Gentleman Jim

by Mimi Matthews

“Aunt Harriet’s in her room with a breakfast tray. And Margaret and I are only going shopping, not to promenade along the Dark Walk at Vauxhall. We shall have our maids with us. And a footman as well. Of course,” she continued, “if you’re very concerned for our safety, you may accompany us yourself.”

  “I might at that,” George replied severely. “The two of you out and about with nothing but two useless abigails and a lone footman? Recipe for disaster if I’ve ever heard one. I remember a time when there were so many gents crowding round Miss Honeywell, she could scarcely draw breath.”

  Maggie laughed. She remembered it, too. It had been an oppressively stuffy ballroom and George had taken her delicate lace fan from her hand and wafted it about her so vigorously that the sticks had broken. “Those days are long gone, I assure you. I’m six and twenty now.”

  “By Jove, are you? You don’t look it.” George took a swallow of coffee. “Not that it will make a bit of difference with the gossip going round after this morning. People bound to stare and whisper. And plenty of old tabbies won’t scruple to question you outright, you mark my words.”

  Maggie’s smile faded. “Gossip? What gossip?”

  Jane’s eyes narrowed at her brother. “Yes, George. Exactly what are you talking about?”

  “That’s the very thing I’ve come to tell you. I was out riding this morning in the park. I’ve bought a new gelding, Miss Honeywell. A prime goer. Not unlike that blood chestnut you had back when—” He broke off at a stern look from his sister. “Yes. Quite. As I was saying, I was out in the park this morning. All the fellows were talking about it. It’s not quite the thing to speak about in front of ladies, but I daresay Jane has already told you—”

  “Yes, yes. She knows about the duel.” Jane waved him on with an impatient hand. “What did you hear?”

  Maggie leaned forward in her chair, her attention fixed on Jane’s brother. St. Clare had promised not to hurt Fred. And he’d given her no reason to doubt his word. It had all seemed to be settled.

  “A lot of the gents in the park were present at the duel,” George went on between bites of his plum cake. “I wish I’d been! There’s not many who’ve seen St. Clare shoot, excepting Lord Vickers and Lord Mattingly. They traveled a bit with him on his grand tour, you know, and they said he was as deadly as all the rest of the Beresfords. Not that St. Clare’s reputation meant a thing to Burton-Smythe. But then, as I told Vickers, Burton-Smythe’s so full of self-importance that it would never even occur to him that any man could best him.”

  “Oh, go on!” Jane demanded.

  “Well, the short of it is, the handkerchief was dropped and Burton-Smythe fired. His shot went a touch wide. Nearly singed the viscount’s sleeve, I heard. And St. Clare didn’t even flinch! Just stood there and without batting an eye, fired a bullet straight through Burton-Smythe’s shoulder.”

  Maggie’s mouth fell open. “St. Clare shot Fred?”

  “To be sure, he did, but that’s not even the best part.” George’s eyes were bright with excitement as he entered into the spirit of the tale. “Burton-Smythe was lying on the ground with the surgeon kneeling over him, and St. Clare walks up to him as cool as you please and says, ‘Let this be a lesson to you, my good man. If you’re going to act the brutish country squire, best stay in the country.’ And then he leapt into his curricle and drove off.” George laughed appreciatively. “If that don’t beat all!”

  Maggie felt a sickening flicker of dread in her stomach. One didn’t have to be killed outright in order to die from a gunshot wound. Why, if Fred’s shoulder festered, he could expire within the week! And then what was she to do? “Where is Fred now? Is he all right? Oh, Jane… Do you suppose I should go to him?”

  “I say, Miss Honeywell, don’t put yourself into a taking,” George said. “Burton-Smythe is holed up at his lodgings. He’s not hurt too badly—the bullet went clean through—but I hear he’s in as foul a mood as anyone ever saw him. You’d be wise to leave him be for a while.” George cleared his throat, giving an uncomfortable tug at his cravat. “Besides that, there’s some who already think you have an agreement of some sort with Burton-Smythe—”

  “Indeed, I do not!” Maggie objected.

  “—and if you arrive at his lodgings to nurse him through his injury you may as well put a notice of your betrothal in the paper.”

  “Is that the subject of the gossip you mentioned?” Jane asked. “Well, is it?”

  George groaned. “You know how things are. It’ll begin with a few old tabbies stopping Miss Honeywell in Bond Street to ask after Burton-Smythe’s health and end with all of the ton saying that the duel was fought over her honor.” He shook his head in disgust. “Some of the fellows are already talking. Wouldn’t you know it, that infernal gabster Beauchamp was at the duel, and by the time I arrived at the park, he was already there, telling the other gents how Burton-Smythe and St. Clare had looked as if they hated each other, and how he’d give a monkey to know what the duel had really been about. ‘No doubt it’s a woman,’ he says. What a heap of rubbish. Everyone knows they fell out over a game of cards.”

  “I may as well go home,” said Maggie.

  “You most definitely will not,” Jane replied. “Nor will we postpone any of our pleasure. If there’s gossip going round connecting you to this duel…well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s even more reason for us to be seen abroad. We shall go shopping just as we planned.”

  George heartily agreed, even going so far as to offer to escort them to the dressmaker himself, and afterward, if they weren’t too worn down from their exertions, to take them both to Gunter’s for an ice. “And if anyone dares inquire after Burton-Smythe’s health,” he said, “I’ll send them off with a flea in their ear.”

  Maggie could do nothing but agree. In short order, she and Jane were tugging on their gloves and tying the ribbons of their bonnets, and George was handing them up into the Trumbles’ barouche.

  “I don’t even really care about the gossip,” Maggie confessed to Jane in a whisper while George stepped away to have a word with the coachman. “The truth is… Dash it, I don’t like to think of myself as cold-blooded, but the only emotion I feel at the possibility of Fred succumbing to his wounds is worry over Beasley Park and my inheritance. Am I very awful?”

  “No indeed.” Jane unfurled a pale-yellow parasol. “Fred has been an inconsiderate clodpole. If I were you, I’d be white with rage.”

  “I should be, I know. And I am angry. But somehow…somehow I’m far more upset with Viscount St. Clare than I am with Fred. I can’t think why.”

  Maggie recognized the untruth as soon as she said it.

  She did know why she was more upset with St. Clare, even if she couldn’t admit it to her friend. The fact of the matter was that, though she’d often felt powerless in the years since her father’s death, she was wholly unaccustomed to being made to feel a fool.

  Three forfeits indeed.

  What a country bumpkin St. Clare must have thought her. No doubt he’d been laughing at her the entire time. And she so disposed to think well of him for no more reason than that he bore a passing resemblance to Nicholas Seaton!

  After shooting Frederick Burton-Smythe through the shoulder, John Beresford, Viscount St. Clare returned to his grandfather’s house in Grosvenor Square. He had a brief word with his groom, an even briefer word with his valet (who gaped at the singed sleeve of St. Clare’s shirt with blank horror), and then, as he did after all of his duels, he withdrew to the breakfast room and ate an exceptionally large meal.

  It was while he was drinking his coffee and reading the newspaper that his grandfather strode into the room.

  “Out!” Lord Allendale growled at a lingering footman. The servant scurried away as the earl took a seat across from St. Clare at the table.

  A taut silence permeated the room, so ominous that, at last, if for no other reason than mer
e curiosity, St. Clare was compelled to lower his newspaper. “Well, sir?”

  The Earl of Allendale’s once golden hair had gone silvery white, and except when his blood was up, the fire in his distinctive gray eyes had dimmed, but a life of activity and adventure—a life that had bronzed his skin and strengthened his body—had left him free of many of the maladies of old age. He didn’t suffer from rheumatism or gout. He was never confused or forgetful. And though he was the first to admit that he walked a bit slower than he once had, he stubbornly did so without the aid of a stick.

  He’d never been a typical English aristocrat. Some even called him an eccentric. Cursed with an insatiable desire to travel the world, he’d spent the better part of his life abroad, the last years of which he’d dragged his grandson along behind him. It had only been recently—as St. Clare approached his thirtieth birthday—that the earl had begun to show signs that he wasn’t so very different from a typical English aristocrat after all.

  “I have it from Jessup that you fought a duel this morning,” Allendale said.

  St. Clare saw no reason to deny it. His grandfather of all people should understand. He was no stranger to affairs of honor. Proficient with pistols and swords, it was he who had honed St. Clare into the uncannily lethal shot that he was today. “I did.”

  “With an inconsequential squire from the country.” Allendale’s tone held an unmistakable note of warning.

  St. Clare gave his newspaper a regretful glance before folding it and laying it down on the table beside his plate. “An heir to a baronetcy if that makes any difference.”

  “A baronetcy in Somerset.”

  He met his grandfather’s formidable gray glare. “Your point, sir?”

  “Be careful.”

  “I am exceedingly careful.”

  “I believe you know what I mean.”

  St. Clare leaned back in his chair. “As you see, I have survived the encounter without a scratch.”

  “Have you?” Allendale’s mouth tightened. “I was given to understand that the pistol ball singed your shirtsleeve.”

  St. Clare inwardly cursed Jessup. There was a reason his grandfather often referred to the elderly butler as Argus. Just like the mythical giant, Jessup seemed to have a hundred eyes. “A trifling thing,” he said stiffly.

  “And what of your opponent? This Somerset heir to a baronetcy. How did he fare?”

  “Better than he deserved.”

  Allendale fixed him with a long look. “You got him through the shoulder, did you? Which shoulder? The right?”

  St. Clare gave a curt nod.

  “And with which hand does this fellow wield his weapons?”

  A slow smile edged St. Clare’s mouth. “Up until this morning, his right one.”

  “That pleases you, does it? Tell me, my boy, what was it that this squire, or whatever in blazes he is, did to earn your notice? Cheat at cards?”

  St. Clare shrugged one shoulder. “He might have done.”

  “And I suppose you realized that, when you hinted at that fact in the middle of a crowded gaming hell, he might be provoked into calling you out?” Allendale didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, you’ve paid this country nobody back quite handsomely for whatever small offense he’s given. For the next month, he’ll be hard pressed to raise his spoon for soup let alone his pistol or his reins and whip. Are you satisfied now? Indeed, I hope you are, sir, for you’ve fought your first and last duel in England.”

  St. Clare met his grandfather’s burst of ire with silence. The same silence with which he’d endured the earl’s explosions of temper many times before.

  “One month! That’s how long we’ve been back. Have you no self-control, man? No sense of purpose? What were you doing in a blasted gaming hell in the first place?” Allendale’s face reddened with anger. “Do you think I’ve wasted all of these years with you so that you could go the way of your father? The Earls of Allendale have descended in an unbroken line for over two hundred years! Straight down from Ivo Beresford himself! Do you imagine I’ll allow that line to be broken? That I’ll allow the title to pass to that idiot son of my second cousin? I tell you, sir, I will see us both damned first!”

  St. Clare poured out a cup of coffee, and without a word, pushed it across the table to his grandfather.

  Allendale scowled but nonetheless lifted the cup and took a sip. After a moment, the redness receded from his face. “I told you when we left Florence that the time had come to do your duty. There’s to be no more mucking about, my boy. You’ll find yourself a wife and get yourself an heir. It’s what you owe to the title. It’s what you owe to me.”

  St. Clare didn’t argue. He knew very well the duty he owed to the title. For years, his life had been one long, grueling exercise in preparing for his role as the next Earl of Allendale. Anything his grandfather thought he should learn, he had learned. Any skill that had to be mastered, he had mastered. In time, St. Clare’s own ambitions had receded, dimmed by the constant need to prove himself. To excel at every challenge set before him.

  And he had excelled. No study had been too difficult for him. No sport too daring. He’d grown—by his grandfather’s own admission—into a fine figure of a gentleman.

  But they weren’t in Florence now, nor in Paris, Cairo, or Bombay. They were in England.

  “I’m not insensible of my duty,” St. Clare said. “I’ve done everything you bid me.”

  “Not everything,” Allendale snapped.

  St. Clare continued unperturbed. “I’ve engaged a new tailor and bootmaker. I’ve set up my stable. I’ve joined the right clubs and attended the right balls and parties. I’ve even been forced to endure the company of those very men who once ostracized my father.”

  At that, Allendale frowned deeply. “Jackals, every one of them,” he muttered. “A pack of bloody jackals. They drove him to his death.”

  “As I’m well aware.”

  St. Clare’s father, the late James Beresford, Viscount St. Clare, had in his youth engaged in countless affairs of honor and had earned for himself a reputation as an excellent shot. But when, as a result of a foolish dispute over a carriage accident, he’d dueled with and killed the youngest son of the Duke of Penworthy, the ton had accused him of taking advantage of a weaker opponent.

  The viscount’s honor had been tarnished. His friends, such that they were, had deserted him.

  His father had deserted him.

  It was a fact that Allendale never mentioned—and one that St. Clare could never forget. The late viscount had needed Allendale’s protection, and Allendale—a man who had valued familial pride over his actual family—had thrown his son to the wolves.

  Facing arrest, St. Clare’s father had fled to the continent. It was there he’d lived out the remainder of his short life, dying in his thirty-third year of an insidious wasting disease.

  “Your father was a damned sight too trusting. Fell in with the wrong sort of people. But you… You know better. I believe you don’t trust anyone.”

  St. Clare’s mouth hitched in a half smile. “Nonsense. I have a great deal of trust in my valet and my groom.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for loyal retainers,” Allendale agreed, temporarily diverted. “But you won’t distract me. I want your word. Your word as a gentleman. You’re to leave off dueling until you’ve secured the title. If you’ve got a disagreement with someone—confound it, I don’t see why the devil you should have, but if you do—sort it out some other way. From this day forward, your sole purpose is to marry some suitable female and get yourself an heir. By gad, I’ll choose the gel myself if it comes to it.”

  “I’m obliged to you, sir,” St. Clare said. “But I shall choose my own wife.”

  An image of Margaret Honeywell sprang into his mind.

  He recalled the way her face had looked in the firelight, shadowed and beautiful. The wa
y she’d felt when she’d fainted into his arms. A shapely scrap of femininity—altogether too weak and frail. He’d had an overpowering urge to gather her close. To hold her and never let her go.

  She’d been ill, that much was plain.

  It shouldn’t matter. He had no patience with delicate, swooning females. But Miss Honeywell’s late-night visit had upset the balance of his mind. She’d left him restless and unsettled. His thoughts were full of her.

  Indeed, he was sorely tempted to call on her at the Trumbles’ residence in Green Street. Later that day, after his grandfather finally left him in peace, he even made several attempts at writing a note inviting her to take a drive with him in his curricle.

  Dear Miss Honeywell. Would you do me the honor of accompanying me—

  My Dear Miss Honeywell. Please put me out of my misery and consent to join me—

  None of his impulses seemed appropriate. He hadn’t been properly introduced to her. Showing up at her door would be extremely bad ton. And a personal note from an unmarried gentleman to an unmarried lady was borderline scandalous.

  He was going to have to find someone to present him to her. Either that or disregard the conventions altogether. Unfortunately, no matter how much he considered the matter, he couldn’t determine the best course.

  The result of his uncharacteristic indecisiveness was that he didn’t see Miss Honeywell again until three days later, and very much by chance.

  Amongst the many activities afforded in town, the theater was the only one that the Earl of Allendale genuinely enjoyed. The previous week, he and St. Clare had seen Edmund Kean in Macbeth. So impressed was the earl by Kean’s performance that he proposed getting a small party together to see the play a second time.

  That party included an elderly dowager and her two unmarried granddaughters, a middle-aged matchmaking mama and her unmarried daughter, and St. Clare’s friend Lord Mattingly and Mattingly’s younger, unmarried sister.

  “Sorry, old chap,” Mattingly muttered from his place near St. Clare in the earl’s theater box. “You’re the matrimonial prize of the season, you know, and my mother would insist that I throw Astrid in your path.”