Gentleman Jim

by Mimi Matthews

  “No. Not twins. Not entirely. You’re bigger than him. Taller, too. But your face—”

  He looked down at her, amused. “What about my face?”

  “Your eyes.” Her gaze held his. A shivery warmth pooled low in her belly. She knew him. Recognized him with every fiber of her being. A stranger wouldn’t have this effect on her. No man ever had before. “I think I know my friend.”

  His head bent to hers, close enough that he might kiss her. “As I said before,” he murmured, “your friend is a fortunate fellow.”

  Mingled disappointment and frustration warred within her. She drew back from him. “If you will insist upon this fiction—”

  “It’s not a fiction, my dear. It’s an incontrovertible fact.”

  My dear.

  The rogue. He was enjoying this, whoever he was. Seeming to drink in her every expression, her slightest change of mood. To relish the very sight of her.

  “Very well, then,” she said, piqued. “Where were you born?”

  He answered without hesitation. “In Venice.”

  “And your mother?”

  “A lady of northern Italian extraction. My father married her abroad, and she died bringing me into this world.”

  Maggie’s lips compressed. She didn’t believe him. She couldn’t. It would mean disbelieving the evidence of her own eyes—her own heart. “What was her given name?”

  “Giovanna.”

  “Not Jenny Seaton, then.”

  He smiled. “Not remotely.”

  “And your father was Viscount St. Clare before you? The gentleman who fled London after killing a man in a duel?”

  St. Clare’s expression sobered. “You’ve heard the tales, I take it.”

  “Whispers,” she said. “Is it true, what they say?”

  “True enough.” He was silent a moment. “My father shot the youngest son of the Duke of Penworthy. The boy was feebleminded, barely twenty at the time. He had a reputation for being hotheaded. Most everyone had learned to ignore his insults. But my father…”

  “You said he was a rather famous shot.”

  “He was. Too famous by half. Every young pup with something to prove wanted to duel with him. It was something of a rite of passage.”

  “But he didn’t duel with everyone who challenged him, surely?”

  “I don’t know.” St. Clare frowned. “According to my grandfather, my father was a bit hotheaded himself. He didn’t always exercise the best judgment. When Penworthy’s son died from his wounds, my father was obliged to escape to the continent. He died there some years later.”

  “You never knew him?”

  He shook his head. “My grandfather had the raising of me.”

  For the first time, Maggie felt a flicker of doubt. She tried to ignore it. It wasn’t possible that his story was true. That he really was Lord St. Clare, heir to the Earl of Allendale.

  He was Nicholas Seaton. He looked like him. He wrote like him. Smiled like him and smelled like him. Even the way he’d held her—the way he’d said her name. Maggie.

  There were differences, it was true. Marked differences. He no longer carried himself as Nicholas had. And he no longer sounded like him, either. He spoke in the cultured tones of a gentleman, conversing with ease about art and music and history.

  Nicholas had been neither well-read nor well-traveled. But he hadn’t been cold. He’d been warm and affectionate. Passionate in his anger, but always ready with a teasing, lopsided grin. Indeed, despite the hardships of his young life, he’d laughed with her easily and often.

  She wondered what he’d suffered to turn himself into the Viscount St. Clare. What he’d sacrificed to become the gentleman he was today.

  But she feared she already knew the answer.

  He’d sacrificed his past. Blotted it out entirely, and her along with it.

  “We traveled a great deal,” St. Clare said. “My schooling was haphazard at best. But the adventures I had. No man could wish for a better education.”

  “Tell me,” she encouraged him.

  And he did.

  He told her about his youth. About the Grecian Count with whom he’d raced yachts in the Mediterranean. The dangerous little Italian who had taught him swordplay in Venice. And the perpetually foxed scholar his grandfather had employed to tutor him, a man who had doggedly followed them from Italy to Egypt and back again before, at long last, expiring of drink outside a disreputable tavern in Rome.

  “I met Lord Mattingly and Lord Vickers not long after Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena,” St. Clare said. “We traveled together for over a year before I was obliged to rejoin my grandfather.”

  “And then…?”

  He shrugged. “And then I came home to England.”

  She felt a sudden flush of anger toward him. “But it’s never been your home, has it? Indeed, it must seem very strange to you after a lifetime spent abroad.”

  “It isn’t strange at all,” he said. “Not a day of my life has passed that my grandfather hasn’t spoken of England. He’s described every facet of fashionable society. Every stone and timber of our estate. I always knew it was my destiny to return here.”

  She had to look away from him for a moment, else risk losing her temper. Good lord above. What a pantomime this was. What an absolute farce. She wanted to shake him until he admitted the truth to her.

  But she couldn’t force him to do anything.

  She didn’t dare try, not when there was the faintest shadow of uncertainty about who he was. And she was uncertain, more now than she’d been before he’d started his tale. How could she not be when he looked as he did and talked as he did? When he had wealth, and a title, and the support of the Earl of Allendale?

  “Does it not get tedious living with your grandfather?” she asked. “A man of your age?”

  “In Grosvenor Square?” He shrugged. “On occasion. But I’m not bound to stay there.”

  “You have another residence?”

  For a moment it seemed he would not answer. And then: “I keep a set of rooms at Grillon’s. A place I can go when I want a bit of privacy.” His mouth hitched in an apologetic smile. “It’s not something I generally make known.”

  A set of rooms at Grillon’s.

  Heat crept into Maggie’s face. She was no green girl. She knew why a gentleman might keep rooms at a hotel. Privacy indeed. “Why did you come back? Do you mean to settle here?”

  “I told you,” he said. “I mean to court you.”

  She huffed an exasperated breath. “To what end?” She was resolved to be as blunt as he was mysterious. “I can’t marry you.”

  St. Clare went still. His eyes searched hers.

  “And yes,” she said quickly, to stave off embarrassment, “I know you haven’t proposed, or even mentioned marriage, but the natural goal of any courtship is—”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can’t, not even if I wanted to. Don’t you understand? You’re too late.” She stood from her seat, her heart twisting on an unimaginable spasm of anguish. “Whoever you are, you’re a year and a half too late.”

  St. Clare caught Maggie gently by the wrist and drew her back down to his side. She came reluctantly, resuming her seat on the bench, closer to him now than she’d been before.

  “Talk to me,” he said. “I want to understand.”

  She couldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t. The reality of her situation was too fraught with emotion. It was bad enough that she must contemplate marrying Fred, but to lose Nicholas forever? He’d only just come back into her life. How could she let him go? The unfairness of it was enough to drive anyone to tears. And she didn’t wish to cry.

  “What else is there to say?” she asked. “I’d have thought it was abundantly plain.”

  His fingers slid from her wrist to engulf her bare hand. His own
hand was bare as well. He’d left his hat, cane, and gloves inside with the butler. There was nothing untoward about it. The two of them were in a private garden, not a public promenade. But it didn’t feel entirely proper. Quite the opposite. His skin pressed so intimately to hers. It felt dangerous. Illicit. Sensual beyond permission.

  He didn’t have the soft hands of a pampered aristocrat. His hands were large and strong, his long fingers almost elegant, with callusing from where he held his reins and whip. The hands of a sportsman. A Corinthian.

  They were Nicholas’s hands, she was sure of it.

  “Does this have anything to do with Mr. Burton-Smythe?” he asked in a quiet voice. “You said he was something like your guardian.”

  She returned the warm clasp of St. Clare’s fingers. She couldn’t help herself. “He has control of all of my money and property.”

  “Until when?”

  At last she turned to meet his eyes. Her heart clenched. “I must marry before six months have passed. If I don’t, everything will go to Fred absolutely.”

  St. Clare straightened. “Well, then. There’s no difficulty—”

  “You don’t understand. It must be with his permission. A groom of his choosing.”

  “In other words—”

  “In other words, Fred himself. He won’t approve of any other.”

  A muscle ticked in St. Clare’s jaw. “And if you don’t marry him? If you wed someone without his approval?”

  “I shall lose my fortune, and Beasley Park along with it.”

  Were St. Clare truly Nicholas Seaton, he would have comprehended the full meaning of her words. Nicholas had known what Beasley Park meant to her. It was as much a part of her as he had been. Love of the land was etched into her very soul.

  But St. Clare didn’t seem to register the difficulty Fred’s power over her presented. “I have no need of your fortune,” he said. “I have one of my own.”

  Maggie stiffened. “You’re suggesting that I allow him to take Beasley Park?”

  “Why not? If the choice is between the estate and your happiness—”

  “The estate is my happiness.”

  His hand tightened on hers almost imperceptibly. “You would marry Burton-Smythe in order to keep it?”

  “I don’t want to marry him. But Beasley must come first.”

  “You fear what he’ll do to it if left to his own devices, is that it? You believe he’ll run it straight into the ground?”

  “It’s not that,” she admitted.

  On the contrary, according to the letter she’d lately received from Mr. Entwhistle, the decisions Fred had been making in regard to Beasley Park had, thus far, been sound ones. Generous ones, too. He’d even approved a plan to replace the old roofs of the tenant cottages—a costly scheme that Maggie had advocated for herself.

  “It’s just that…he’s put me in an impossible position.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” St. Clare said.

  “Some things are. Believe me, sir. If any of it were easy, I’d have already sorted it out for myself. As things stand, I intend to consult a solicitor. Though I don’t hold out much hope. My father made his wishes abundantly clear.”

  “What can I do to help? My grandfather has solicitors. Private inquiry agents, too. If it’s a matter of law—”

  “I don’t need your help, thank you. I shall deal with it. And with Fred, too. I don’t require any—”

  “Don’t be stubborn merely for the sake of it. Pray, let me be of use to you. I shall run mad otherwise.”

  She gave him an ironic look. “You’re very keen for someone who claims to have known me only a fortnight.”

  There was nothing of amusement in his face. Not any longer. “I know my own mind, Miss Honeywell.”

  “And I know mine. I’ll sort it out myself. There’s more to consider than legalities. Fred is…Fred.” She withdrew her hand from St. Clare’s grasp. “If you were Nicholas Seaton, you’d understand that better than anyone.”

  Jane chose that moment to reappear at the end of the garden path, Lord Mattingly at her heels.

  Rising from the bench, Maggie pasted on a smile. “There you are. I wondered where you’d got to.”

  The following afternoon, St. Clare returned from Jackson’s Boxing Saloon, his mind still in a state of turmoil. Exercise usually served to settle it, but not today. No amount of sparring had calmed him, not even during those minutes when he’d imagined that his opponent was Frederick Burton-Smythe.

  Entering the marble-tiled hall at Grosvenor Square, he divested himself of his hat and gloves and handed them to Jessup.

  “Lord Allendale requests your presence in the library, my lord,” the antiquated butler said.

  St. Clare ran a hand over his rumpled hair. “Now?”

  “Immediately upon your return. He was quite clear on that point.”

  St. Clare made for the library. If his grandfather wanted to see him so urgently, it was nothing to the good. Best to get it over with.

  He entered without knocking, finding his grandfather seated behind his carved mahogany desk. His head was bent over what looked to be a newspaper.

  “You wished to see me?” St. Clare crossed the thickly carpeted floor to stand in front of him.

  The library at Grosvenor Square was a masculine room, smelling of pipe smoke and leather. Wooden shelves lined the walls, sagging under the weight of old books and new ones. Volumes on travel, archaeology, and natural history abounded, stacked on every available surface. They were complemented by inlaid tables draped in maps of the world, and a magnificent terrestrial globe standing in a tall carved frame.

  Allendale looked up from his paper. He scowled. “Back at last, are you?” He gestured to the leather-upholstered chair in front of his desk. “Sit.”

  St. Clare sat down. “You expected me sooner? I can’t think why.” His grandfather had known he was going to Tattersall’s this morning, and then to Jackson’s Saloon after that. “We agreed at breakfast that we’d dine together before attending Lady Colchester’s ball.”

  “That was this morning. Before I saw this.” Allendale thrust his newspaper across the desk.

  St. Clare retrieved and opened it. But it wasn’t a newspaper at all. It was a gossip rag. One of the most unsavory, too. A veritable scandal sheet. He skimmed the small, smudged black print before looking up at his grandfather with a scowl. “What—”

  “The second page,” Allendale said. “Quarter of the way down. Under that bit about the opera dancer.”

  St. Clare looked again. This time he saw it. Indeed, he wondered that he hadn’t noticed it the first time. It was written there, plain as day, under the heading Tittle Tattle of the Fashionable World:

  At long last, the Earl of A— has returned from exile, accompanied by his golden heir. But was the mysterious Lord S— born on the right side of the blanket?

  St. Clare lowered the paper back to the desk. A chill settled into his veins. “Is that all?”

  “What? Not pointed enough, for you? Never fear, my boy. It soon will be.” Allendale tapped the offending report with his finger. “This is how it always begins. Small. Just a few lines of suggestion. Of innuendo. But it won’t be small for long. Not if Lavinia and her boy have anything to say about it.”

  “You hold them responsible?”

  “Who else?”

  St. Clare was silent. Who else indeed.

  Allendale’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t been doing anything you shouldn’t have, have you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I warned you, no more dueling with country squires. No more personal vendettas. You and I have bigger matters to contend with.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  Allendale leaned across his desk. His face reddened. “By heaven, if you’ve faltered—”

 
“Calm yourself,” St. Clare said. “There have been no more duels. Nothing that would cause remark.”

  Indeed, as far as he was aware, Burton-Smythe was still holed up in his rooms in St. James’s Street, nursing his wounds. St. Clare looked forward to the moment when he emerged.

  “I told you to be careful,” Allendale said, frowning. “All you must do is find a bride and secure the title. I’ve drawn up a list. Suitable ladies of breeding years. Each of them of good stock.” He withdrew a sheet of paper from a drawer of his desk and extended it to St. Clare. “You met several at the theater last week, Miss Steele among them.”

  St. Clare took the paper and set it down, unread. “I told you, I’ll find my own bride.”

  “And what efforts have you made in that regard? Have you called on Miss Steele? On the dowager’s granddaughters? Even that young chit, Mattingly’s sister, might do if you insist upon having her. Only make up your mind—”

  “I have made up my mind,” St. Clare said with uncharacteristic heat.

  Allendale came to attention. “And? What’s the gel’s name?”

  “Miss Margaret Honeywell.”

  It was in this very room she’d appeared to him not two weeks before, cloaked in a shapeless gown, her face shadowed in the firelight. He’d caught her in his arms as she swooned. Had held her so very close to his breast. He’d understood then what he knew now absolutely. There could be no one else. No other lady, save her.

  “Honeywell. Honeywell.” Allendale murmured the name as if he was on the cusp of recalling some troublesome memory. “Who’s her father?”

  St. Clare hesitated. “A wealthy country squire, recently passed away.”

  Allendale’s expression darkened. “Whereabouts was his property? Not Somerset, I trust.”

  St. Clare was silent.

  “Foolish boy—”

  “I’m not a boy. Not any longer. And she’s the one I want. The only one I want.”

  “Want,” Allendale echoed derisively. “What does that have to do with anything? You know your duty. You claimed to have accustomed yourself—”

  “I thought I had until I saw her. And now I can’t…” St. Clare struggled to express the emotion he felt whenever he looked at Miss Honeywell. The way his heart swelled with longing at the sight of her face. The way his blood heated when she argued with him. And when they’d kissed…