An Early Engagement (16 page)

“No, no. Not at all. Just wanted a little quiet. Balls ain’t in my line, you know.”

“I’m surprised you came, then. No matter, now that you are here, perhaps you’d care to take a glass with me.”

“Honored I’m sure, but no thank you. Got to get back to the wife.”

Stokely’s eyes narrowed. “But I insist,” he said, pouring two glasses from the opened bottle. “After all, I do not believe you have ever drunk to my marriage.”

Oh, but Morgan had, bottles and bottles. Not exactly
to
the marriage, but certainly on its account. He had no wish to do so tonight, however. “Sorry, lad, my, ah, stomach has been bothering me.”

“Brandy is just the thing to settle it, then.” Morgan found himself in a leather chair, a glass in his hand, and his very large, very serious nephew-in-law sitting across from him. He shrugged. “To you and Emilyann.” The men clinked their glasses together and raised them to their lips. Stokely’s glass was empty. The level of Morgan’s drink had hardly changed.

“Come now,” said the earl, refilling his own glass and noting Aylesbury’s eyes glitter. “You can do better than that. Another toast. To the family.” He emptied his glass again, after touching it to the duke’s, but Morgan’s hand seemed to shake, and the liquor spilled out.

“How clumsy of me.”

“Yes, wasn’t it?” Stokely’s voice was smooth, satisfied. “I begin to think you do not like my taste in wine. That could be construed as an insult to my hospitality, you know. I am almost tempted to take offense and call you out.”

“Not at all, not at all. Merely an accident.” Morgan made to rise, but a hand shot out and gripped his arm in an iron-hard clasp. Morgan looked down to see wine dripping from Stokely’s sleeve, where the earl had been pouring it. Morgan slumped back in his chair.

“Exactly.” Stokely carefully wiped his hand with his handkerchief. “I find it strange how many of these ‘accidents’ there have been lately, don’t you? Especially when I wrote to you once concerning my wife’s welfare. Forgive my immodesty, but I consider my own continued existence also necessary to her well-being.” He paused to contemplate the ruined cuff of his new shirt. “Peculiar thing about your family, you and Emilyann anyway. Neither one of you seems to take my orders seriously. You would not last long in the army.” He looked up and there was cold death in those gray eyes, a promise of implacable vengeance in the low, steady voice. “You will not last long in London.”

Dead men have nothing to lose, so Morgan shot back, “Go ahead and make your threats, you sanctimonious cockscomb. You’re a fine one to talk, marrying a chit out of the schoolroom to line your pockets with what should have been mine. We paupers cannot afford scruples, eh, but your notions are a little nicer than mine? I think not, nevvy.” He waved a liver-spotted hand at the room, the house. “I see the way you live, how your sister’s fixed on buying a title with her dowry. That was Emilyann’s dowry, what should have been mine!”

“It was never meant to be yours, you old fool, and it will never
be
yours. I’ll see you rot in hell first. You’re forgetting who forced Sparrow into the marriage, Aylesbury. It wasn’t me. I never coveted her fortune.
I
never sought what was not mine.
The money she spent on the house will be repaid, yes, and Nadine’s dowry and the price of every blasted pig at Stockton if it takes me the next twenty years, and you shall never see a groat of it. You stupid bastard, haven’t you even figured out that if you kill me, the money goes to my brother Thornton?”

“But not the heir’s fortune. Dead men don’t make good fathers.”

Now, that struck the earl funny. He wished he could have shared that joke with Sparrow: Uncle Morgan wanted to keep him out of her bed as much as she did. He smiled, thinking that in the mood she was in tonight she’d be more dangerous than Morgan’s wildest imaginings. She would be even harder to placate if he ruined her ball—and the new carpet—by spilling Morgan’s blood all over them.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I am going to give you another chance, and a good piece of advice. The chance is this, and my last warning: one more accident, one more clumsy attempt to harm me or Emilyann, and you die. I wouldn’t even bother calling you out. You better hope we live to ripe old ages and die of natural causes. Have I made that clear?”

Morgan had almost stopped quaking. Damn, he needed a drink. None of
those
drinks, of course. He swallowed the fear-taste and nodded.

“And here’s the advice: get yourself the damn heir. I don’t care a rap for the money; it would be the boy’s anyway, and I fancy my son taking over my title, not yours. So do it, man. The babe doesn’t have to be from the right side of the blanket, you know. Get yourself a by-blow somewhere, and enough proof that you’re the father to stand up in court. I’ll not contest your petition to have the child declared legitimate as long as you don’t try to foist Bobo on us.”

Morgan wore a speculative look. “Never liked the bobbing-block m’self.”

“Well, there you go. A little bedroom action, a little legal action, and one-two-three, you’ll have a new little Arcott to corrupt and a whole new fortune to gamble away.”

The idea had possibilities, maybe even promise. Morgan could do it, all right. There was that new dealer at Mrs. Corbett’s. Nice, but not too nice, of course. Good head for cards she had, too. It might even be refreshing to have a son with some intelligence for a change. Yes, he was liking the notion better and better.

Lost in the happiest thoughts he’d entertained in years, Morgan did not realize he was being led, not back to the ballroom, but through the corridor to the front door. Stokely had his arm around the older man’s shoulder, for all the world like a loving nephew escorting a relative to his coach. He nodded affably to any of the guests they passed and paused only to whisper a few words to Mr. Butler in the entry while Morgan dreamed on. The innkeep’s daughter out in Richmond? What about one of the tenant farmers’ daughters at the Hall? Healthy, wide-hipped, yeoman stock might be just the ticket.

“I’ll do it,” he declared, chortling. He pumped Stokely’s hand up and down, ignoring the two strapping footmen who now flanked him and would until he was off the premises.

Stokely smiled and stepped out of the light before more of the company noticed his soiled sleeve. “Good,” he said just before he went back inside, just before he made his final thrust, like a knife in Morgan’s back. “Good. Now all you have to do is convince Aunt Ingrid to house your bastard.”

“Cor,” said one of the footmen as he slammed the door of the hackney carriage. “I ain’t never seen no duke cry.”

Stokely hurried back to the library, where he threw open the window, stepped out to the balcony, and proceeded to empty all five bottles of very old, very fine wines, unintentionally murdering one of Aunt Adelaide’s rosebushes. Then he went upstairs to change his clothes again, just as the strains of the next dance began.

It was a waltz, and Emilyann’s partner was missing. She was being stood up for a dance at her own ball, by her own husband! She almost dragooned young Remington into partnering her, then noted little Miss Whitlaw sitting forlorn on one of the gilt chairs at the edge of the dance floor. She sent a very disappointed young man in that direction and went to join a laughing group around Lady Jersey.

“What, not dancing, my dear?” that lady asked. “I thought you two lovebirds would be waltzing again for sure. Such a romantic dance.” She tittered. Everyone in the place knew the Stokelys were more like fighting cocks than lovebirds tonight. What a diversion!

Emilyann seethed but smiled. “I had to see about a small matter in the kitchen. The duties of a hostess come first, of course.”

“Of course, my dear, and I must congratulate you on performing them so well.”

Emilyann nodded politely. If she told this old cat what she was thinking, they’d never see the inside of Almack’s again. She bit the inside of her lip as Lady Jersey went on, living up to her nickname of Silence. “And it’s a pleasure to see Stokely taking on his new responsibilities as host also. So kind of him to go after Lady Bramby when her flounce tore. At least I think he did. We saw him headed toward the library just after she left, didn’t we, Ferdie? Thoughtful boy. You know, I had my doubts about him as husband material, such a shocking rake he used to be, don’t you recall, Ferdie? Why, I remember ...”

Emilyann remembered another errand in the kitchen. “We can’t seem to put out enough of those spun-sugar confections. Count Andreovich loves them so, I’ll just go find some more.”

What a surprise, there were no candied violets in the library. There were no erring husbands, either, but there were two empty glasses, and the doors to the balcony were open, letting in the cool night air. Emilyann stepped out to look, but the balcony extended too far in either direction for her to see past the library’s meager light. Of course, they would have found a dark corner somewhere. She pulled the doors shut with a snap, rattling the glass, and turned the key in the latch. If they were out there, let them freeze. Lady Bramby had been wearing little enough anyway.

Emilyann was not a heavy drinker, but she needed Dutch courage tonight if she was to get through the rest of this awful party. She found a clean glass and—and all of the bottles were empty. Heavens, what kind of orgy was Stokely throwing? She kicked his stupid old desk. He’d been castaway on their wedding night, too, and Geoff looked green this morning after a night out with him. If Stokely was that kind of man, she told herself, he was not worth her tears. So why was she crying?

Because her foot hurt, she answered herself, and because what should have been one of the happiest nights of her life just couldn’t get any worse.

She was wrong. It could.

* * * *

After the last of the guests made their departures and Emilyann had thanked the staff and ordered the clean-up left for tomorrow, she limped up to bed. Marvelous, she thought, her maid hadn’t even waited up for her, and those tiny buttons down the back of her gown would be devilish to undo. It was not as if the girl were overworked either, or underpaid, Emilyann considered angrily, about to wrench the offending buttons apart. She hated the ugly dress anyway; she would never wear it again.

Then the last person she expected—or wanted—to see was in her doorway, asking, “May I help?” Stokely had been bidding farewell to the men from the Foreign Office the last she saw, ages ago. Now he was in her bedroom, wearing his dressing gown and a tentative smile. He could just take that quirky grin and—

“Thank you, no, I’ll ring for my maid. She should have been waiting here.”

“She was. I dismissed her.”

Emilyann took a deep breath.
“You
dismissed
my
maid?”

Smoky nodded, meanwhile moving out of throwing range just in case. At least life would never be dull. “I wanted to talk.”

She put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “Well, that’s all of a piece, isn’t it? You order my servants about, you ride roughshod over my plans, overrule my decisions, and make me a laughingstock at my own ball. Well, you, you, authoritative ass, you can just go back to Lady Bramby, see if I care.”

“What, was Sydelle here tonight? I’m sorry I missed her. Pleasant lady, always even-tempered.”

“And I’m not, I suppose?”

He grinned.

“She wouldn’t be either, married to an insufferable, arrogant brute, to say nothing of any
lady
dressing like that. Her gown was so sheer you could tell she had no underpinnings on beneath.”

“Then I am doubly sorry to have missed her.”

Now, Smoky might tease, and he might rage, but he would never lie to her; Emilyann would have sworn on that. “You did not see her tonight?”

He took a seat on the chaise longue. “I said so, didn’t I?”

She sniffed. “That doesn’t change things. How dare you cancel the negotiations I had going with Squire Kimball? I’ve been after him for ages now, and you queer the deal within minutes. We needed that land for the new breed of hogs Geoff and I have been studying.”

“I cannot afford it.”

“I can!”

“But that is your money, not mine. I don’t care if you dress every horse in London in a green bonnet, or buy every break-down hackney nag for your racing farm. That is yours. The land is mine, and I will not have my wife bankroll it. Which sentiment I believe I expressed frequently and forcefully.”

“Of all the overblown, prideful—”

“You’re the one standing there in a dress that won’t unbutton rather than let me help.”

She ignored that. “And what about Gannon? You had no right to fire him without a by-your-leave.”

Stokely brushed at a piece of lint on his sleeve. “No? I thought I had a great many rights, even if I choose not to exercise them all the time. I gave you your head in a large field, Sparrow, I did not give you the ordering of my life. You did not buy me, you know. I
do
live here, or there at Stockton, and I have every right to make sure my properties are well tended.”

“And they are!”

“In nearly all instances. Perhaps I never expressed my gratitude to you for how well you’ve managed. Stockton has never been in better condition, and all the tenants sing your praises.”

“At least someone does,” she muttered. It was becoming harder to maintain her anger. That was the way it always was with him, blast.

He looked around. “Where’s the dog?”

Oh, dear, in all the bustling about, she had not even had time to check on poor Pug!

“He’s in the stables with Jake.”

“Good, that’s where he belongs.”

“And you don’t even like my dog!”

He laughed. “Anything else in your budget, Sparrow? I’m sure I have wronged you woefully, so you may as well have at it now while you have the opportunity. I’ll be leaving soon.”

He shouldn’t have reminded her. The ball! “You left
me
there without a partner at my own dance!”

“I was occupied, my dear.”

“Occupied? Your brainbox must be occupied by a family of squirrels! Everyone knew we were to have the waltz. All the old tabbies were snickering behind their fans.”