Love and Other Perils

by Grace Burrowes

  “In a moment,” Max said. “I’d like a closer acquaintance with your collection first.” He pretended to peer at the nearest shelf full of books while Hamblin poured two glasses of brandy. The collection was in no order—a volume of poetry next to an herbal, a book of sermons between two of Mrs. Radcliffe’s works.

  Any learned treatises were hopelessly lost in the wilderness of bound volumes, tracts, and pamphlets. Antonia would be horrified.

  Hamblin brought Max a glass of spirits. “To your little experiments, Haddonfield.”

  If any pair of words had the power to sour Max’s digestion, it was little experiments. He’d been hearing it from indulgent sisters, taunting brothers, jeering classmates, and sneering tutors for as long as he could remember.

  “To truth, wherever that leads us,” Max countered, for the aim of his science was to enlarge upon known truths for the betterment of all.

  “Yes, that too, of course, and one truth I must discuss with you is that Jess needs a husband.”

  Max set down his drink untasted. “You have alluded to this topic before. While I wish the lady all good fortune, I cannot see that her situation is relevant to mine.”

  “Her situation, as you term it, has grown desperate.”

  The fire roared softly in the hearth, the clock on the mantel ticked quietly. “Desperate, sir?”

  Hamblin collapsed onto the sofa and took a hearty swallow of his drink. “You are an intelligent sort, Haddonfield, for all you lack a certain polish. Jess was indiscreet with an unsuitable party. She needs a husband whom society will accept. You are a fourth legitimate son. The likelihood of your progeny ever inheriting your brother’s title is nil, and you are in want of a wife. Somebody to see that your neckcloths are starched and your meals regular.”

  Max abruptly understood the theorem under consideration. “That’s your summation of a wife’s value?”

  “Creature comfort is no small contribution to a man’s well-being, Haddonfield, not that you’d grasp that yet. Jess will do her part by you; she knows she’s in a precarious position.”

  “May I ask who put her into this precarious position?”

  “I’d rather not say, but you will deduce the guilty party easily enough. Mr. Nagle took advantage of a young woman’s innocence, though Jess was by no means forced. She wanted to elope with him, thinking I would have to acknowledge the union then. Nagle refused to elope and wanted settlements in hand before he committed his future. When I offered only a modest contribution to his income, he changed his story.” Hamblin took another sip of his drink, no longer the jovial lord. He looked old, weary, and more than a little disgusted. “Nagle said Jess had thrown herself at him, as if he was powerless to resist. All very sordid, but not that rare a tale, I’m sure.”

  Couples anticipated their vows often, if not a majority of the time. That part wasn’t unusual at all.

  “Why not simply settle an adequate income on Nagle? Keep the principal tied up in a trust and put him on a short leash?”

  Hamblin finished his drink, pushed to his feet, and sighed. “Because I have lived my three score and ten, Haddonfield, or very nearly. When I expire, who’s to stop Nagle from plundering Jess’s inheritance? She’s all I have, and I have failed her.

  “Nagle will make my shortcomings look princely by comparison,” Hamblin went on. “He has gambling debts, keeps company with the wrong sort, and has squandered his own inheritance as well as his sisters’ portions. I’ve had a look into his situation, and the details are most unbecoming. If I’d been more careful, he and Jess would never have met, much less. . .” Hamblin waved a hand toward the cherubs cavorting on the library ceiling.

  And Nagle was the man Antonia had chosen to marry?

  “I am sorry for the burden this must be to you, my lord, but—”

  “I will pay you,” Hamblin said. “Handsomely. Very handsomely. You can explore the Amazon, visit the steppes of Asia, learn Mandarin and Hindi, and catalog bird species in the Antipodes. Whatever your scientific heart desires, as long as you make a credible pretense of being a husband to my niece. I am a wealthy man, and I am determined to see my Jess well cared for.”

  And there it was, the entire theorem, all but the quod erat demonstrandum. Max allowed himself a moment to consider the basic syllogism.

  Max Haddonfield is passionate about science.

  Well run experiments cost money.

  Therefore, Max Haddonfield’s entire future can be had for a large enough sum of money.

  A month ago, Max himself would likely have considered the logic valid. “Miss Huntly is still in love with Nagle?”

  Hamblin scrubbed a hand across his brow. “She thinks she is, and the harder I try to convince her otherwise, the more she won’t hear my criticisms of him. She’s young, Haddonfield, and so very stubborn. A white marriage would likely suit her, but she won’t insist on it.”

  Max did the only thing he knew to do when his calculations wouldn’t come right and his conclusions were thrown into disorder.

  “I must have time to consider your offer, my lord, though I doubt I will accept.”

  “Haddonfield, you are accounted a decent fellow. Nobody has a word to say against your integrity, and Jess is really a very sweet girl.”

  “I’m sure she is, but I am not her choice.” And she is not mine. “I bid you goodnight. You will hear from me within the fortnight.”

  He left his host pouring another brandy in the cozy library full of cheaply bought books, and stepped out into the cold night air. Hamblin had set a puzzle before him, one with multiple variables. Jess wanted Nagle, Nagle wanted Antonia’s fortune, and Max had no idea whatsoever regarding Antonia’s wishes.

  He did, however, have an increasingly firm grasp of his own.

  Max had taken to playing the scarf game with the kitten after the day’s calculations were complete. While the wee beast pounced, scooted, and leapt about, Max weighed possibilities and considered options.

  He’d finished double-checking Dagger’s math from the previous day—the boy seldom made errors any more—when it occurred to him that Beelzebub was nowhere in evidence. Dagger had gone out to dispose of the day-old breads—or sell them, which Max considered more likely—leaving Max to the calculations.

  “Beelzebub?”

  No paw appeared from under the sofa. Edward remained on Dagger’s cot, snoozing in a heap with Hannibal; the other three cats were draped in their usual perches.

  “Bee-elzee-buuuub!” Max called. He got down on all fours and peered under the sofa.

  No cat.

  Dagger had left bearing a sack, which meant. . . Max found half the day-old breads on the balcony, a flock of pigeons feasting on the lot. He was tossing the breads one by one to the cobbles on the alley below when Dagger trudged around the side of the building, his sack empty.

  “Where’s Beelzebub?” Max called.

  The boy gazed down the alley as if contemplating flight. “With Lucifer, purring away in some old biddy’s lap. She were calling him Mr. Beetles when I left. Lucifer’s run to fat and they call him Lukey-pie.”

  “Get up here, Dagobert.”

  “You said Beelz was getting too stout to be pathetic.”

  “I will not ask you again.” Max returned to the warmth of his apartment, half-amused, half-furious.

  Dagger came foot-dragging up the steps five minutes later, chin jutting, mouth a sullen line.

  “Why did you do it?” Max asked, taking the chair behind his desk.

  “Because somebody had to, and you weren’t getting on with it. She’s pretty—Miss Antonia, that is. She smells good too.”

  “I know she’s pretty, but you shouldn’t have to deliver the cats to their new homes. That is for me to do.”

  Dagger tossed his hat in a perfect arc, the cap landing neatly on a peg near the door. “You wasn’t—you weren’t doing it. Lucifer isn’t coming back. It was time. Who’s next?”

  The boy was avoiding Max’s gaze, avoiding Edward and Hanniba
l on the cot. They were awake and looking about as cuddly as a pair of stone sphinxes.

  “Please take off your coat.”

  Dagger complied, never a given with him, but instead of hanging up his jacket, he draped it over the back of the sofa and slouched over the armrest onto the cushions.

  “I never seen that many books. Never saw. Miss Antonia talks fancy. I could listen to her all day. Can’t understand half what she says, but she sounds all tidy and kind. She said Dagobert was an important French king.”

  Dagger sneezed, and for the first time in Max’s memory, took out a handkerchief—a pretty white linen handkerchief with red and green embroidery about the border.

  “Don’t you dare,” Max said, bolting across the room to snatch the cloth. “You nicked this from Lady Antonia, didn’t you?”

  Dagger folded his arms and looked away. “She asked about you.”

  “So you stole from her?”

  Something about the boy’s posture, the martyred set of his bony shoulders, the diffidence of his idle hands. . . A hypothesis popped into Max’s head and nearly broke his heart.

  “You think if you stop stealing, I will consider you ready for a post somewhere else, in a livery stable, as a porter, as a boot boy. You barely eat enough to keep a bird alive, lest I think you too healthy to bide here.”

  “You send them on,” Dagger said, sniffing loudly. “Six of ’em so far, and no end in sight. They think this is their home and then you’re tossing ’em out on their furry arses. Poor little mite can’t hear, and he’s dumb as a rock, and you’re probably already thinking how to ditch him.”

  Lancelot chose then to plummet from the desk to the floor. In the next instant, he went pronking sideways across the carpet, pivoting to attack the sofa.

  A tear tracked down Dagger’s cheek, even as he smiled at the kitten. “Shoulda called him Dunce-a-lot.”

  This mutiny was not about cats, or not only about cats. Max passed Dagger his own handkerchief. “That handkerchief is yours to keep. Lancelot is yours to keep, and you are mine to keep as long as you choose to bide here. You will doubtless grow up on me all too soon, and lead some famous expedition up the Nile and become fabulously wealthy. That cannot be helped, but for the present, I would very much appreciate your continued services.”

  Dagger appeared fascinated with Max’s handkerchief.

  “Every time I walk out that door,” Max went on, “I worry that I’ll come home and find you’ve done a bunk on me. I was sure you’d bolt before winter set in, now I’m hoping you don’t pike off come spring.”

  “Me? Leave?”

  “Like a cat, coming and going as you please, until one day, it’s all going and no coming home. You’ll get bored with the experiments, tired of watching the cats find new homes, bored eating bread three times a day.”

  Dagger tucked the linen into a pocket. A silence built, punctuated by feline rumbling.

  “I have a sister,” he said, as casually as Max might announce that the sky looked like rain. “She’s little. At the charity hospital. I take the bread there.” He heaved a very large sigh for such a small boy. “I won’t get bored, sir. Sissy is doing better since I started working for you.”

  Lancelot clawed his way up the sofa and into Dagger’s lap, then kept right on climbing, up Dagger’s shirt, until he was nose-to-chin with the boy.

  Seeing the skinny boy and the deaf kitten touch noses did something unscientific to Max’s insides. “What is your sister’s name?”

  “Nan. She’s too little to ’prentice yet, but the hospital won’t let the sweeps have her. I made ’em promise.”

  Dagger had been working for Max for months, and this was the first Max had heard of any siblings. “Have you any other family?”

  Dagger shook his head and got a kitten paw across the chin. “Just me and Nan.” He extricated Lancelot’s claws from his shirt and cradled the kitten against his shoulder. The rumbling grew louder, a deaf cat having no sense of his own ability to make noise. Dagger wiped his cheek on the kitten’s shoulder.

  Long ago, another small boy had felt friendless and misunderstood. He’d wiped his tears on the Principia, which was incapable of purring and in no wise endearing.

  “There is more to life than science.” Max hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

  “Is that a hypothesis, sir?”

  “It’s an eternal verity. Be here when I come home, please. See that our cats are here too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Smiling, affable Peter stormed through the library door in such a taking that both cats dodged under Antonia’s desk.

  “Antonia, what is the meaning of this?” He brandished a folded sheet of paper, and the Barclay sisters put down their books.

  “My letter means what it says, Peter. This is a public venue. We can discuss the matter at another time.”

  Peter’s hair was untidy, his cravat off center, and his sleeve bore an odd streak of something brown. “We will discuss it now, madam.”

  Antonia rose from her desk. “Your ladyship.”

  “When we are married,” Peter began, yanking off his gloves. “You will not take that tone with me. Proper deference to the man of the—”

  “Out.” Antonia snarled the word with more menace than she’d known herself capable of. “Now. You have no lending privileges here, and you have no business here.”

  “I have been patient long enough,” Peter retorted, twisting the buttons of his coat open. “More than patient, and now you turn your back on me, renege on an understanding that wanted but a few formalities—”

  “I said leave.”

  Both Barclay sisters had risen, each one holding a heavy tome.

  Peter was attempting to loom, but Antonia was wearing heeled half boots and she’d remained behind her desk. He lacked the height to intimidate her, and more to the point, she wasn’t in the mood to be intimidated.

  “If I leave,” Peter said, “you are coming with me.”

  He seized Antonia by the forearm in a painful grip, which was the outside of too much. She delivered him a stout slap with her free hand.

  “Unhand me, or I will allow you to starve in the gutter.”

  “Let her go, Nagle, or a peaceful end in the gutter will be your dearest aspiration, one I will deny you.”

  If Antonia hadn’t recognized that voice-of-doom tone, the whiff of fresh bread would have informed her of the speaker’s identity. Max Haddonfield, hair wind-blown, cheeks ruddy with cold, loomed at Peter like an angel of divine wrath.

  “Mr. Haddonfield,” Antonia said. “Good day.” He wore the same rumpled coat and the same disreputable scarf, and his expression promised death to Peter in the next three seconds.

  “My lady.”

  Peter stepped back and jerked on his waistcoat. “You interrupt a lovers’ quarrel, Haddonfield. Not the done thing.”

  “He’s not my lover.”

  “One gathered as much,” Max said. “Though a certain young lady of my acquaintance cannot say the same. He used her very ill indeed, because he thought he could toss her over and get his hands on a much larger fortune.”

  Antonia had suspected something drove Peter’s scheme to “keep the fortune in the family,” but hearing the details was still unsettling.

  “Jessica Huntly,” Miss Dottie muttered, still gripping her book. “Lost her aunt at exactly the wrong time, went a bit wild.”

  “We do keep up,” Miss Betty added. “Poor thing is headed for ruin. We tried to tell old Humbug he needed to take the girl in hand, but he would not listen.”

  “Nagle,” Max said, “you have behaved abominably toward not one but two women. The first will be the mother of your child, the second is your kinswoman. You will increase your chances of surviving this disgrace by apologizing to her ladyship.”

  A month ago, Antonia might have told Peter an apology was unnecessary, and one need not belabor a bad moment. That was then. Now, Peter’s behavior put swine to shame and he did very much need to apologize.
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  Lucifer hopped onto the desk and sat on the blotter with his tail curled about him. Beelzebub joined him, both cats regarding Peter as if he were a particularly loutish mouse.

  “Antonia, I am sorry if you misconstrued—”

  Max cuffed him on the back of the head. “Try again, Nagle. If that’s your idea of an apology, married life will be very uphill work for you.”

  Peter rubbed his arm. “Antonia, I am—”

  Another cuff. “Proper address when groveling, Nagle. You have much to learn.”

  Miss Betty harrumphed. Miss Dottie sniffed. Lucifer hissed, showing formidable fangs.

  “Your ladyship,” Peter said, “I am sorry if I have given offense, or if I in any way misunderstood the nature of your sentiments. I understand that we would not suit and I will take my leave of you.”

  “My lady?” Max asked.

  “Adequate,” Antonia said, “but something must be done for Miss Huntly. She has been grievously wronged.”

  Peter smoothed a hand over his sleeve. “She comported herself most indecorous—”

  Miss Betty drew back her arm, clearly ready to let fly with Reverend Fordyce’s wisdom.

  Antonia was beginning to enjoy herself. “Peter?”

  “Miss Huntly will have him,” Max said, “though she’s an heiress, and Lord Hamblin didn’t trust Nagle to handle her fortune responsibly. I found a solution for that conundrum.”

  Peter stopped fussing with his cuffs. “A solution?”

  “For Miss Huntly,” Max said. “She will marry you, but my brother has agreed to stand as trustee of her fortune. He’s an earl, and not a man who tolerates ill-bred behavior toward the ladies. Stands about”—Max held a hand four inches above the top of his own head—“that tall, and is something of an amateur pugilist. My oldest brother, equally competent with his fists and sporting a minor title, will happily serve as a co-trustee should that be necessary. If you misappropriate a single farthing of Miss Huntly’s money, your fate will be too unfortunate to mention in the presence of ladies.”

  “Mention it,” Antonia said. “Please.”