The Last Killiney

by J. Jay Kamp

  * * *

  Two hours later Lord Oliver came calling.

  Asking for James, the man claimed he’d come straight from Brooks’s and he’d better see Lord Wolvesfield; James had to be told, preferably by a friend and not a stranger.

  “He’s gone out,” Paul said, greeting the Irishman at the drawing room door. “Em, I think to meet a fellah for coffee, some naval lieutenant; I could find out which one—”

  “Please, would ye mind?”

  While Paul went off to ask the maid, Lord Oliver coughed and fidgeted, hummed and hawed, until finally Ravenna couldn’t stand it anymore. “James has to be told about what?” she asked.

  “Ah, m’lady,” Lord Oliver growled, “you’ll pardon me sayin’ it, but that Launceston’s a menace, a genuine hellion. As your brother’s a decent man, it’ll kill him to learn what your cousin’s done.”

  Cousin, indeed. Hadn’t James warned her to tell Christian nothing, to give him nothing to use against the family or, what had James said? The seams of the world might come undone.

  Now all of London knew about James’s feelings for Sarah. As Lord Oliver explained, Christian had taken the old marquess’s letter from Ravenna’s commode, and he hadn’t hesitated to march right over to Brooks’s and pass it around amongst the gamblers and beaus.