by Julia London
Trevor angrily snatched up his purse again. Twenty crowns. With a little luck, he could double that. That was all he needed, a bit of luck, that was all.
And his father.
Chapter Twenty-Two
AS THE EASTERN sky was beginning to show a faint hint of light, a small, tenacious group of men surrounded the card table in the back room of the Willowbough Inn, their eyes bloodshot and their whiskey glasses empty as they stared down at the cards being dealt.
None of them noticed the gentleman from London slip out the front door of the common room, instead of climbing the stairs to retire, as he had said he would do.
Trevor ran almost soundlessly across the courtyard toward the stables. Carefully, he pulled the door open, freezing when one horse lifted its head and whinnied. He waited a moment until he was certain the horse’s rustling hadn’t sounded any alarms. When the horse turned its head away from him, Trevor walked calmly into the stables, down the center of the pens, in the direction of a single door leading to an adjoining room, where a handful of drivers slept on pallets.
No one stirred when he opened the door; a faint snoring set the rhythm of their sleep. A lamp at the far end of the room was burning low—but it was enough light to find his driver. The man was quite large; in the darkness, his shape rather resembled a cow carcass. Careful not to disturb the other drivers, Trevor moved quietly to where he slept and nudged him with his foot.
The man did not move.
Trevor nudged again, harder, making contact with the soft flesh of the man’s bum. With a small cry of alarm, the driver rolled and sat up all at once, blinking hard before grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes and looking up.
He blinked when he saw Trevor. “Milord?” he asked, incredulous.
Trevor went down on his haunches, put a finger to his lips. “How quickly can you ready the team?” he whispered.
“The hostler comes at daybreak. Then it’s not more than a quarter of an hour,” he whispered in response.
Having no intention of waiting for the hostler, Trevor leaned in closer to the driver. “I mean now.”
The driver winced sharply. “Now? But it’s the middle of the night, milord!”
The idiot obviously could not grasp that was precisely the point. “I am well aware of the time! I would leave now, and the sooner and more quietly you can be about it, the better!” Trevor rose to full height, stared down at the groggy driver. “Get to your feet,” he whispered harshly, and turned on his heel.
The driver followed him a few moments later, stuffing his shirt into his trousers as he stumbled through the door. When he saw Trevor standing just inside the stable he started, pressed his hand to his heart. “God’s blood, milord, you gave me another fright!”
“Where are the grays?” Trevor asked, impatient. The driver nodded toward several stalls on the right. Trevor looked over his shoulder, saw the head of one, and looked to his driver again. “And the coach?”
“Behind the stables, milord,” he said, nervously wiping his hands on the sides of his pants.
“Bring it round.”
The driver looked as if he might speak, but then apparently thought the better of it. Trevor waited until he had disappeared through the stable doors, then walked to where the grays were penned and began to methodically bridle them.
In spite of the cool night air, a sheen of perspiration dotted his forehead and neck as he worked. It was not, however, the slight exertion that had him perspiring, oh no. It was fear, a raw, gnawing fear, a sense of impending doom that had been eating away at him for weeks, growing stronger every day.
The situation was hopeless. He had sunk so deeply into the morass that it seemed impossible he would ever extricate himself, even with his father’s considerable, but unconscious, help.
It still amazed Trevor that he had ever managed to ensnare himself in such a predicament to begin with. It had happened so quickly, so silently—he had not understood what trouble brewed until a man purporting to be the rather dubious “friend of a friend” accosted him on a dark road in Nottingham one night. That man told Trevor, in no uncertain terms, that if he did not requite the nearly two thousand pounds he owed a moneylender, that he might potentially find his young son missing. That threat had chilled him to his marrow—certainly he had had his fair share of gambling debts in his life, but he had never found himself in the position of having to borrow money, not like he had begun to do.
It was all because of one particularly ugly game of cards; he had lost a bloody fortune. But his finances were in terrible disarray—he had suffered an astounding loss at the parish horse races in the spring of that year when the mare on which he had placed a small fortune went down with a broken femur. That, coupled with Elspeth’s dying and directing that the remainder of her small inheritance be settled in trust for Ian, had left him with scarcely anything on which to live.
So he had gone to the moneylender about whom he had heard in gaming rooms around the parish. The man lived in a small, rundown house on the edge of Nottingham. Its dilapidated appearance belied the rich appointment within its walls—the parlor to which Trevor had been shown was full of valuable artwork. The lender himself, dressed in a blue velvet smoking jacket, was dripping in gold rings and a pocket watch. He had nodded sympathetically as Trevor had explained his predicament, then smiled reassuringly when he had signed over the banknote, urging Trevor to take all the time he needed to repay the debt.
Apparently, three months was too long for the moneylender.
Truly, Trevor had never meant it to drag on so long, but it happened that he experienced the most incredible string of bad luck—he couldn’t win a hand of cards or a horse race to save his sorry life. Whatever he tried, he only managed to lose more money while the interest on his debt to the moneylender mounted at an extraordinarily rapid pace.
When the man had accosted him in Nottingham, Trevor had no place else to turn but his father.
His father. The viscount had condemned gambling as long as Trevor could remember. This point he had made abundantly clear when Trevor was a young man. He had foolishly bet his finest horse on a game of cards and had lost. When he asked his father for the money necessary to buy it back from his friend, his father had flatly refused. “Let this be a lesson to you, son” was all he had said. Trevor lost his horse. He had never spoken to his father about his gambling again, although his father knew from others that he continued to do so, and let it be known that he did not approve in action and in deed.
Nonetheless, desperate times called for desperate measures. Trevor had been duly frightened by the threat against Ian and was prepared to ask the old man for a loan, if only for his son’s sake. The seizure had taken that opportunity from him. The viscount was hardly capable of seeing after his accounts, much less making a loan on them.
Trevor had devised his scheme one evening after giving his father a dose of the opiate the doctor had prescribed to ease any pain. As he had watched his father drift into the oblivion of the drug, he had been struck with the idea of perhaps forging his father’s signature on a banknote.
He hadn’t really meant to steal from his father, he’d really only meant to borrow. As he was certain his father would have loaned him the money, given the threat against Ian—and assuming, of course, that Trevor could make him understand it. But seeing as how he could not make him understand it, he couldn’t really see the harm in signing for his father. After all, the man was incapable. Why not simply help him sign the banknotes? Then it wouldn’t be stealing, not really.
That night, Trevor had placed the pen in his father’s gnarled hand, pressed it against the paper, and helped him form the letters. It had dumbfounded him when his father actually began to sign the document of his own accord. Trevor had dropped his hand, stood back in horror as his father completed his signature without so much as looking at the paper. It was as if some part of him had not died with that seizure; some part of him understood what he was to do and even remembered how to go abo
ut affixing his name to a document.
Looking back on it now, as he led the first gray out of the stable, Trevor marveled at how easily that one wish to repay a disreputable moneylender had escalated into the machination that was his scheme now. His father had signed literally thousands of pounds over to him. Even as he began to improve, to regain the use of his limbs, parts of his memory, Trevor continued. It was astoundingly easy—giving a man who cannot remember most things a strong dose of opiate night after night had the desired effect—his mind remained incapacitated. And Trevor had, somehow, rationalized it time and time again in his own mind.
There was a part of him that would never regret the deceit. It was only fair, to his way of thinking. He was the legitimate son of Lord Hamilton. He was spending his inheritance. When he thought of that goddamned imposter, how he would attempt to take what was rightfully his, Trevor fumed—the man had no right, no claim to what was his, and he would die defending that if he must!
Which meant, of course, that he had to reach his father first, reach him before the swindler managed to do it and somehow convince the old man that he did have another son. Rubbish! Oh yes, he’d die first before allowing that man to have a single pence of what was rightfully his.
Trevor quickened his step.
By the time he and the driver got the team harnessed, the night was beginning to lift. There was no time to go in and retrieve his things from the dingy room at the top of the stairs—it would be a bloody miracle if they were able to drive out unnoticed, much less get down the road before the authorities were sent after him.
With a strict warning to the driver to be quick, Trevor climbed into the coach and sent him along with a sharp rap above. The coach lurched forward; Trevor held his breath, waited for the sound of shouting, something to indicate that the innkeeper was demanding payment, or the gent from Coventry was realizing he had slipped away without paying him the one hundred pounds he had lost and had given his word to pay this morning.
But the coach kept rolling, and when it was apparent that they had, by some wondrous measure, managed to slip away, he buried his face in his hands and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, mortified that he was, for the second time this week, fighting tears.
The strain was unbearable—he had almost crumbled into madness when he returned to Bedford Square from the gaming club and realized the French whore had stolen his father away. He had already signed too many banknotes without his father’s assistance; their London banker had looked at him rather suspiciously the last time he had been in, had made some remark about the drain on his father’s accounts.
God, he needed the viscount, needed him to lend his hand to the notes!
But that was, he knew, a door that was slowly swinging shut. He could not continue much longer before another banker took notice.
Which was why, in part, the prospect of a match with Sophie Dane had looked so desirable.
Certainly he had been, quite simply, amazed by the transformation in Sophie since her scandal. She was no longer the mousy little thing who had hovered in corners of ballrooms. She had matured; even her features seemed less plain than they did then—she was actually quite attractive in an unassuming way. In his estimation, she was a well-mannered, docile woman who was perfect for Ian and him.
And it certainly did not hurt, in his present dilemma, that she was an heiress in her own right.
His offer for her hand was a stroke of brilliance, he thought. He had solved her problem of being so undesirable—with her reputation and scarred past, it was inconceivable that another gentleman of the ton would offer for her. No man in his right mind would want her scandal tainting his children or his business dealings. He had also solved his problem—he was not in a position to be overly selective. He needed a wife. A wealthy wife. And Sophie Dane fit that description. Quite frankly, she fit that description so well that he was rather looking forward to their conjugal relations. Looking very much forward to that.
Damn her all to hell, then.
Her refusal of him had brought his fury crashing down on him, muddling his mind. The foolish chit had come chasing after him and the French whore and his father. And she was drinking ale like some doxy, a sight that displeased him enormously. A woman of the ton did not sip ale like a commoner. She apparently had no regard for her reputation, a flaw he would have quickly corrected once they were wed.
But more than those astounding facts, when he had stepped out of the game room for some air and had seen her sitting there, as if it were perfectly acceptable to go chasing across all of England, the chit had not been contrite in the least. Lord no—she had summoned up the audacity to refuse him, to throw his offer in his face. And all because of some female pique that he had not spoken with her privately about the offer. No doubt she envisioned some terribly romantic moment with him on one knee, her on some gilded swing.
He would have, in due time, corrected her overly romantic notions and wild ways. He would have delighted in teaching her how a Hamilton would behave, in more ways than one. But Sophie had ruined it all, had effectively made herself so untouchable that even he could not come near her. She had thrown it all away for one romp in the sack with the bastard imposter.
The very thought of her standing in the courtyard…next to him…made Trevor choke with anger. A tear inadvertently slipped from the corner of his eye, trailed down the stubble of his unshaven face.
He slammed his fist into the side of the coach.
She had ruined it, ruined everything.
Ruined him.
Another miserable day, and Trevor and his driver arrived at Hamilton House, exhausted and ravenous, well after midnight. He sent the driver around to the stables, and limped to the door of his father’s house, his legs gone numb with disuse. He did not bother to knock, but retrieved an old door key they kept under the rain gutter and let himself in.
He paused in the foyer, listening for any sound; the house was silent.
Cautiously, Trevor moved down the corridor to the servant’s old stairwell. Sheets still draped the furniture in the main salon and parlor; the library door was closed. Frankly, at this particular moment, he hardly cared if anyone had taken up residence in his father’s home—he was too exhausted to think.
He took the stairs two at a time, to the second floor, and his suite of rooms. His bedroom was just as he had left it; the furniture was covered in white muslin sheets, the bed bare. He yanked his neckcloth free of his collar, then proceeded to strip down to nothing. Taking a sheet from one of two winged-back chairs at his hearth, he fell on the bare bed, nude save for the sheet that covered him, and closed his eyes.
But sleep would not come easily; it did not come at all, much to his great exasperation. As exhausted as he was, his mind could not let go the pressures of his indebtedness. Tossing and turning on that bare bed, Trevor tried to sleep, tried to put the vague fear out of his mind, if only for a few hours.
When the clock struck three, he sat up, pressed two fingers to his eyes. After a moment, he rose, stumbled sluggishly to his dressing room, and donned a dressing gown. In his bare feet, he left his rooms, took the main stairwell down to the first floor, and silently made his way to the study. Carefully, he opened that door. The furniture here had not been covered—he supposed that the longtime family butler, Darby, used this room for his bookkeeping. Trevor padded across the carpet to a portrait of his grandfather and lifted the painting from the wall, placing it aside. With a sigh, he stood, staring at the wall safe.
He wasn’t certain he wanted to look…but he had to. He crossed to the desk, searching three drawers before finding the blasted key.
Fortunately, the safe opened easily. He peered inside, past a stack of currency his father kept for emergencies, past his mother’s jewels—what he hadn’t sold, that was. What Trevor was looking for was in the very back of the safe. He reached in, took the thick packet of paper, and crossed immediately to the large floor-to-ceiling windows where a bit of moonlight spilled in, and untied the ribbo
n that kept the papers together. Quickly scanning the documents, he scowled.
Nothing had changed—it was all still there, still boldly penned in black ink. Bloody hell!
He stood for several long minutes staring blankly at the packet he held in his hand, his jaw clenched tightly shut. At last he tied the papers together again and walked slowly to the safe, lost in his own tormented thoughts. He carefully replaced the papers, closed the safe, and returned the portrait and key to their appropriate places. Then he made his way back to his rooms, his thoughts torturing him with each step.
In his bedroom once again, he let the dressing gown drop to the floor as he reached his bed, and then fell, face forward, onto the bare mattress.
He closed his eyes, prayed to God for sleep.
Sophie and Caleb spent that night under the boughs of an old elm tree, their mattress a horse blanket, their coverlet Caleb’s riding coat.
In the course of their journey that day, their hopeful mood had dimmed, as both understood that the moment they reached Hamilton House, everything would change.
It had been a conscious decision to sleep in the open as opposed to another inn—they wanted to be alone, to hold the world at bay for a few hours more. Neither of them mentioned aloud what they both knew—the spurious realm in which they had lived these last few weeks, and in particular, these last two days, was coming to an end. Once again, they would be exposed fully to the harsh reality of their lives.
Caleb caught some fish in a nearby stream; they cooked the meat over a small fire, ate the flesh with their fingers, and wished for wine. When Caleb had seen to it the horses had plenty of room to graze, they had made sweet love beside that fire and underneath the old elm, clinging to one another as they reached fulfillment, not wanting to ever let go, no longer caring if his seed planted within her.
It hardly seemed to matter—Sophie’s reputation had been irreparably harmed and not even time could mend it now. Caleb wanted nothing more than a child who would seal their love for the rest of their natural lives and beyond. Her family could not refuse her the legitimacy of the child’s name, could not refuse her marriage to the man she loved.
