Gentleman Jim

by Mimi Matthews

  Everything had clicked into place. Settling perfectly, as if she was the missing piece that made the puzzle of his restless life complete.

  “I can’t imagine marrying anyone else but her,” he said.

  “Then you lack imagination, sir. Any of these gels would make you a conformable wife.” Allendale pointed to the topmost name listed on his paper. “Miss Steele is as handsome a female as you’re likely to find. Don’t tell me you can’t rouse yourself to sire an heir—”

  “I’m not a stud horse on one of your farms, sir,” St. Clare shot back. “And you haven’t even met Miss Honeywell yet.”

  Allendale’s gray eyes were hard as flint. “I don’t need to meet her. Indeed, it seems to me that the wider a berth you give the gel, the safer you’ll—”

  “She wouldn’t—”

  “Oh, wouldn’t she? Gossiping with her friends? Whispering in front of her servants? Before you know it, the scandal sheets will be rife with outright accusations. And when I die—”

  “You’re not dying anytime soon.”

  “When I die, where will you be? How will you defend your claim? No. I’ll not have it. You must do your duty—for duty it is. I won’t permit you to ruin my plans for some country nobody.”

  St. Clare clenched his jaw. There was no more point in arguing. He stood from his chair.

  “Miss Steele will be at the ball this evening,” Allendale said. “You’ll secure the waltz with her, and the supper dance as well. Make it your particular priority. I want an heir by next year.”

  “You leave little time for courtship.”

  “Blast your courtship!” Allendale bellowed at St. Clare’s departing back. “Do your duty so I can die in peace!”

  The Trumbles’ carriage rattled toward Green Street. Both Maggie and Jane sat silent within it. They’d uttered not a word between them since leaving Mr. Wroxham’s office in Fleet Street. What was there to say? The solicitor had made Maggie’s situation plain enough.

  She stared out the carriage window, her thoughts drifting, as they often did, toward Beasley Park. To the household servants she’d grown up with, and the tenants she’d come to look on as her own family. She had a responsibility toward all of them. They were her people.

  “You’re not too dreadfully disappointed, are you?” Jane asked.

  Maggie turned to look at her friend seated across from her in the carriage. “I am, rather. Not but that I didn’t expect—”

  “It’s my fault. It was I who gave you reason to hope.”

  “Hush. You did only what a friend would do. A very dear friend.”

  Jane sighed. Clad in a slate-colored carriage dress and plumed bonnet, she appeared the very picture of an elegant and sensible lady. One who was accustomed to addressing problems with efficiency. “I do think that Mr. Wroxham might have found some way to extricate you from the restrictions of your father’s will. It’s an injustice if I’ve ever seen one. And the law is supposed to concern itself with fundamentals of fairness, is it not?”

  Maggie smoothed the skirts of her pale blue pelisse. It was fitted tight through the bodice, with a decorative belt fastened high at her waist, and military-style braiding trimming the collar and sleeves. The sort of garment one wore when embarking on a campaign. She’d felt guardedly optimistic when she’d put it on this morning. As if she might conquer the problem of her father’s will as readily as a general conquered a foe on the battlefield.

  More fool her.

  “Fundamental fairness for men, perhaps. But not for ladies.”

  “No, indeed,” Jane said. “We must seek justice elsewhere, it seems.”

  “Where?”

  “By petitioning other men, I suppose. Powerful men who might argue on our behalf.”

  “Why would any of them trouble themselves over me? I made no allies during my younger days in town. Quite the reverse. I daresay there are many gentlemen who would be glad to see Fred take me in hand.”

  “Oh dear. I hadn’t considered that. You were much talked about. And when you refused every offer of marriage—”

  “You know why I did—”

  “Yes, yes. I know. At the time, I thought it rather romantic.”

  “It was headstrong and foolish is what it was. What I wouldn’t give to go back and do it over again, knowing what I know now.”

  “You would have accepted one of them?”

  A knot formed in Maggie’s stomach as she recalled her previous suitors. Perhaps she should have chosen one of them. A gentleman who would have been kind. Someone she could have managed, who would have allowed her to run Beasley Park as she saw fit. It needn’t have been a romance. It needn’t have been him.

  Nicholas.

  Viscount St. Clare.

  Shadowed images of the two men intermingled in her mind. She couldn’t think of one without seeing the other. And yet, St. Clare still refused to acknowledge the truth of his identity.

  Maggie was beginning to wonder if maybe she’d got it all wrong.

  What if St. Clare was telling her the truth? What if her long illness and dual periods of mourning—all those months of darkness and solitude—had addled her wits? Had left her longing for Nicholas so keenly that she was seeing him in a man who was nothing but a stranger to her? An attractive, dashing stranger, but a stranger nonetheless.

  “Margaret?” Jane prompted.

  Maggie exhaled a deep breath. “No. I wouldn’t have married any of them.”

  “And you won’t marry Fred, will you?”

  “I want to say no.”

  “Then say it.”

  “I can’t. Not if it means relinquishing my estate.” Maggie clasped her gloved hands tightly in her lap. “Beasley Park means everything to me, Jane. I won’t allow Fred to take it from me.”

  “He’ll take it anyway,” Jane said. “He’s not going to become more manageable once you’re wed. He’ll become worse. Men like him always do. Odious men who would use the law to oppress the ladies in their care. Oh, but I do think he’s awful, Margaret. An absolute tyrant.” She glanced out the window as the carriage came to a halt in front of the Trumbles’ town house. Her face tightened. “Speak of the devil.”

  Maggie followed her gaze. It was Fred, or rather, the back of him, ascending the steps to the door and disappearing inside. She’d have recognized that coppery hair and those brawny shoulders anywhere. “What is he doing here? I’d have thought he’d still be abed.”

  The footman opened the carriage door and handed them both down.

  “Something must have happened to drive him from his rooms,” Jane said as they climbed the front steps to the house. “We shall soon find out.”

  Inside, the butler informed them that Fred was waiting in the drawing room.

  Maggie stripped off her pelisse, bonnet, and gloves, and smoothed her hair into order. “I’ll go to him, Jane. It’s best he and I speak alone.”

  “Very well,” Jane said. “But only for a quarter of an hour. You know you shouldn’t be seeing him without a chaperone. And certainly not if he’s in a mood.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Maggie promised. “If there’s anyone I know how to handle, it’s Frederick Burton-Smythe.”

  Bold words and ones that she reminded herself of as she entered the Trumbles’ drawing room. Fred was standing near the bank of green damask-draped windows. At the sound of her footsteps, he turned. His right arm was bound up in a cloth sling, held close against his chest. She supposed it was meant to take the weight off of his injured shoulder.

  “Margaret.” His eyes raked over her. The cut of her new muslin day dress showed off her figure better than anything she’d worn in years.

  “Fred. This is a surprise.” She crossed to a petit-point chair near the marble fireplace and took a seat. She couldn’t risk the gilded silk settee. It would only encourage him to sit beside her. “I wouldn�
�t have thought it advisable for you to be out as yet. Has your physician allowed it?”

  He came to join her, lowering himself into the delicate chair across from her. The carved legs gave a creak of protest at his bulk. “I’m hale as a horse. Only a trifle sore.” A frown darkened his brow. “I expect you’ve heard what transpired.”

  “The day of your duel? I’ve heard that Lord St. Clare bested you.”

  Fred’s already mulish expression transformed into a scowl. “It was dumb luck. The wind was high, else my bullet would have struck him first. It came very close to doing so. His sleeve was singed. But I don’t expect Miss Trumble and her brother will have told you that part of the story. Gossiping busybodies always get their facts wrong.”

  She looked at him steadily. He was angling for a fight. No doubt his pride was hurt. “Is this what you’ve come to see me about? Gossip about your duel?”

  “Not about my duel,” he said. “The gossip has been about you.”

  Her brows lifted. She affected a look of unconcern, even as a flicker of uneasiness set her on her guard. “Oh?”

  “I’ve been hearing countless tales. Indeed, people have been at great pains to bring them straight to my door. Tales of you and the man responsible for this.” Fred lifted his elbow in its sling only to drop it back against his chest with a thump. “I’ve come to find out if the tales are true.”

  “How on earth should I know?” she asked. “I don’t even know what it is you’ve heard.”

  “That he’s been making advances toward you,” Fred replied sharply. “I demand that you tell me what’s been going on. I have a right to know. If he’s been coming here—”

  “Is that what they’re saying?”

  “Yes, dash it all. They say he’s been calling on you here. That he’s been seen with you in Bond Street, and at Hookham’s Library. That he’s even taken you driving in Hyde Park. And all of this—”

  “Really, Fred.”

  “All of this,” Fred raised his voice, “after the blackguard shot me through the blasted shoulder!”

  Maggie’s nerves jumped. From childhood, Fred had been a hothead and a tyrant. As a grown man, however, he’d rarely shouted at her, preferring to exert his dominance with high-handed edicts and masculine condescension.

  But not now.

  Now, he was, once again, the formidable bully of her youth.

  “Be reasonable,” she said. “It was you who issued the challenge. You who shot first. What else was he to do but return fire?”

  “Has he called on you here? Have you received him?”

  There was no point in lying. It would be easy enough for Fred to discover the truth, if he didn’t know it already. “Yes. On both counts.”

  His face darkened like a thundercloud. “I forbid it.”

  “You have no right—”

  “Try me,” he said. “You’d be hard-pressed to stay in London with no funds of your own.”

  “Rubbish.” Her gaze locked with his. She refused to be intimidated. “You can withhold my money, but you have no control over my person. I can go where I like and see whom I like. I can marry anyone—”

  “Marry him!” Fred launched from his chair. “You wouldn’t—”

  “I might.”

  “Margaret—”

  “And pray don’t loom over me in that overbearing manner. You’ll give me a cramp in my neck.”

  He reluctantly dropped back into his seat. “I won’t ask if he’s proposed to you, for I know full well he hasn’t. He’s made no secret that he’s courting Miss Louisa Steele.”

  Maggie stared at Fred. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she’d heard him correctly. St. Clare was courting Miss Steele? That beautiful porcelain doll of a girl Maggie had seen him with at the theater? The young debutante in the first bloom of her youth?

  She shook her head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true. He took her driving yesterday and escorted her to Lady Colchester’s ball that same evening. To hear tell of it, the pair of them were inseparable. Waltzing together, dining together.”

  Maggie hadn’t attended the Colchesters’ ball. She was saving her strength for Lady Parkhurst’s ball on Saturday. It was to be a grand affair. Maggie’s first and only ball of the season, and one where she had hoped she might attempt a waltz with St. Clare. Then again…

  He hadn’t called yesterday. And he hadn’t come today. Not yet. He hadn’t even sent his usual bouquet of flowers.

  “Miss Steele is this season’s incomparable,” Fred went on. “Her father is the younger son of the Earl of Lindsey, which makes her more than suitable as a match for a viscount. The ton is already talking about her marriage to St. Clare. If he’s paying attention to you at all, it’s not because he wants to wed you. It’s because you’re—”

  “What am I?”

  “Come, at your age, you can’t expect—”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “You’re six and twenty. If a man like St. Clare is paying attention to you at all, he can have only one thing in mind, and it’s not to make you his wife.”

  “How dare you!” Maggie’s temper boiled over at last. “To make such insinuations. You don’t know anything about him.”

  “No one does! He’s never been seen before in England. There are reports he’s not even legitimate. Why else would the Earl of Allendale have kept him away so long?”

  She looked at Fred in disgust. “Is that the rumor your spreading now? I knew you were spiteful, but this is the absolute limit. To accuse someone of—”

  “Not me. It’s in the papers where anyone can read it.” Fred leaned toward her. “And I won’t be called spiteful, not when I’m only endeavoring to protect you.”

  “To protect me from St. Clare, you mean.”

  “And others of his ilk. So long as you’re in town, you’re fair game to them. A lady past her prime, who makes a show of herself at the theater and in Hyde Park—”

  “Past my prime!”

  “You’re obviously not angling for a husband. The whole of society knows you’re meant to marry me. It’s what your father wanted.”

  “My father never understood the first thing about you.” Maggie moved to rise.

  Fred anticipated her, catching her by the arm in a harsh grip. He hauled her up in front of him, far too close for her comfort.

  An unaccountable jolt of fear went through her. Despite his bluster, Fred had never resorted to brute force. Not where she was concerned. “Let go of me,” she said.

  “You will listen to what I have to say.” His grasp tightened, as if he could force her to obey him by a show of physical strength. “Go home, Margaret. You’ve had a fortnight’s holiday. Let it be enough. Go home,” he said again. “Ready yourself for our wedding.”

  “I never said I’d marry you.”

  “We both know that you will. You’ll do anything to keep Beasley Park.” A peculiar light shone in his eyes. “Can you not find it in yourself to love me a little? I’m not the ogre you make me out. All I require is that you—”

  “I said let go of me.” She wrenched free from his grasp. “Do you think anything in the world could ever induce me to love you after what you did to Nicholas Seaton?”

  Fred froze where he stood. It was as if the name had turned him to stone. A name Maggie hadn’t uttered in nearly ten years. “What did you say?” he asked in a dangerous whisper.

  She took a step back from him. Her heart beat swift as a hare caught in the sights of a hunting hound. “I believe you heard me.”

  Fred advanced on her. “That boy—that bastard—was a thief and a liar. He stole your jewelry—”

  “Spare me that old story, if you please. I’m not as gullible as my Aunt Daphne.” She glared at him. “I see you for exactly what you are.”

  There was no remorse in Fred’s face. No sign
of regret over what he’d done to Nicholas so long ago. Quite the reverse. “He should have been hanged.”

  “If he had been,” Maggie said, “you’d be no better than a murderer.”

  Fred gave her an accusing look. “Is this why you continue to refuse my hand? Because of him? Because you’re still pining for him after all these years?”

  “Did you think I’d forget? You stole my happiness away from me.”

  “A stable boy.” He gave a derisive snort. “And for his memory you’d relinquish Beasley Park? I don’t believe it.”

  Her spirits, already so low after the visit to the solicitor, sank even further. “No. I’m not stupid. I may yet marry you. You’ve given me little choice in the matter. But make no mistake. Whatever the future holds for us, I shall never, ever love you.”

  The Parkhursts’ estate was located just outside of Chiswick. Maggie and Jane traveled there Saturday evening in the company of Jane’s brother and Aunt Harriet. It was a long drive from Green Street, but not a lonely one. The usually dark road was alight with elegant carriages bound for the ball, the glow of their lamps leading the way to the drive of a grand house emblazoned with torches.

  At a quarter past ten, guests were still arriving steadily. Traffic was backed up in the drive, coachmen only able to move their horses a few feet at a time.

  George rapped at the roof of the carriage, signaling the driver to stop. “We’ll get out here,” he said. “If you all don’t mind winding our way to the front steps? It will be quicker.”

  He handed each of them down onto the cobbled drive. It was a balmy evening, scarcely worthy of the light wrap Maggie had brought. She was glad to leave it behind in the carriage. Her new gown wasn’t meant to be covered up. It was made to be shown off—every shimmering, clinging inch of it.

  Indeed, Madame Clothilde had outdone herself for the occasion, creating a stunning confection of Clarence-blue silk, cut low at the bosom with short, fluttering sleeves and an overskirt embroidered with delicate beadwork that flashed and glittered in the candlelight.