Lord Croston,
I am in receipt of your kind invitation for a picnic. However, I fear my powers of discernment force me to decline. Perhaps Lady Dunscore would enjoy going in my stead.
Respectfully yours,
Maude Linton
James crushed the refusal in his fist and threw it into the fire.
* * *
“LA, JAMES,” HONORIA said that evening, whisking into his library, “what are you about? I’m hearing the most dreadful things!”
James relished the angry scratch of his pen across paper and didn’t bother to look up. “I don’t wish to discuss it.”
“Well everyone else wishes to, and if you don’t have a care you’ll go from hero to laughingstock before the month is out. I’ve come to tell you that Lady Dunscore has left for Scotland. I want to know what you plan to do about it.”
“If she’s gone, there’s nothing anyone can do.”
“Sometimes you aggravate me to distraction, James. You’re in love with her, and now she’s gone, and you’re pretending you don’t care. Which makes your fumbling attempts to court these other young women all the more pathetic.”
He jabbed the pen into its stand and stood up. “Pathetic?”
“Yes.”
They faced off across his desk. And then James smiled. “My dear Honoria, your female sensibilities have taken you too far this time. Why women insist on seeing love whenever a man so much as glances at a woman, I’ll never fathom.”
Honoria laughed. “La, James, I daresay you’ve done far more than glance at Lady Dunscore—but that’s neither here nor there. Tell me this, if you’re not in love, then why did you stay up all hours when Miss Germain was injured? Do not say it was for Miss Germain’s sake. And why have you gone to such lengths to help Lady Dunscore’s cause? I hear things, James. I know what you’ve been about.” She narrowed her eyes and studied him too intently for comfort. “You are in love. You’re just too mutton-headed to see it.”
* * *
HE WAS NOT. In love. It was the refrain that repeated in James’s head as he drank his coffee in the morning, sorted through correspondence in the afternoon and, instead of attending every blasted social event in London, played away his cares at White’s in the evening.
He’d succumbed to lust, but that was behind him now. It was what he told himself as two more days passed with all the haste of a bit of flotsam on a calm sea. A few more loose ends, and he would go to Croston. He met with his accountant, his solicitor, his banker. He compared figures, reviewed plans, studied reports.
Lust was an easy enough state to ease should he decide to do so. It was what he reminded himself in the middle of the night when he woke up in the darkness with a raging erection and a sheen of hot sweat on his skin.
God knew it would be a simple enough matter to find someone willing. There were plenty of women equally as beautiful and half as contentious. He could make an acquaintance in the country. Find a sensible woman, come to an understanding while he looked for a suitable bride. It was the fantasy he was indulging in, overseeing the packing of his valises on morning seven since the disastrous carriage ride home from Westminster, when news came that the committee would present its report that afternoon.
“YOU STUPID BASTARD!” Holliswell raged under his breath, yanking out a chair next to Nick at the coffeehouse where Nick was coming to terms with the vote that had taken place not an hour before.
Nick glanced up from his paper and took in the red face and outraged eyes. “Oh?”
“This is your fault.” Holliswell shoved a crumpled note in his direction. “She’s gone,” Holliswell said, eyes blazing.
“Gone.” Nick set his paper aside and picked up the note. Instantly he recognized Clarissa’s feathery hand.
“Run off with Edrington,” Holliswell spat.
Edrington. Nick raced through Clarissa’s words.
Please forgive me, Father. We are so much in love, and my fear was great that Lord Taggart would attempt to follow through on his own proposal, or that you would force one of your other pernicious choices upon me.
One of Holliswell’s other pernicious choices? For a moment he could only stare as the truth hit him like a full frontal assault: he’d been played for a fool.
“My Clarissa, my dearest angel—” For a moment Holliswell looked as if he might cry. But then he swallowed, and his fury returned. “I see now the plans you were making behind my back, filling her head with ruinous notions.”
“I would think Edrington’s title would carry some weight with you.” That day in the park—she’d told him she was out for a walk and did not know why Edrington wished to speak to her. That she’d only spoken to him once before at a dinner.
“Empty title. Scotland—with a penniless pissant!”
Clarissa, not so opposed to Scotland, after all. Just not with Nick. He’d practically sold his soul to the devil, fighting his own brother to save her, and she’d been perfectly capable of saving herself.
Accomplished actress indeed.
Nick reached for his coffee and took a sip. The tepid brew slid bitterly down his throat. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. As the daughter of an earl, she might have done much better.” He set the cup down. “In case you haven’t heard, the committe made its report this afternoon. The Lords voted against a third reading. The bill is dead.”
Holliswell looked as if he might suffer an apoplexy. “You worthless bastard.”
The man didn’t know how right he was.
“As of this moment,” Holliswell said through gritted teeth, “I am calling in my notes. Sell Taggart or assign it to me, but I’ll not coddle your debtor’s arse one more minute. Do I make myself clear?”
Another sip, and Nick leaned back in his chair. It was no less than he’d expected. He would lose Taggart, and he would start over with nothing. There was a moment of agonizing pain in his chest, followed by a peaceful numbness.
“Indeed,” he said. “I understand you perfectly.”
* * *
IT WAS OVER.
It was the fact that thrummed through James’s brain all evening as he fixed his mind on port and cards at the club. The committee had made its decision. He’d raised enough support, after all, and Katherine would keep Dunscore. His debt was paid, and he was free.
Good riddance.
It was the lie he told himself as he emerged, half-drunk, from the club that night and onto the dark street. The rank, misty air hit him full force at the same time as the realization that Katherine and Deal had no way of knowing the committee’s decision. It would take days for the news to reach them in Scotland. She could well end up married to Deal before learning the marriage wasn’t necessary.
Katherine. Married. To Lord Deal.
No.
Bloody, sodding, hell no.
He ground to a halt right there on the pavement. There was no way in hell he could let that happen.
It was the truth that blazed to life inside him right there beneath a sputtering lamppost: He wanted her. Age, insanity, illness—whatever the