My Pleasure (13 page)

“My mother was the daughter of an earl. Last time I checked, they outranked marquises,” Ram replied, finally stung out of his insouciance.

“Her father had been stripped of his title and his lands. She was a Scot and a papist!” the marquis returned angrily. “She refused to convert regardless of my wishes or how it would affect your father or yourself. She was no better than the regent’s bawd, Mrs. Fitzhugh, and as she was not yet twenty when they ‘wed,’ your parents’ union was not even legal!”

“It must have been most vexing when your son refused to deny his marriage to my mother,” Ram replied flatly.

With an obvious effort, the marquis brought his fury under control. He would not win the young man by alienating him. All hope of his line continuing, the noble name and title being handed down through future generations, was lost. Unless he could convince Ramsey Munro to accede to his wishes. For that purpose, he could control his ire.

“It doesn’t matter what he denied,” the marquis said. “The state doesn’t recognize his marriage. Or you.”

“I shall contrive to live with my disappointment.”

“You don’t have to.”

Ram glanced up from the grape he’d been assiduously peeling. He even smiled. Blast his insouciance.

“Your mother left you nothing,” the marquis said flatly.

“The exact same sum the butcher of Culloden, your friend the duke of Cumberland, left her family.”

“Cumberland was no friend of mine. Nor do I care about some Scottish family’s loss. If they had wanted to keep their lands, they should have supported the crown.”

“Forgive me for boring you.”

The marquis ignored him. “But most of all, I do not care because it is in the past. The past is dead. Like my son. Like your mother.”

“You mean sons, don’t you?” Ram asked softly.

A quake ran through the marquis at this sudden stab to his heart, and Ramsey smiled, noting his shiver. It was not a pleasant smile. Damn. Of course he would know. Everything that had been reported to him about Ramsey Munro suggested he would.

“I believe you sired three males after my father,” Ram said. “One died in infancy, and another died some years later in an accident at Eton. The last was killed five years ago. All dead without heirs. Without, or so I am told, even siring a few handy bastards.”

He would not be provoked. “I would declare you my legal heir.”

“Would you now?” Ram emitted a snort of amusement and, clamping his hands on the ends of the chair arms, heaved himself to his feet. He glanced at the clock on the mantle above the fireplace. It was old, the marquis noted, and exquisitely made. No other decorations stood beside it. As a boy, Ram had a life lavish with luxuries and indulgences. Did he miss them? How could he not?

His father’s wealth had been provided not by the marquis but by a vast entailment coming to him through his maternal line. Wealthy, ostracized, unheeding, and bold, Ram’s father had denied his wife and son nothing money could buy: servants and carriages, tutors and instructors, sumptuous furnishings, exotic food, and fine clothing. Ram had lived like a young prince.

For nine short years.

Until his father had died in a duel defending
that
woman’s honor.

Then…oh yes, then Ram’s privileged life had changed. Now the once-entitled boy sat as a cool, dark stranger before him in a nearly empty room in a cheap part of London. Drinking stolen wine. How could he fail to want what the marquis offered? The marquis set his glass of claret on the table.

Ram yawned. “You must forgive me,” he said. “I find I am suddenly exceedingly tired. Gaspard will show you out.”

“Did you not hear me?” the marquis asked incredulously. “I have offered to have you legally recognized. As I have offered last year and the year before and the year before that. I can make you the next marquis of Cottrell!”

“You cannot do that,” Ram said lightly. “You cannot simply make a bastard a marquis. Only the crown has that power.”

Ah. So, that was why he failed to be impressed. Ramsey did not yet grasp the extent of the marquis’s power. Nor did his grandson know about the plan the marquis had implemented years ago. “And those who have the crown’s ear,” he said.

“As do you?”

“Yes! Now do you understand the great gift that I am offering you?”

“Indeed, I quite understand, sir,” Ram answered. “And as I wrote you last year and the year before that and the year before that, I am not interested. I am surprised you could imagine I would be.”

The marquis gaped at him. “I do not believe you. You are playing a game. Trying to make me beg. Trying to make me say I am sorry. That I regret my treatment of your father and his—your mother. I won’t do it. I won’t!” He slammed his fist down on the table and the glass tipped over, spilling claret on the bare floorboards.

Ram looked at the pooling ruby liquid without emotion. “On the contrary, sir. I would expect nothing less from you than what you have already demonstrated.”

“You think you are being noble,” the marquis said angrily. “But you are being stupid. An obstinate, ridiculous boy. You aren’t going to make your mother live again by denying me.”

“No,” Ram agreed politely.

The marquis’s mouth flattened, and he swung away to collect himself, thwarted and infuriated. Ram’s refusal to meet his provocations was unexpected and therefore unplanned for. Fury and hatred had been emotions he had been prepared to deal with. He had not anticipated an imperturbable young man capable of more disdain than Lucifer.

He tried another tack.

“Accept my offer,” the marquis said quietly, forcing himself to the same degree of chill politesse his grandson evinced. “You cannot want to live like this, an outcast, a beggar eating the scraps from your betters’ tables, knowing all the while that they are not your betters.”

Ram smiled. “They are extremely tasty scraps, sir.”

The marquis ignored his flippancy, his gaze fixed on Ram’s face, looking for any sign, the slightest fissure in his composure. “How you must hate it, as heir to your mother’s pride as well as your father’s.”

“Hate what?”

“Society’s pity at the same time as their patronage. It must taste like ashes in your mouth.”

Nothing.

“Do they greet you when they chance upon you in the streets? Do they invite you into their clubs? Yes? But only to give exhibitions of your prowess. Like a circus bear.”

Not a flicker.

“Do their wives and daughters speak to you?” Was that a slight tightening about the corners of his mouth? Had his words found a sore place? There was but one way to tell: Press harder. “But what a foolish question! Of course they do. Look at you!

“Yes,” the marquis mused thoughtfully. “I am certain they speak to you…after dark. Or in the back stairwell of their mansions, while their husbands lay in sodden slumber at their gaming tables.” A mistake there. The tension in Ram’s smooth countenance disappeared. The marquis hurried to recoup the lost ground.

“No,” he said. “No. There would be no husband waiting for
your
lady, would there? You would not tolerate someone else’s dregs.

“Who then? A widow? Or perhaps an adventurous young lady? Does she allow you liberties in the hushed seclusion of her carriage or in the leafy bowers of the pleasure gardens? But then…does she refuse to acknowledge you the next morning during her ride in the park?”

There! A flash of some deeply rooted emotion in the pacific coldness of that brilliant gaze.

“Indeed,” he said softly, “I am quite certain the ladies do more than just speak to you.”

“I will have Gaspard show you out.”

“You have too much pride to be kept, like a secret pet, by some lady. You are no male whore.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Ram said. But tightly.

“On the contrary. I know a good deal about you. I have had you investigated: your finances, your associates. I know you better than you assume. For instance,” he said, “I know you have your father’s inability to accept substitutes or compromises. I know you have his charm.

“I doubt any woman could stand proof against him when he wanted something badly enough. I doubt many have managed to stand proof against you. Indeed, your reputation is widespread.”

Ram scoffed. “You can’t have it both ways. One minute my Cottrell looks doom me to a future as some sort of cicisbeo, the next I am so fatally attractive to members of the opposite sex that I have but to put forth a suggestion, and they race to ruin themselves at my behest.”

“I have not made myself clear,” the marquis answered in a silky voice. “They do not stand proof against you, at least not for a few hours. But I suspect they recover their senses quickly enough once they emerge from your bed. Ladies such as you would wed, bed, and beget your heirs upon, ladies ofquality, are quite careful about that sort of thing, recalling how much the cost of love is once passion has been spent.”

“The sort of ladies I would wed?” Ram echoed incredulously. “You know nothing, nothing about what I want. I assure you, sir, should I someday be overcome with the need to propagate, there are plenty of virtuous—”

“Virtuous shopkeepers’ daughters?” The marquis laughed, shaking his head. He had him. He could see the dull color bronzing the pale, fine skin, the slight flare of his nostrils. The fool was in love. With a lady.

And she would not have him.

“No, Ramsey Munro. You were born to splendor and privilege, like a young caliph, a connoisseur, trained from the cradle to appreciate only the best, the finest, the most exquisite. Look around. You have precious little, and yet what you do own is exemplary.

“How many nameless paupers own a Japanese blade from the seventeenth century? And how many nameless bastards wear gold roses in their cravats? Yet you do.”

There. He could see how close to the bone he’d cut. “Think about my offer.”

“I don’t have to. I don’t want anything that belongs to you. I don’t want your name, your money, or your title.”

“But whoever has you so enthralled, she might. If you take my offer she might actually accept the use of your name for a lifetime, rather than the use of your body for a few hours.” The marquis rose with the aid of his ivory walking cane. He moved in a cramped, arthritic manner to where Ram stood.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I can see there is a woman. I read the signs. I’ve seen them before. With your father.

“And like him, you must have her, and you will never accept her on any terms less honorable than those you impose. But she, whoever she is, won’t have you. Not openly. Indeed. You ought to know that by now. Was there not one particular young lady a few years ago?”

“Get out.” Ram’s hands curled into fists by his side.

The marquis smiled complacently. “What gentlewoman would give up everything—honor, family, society—for you as you are now? At least with your father, there was ample inducement to fly in the face of convention and society. Your father was heir to a title and wealthy beyond reason. You are a bastard, and a poor one at that.”

“I said get out!”

“Tell me one thing. This young gentlewoman…do you think she’s even told you her real name? Or is she too discreet—or too embarrassed—to bother telling you any name at all?”

The marquis’s glance flickered to the trembling fists at Ram’s side. A shiver raced through him at the sight, a sensation long unfamiliar and now unaccustomed. He hesitated. For all his covert study of Ramsey Munro, he did not know how far he could be pushed. He did not know what had been done to him in that French prison or what he had become in there.

Still, he must do what he had come to do. He would not leave without doing everything in his power to secure a legitimate line for his name. “You are so like him, Ramsey. You will kill yourself with wanting. But you needn’t,” he whispered urgently. “You can have anything you desire.”

“I do not desire anything from you. Except your absence from my house.”

The marquis opened his mouth to speak but snapped it shut. Let his words work in his absence. He swung around and laboriously lumbered out into the cold, narrow, and poorly lit hall.

“You will,” he muttered as he passed the one-eyed butler holding open the door. “You will.”

Gaspard closed the door behind the handsome old man.

“Gaspard!”

At once the Frenchman hurried into the drawing room to see what Ram required. His master stood in the precise center of the room, his legs wide, as though he stood on the deck of a sea-battered ship rather than on dry land in London’s White Friars. His shoulders were bunched against an unseen gale, and his head was lowered. At Gaspard’s entrance he glanced up, his face ravaged and his lips curled back over clenched teeth. Like Lucifer himself upon being told of his eminent expulsion from heaven, Gaspard thought, mindful of the sacrilege but incapable of expelling the thought.

“Oui?”he asked, faintly.

“Whiskey, Gaspard,” Ram demanded in a husky voice. “Two bottles. No, three. And keep the light out when the blasted dawn breaks.”

FLANCONADE:

Italian. A thrust to the side of the body exposed just under the elbow

THE EVENING OF THE 12TH, 55 Beard Street, Cheapside. A revel in masque. Three shillings, Harlequin.

“Miss Nash.”

Helena, having just found the advertisement Oswald Goodwin had promised to place in the London Post, jumped at the unexpected sound of Lady Tilpot’s voice. It was half an hour before the guests were scheduled to appear, and Lady Tilpot generally preferred to make an entrance after their arrival.

“Calm yourself, Miss Nash,” Lady Tilpot commanded, waddling in. Helena held back a start of surprise. Lady Tilpot had eschewed her normal funerary colors for white lace. A great deal of white lace, which fell from her plump, narrow shoulders in a more or less uninterrupted line to a broad circumference at her feet. She looked like a sugarloaf. “You are becoming deuced agitated of late.”

She lifted her beringed hand and waggled her fingers. At once the footman scurried forward to hold her chair as she settled her bulk into it. She waved him away. “You may go await my guests, John.”

In Lady Tilpot’s household, as in many of the great households, all footmen went by the ubiquitous name “John” regardless of their given name. The footman withdrew, and Lady Tilpot returned her attention to Helena.