“You’re out of your mind!” Juliet cried.
But Gareth had gone very still. He stared at Snelling, so shocked and insulted by this outrageous suggestion that for a moment words failed him. Finally he gave an incredulous little laugh. “You insult me, sir, by even suggesting such a thing. Gentlemen do not engage in swordplay for money, but only for the settling of affairs of honor!”
“Sixty-forty, then, and use of the Dower House at Swanthorpe.”
“The devil take you, I will not stoop to such vulgarity!” Gareth cried angrily. “If I thought you were a gentleman and therefore worth challenging, I’d call you out myself for even suggesting such a thing to me!”
“I am a businessman, nothing more. But you take some time, my lord; have a think about it,” Snelling said affably, clapping Gareth across the shoulders before reaching into his pocket and drawing something out. “Here—” he grinned and held the object out—“take my card.”
Gareth did not accept the card. He did not even look at it. Instead, he regarded Snelling as he might a particularly disagreeable piece of offal, then turned and sheathed his sword.
“If you are not away from here by the time I turn around, Snelling, I am going to make what I did to your fighter look trivial compared to what I shall do to you.”
Snelling held up his hands in truce, then tossed the card into the straw at Gareth’s feet.
“A good night to you, then,” he said, pleasantly, and with a sly, private grin, turned and left, waving casually over his shoulder before disappearing into the rainy darkness.
“The nerve of that rogue!” Gareth cried. “What bloody cheek! Does he think me some dancing bear at a traveling show, to be exhibited for money? What in God’s name is this world coming to!”
But Juliet was handing him back his pistol. “Never mind him,” she said, as practical as ever. But Gareth noticed that her face was very white, her mouth tense. “We have a bigger problem. A much bigger problem.”
“Yes, we need to find a place to stay for the night.”
“Worse.” She held out his surtout. “The envelope containing the money the duke and Perry gave us? The one we tucked in this pocket?”
Gareth felt everything inside of him stop. He stared at her, knowing what she was going to say before the words even left her mouth.
“I think it must’ve fallen out while we were running from Snelling. God help us, Gareth, it’s gone.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“What do you mean it’s gone?”
“I just looked through both pockets, Gareth—it isn’t here.”
He swore softly and checked the pockets himself, even turning them inside out. She was correct; the envelope of money was lost. Grim-faced, he took her arm and turned back in the direction from which they had come. They backtracked through the rainy streets, desperately searching the cobbles, the pavements, the puddles. They looked down the alleyways; they even went all the way back to the brothel.
Nothing.
“That’s it, then. It’s gone. We’re in a fine mess now,” Gareth muttered, running a hand through his wet hair. “Damn it, Juliet, why didn’t you mind the thing more carefully?”
“I thought the pocket was buttoned!”
“It doesn’t have a button!”
“Well, how did I know that? Besides, there’s no use getting angry with me, you’re the one who put it there!”
“And you’re the one so worried about money—you’d think that such a person would safeguard it a little better when it’s entrusted to them!”
They stood there in the pouring rain, getting more and more wet, panicky, and angry. Finally, Juliet drew a heavy breath and said through her teeth, “That’s it then, Gareth. We have to go to de Montforte House, whether you like it or not.”
“No.”
“For God’s sake, would you please be reasonable? We have no money, no place to go, and we’re standing here getting soaked; we don’t have a choice!”
“No. You have a choice. I will not stay there.”
“Fine, then—I’ve made my choice!”
“What?”
“I want you to take Charlotte and me there at once!”
He stared at her, his nostrils flaring with ire, his whole manner one of stiff affront. And then he took her arm and brought them back to the mews, where he saddled Crusader and led them all back out into the rain. It beat down, cold, driving, merciless. Charlotte, growing damp despite her protective covering, began to cry.
Tension mounted. Neither spoke. Tempers simmered, barely banked beneath set, angry faces.
“Are we almost there?”
“Another five minutes,” Gareth replied tersely. God help him, he’d had enough—of responsibility, of problems, of having to think too much. In short, of everything that had happened since he’d spoken the words “I will.” Is this what marriage was all about?
He took them straight to Lucien’s town house, standing in all its imposing splendor behind a tall, wrought-iron fence. He shoved the gates open and marched Juliet up the steps, barely coming to a stop before pounding his fist on the door.
It was opened by Harris, the duke’s impeccably dressed butler.
“My lord!”
“Harris, this is my wife and daughter. They will be staying here until I can return for them. Good night.”
“Gareth!” Juliet cried angrily. “You can’t just leave us here!”
“You wanted to come here, and so I’ve brought you.”
“You can’t just go off like this!”
“Juliet, I am not going to stand here arguing with you!”
“But what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Where will you go, then?”
“Does it bloody matter?”
“Yes!”
“I don’t know,” he muttered. Retrieving his damp surtout from her, he turned away, storming back through the rain toward where Crusader waited just beyond the iron fence.
He never looked back.
They were safe.
It was all he could do not to send Crusader galloping off down the street in relief. The weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders and he had his life back, if only temporarily. No wife, no baby, no responsibility, nothing. It was wonderful! It was liberating! It was strange. And with every stride that Crusader put behind them, Gareth grew more and more confused, not knowing whether to celebrate his newfound freedom—as was his first impulse—or drown the weird and underlying sense of loss that went with it in a bottle of whiskey. Normally, he would’ve rejoiced. But now … now, as his anger began to abate (maybe it really was his fault they’d lost the money; after all, he had been the one to put it in the pocket) and Crusader carried him farther and farther away from his wife and daughter, he wasn’t so sure. He felt empty, confused, and almost a little lost without them.
What the devil was the matter with him?
He slowed the horse to a walk. The wind flung a sheet of rain into his face as he turned the corner and made his way through Hanover Square. He pulled his tricorn low, watching the water spout from its peaked front in a little stream that splashed the pommel of the saddle and raced down the dark, drenched leather. Steam, and the strong scent of horse, rose from Crusader’s wet hide as the big hunter moved easily beneath him. What a god-awful, hellish night.
He went south, uncertain where to go, what to do. He was wet, miserable, and cold, and his momentary relief (he could not quite call it euphoria) at having no one to worry about save himself was already fading. He tried to resurrect it. No use. He considered going to his club on St. James but decided on second thought that that might not be such a good idea. Soaked, unshaven, and looking like the worst sort of riff-raff, he was in no shape to rub elbows with the elegant gentlemen at White’s. Besides, he had no money.
No money.
Fear snaked through him, and for the first time, the extreme gravity of the situation hit him.
He had no money!
&nbs
p; What was he going to do?
He could ask his friends if they could lend him something, but that idea came with its own dead ends. For one thing, he had no idea where any of the Den members were. For another, most of them weren’t in any better a financial state than he was, save Perry, who—unlike the others—had come into his inheritance and therefore had blunt to burn.
Perry. Yes, he’d seek him out. Good old Perry would help him.
He turned Crusader down St. James toward White’s. The street was wet and shiny with rain, the windows of the various clubs glowing a warm and welcoming gold through the sheets of water pouring out of the black sky. He looked at them wistfully. How he longed to go inside his own, to shed his drenched clothes and spend the night drying out before the fire, but he wouldn’t be caught dead inside, looking the way he did. It was embarrassing enough just to have to walk up the steps to inquire after his friend.
The answer, when it came, was grim. No, Lord Brookhampton was not there; he had left an hour before with a group of his friends. Gareth knew just what friends Perry must’ve left with. He swore and continued on, soaked and miserable and never needing those friends as much as he needed them now.
He went straight to Brookhampton House, where Perry’s mother told him her son was abed, then slammed the door in his face. He went to his other friends’ town houses, and was given a similar reception by their mothers, who had listened too much to Perry’s, bore grudges against him, or just plain thought him a bad influence on their darling sons.
By one in the morning, he was shivering and hungry. By two, he was getting a sore throat. He continued on, numb with fatigue and growing despair. By three, exhaustion had caught up with him, and he began to wander aimlessly. He rode to Grosvenor Square, back to Hanover Square, up and down Pall Mall and Piccadilly endless times. No Cokeham, no Chilcot, no Audlett, nobody. Huddled against the cold rain, he turned Crusader north once more, the horse’s hoof beats echoing against the dark and silent buildings that lined Albemarle Street. A young urchin slid out of the shadows begging for a penny, and Gareth, feeling as miserable as the lad looked, reached into his pocket for a coin, forgetting that it was long since empty. The boy cursed him furiously, spit at Crusader’s feet and fled back into the rainy night. Gareth was alone once more.
With no other recourse, he let the big hunter carry him back to the mews near Bruton Street. The building was damp and cold, but at least it was shelter from the rain that sheeted down outside. Shivering, he pulled the wet saddle from Crusader’s steaming back, rubbed him down with a few handfuls of straw, and, carrying the saddle, stumbled wearily to a corner, where he tossed the tack to the stone floor and stood contemplating it for a moment, so tired that he could not muster a single coherent thought from the jumble of meaninglessness they’d all become.
In a stupor of fatigue, he scraped and kicked a few bits of old straw together over the uneven floor. Then he lowered himself to the cold damp stone, pulling his drenched surtout up over his shoulders and resting his head against the saddle. Beneath him, the stone reeked of horse manure and felt like a slab of ice. Trails of cold water still drizzled from his hair and down his neck. He had never been so miserable in his life.
Exhaustion eventually won out. His eyes drifted shut and Lord Gareth de Montforte fell into a deep and troubled sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was a wet and wild night on the Lambourn Downs, too. The wind drove through the vale in which Ravenscombe nestled, tearing off a roof tile here, snapping branches from a copper beech there, whistling up and over the high downs and through the gatehouse of Blackheath, where it made the roses in the garden thrash and bob, moaned around the mighty castle, rattled the windows in their casements, pummeled the ancient stone with rain. But the castle stood firm and high and invincible. It had thwarted both man and the elements for five hundred years and would probably thwart them for five hundred more. Its great towers stood out against the black sky, its close-cropped lawns were an expanse of dark velvet. Only the library windows glowed with light, proclaiming the presence of one who had not yet gone to bed.
In a chair beside the cold hearth sat the duke, his face grim as, by the light of a single candle, he opened the missive that had just arrived from his man in London.
My dear duke,
I hope it will set your mind at ease to know that his lordship your brother married Miss Juliet Paige this morning under special license (and at great expense, I might add), and that all went as well as could be expected. This evening, Lord Gareth brought his family to Mrs. Bottomley’s; careful inquiries have assured me that they have merely taken a room there for the night, nothing more, and so, satisfied of their safety, I have taken my leave of them and will reassume my clandestine vigil in the morning, at which time I shall report again.
C.
Lucien leaned forward, set the note on a table, and kneaded his brow. So he’d married her. Good. But as he gazed out over the rainy, night-shrouded downs and thought of them all off in London, he could not take pleasure in his success. Leave it to Gareth to bring his family to a whorehouse, of all places. God only knew where he’d take them tomorrow.
He rose to his feet, pacing slowly back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. Was he right to have placed any faith in his brother? Was he right to have any faith that the girl could turn him around, make something of him? And why had she consented to stay at a whorehouse? Lucien swore softly beneath his breath. If it weren’t for Gareth’s fierce pride—and Lucien’s own dwindling hopes that, through adversity, Gareth would finally straighten himself out—he’d order Armageddon saddled, ride to London, and drag them all back here himself. Nerissa had begged him to do it. Andrew, who wasn’t speaking to him, had threatened to go himself. And now to hear that Gareth hadn’t taken his family to respectable lodgings but to a damned brothel.
He shook his head. No. He would not intervene, no matter how tempted he was, no matter what lows his brother had sunk to. He had to give Gareth this chance to prove himself.
Had to allow him this chance to grow up.
He picked up the candle, pocketed the missive, and moved silently from the room, the meager flame glowing against Blackheath’s ancient stone walls as he moved through the silent, shadowy corridors. He began to climb the stairs. Sleep might evade him, as it often did on these nights when the wind moaned around the castle and he relived that terrible moment when he’d discovered his father dead on the tower stairs all those years ago, but at least he could find peace in one thing: Gareth might be up to his usual depravity some miles away in London, but through his informer, the Duke of Blackheath was watching over him most keenly, indeed.
He had already lost one brother.
By God, he would not lose another.
In a lavish bedroom at de Montforte House, a humble young woman from the colonies lay dreaming on soft, goose down pillows. A thick, fluffy counterpane warmed her body, her skin was silky after a bath in lavender water, and the fire that crackled in the hearth filled the room with heat and light.
On a cold stone floor in a nearby mews, the heir presumptive to an English dukedom also slept, his pillow the hard leather of a saddle, his blanket the wet surtout that covered his shivering body. His skin was damp and raw, and the rain that beat down outside found its way in through the leaky roof, creeping beneath his sleeping body via grooves and channels in the filthy stone floor.
The horizon greyed with the approach of dawn. The night man came in leading his tired horse, a lantern in his hand. He saw the nob lying apparently drunk on the floor, stepped over his huddled body with indifference, and put his horse in its narrow stall. A few feet away, the drunk was mumbling something in his sleep, tossing fitfully.
But Lord Gareth de Montforte was not drunk. He was dreaming.
You are lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless. You are an embarrassment to this family—and especially to me. When you grow up and learn the meaning of responsibility, Gareth, perhaps I shall treat you with the respec
t I did your brother the respect I did your brother the respect I did your brother.
Gareth tried to storm away. But this time he could not just go riding off to escape Lucien’s savage rebuke, could not just laugh in his face and go find some other trouble in which to involve himself, because this time it was a dream, and there was nowhere else to go. Instead, he tried to escape by clawing toward wakefulness, but the dream held him in its clutches like an iron shackle around a prisoner’s leg, and there was no getting away.
And still, Lucien, gazing down his nose at him with the highest contempt, those damning words echoing over and over.
Lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless.
“Oh, just sod off, will you?” Gareth cried, lashing out at that austere, forbidding face. “Bugger off and leave me the hell alone!”
He turned over and saw Charles.
“Hello, Gareth.”
He froze, staring in open-mouthed shock. Then his heart began to beat in sudden, fragile excitement. He blinked, disbelieving. “Charles?” he croaked.
Charles smiled. He was in his regimental uniform with its blue facings and shining gorget, his sword at his side. For a long moment he looked at Gareth, his face tender with brotherly love; then he shook his head, gave a tolerant little smile, and, turning on his booted heel, began to walk away.
The command to follow was an unspoken one. Gareth picked himself up, shot Lucien a triumphant glance over his shoulder, and dashed off after Charles, hardly daring to breathe.
Incredibly, Lucien did not try to stop him.
His brother led him through the fields, never turning to see if Gareth followed, never pausing to wait, but continuing on his way as purposefully as if he were leading his company into battle. How long they walked Gareth did not know. Where they were going he could not even guess. But eventually Charles paused, and as Gareth came up beside him, he stood back and pointed to something just becoming discernible through a drifting envelope of gray mist. Gareth gasped. It was their mother, having tea in the garden with Perry’s mother, her smile as gentle, loving, and heartwarming as he remembered. His heart leaped. Mama! he cried excitedly, but she went right on talking to the Witch, never hearing him, never even knowing he was there. And as the mists cleared even more, Gareth saw that a fine summer day surrounded them, with the pond sparkling like a blue mirror in the distance. Far off in the muck and bulrushes that ringed it, he could just see a bit of color: himself as a little boy, hiding in the weeds with Perry and giggling in preparation for their grand prank.
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