Fearless

by Lynne Connolly

  “With Sir Lucas Shapcott, I see,” Val said. He slowed his pace and turned his head to glare at Hunter. “Keep your distance.”

  Hunter’s nostrils flared. Nobody spoke to her like that. Charlotte had another moment of triumph. She would miss Val.

  “Thank you for today. I intended to make the purchase myself, even if my father sent the gown back, which he probably would have done once he saw it.”

  “Then don’t let him see it until you wear it. Until it’s too late for him to change his mind.”

  Her laugh rang around the park, and her aunt looked up. They were too far away for Charlotte to see her face, but not the way she was eagerly turning to her escort.

  “You do not know my father,” she said bitterly to Val. “His word is law. He would slice the gown off me if I tried such a trick.”

  “It’s not a trick. It is your choice to dress as you wish. What is wrong with what you have chosen?”

  It was good of him to say her choice, but he’d had as much say as she, only because she had little experience at such matters. Choosing her own clothes was exciting but daunting. The difference was Val had ensured she was happy before she made the choice. She’d have ordered half a dozen and hang the expense, if she’d dared. That would have put her in hock for years, but she didn’t care.

  Most of her larger bills went directly to her father. Consequently, her pin money did not amount to much. She had enough to buy stockings, gloves, shifts, and other necessities. The jewelry she had was mainly from the family vault and consequently old-fashioned, far too grand for most purposes these days.

  “It is extravagant,” she said to Val, recalling her father’s strictures on other ladies. He would go home and dissect them all, before he turned on Charlotte and picked her appearance apart. “He will say that it is not a practical fabric, and it will have to be cleaned far too often. It is too fashionable and it will have to be remade next season. The fabric will not date well. It is far too extreme. It is too tight, the lace too fine.”

  Val held up his hand. “Stop! I see his reasoning and condemn it all. You must not tell him I said that, if you please. However, I do not scruple to tell you that your father is far too much the great lord. He is a duke, it is true, but he must relax sometimes, surely.”

  A year ago, Charlotte would not have noticed Val’s agitation, but now she did. His blue eyes sparked, and fine lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. Even her recounting of her father’s less harsh behavior had driven him to that. She did not dare tell him of the rest.

  “Not that I have seen.” She bit her tongue before she told him how much time her father expected her to lavish on him. She would be back on duty when she returned home, attending him during fashionable visiting hours. Some thought him a doting father because he insisted on being such an important part of his daughters’ lives. Charlotte knew better.

  Her shiver made him draw her closer. “What is wrong?”

  “Nothing. A chill, that is all. I am perfectly well, sir.”

  This man was far too perceptive. He had never been so before, had left her to her own devices during their long betrothal. What had raised his curiosity now?

  The kiss. That kiss had opened her up. One touch of his lips had turned her into a wanton, someone she hardly recognized, except that the person who had responded so fervently to his embrace had been buried deep inside her. He’d woken her.

  She would not wear the gown. She would send it back to Val unworn. That would appease her father and perhaps persuade him to expedite discussions with Val’s father to sever their connection.

  So why did her heart sink at a prospect she wanted so much?

  The bright day and the pleasure of her trip out melted away in the face of her unexpected sense of devastation at the prospect of losing him. She could not let herself grow even fonder of him than she had already. The disgraceful scion of a great house would go on his merry way and never realize how much letting him go had cost her.

  She would make sure of it.

  Chapter 5

  Val strolled down the stairs at the family’s London house, glancing in the pier glass as he passed to ensure his neckcloth was neatly arranged.

  Pausing, he looked at the small portrait of Charles the Second hung on the wall halfway down. He touched two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. The old roué was rumored to have fathered the Third Marquess, although he never formally acknowledged it. He probably didn’t want to upset the Second Marquess, who was not an even-tempered man.

  Unlike Val’s own father. The current Marquess, the fifth, was a much-loved father, with what Val would term a measured temper. He could usually control it, although Val wasn’t sure how he’d take his current news.

  Having ascertained from the footman in the hall that his father was in his office, Val tapped at the door. The impatient “Come!” didn’t sound promising, but he went in all the same. He had promises to keep.

  The leather-and-brandy smell greeted him the way it always did. The room hadn’t changed in his lifetime. A worn oak desk, glass-fronted bookshelves warped with age, filled with a mixture of well-thumbed books and estate folders and account books crammed the modest space. The rug on the floor was a worn example, ejected from another room a long time ago and now threadbare where his father’s feet had come into constant contact with it.

  The scratched leather top of the desk was evidence of his father’s industry, with oak boxes filled with papers and folders. Amongst them, he knew, was one labeled “Lord Valentinian Shaw.” It contained details of his inheritance and his marriage contract. Val did not rely on his expectations from the estate. He had made his own provisions for his future.

  His bow was met with an impatient wave of his father’s hand. “Sit. It isn’t as if I didn’t see you at breakfast. Your brother sends his regards. He’s blissfully happy. They are anticipating a happy event early next year.” He waved a letter. That must be from Val’s older brother, currently resident at the country estate with his beloved wife. They had visited London for all of two weeks at the start of the season and then left for home. People designated Marcus as “the quiet one,” but they didn’t really know him. Very few people did, but Val was one of them. So was his father.

  “I’m glad.”

  “Even more so because now you are under far less pressure to marry, eh?”

  Reluctantly, Val nodded. “They will produce a brood of children, I’m sure of it, sir.” The argument would no doubt help him. “In fact, that is what I wanted to discuss with you.”

  The marquess put his pen back in the stand and leaned back in the comfortable though worn chair he’d used ever since Val could remember. Val dragged a green plush upholstered chair over from where it stood against the wall and sat.

  He leaned his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands. He got straight to the point. “Lady Charlotte wishes to be released from our contract.” Nothing like getting the matter out in the open.

  His father was just as direct. “Why?”

  “She has found someone else she prefers.” He hated even saying the words.

  The marquess barked a laugh. “Ha! What, your much-vaunted charm and address failed you?” The marquess’s smile melted away. “I cannot pretend surprise. Your manner will succeed only with those who look for amusement and a little distraction. Lady Charlotte is a woman of intelligence. She wishes for more than amusement in a husband.” He grimaced. “You know she is in love with you, do you not?”

  Shocked, Val raised his head. “When we first met she was infatuated with me, but that is all. She wanted to love her husband, and I am, sir, at the very least, lovable. I ensured she was disabused of that. It would not be fair to allow her to continue in her illusion.”

  “If she was infatuated with you, surely that was her choice?”

  “I was her knight riding in on a charger to rescue her,” he said dryly. “You would be the first person to contradict that I am anything of the kind.”

  His father r
egarded him steadily. “I have my doubts,” he said. “I have sometimes suspected your scandals are much less than people suppose. Of late I have noticed signs that you are settling.”

  “Papa, I cannot settle. You know it. I’ve been that way since I was a child. I have grieved my mother. She’s said so any number of times.” The problem had troubled him until he worked out the solution—never to stay too long in one place.

  “Most children cannot settle. They grow out of it. I have no reason to believe that you are not the same.”

  Val knew better. His restlessness consumed him, except when he was involved in a new project. Then he could engross himself completely until the next bright idea came along. “I do not think I will ever grow out of it, Father, but I have learned to live with it. However, it would be unfair to subject to someone as constant as Lady Charlotte to my pets.”

  “Have you not noticed your change in mood recently?” his father asked.

  The question sounded casual, almost careless, but, aware of his father’s perceptiveness, Val was on his guard. He had no idea what his father meant. “I cannot see any change,” he said.

  “Sometimes the person closest doesn’t notice.” The marquess flicked back his lace cuffs and reached for his pen but did not dip it in the inkwell. Instead, he toyed with the slim quill, spinning it between his hands in a way that used to fascinate Val when he was a boy. “Recently your concentration on certain projects has lengthened. Your involvement with your cousins in a little family problem never wavered.” He looked up, one eyebrow arched in query.

  Val had enjoyed the “little family problem.” Very few families had a problem like theirs. “I had to see it through to the finish.”

  “Is it finished?”

  Val straightened up and leaned back in his chair, assuming his customary pose, one leg crossed negligently over the other at the knee. “We believe it has finished, yes. We may never be perfectly sure, but it seems reasonable to assume so.”

  His father was right, in one way. He had not noticed the length of time the project had taken. His venture with his brother was taking even longer. In fact he was attending a meeting after this uncomfortable interview with his father. Had his affliction really left him, or had he learned to cope with it? He could never imagine living in the country, devoting himself to one woman, as his brother had. Marcus was cut of entirely different cloth; steady and true, he rarely deviated from his path. Val, on the other hand, was constantly distracted by the new, especially if he had never encountered before. It would not be fair to subject Charlotte to his variable moods.

  However that would never happen. Charlotte had decided she was done with him, and so the matter was at an end. “To be honest, Papa, she deserves better. In a few years, I will want to move on to another love, to another mistress, and I will tear her heart out. She is constant and true.”

  His father took his time, playing with the quill, a frown furrowing his brow. Then he looked up, in his eyes sharply perceptive. “You do not do yourself justice, my son. You are intelligent, far more than is comfortable, and I believe that more than half of your problem is boredom. You will find constancy when you need it. But you’re past the first flush of youth.”

  Val smiled wryly. “If you are about to say that I will grow out of it, I doubt that very much. I do not think I’m any more intelligent than most of the people I know. Darius has a quick mind, for example, and can easily beat me in certain areas.”

  “Darius is another such. He has his own problems and his own way of solving them. It grieves me that he has chosen this path, but I will not cease to call him my son.”

  That was why they all loved their father so much. While he did not understand Darius’s problem, as he put it, he continued to stand by his son. Darius did not regard his preferences in bed partner as a problem, except that he was dancing with the law. Their father would never understand that, but it did not matter. He loved Darius as much as he loved his other children. Some would call him easygoing, but not the people who knew him best.

  “Nevertheless,” his father continued, “you have an exceptional intelligence. You pick up concepts that most people, including myself, labor long and hard over before we understand. Perhaps that is a gift you have to pay for.”

  Val did not want to admit how much his father’s words touched him. He cleared his throat. “Thank you, sir. I will try to justify your faith in me. But the topic remains. Charlotte wishes to accept the addresses of another man. I cannot in all conscience prevent her.”

  “Who is this man?”

  “Lord Kellett.”

  His father shrugged. “I’m not sure I know him.”

  “He is a viscount, wealthy and devoted to Charlotte. I have every expectation of him making her an excellent husband. He has intimated to her that if she were free he would make her an honest offer.”

  “And he has a peerage in his own right. Does that concern you at all, that you will not have one?”

  Val could tell the truth about that. “Not in the least. I’m making my own way and enjoying it. I will never stop being a Shaw. That in itself will assure people I do business with. Can you imagine me in Marcus’s position?” He laughed. “I would be even more trouble to you.”

  His father did not repress his shudder. “I have to admit that is not a prospect I regard with any enthusiasm.”

  “The peerage will no doubt have an effect when Charlotte discusses the matter with her father. I have to request that you begin negotiations to dissolve the contract between us.”

  The marquess shook his head. “I will not be the one beginning the discussions. Let the man come to me. He owns a neat little parcel of land near our estates in Yorkshire. That will prove an interesting negotiation point.”

  Val should have expected his father to be on point. He nodded. “I see your reasoning, but for Charlotte’s sake, do not prolong the discussions, please.”

  “For her sake, I might do so. But for the sake of my son, a little delay is to be expected.” The marquess leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk, threatening to topple a pile of roughly stacked paper. “Think about this action, Val. I want to see you happy, as your older brother is. With Charlotte you seem happier and more settled than I have ever seen you before.”

  “Nobody else has seen that,” Val said dryly. “Perhaps it is a figment of your imagination.” But even as he assumed his air of world-weariness, he knew he had lost that particular battle.

  Indeed his father had noticed more than he had. Only when the notion of losing Charlotte had arisen had he realized that he didn’t want to lose her. But it was too late now, and in any case, it was all for the best. She would not withstand life with him. Few people did.

  With his father apprised of the situation and his duty done, Val excused himself and made his way to his next appointment.

  He did not have to go far.

  Upstairs, the sound of men’s voices punctuated by laughter came from the direction of the library. After straightening his coat, Val flung open the door and joined the fray.

  The large table in the center of the room contained files and papers similar in appearance to the ones on his father’s desk. However these belonged to him and the other two men sitting at the table.

  They looked up at his entrance. “About time.” Darius ostentatiously consulted his watch, flipped the lid closed, and dropped it back in his waistcoat pocket.

  Darius’s salmon pink velvet coat, heavily embroidered and laced with gold, hung on a peg by the door. Feeling the warmth of the day, Val removed his own of more sober dark green, with a more acceptable level of decoration, and hung it next to his brother’s extravagant confection.

  He tapped it with a disparaging finger. “That is hideous. Whatever made you order such a disaster?”

  His twin grinned. Darius’s grin was entirely his own, crooked up on the right side, giving him the impression of a demented elf. “I heard old Lord Simpson declare that one could not tell ordinary men from the per
verted kind by the clothes they wore. I will show him differently when I go to White’s later today.”

  Val groaned and clapped his hand to his heart in a mock groan. In reality he wanted to hunt Lord Simpson down and give him a pummeling he would never forget, but he had long since learned to control his protective instincts toward his brother. Darius could fight his own battles, and he would not appreciate offers of sympathy. He dealt with his detractors in his own way. “That must have cost you a pretty penny.”

  “We can afford it.” Darius tapped the paper in front of him. He glanced at the man sitting next to him, their cousin Ivan Rowley, the third man in the venture.

  Ivan, a man of forbidding appearance with thick dark brows and black hair to match, proved that he could smile as broadly as any other man. “We are well on the way to riches beyond the dreams of avarice, if we haven’t reached that point already.”

  Casting aside his problems, Val took a seat and pulled the nearest paper toward him. “So where are we?”

  “Two ships at sea, two due in port any day, and a collection of new ventures,” Darius said. He flicked through the accounts book. “Word is getting around and we’ve received a few requests.” He glanced up at Val, his brows arched. “You’ve been busy, brother.”

  Leaning back, Val smiled like a cat who’d stolen a whole pitcher of cream. “The venture is more fascinating than mere gambling. A card game is limited, which is its interest, but I have never played a game so changeable. Card games were the training for this.”

  Darius nodded. “They certainly were.” Val haunted the fashionable areas, listening to rumors and speculation, adding his own mite. Darius had access to places the other two did not, but they made up for it in other ways. Ivan took the coffeehouses and clubs, where men spoke of serious business matters. Their tiny office in the City was his domain for the most part.

  For the last two years, the three men had worked together in the terrifyingly volatile world of insurance. Shipping insurance was a growing field, and the three men had access to areas others did not. They’d used it. Val had entered it, fascinated by the numbers. The calculations that had kept him engrossed when he gambled proved even more fascinating here because there were so many more variables and the imponderables to deal with. Then he got into portfolio management, where they could insure a safe cargo at a low rate and increase it for a riskier cargo. They were investing in the cargoes from time to time, too. “We should ask for a percentage of the profits instead of a flat rate.” Val tapped the accounts.