AN Unexpected Gentleman

by Alissa Johnson

  “And he discovered Sir Robert was their accuser,” Isobel guessed.

  “Yes, and that Connor’s assets had been seized by the courts. I asked my husband to intercede on Connor’s behalf as repayment for the kindness he showed Thomas. It would appear Gideon had some success.” She turned to Lilly. “Do you suppose the men are finished in the study? We should see what they’ve learned.”

  Lilly nodded but kept her gaze on Adelaide. “You will take the time to think? You’ll not be rash, or choose out of anger?”

  In a show of support, Isobel came to stand beside her. “My sister is nothing if not sensible . . . generally. She’ll make the right decision.”

  Adelaide reached up to squeeze the hand Isobel placed on her shoulder.

  “Then I’ll not worry.” Lilly bent to kiss Adelaide’s cheek, then gestured to Winnefred. The pair left the room arm in arm.

  Isobel blew out a long breath after their departure. “This is all very complicated.”

  Complicated, Adelaide decided, was too mild a word. It was an impossibly convoluted disaster, a hopeless tangle of questions and lies she had no choice but to try to unwind.

  Slipping off her shoes, she rose from the bed and began to pace. Where did she begin? Compromises and duels, highway robbery, false imprisonment, and stolen fortunes. It was too much.

  Her thoughts jumped about her head as wildly as the butterflies danced in her stomach. She felt off balance, just as she had after the whiskey, but there was nothing liberating in the experience. There was only dread, anger, and an abundance of confusion.

  Why had Connor done it? Surely it wasn’t merely to spite his brother. There were an infinite number of ways one could irritate a sibling. The vast majority of them did not require the ruin of an innocent bystander. Surely he wasn’t so coldhearted, so cruel. There had to be a better explanation.

  And if there wasn’t, then there had to be retribution.

  Determined, she crossed the room, threw open the wardrobe, and snatched her hooded cloak.

  Isobel leapt up from her seat at the vanity. “Where are you going?”

  “To speak with Mr. Brice.”

  “What? But you—”

  “I want an explanation. I cannot decide what’s to be done without an explanation.”

  “But you can’t,” Isobel insisted. “Even I know you cannot seek out a gentleman unattended.”

  “Really?” Adelaide clasped the cloak at her neck and gave her sister a bland look. “Why?”

  “Because it . . . You would . . .” Isobel managed an expression that was both a grimace and sympathetic smile. “I suppose you can do most anything you want now.”

  And you as well, she thought. The ton was all too eager to spread the shame of one fallen woman onto every member of her family. “He’ll answer for that.”

  Chapter 8

  It took no time at all to discover where Connor was staying. The staff were all abuzz over the unfolding scandal. According to the maid Adelaide questioned, Jeffrey the footman had overhead Lord Gideon mention the widow Dunbar’s cottage to his wife. The footman mentioned it to the housekeeper, and within twenty minutes, everyone knew.

  Adelaide imagined it had taken half that time to spread the news of her ruin.

  Rather than risk running into guests along the road, Adelaide slipped out the back of the house and followed a drover’s trail into town.

  The trip was scarcely more than a mile, an easy distance for one accustomed to walking. But in her haste, she’d forgotten to change into her half boots, and the thin soles of the slippers she wore now offered little protection from the rocky ground. The bottoms of her feet were stinging before she was halfway to town.

  The discomfort only added to her roiling temper. By the time she reached her destination—the two-storied cottage with green shutters and a tidy garden on the edge of town—she felt positively murderous.

  She strode to the door, gave it three solid knocks, and waited for the housekeeper or maid to answer.

  It was Connor who answered her summons, wearing trousers, shirtsleeves, and an expression of mild surprise.

  He flicked a glance over her shoulder. “Adelaide. Did you come here alone?”

  “Yes.” She tipped her chin up and kept her eyes studiously away from the open neck of his shirt. “Are you going to allow me entrance, or shall we hold court on the street?”

  He frowned slightly but stepped back to allow her inside. She swept past him into a small foyer that opened into a modest parlor dominated by an oversized settee and pair of upholstered chairs.

  “Does Lord Engsly know you’ve come?” Connor asked.

  She unlatched her cloak and slipped it from her shoulders. “Lord Engsly is not my guardian.”

  His mouth curved up, but whether he was amused or pleased by her statement, she couldn’t say. Either way, it annoyed her, and when he held his hand out for her cloak, she took perverse satisfaction in shaking her head and walking past him into the parlor without invitation.

  Connor navigated the narrow path behind the settee and retrieved a decanter and snifter from a built-in cupboard.

  “You’ll excuse the accommodations,” he said conversationally. “Private rooms were difficult to come by on short notice.”

  She stared at his profile as he poured his drink. On the way there, she’d given some thought on how best to begin the conversation. Ideally, it would start with a heartfelt apology from Connor, but he didn’t appear inclined to oblige.

  Nothing about Connor indicated he felt even a sliver of regret. There was an insolent quality in the way he looked at her, an irreverence in his tone when he spoke. He seemed to her to be an altogether different man than the one she’d known in the garden.

  She briefly considered going with plan B, which was to throttle him until he was very sorry indeed, but ultimately settled on plan C.

  “Why?” she snapped. “Why have you done this?”

  “To keep you out of Sir Robert’s grasp.” He held up the glass. “Drink?”

  “What? No.”

  “Then have a seat.”

  “I’ll stand.”

  “You’ve come for an explanation, haven’t you?” He waited for her nod. “Then sit. It’s a lengthy story, and I’d just as soon not stand for the telling of it.” He smiled as he came around the settee. “It’s been something of a trying day for me.”

  She reconsidered plan B but ultimately ground out, “How thoughtless of me,” and took a seat on one of the chairs.

  Connor sat across from her, leaned back against the cushions of the settee, and set his elbow on an armrest. “Comfortable?”

  She responded with narrowed eyes.

  “Excellent.” He stretched his legs out before him. “My father, as you may have guessed, kept two homes. One with his wife and heir, and another, sixty miles away, with his mistress and son. The arrangement was not a secret. I was acknowledged at birth and raised as the well-loved son of a wealthy baron. My mother and I wanted for nothing—funds, education, my father’s time and attention. All were to be had in abundance. We even enjoyed a limited taste of respectability in our little hamlet. My father made certain of it.”

  He paused to take a sip of his drink, and she almost filled the silence by proclaiming the baron a good man. But then she realized the baroness might have felt quite differently.

  Connor’s mouth curved. “You see the predicament. I cannot answer for my father’s treatment of his wife and Sir Robert. I knew him only as the man who made my mother laugh and taught me how to hunt quail and seat a horse.” He tapped his finger again. “We were happy.”

  “Sir Robert was not,” she guessed.

  “His mother certainly wasn’t. And who’s to blame her? Her husband’s flagrant infidelity must have been a constant source of humiliation. She took her own life when I was thirteen.”

  “No, she drowned,” Adelaide countered. Sir Robert had told her the story of his mother’s death not three weeks ago. “She went for a walk alon
g the banks of the estate’s lake, slipped, hit her head—”

  “She went for a walk in the estate’s lake. The only rocks involved were the ones stuffed in the apron that was tied about her waist.”

  It was a horrific image. “You can’t possibly know that.”

  “No, but Sir Robert could. It was he who found her.”

  That was worse. “He told you this?”

  “Indeed. Two years after the fact, and two seconds before he hit me over the head with the butt of a pistol and delivered me into the hands of a press-gang.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, as if he were relating the story of someone else. She hoped he was. The alternative was unthinkable.

  “I don’t believe you. It is illegal to impress a boy under the age of eighteen.” She felt foolish for the statement almost before she’d finished saying it. It was well known that a blind eye was often turned to infractions. The war had needed ships, and ships required able-bodied sailors.

  “I don’t believe Sir Robert would be capable of such a heinous deed,” she added, lamely. “He’s not a monster.”

  “Believe what you like. But the truth is, a carriage accident had taken my father and mother not six weeks earlier, and Sir Robert saw an opportunity to rid me of my inheritance and simultaneously rid Britain of a . . .” He glanced at the ceiling, remembering. “ ‘Murdering bastard son of a whore,’ I believe he put it.”

  “Murdering?” She didn’t want to believe that either.

  A lazy shrug of one shoulder. “He holds me accountable for his mother’s death.”

  “That is preposterous.”

  “Unjust at the very least. But by Sir Robert’s reasoning, if I’d not been born, I’d not have been acknowledged, and if our father had not acknowledged me, he could have kept his mistress in secret and his mother would have remained blissfully unaware of her husband’s philandering ways.”

  As she’d already used the word preposterous, Adelaide found herself at a loss for anything more to say. Her mind whirling, she rose from her seat without thought and began to pace. It was difficult to maneuver in the confines of the small parlor, but she found the space in front of the fireplace to be adequate.

  Connor set his drink aside and cleared his throat. “Adelaide—”

  She silenced him with an impatient shake of her head. She wanted the quiet to think. There was so much to absorb and consider. Too much. And why the devil did she have to do either? Even if Connor’s story were true—and she wasn’t altogether convinced that it was—she’d not been the one to toss him to a press-gang. Lord knew, she didn’t have his lost inheritance.

  She stopped and faced him. “Mr. Brice, I am sorry for . . . any unpleasantness you may have endured, and I am equally sorry that you and your brother should be so at odds, but this . . . none of this has anything to do with me.”

  “Unpleasantness,” he repeated softly. “Do you have any idea what life is like for an impressed sailor? What it was like for a fifteen-year-old boy?”

  “No, however—”

  “A hell beyond your reckoning. It took me nearly a year to escape. Months more of sleeping in the gutters of Boston before I had a permanent roof over my head, and more than a decade before I amassed the wealth I needed to return to Scotland. I’ve waited half my life for my revenge.”

  “Revenge. You . . . All of this . . . I am your revenge?”

  He stood up, slowly, and walked to her, a smiling golden devil. “You are a prize, sweet. But not the prize. I’ve a long list of treats in store for my brother.” He brushed the backs of his fingers along her jaw. “You’re but the first order of business.”

  Her fingers curled into her palms at the callous words. She wanted to slap him. Never before had she been tempted to raise her hand to another human being. But, oh, how she wanted to now.

  “You . . . selfish . . . arrogant . . .”

  “Bastard?” he offered.

  “Liar,” she bit off. “I don’t believe a word, not one word of your story.”

  “You’ve had more truth from me today than you would in a lifetime with Sir Robert.” He bent his head and softly asked, “Would you like to know who owns your brother’s final debt?”

  “What has that to do with . . . ?” The insinuation seeped in slowly, like a thick poison into her blood. “Another lie,” she whispered, but there was little conviction behind it.

  “Ask him. Wolfgang’s not half bad at keeping a secret, but he makes for a poor liar.”

  She shook her head, rejecting his words, even as she demanded, “Tell me what you’ve heard.”

  “It’s for Wolfgang to tell you.” He straightened with a small shrug. “You’ll not believe it from me anyway.”

  Because he was right, and she detested that he should be right, she changed the subject. “You’d no right, no right to drag me and my family into an ugly feud with your brother.”

  “No, I didn’t,” he agreed easily. “And yet, it was the right thing to do.”

  She tried to speak through her fury but managed only a strangled sound in the back of her throat.

  Connor had no trouble expressing himself. “Be reasonable, Adelaide,” he cajoled. “Better yet, be unreasonable. Marry me and enact your own revenge. I’ve a fortune you can squander, homes you can burn to the ground—”

  “Then where would I put my second family?” She spat. She was shocked at her own words. Shocked, and pleased.

  His lips tucked down in a thoughtful frown. “I’m afraid I have to insist on fidelity.”

  “You humiliated me,” she ground out.

  His gaze skittered away for a split second before returning to hers. It was the smallest of movements, the stingiest hint of discomfort, but it was something. It was enough. She felt a burgeoning sense of power, of righteousness, of pure spleen.

  “You humiliated my family. You tore my name to shreds and show not the slightest hint of shame now to be holding the remnants of it ransom. Do you think I care one jot for your insistence? You’ll pay for what you’ve done. You’ll pay dearly. And the punishment will be of my choosing.”

  He cocked his head at her. “Is that a yes?”

  The sound that emerged from her throat was too strangled to pass for a true snarl. Out of insults, she snatched up her cloak, spun on her heel, and headed for the door.

  “Adelaide.”

  His tone was soft and undemanding. The sudden change startled her into turning around.

  He looked at her without smiling and spoke without humor. “Humiliating you was never my intention.”

  She absorbed that silently for a moment. “Is that an apology?”

  “It is.”

  She didn’t believe for a moment he was in earnest. The man changed his nature as if he were trying on a closet full of new coats. She didn’t care for the cut of anything she saw at present.

  She tipped her chin up and looked down the length of her nose. “How noble of you. Let us see how sorry you are after I’m done with you.”

  Pleased with what she felt was a very fine parting shot, she spun about again to leave.

  “You’ve forgotten your shoes.”

  She stopped, felt the cool floor on her toes through her stockings, and grimaced. Damn and blast. She didn’t remember even taking them off. Wiping her face void of any expression, she straightened her shoulders, turned about, again, and did her utmost to retain a regal appearance as she scanned the room for her misplaced footwear.

  “Far side of the chair,” Connor said easily. “Why did you take them off?”

  It was a habit she developed years ago to keep her penchant for pacing from wearing out soles faster than she could afford to have them replaced. But no force in heaven, earth, or hell could have dragged that admission from her lips.

  She crossed the room in silence instead, snatched up her slippers, and began to pull them on where she stood.

  “Did you walk all the way here in those?”

  It wasn’t necessary to look at him to know he was sc
owling. She could hear it in his voice. She remained stubbornly silent, determined to be done, absolutely finished, conversing with the man.

  “I’ll take you back in my carriage,” he decided.

  Apparently, she wasn’t finished. “No.”

  “I’ll saddle a horse for you—”

  She didn’t know how to ride. “No.”

  “I can’t allow you to walk about—”

  “Allow? You forget, Mr. Brice, you are not my husband.”

  “Not yet.”

  She gave him a withering stare. “Do you really believe I would choose you over Sir Robert? That I would cast aside the affections of a perfect—”

  “Coward?”

  It only added to her anger that the same word had crossed her mind. “Gentleman. And bind myself to a man who wants me only as a means to render his brother miserable?”

  “Sir Robert is miserable by nature. I would marry you to see him furious. He turns a glorious shade of purple.”

  “This is a jest to you.” Disgusted, she marched out of the room.

  Connor followed. “On the contrary, I take my revenge quite seriously. You ought to consider doing the same.” He stepped in front of her and grinned. “Marry me, Adelaide. Render my life a living hell.”

  She shoved him aside, threw open the front door, and strode out.

  The moment Adelaide disappeared, Connor let his smile fall. He retrieved a pair of pistols from the drawer of a small side table, then walked to the door that connected the parlor to a study. With a quick tug of the handle, he swung the door open. Gregory and Michael tumbled in from the other room, a stumbling mass of arms and legs. Connor took hold of the older man and let Michael fend for himself.

  Michael caught himself on the windowsill, narrowly avoiding rapping his head against the glass pane. “Damn it, boy. Might give a man warning.”

  “A man might have better things to do than eavesdrop like an old hen.” Connor let go of Gregory and held the pistols out. “Take these. Follow her back.”

  No one with a pair of eyes and an ounce of sense would mistake them for a pair of highwaymen. But two finer shots were not to be found in all of Scotland.