Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 04] (3 page)

V
ISCOUNT RAVENTHORPE STRODE SWIFTLY
up the Strand toward St. James’s. He had dismissed his carriage before entering the solicitor’s office, for he had not wanted to advertise his presence there either by leaving it standing at the curb or by having it go round and round the block. The Strand at Villiers Street was not a back slum by any means, but a nobleman’s carriage would nonetheless soon draw notice.

He was a tall man, over six feet. Thus his long stride would cover the distance between Clifford’s office and Brooks’s Club in good time. Despite his carefully expressionless demeanor, his thoughts were in such turmoil that at Charing Cross he nearly stepped into the path of a team pulling a heavy dray wagon.

An urchin’s cry of, “Hold up there, mister,” brought his head up just in time to avoid disaster. Tossing a sixpence to the delighted lad, Raventhorpe paused just long enough for the dray to pass before striding on again into Cockspur Lane and Pall Mall, his long coat flapping around his ankles as he went.

He wondered if Clifford would speak to anyone else about their meeting. Solicitors were by nature generally a closed-mouth set, but one could never be certain. Over the past months, he had learned that many rules fell by the wayside when the richest man in London drew notice. Grimacing, he decided that, had anyone told him a year earlier that wealth could be as much of a curse as a blessing, he would have laughed himself to fits.

Until recently, he rarely had spared a thought for the opinions of others. Even now he told himself that no one’s opinion mattered but his own. His life was orderly; and, aside from his duty to the young queen—agreed to before he had come into his vast inheritance—what he did or did not do concerned no one but himself. The difficulty was that he was finding it necessary to remind himself of that fact rather frequently of late.

Still, it irked him that Clifford now might think him so greedy that he could not bear even one of Augustus Benthall’s many possessions to go to someone else. He had carefully explained to the man that he was simply curious about the odd disposal of the Upper Brook Street house, and concerned about the welfare of his great-aunts, its two elderly tenants. However, his interest had apparently surprised Clifford. Indeed, the solicitor had seemed downright disbelieving. His bushy eyebrows had shot upward as he said, “I believe your man of affairs must have made the details plain to you long since, when he read you the will, my lord.”

“Not all the details,” Raventhorpe had retorted, feeling his temper stir. “I’ll grant you that the will made it clear enough that Augustus
believed
his aunts could remain in the house, but—”

“There can be no doubt of that, sir.”

“That ought to relieve my mind, I’m sure, but I do not know how you can be so certain when Augustus left the house away from the family.”

“The property was Mr. Benthall’s to bequeath as he pleased, however.”

“Yes, yes, I know it was, but surely you must understand my concern. We do not even know this person, this … this …”

“Lady Letitia Deverill has spent most of her life in France,” Clifford said, his tone icy enough to inform Raventhorpe that he had stepped over the mark. “Her father, the seventh Marquess of Jervaulx, has served our great country for many years in a diplomatic post there.”

Drawing breath, and smiling ruefully, Raventhorpe said instantly, “I beg pardon, sir, if I have given offense, but as I said, I am gravely concerned about the welfare of my elderly relations.”

“You might easily have left that concern to your solicitor’s attention, my lord,” Clifford said softly. His eyes had narrowed and grown steely, making him suddenly look far more formidable than he had only moments before. He said grimly, “The most likely motivation for this call of yours is simple, not to say vulgar, curiosity. I must presume,” he added before Raventhorpe had gathered his wits to retort, “that you already have taken up this matter with Benthall’s man.”

“I have, and he’s as mum as mincemeat,” Raventhorpe said. “I own, sir, that I did hope you could cast light on this business. Say what you will about my motives, for a man to leave an excellent property away from his own kith and kin, to a family whose politics not only conflict roundly with ours—”

“It certainly is a fine property,” Clifford interjected, silencing him.

The solicitor had said no more than that, but although the steely look had softened, Raventhorpe was certain that Clifford still disbelieved the purity of his motives. In truth, he was not so sure of their purity himself, which stirred his temper now as much as his failure to glean any useful information from Clifford did.

Having by that point accurately taken the solicitor’s measure, he had left without asking anything more about Lady Letitia or her family. That she was the sole daughter of the Marquess of Jervaulx he knew from Augustus Benthall’s will, but he did not think he had ever met her. In all likelihood, she and her noble parents had attended the young queen’s coronation the previous May, and it was likely that he and she had attended many of the same festivities at the time. It was even possible that he had stood up with her for a dance at one coronation ball or another. To be sure, such an instance would have required a proper introduction, but he met so many chits during any given Season that he had long ceased to take much notice of them unless they were diamonds of the first water or noteworthy heiresses.

The last thought brought a slight smile to his lips. He no longer needed to look for an heiress to undo the damage done over the years to his family estates. He could marry now where he chose, but he could see no reason to change his mind about Miss Susan Devon-Poole. Tall, blond, with a generally stately manner, and charmingly compliant, she would—as he had suspected nearly a year ago, shortly before the coronation—make him an excellent wife. Her respectable fortune, once a significant enhancement, now paled in comparison to his; but its existence would make her feel worthy of him. She would have to stop saying “my goodness me” every time she opened her mouth, but he would soon cure her of that.

That Miss Devon-Poole might reject him did not occur to him, for the notion was so absurd that it had not occurred to him even before he had inherited Augustus Benthall’s vast fortune. Even then he had known his worth. The heir to the earldom of Sellafield, despite its wasted estates, had been quite eligible enough to attract her. She certainly would not reject him now that he was the wealthiest man in London.

He wondered if she suspected his interest. Though he had taken care not to exhibit it, not wanting to raise false hopes before he had quite decided, he suspected that she did. He knew that she had sent young Fothering to the rightabout, but that showed only that the chit had sense as well as beauty. Fothering would not suit her at all. With his fluttering attention to her, the scrawny fop always gave one the impression of a hummingbird attempting to drink nectar from an alabaster statue.

The walk from Villiers Street took him no more than twenty minutes. When he passed into St. James’s Street, away from the traffic of Pall Mall, quiet closed around him until, as he passed Pickering’s Court, a rattle of horseshoes and wheels on the cobblestones behind him broke the momentary stillness. A heavy town carriage soon drew abreast of him and a familiar voice shouted his name.

Turning, he saw that the carriage’s lone passenger, a fashionable young man with wavy dark hair tumbling in wings over his forehead, had let down the window to lean out. Waving his beaver hat, he shouted at the man on the box, “Pull up, damn you! I want to get out.”

The coachman complied, and Sir Halifax Quigley—known to his familiars as Puck—descended gracefully to the pavement.

Raventhorpe watched with amusement as his friend, who had been behaving like a rowdy schoolboy moments before, transformed himself into a young man about town the moment both highly polished shoes touched the cobbles.

Quigley wore a well-cut bottle-green coat, cream-colored smallclothes, a fashionably ruffled white shirt, and a well-starched cravat. As he moved toward the flagway, he restored his hat to his head and tucked a walking stick under his arm in order to straighten his coatsleeves and smooth his pale yellow gloves. He was shorter than Raventhorpe by a head, and built on slender, more graceful lines. “I hope you’re going to Brooks’s,” he said as they met on the flagway.

“Where else?”

“Now, if that ain’t just like you, Justin. Where else indeed? I haven’t seen you in weeks, but here you are, walking along the street like a commoner, and you ask, ‘where else?’ Where’s your carriage, my dear fellow?”

“At home by now, I expect. How are you, Puck?”

“Sound as a whistle, but don’t think you can divert me that easily. Not when I’ve dismissed my carriage and condescended to walk with you.”

“You needn’t have done so.”

“What was I to have done, then? Stand waiting on Brooks’s stoop till you arrived? If you say that you’d have got into the carriage if I’d invited you to ride less than a block, I’ll tell you to your head that I don’t believe it.”

“Then I won’t say any such thing. I like that coat.”

“Yes, so do I. You ain’t just coming from Sellafield House at this hour.”

“No.”

“I knew it! Wrong direction.”

“Your powers of observation amaze me.”

“No, they don’t. Never did.” Puck remained silent until they had crossed to the other side of the street, then said, “If it ain’t Sellafield House, then where
do
you come from, Justin?”

“I hesitate to snub you, Puck, but—I beg your pardon. Did you speak?”

“You know I didn’t,” his friend retorted. “I snorted, because you never hesitate to snub me, my lad—or anyone else, come to that.”

Justin sighed. “Others tend more easily to heed my gentle hints, however.”

“They’re afraid of you, that’s all.”

“Dear me.”

Puck chuckled. “You know they are. For that matter, when you lose that damned temper of yours, you can scare the liver and lights right out of me, too, even though I know you’d never do me any great harm.”

“I trust that I may live up to your confidence.”

“If that’s by way of being a warning, it missed its mark,” Puck said as they crossed Park Place. “You’d never strike anyone so short of matching your weight.”

“Perhaps not,” Justin said, turning to mount the wide steps of Brooks’s. As they approached the front door, it opened, and when they entered the stately hall, the porter bade them a good morning, taking their hats and gloves, Puck’s walking stick, and Justin’s long coat.

“It’s good to see you back in London, sir,” the porter said to Justin. “Lord Sellafield is in the front morning room, by the bye. He asked that you wait upon him there if you should chance to come in.”

“Thank you, Marston.” Justin glanced at Puck. “I expect I shall be detained some few minutes. Do you want to accompany me, or—”

“No, no,” Puck said hastily. “I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”

“But my dear chap, it’s nearly eleven o’clock!”

Puck raised his eyebrows. “I believe some deep meaning lies concealed in that observation, but I don’t immediately perceive what it may be.” Appealing to the porter, he said, “One can still get a passable breakfast here, can one not, Marston?”

“One can, indeed, sir.”

“There, you see, Justin. Will you join me when you have attended to his lordship’s wishes?”

“I will, but not to have breakfast. I ate mine several hours ago.”

“Gad, is that why you noted the time? But surely you know that I do not rise with the sun, or ride in the park when there is no one to admire my seat or the cut of my coat! Nor do I have affairs of business to occupy my time. I ask you, what other purpose would serve to roust me out of bed before nine o’clock?”

“I can think of none,” Justin admitted. “Go eat your breakfast, then, and I will join you when I can.”

He found the Earl of Sellafield alone, sitting in a comfortable chair in one of the morning room’s two window embrasures. The morning papers surrounded his lordship, most of them on the floor near his chair where he had dropped them.

“So there you are,” he said gruffly, scowling at Justin as he lowered the paper he had been reading to his lap.

“Good morning, Father,” Justin said. “How may I serve you?”

“Where the devil have you been?” the earl demanded. “I was out by the time you arrived yesterday. You were asleep when I got in last night, and although I thought I’d got up early enough to have a word with you this morning, they said you’d gone out. Moreover, you neglected to tell Latimer whither you were bound.”

“I did not know you wanted me,” Justin said, stifling irritation and glad that, for the moment at least, they had the room to themselves.

Sellafield snapped, “Good God, sir, it is no more than common courtesy to make your whereabouts known to the rest of your family.”

“As you do, sir?”

“You keep a civil tongue in your head,” retorted the earl, who rarely bothered to tell anyone where he was going or when to expect his return. “I’m still your father, by God, and I’ll have none of your damned insolence. Sit down, damn you! I cannot talk to you whilst you loom over me like the Colossus of Rhodes.”

Drawing a chair nearer, Justin obeyed, saying evenly, “How much?”

“Just a trifling amount,” the earl said without pretending to misunderstand him. Casting his newspaper to the floor to join its fellows, he added matter-of-factly, “Yesterday was settling day at Tatt’s, you know.”

“I cannot see how that concerns me, however, or you, since you assured me that you would back no more horses until you could better afford to do so.”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” the earl snapped. “I am not a child, and if I choose to attend the races, I must put money on my friends’ entries, even when I’ve none of my own nags running.”

“But since you have no money to waste—”

“Waste, is it? Now, see here—”

“Waste,” Justin said firmly. “You should be putting your energy into restoring our estates, sir. Since they are the primary source of your income—”

“Dash it all, how can I put them in order without money? This is a fine state of affairs, I must say, when I am forced to discuss such things with a son who owes me both his duty and respect. Had your mother inherited Augustus Benthall’s fortune as, by rights, she should have, I’d have full control of that fortune, instead of you, and I could do all that needs doing at Sellafield and more. But as it is …”