weatherby there had the nerve to praise my sister’s literary interests. That man can barely read; someone must have read it to him.”
“Most likely Anne Dinsmore.”
“Damn it, it wasn’t Anne Dinsmore who had my sister’s gown around her elbows!”
“But it was Anne who was trumpeting the news about Hyde Park. You should have seen her this afternoon, dressed in a red and blue riding habit. You’d have sworn she was from some regimental band.”
“You were in the park this afternoon?”
Cole nodded.
“Then you saw how Elizabeth was greeted?”
Cole nodded again, his face grim.
“I had hoped Alix was exaggerating.” Rafe drummed his fingers in an angry tattoo on the table. “I will not let him marry her.”
“Has Dinsmore asked?”
“Elizabeth imagines that he will, but he hasn’t had the decency to show his face at my door. Which makes him either a conscienceless rake or an inexcusable coward.”
“James may not be entirely respectable, Moreham, but the Dinsmore family name is. And he is heir to a dukedom.”
“Heir to a madman. Heir to an impoverished, obscure estate.”
“One might have said something similar about you thirteen years ago.”
“But I didn’t go about frittering what was left, and I didn’t ruin innocent young girls to bolster my fortune. I worked to repair it.”
Cole leaned forward, his voice very low. “And some might say a peer working in the French textile trade to rebuild his fortune is an even greater scandal than a peer seducing an heiress.”
“I will not apologize for engaging in trade.”
“But you’re not likely to trumpet it about either.”
“So, you think I should force Dinsmore to come up to scratch.” Rafe changed the subject.
“I think you have little choice. A duel might restore your honor, and perhaps, on the surface, Elizabeth’s, but it will not stop the talk. You could do worse than James Dinsmore.”
Rafe snorted his disbelief.
“At least Elizabeth likes him.”
“For his pretty blue eyes and his blond tresses. A schoolgirl’s crush.” Rafe’s long fingers toyed with the stem of his untouched wineglass. “My sister imagines she sees beyond a pretty face, and believes there is goodness in a heart that has none.”
“And what if she is right? What if she can find goodness in James Dinsmore?”
Wine splashed redly on Rafe’s fingers. “And what if she is wrong?”
“Then she has a marriage no worse than any other arranged marriage in the ton.”
“Where to, sir?” the coachman asked as he swung open the carriage door.
James paused, feeling the cool night air sweep over him.
He hadn’t really considered his destination.
It was eleven thirty, too late for the theater, too early to go home.
He hadn’t the funds to gamble, and he was in no mood for a brothel.
He mentally reviewed the parties whose doors would be open to him that evening.
Dull, duller, dullest.
Particularly without the intriguing prospect of Elizabeth Harcrest’s attendance.
Little chance she’d show her face after what had happened. What he’d done to her… The night air suddenly seemed damp and heavy. James squared his shoulders as if to toss it off. Christ, but he was becoming maudlin about the girl. “Get a grip on yourself, man,” he muttered.
“Beg pardon, sir?” There was a hint of surprise in the coachman’s respectful tone.
“Lady Lambert’s.” James named the place he was most likely to find Lounsbury and Ashton.
Mindless chatter, that’s what he required, talk of horseflesh and whores.
No more pensive ponderings about the worth of his soul or redeeming his future.
He climbed into the carriage and the coachman swung the door shut behind him.
James leaned out the window. “Lady Lambert’s. Do you know the address?”
The coachman nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Then let’s put some speed into it.” James rapped the door with a gloved hand for emphasis.
“So, I said to Hardy, if you’re not going to take the bloody horse back, the least you can do is provide the funds to nurse the damn nag back to health…” Lounsbury, as usual, was lamenting his difficulties with a recent purchase.
“Quite right, Lounsbury.”
Odd, James reflected, how some people could continue the same conversation night after night. He supposed Lounsbury found it comforting, the mental equivalent of a favorite pair of worn slippers. He focused on the stripes in Lady Lambert’s ballroom wallpaper. Were there thirty-two or thirty-three?
“I say”—Ashton hurried up to them, face flushed with brandy and dancing—“that Neville-Smythe chit is a sprightly dancer.”
“Skin seems a bit spotty.” Lounsbury, at last dropping the subject of horses, lifted a lorgnette to examine the girl in question.
“Who says I was looking at her face?” Ashton giggled.
Lounsbury let his eyeglass drift lower. “My word.” He nudged James. “Take a look, Dinsmore.”
“A mere Miss Neville-Smythe won’t catch Dinsmore’s eye,” said Ashton. “I hear James has been after nobler sport.”
“Indeed, I’ve heard much the same. Lady Elizabeth Harcrest! Dinsmore, you dog.”
It was precisely the type of moment Anne would relish: Elizabeth Harcrest’s reputation being dragged through the muck. Only James felt it was himself that was suddenly immersed in filth. He had the urge to leap from his chair and plunge himself into a bath, a very deep one.
“Lady Elizabeth? Isn’t she the one whose brother you said would have my arm if I asked her to dance?” Ashton leered. “You seem to have both arms, Dinsmore, and from what I hear, you did much more than dance with her.”
With expensive soap.
“You’ve been most closed-lipped on the subject, Dinsmore.” Lounsbury turned his eyeglass full force on James. “Do tell.”
And a scrub brush. A stout one.
“A gentleman must never kiss and tell,” he said stiffly.
“What a rubbishy cliché!” Lounsbury hooted. “A gentleman doesn’t make love to an earl’s daughter in the library either!”
Lounsbury was right. No amount of soap and brushes would scrub his honor clean. He might mouth the code of a gentleman, but he’d lost all sense of how to behave as one.
“Come on, spill the juicy details.” Lounsbury leaned close.
“Tell, Dinsmore, tell,” Ashton encouraged him.
“Lounsbury,” James said as he rose from his chair, “as you so astutely pointed out, my behavior last night was unworthy of a gentleman. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Harcrest is still every inch a lady.”
He’d made up his mind.
He would ask for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage.
A bit late, true, but it would repair some of the damage he’d done to the girl’s reputation.
He would tell Anne as soon as she returned from whatever affair she was attending.
James settled into the most comfortable armchair he could find in the sitting room outside his sister’s bedchamber—damned difficult since most of them were delicate straight-backed things.
She’d protest, of course, but she’d gotten more than her pound of flesh… It was time to put the scandal to rest…
“You must be drunk.”
James awoke to find his sister leaning over him, inhaling sharply.
“I haven’t had a drop since I left Lady Lambert’s.” He yawned, fumbling for a watch hanging from a fob beneath his green-and-gold-striped waistcoat. “It’s four thirty now, so that was at least”—he yawned again—“four hours ago. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You might have come with me. The Lindsays’ card party would have been far more amusing had you attended. Though we did have ourselves quite a laugh over poor Moreham’s predicament.”
There was the sound of a door slamming several floors below them, echoing up the corridors like an angry wooden slap. The house should have been quiet; most of the servants had gone to bed ages ago. Apparently, a few of the clumsier ones were moving about.
“I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with the things being said about Elizabeth,” James began.
“Nothing is being said about her that isn’t true, brother.”
Somewhere in the house, feet pounded on stairs.
Pitiful really, the performance of the serving class when they weren’t paid regularly.
James glanced quickly at Anne, who also looked irritated by all the noise.
Then he continued, “You know she didn’t expect to become a sideshow for gossipy matrons, or a nasty item in the latest London broadsheet. ”
“But you knew, James. Well ahead of time. It’s a bit late to be cultivating a conscience—”
“I’m seeking to retrieve my honor.” The words sounded hollow even to his ears.
“I thought you were helping to retrieve mine.”
“I thought I was too, Anne.” Silence settled over the room. How could he explain? He spoke again, after several long moments. “This thing has gone too far. Elizabeth didn’t cause any harm to you. Moreham’s the one who led you to believe he’d offer for you, then scurried off…”
Anne held up her hand. “You needn’t elaborate, James. I know precisely what he did. I’m the one who has to listen to snide insinuations whenever he appears with that French creature. I will be the one who decides when the Harcrests have suffered sufficiently.”
As if to emphasize her words, the loud bang of a door being flung open resounded down the hall.
He’d have to have a talk with the housekeeper about the servants in the morning…
unless of course his father was wandering.
He pushed the thought from his mind. Now was not the time to wonder whether dementia, like the Dinsmore title, would be passed down.
“Consider this, then.” James swept a stray lock of hair off his forehead.
“Consider how humiliated Rafe will be when I offer for his sister. No one else will. What man would want my leavings? And her dowry, all that Harcrest money, will be in Dinsmore coffers. Isn’t that what you wanted from the first, Moreham’s money?
You’ll have achieved all the things you set out to when you first set your cap on the earl. ”
Anne stiffened. She would not have achieved everything.
She would still be unmarried. She’d still be the source of whispers and false pity: poor Anne, another season and still no husband.
Still be prey to clumsy attempts at matchmaking: friends seating her at supper parties next to their half-witted cousins and bumbling brothers, men who could barely get a fork to their mouths, much less make intelligent conversation.
“You won’t marry that girl,” she said, her voice rising.
“I won’t permit it.” If James married her, Elizabeth would find a husband in her first season!
No standing in corners, watching others dance, pretending to be disinterested.
No waiting to see who would be left to take her in to supper.
The whole scandal would fade from people’s minds.
She could just imagine the gossip then! Poor Anne, even her rakehell brother has found a wife, such a shame about her…
“Might I remind you, Anne”—James drew himself up, his voice as cold as winter—“that I do not require your permission to wed Elizabeth Harcrest?”
And from Anne’s open bedchamber door came an even colder voice.
“But you do require mine,” Rafe Harcrest said. “And you and the rest of the devil’s minions will skate in hell before I grant it.”