Ashlyn Macnamara (6 page)

Henrietta went still, and her face paled except for a red
blotch on each cheek. Never a good sign, that. “What next? You’ll oblige me to marry the first suitable man who comes along? No. As long as you remain unwed, you cannot force me along that path. It’s only fair, and you can’t deny it.”

George blew out a breath. “Are you saying I need only choose a bride and you’ll stop this nonsense?”

She smiled—a wicked little grin that sent a nasty pang coursing through his stomach. Last time he felt anything like it, he’d just received word his friend Summersby was in grave difficulties, and look how that had turned out. The man was dead by his own hand. “Given your reluctance, I feel I can hardly lose at such a prospect.”

“Prospects?” said a new voice. “I’d say prospects are nothing but favorable. What do you say?”

George turned. A man approached—or more accurately, a dandy. His collar was so stiff, his cravat so intricately knotted, his hair so artfully tousled, it must have taken his valet hours to achieve the effect. George searched his memory, but could not recall spotting the fellow at any of his usual haunts. If they’d ever been introduced across a card table, George had been too foxed to recall the other’s name.

Beaming, the newcomer came to a halt before Henrietta, and his smile widened. “Prospects are becoming more favorable by the second, I’d say.”

Henrietta sent him a stare made all the more withering by long practice at fending off undesired male attention. “Have we been introduced?”

“I daresay, that’s a wrong I intend to see righted.” He cast George a hopeful glance, while Henrietta turned a fish eye on him.

He allowed himself a sly quirk of his lips, an expression his sister would interpret rightly as his brotherly revenge grin. She’d brought it on herself since she insisted
on needling him about his stance on matrimony. “My sister, Miss Henrietta Upperton.”

Whatever else George might say about this man, he bowed quite impressively in one smooth motion from the waist, as if they were standing in the midst of a ballroom rather than outside a dusty servants’ entrance. The act took up a great deal of space, however, and Henrietta was obliged to retreat a step.

“Reginald Leach at your service.”

Thank God the man possessed the foresight to name himself and spare George an awkward moment. Not that they’d ever been introduced. Foxed or sober, George would never have forgotten such a ridiculous name.

Henrietta inclined her head politely enough, but as she straightened, she caught George’s eye. One corner of her mouth twitched, the only outward sign of the laugh she was certainly holding in.

“And how is it,” Leach went on, “that I’ve never yet had the occasion to make your acquaintance?”

“I could not say, sir, only I do not go out much in society.” Her tone was courteous, but she carefully kept any warmth to herself.

“Not go out in society? Goodness, what a waste. We must remedy that matter this instant.” He offered his arm, and when she declined to take it, he hurried on, unperturbed. “I might introduce you to any number of delightful young ladies and gentlemen. I’ve heard tell a goodly number are in attendance, beginning with the Marquess of Enfield and the Earl of Highgate and right on down to Miss Prudence Wentworth. I’ve heard tell that Lady Epperley might even remove herself from her estates to put in an appearance. Unheard of occurrence, that.”

“Oh, indeed,” George deadpanned. “Tell me, have you heard any rumors of Hector Poore planning on attending?”

Leach tore his attention away from Henrietta. “Good Lord, no. He’s had to leave the country. Hounded by creditors. If he was lucky, he escaped to the continent with a change of clothing, but of course, without a valet to attend him, he’s in a bad way.” He jerked his head for emphasis. “Bad way, indeed.”

Damn, there went his best chance at winning some badly needed funds. Poore was infamous for his deep play once he’d had his share of brandy—deep and foolhardy.

Henrietta waved a hand in front of her face. If she’d been in the ballroom, she’d have used her fan. “Well, I’m sure this is all very fascinating.”

Leach beamed at her. “Isn’t it, though?”

“George must find it so, but I daresay he thinks the news of Poore a disappointment.”

“Why on earth would you say that?” George attempted to infuse his tone with a measure of boredom equal to Henrietta’s.

She studied her nails a moment before swiping them along her shoulder. “I imagine you expected to get in a few hands of piquet while you were here.”

George blinked. How in God’s name had she known anything about that?

“Do you play, Miss Upperton?”

“Of course not,” George interceded before Henrietta could reply. “At least not for any sort of stakes.”

His interruption earned him the oddest expression, a glare accompanied by a gleam he knew meant no good at all. His sister was about to make him pay for introducing her to Leach—with interest.

Compounded, no doubt.

“My brother has the right of it.” Henrietta tucked her fingers into the crook of Leach’s elbow. “I do not play. But I should love the opportunity to learn from someone so knowledgeable.”

“I should be delighted.” Leach smiled down on her, his expression akin to a child in a sweetshop. “Delighted indeed.”

George stepped closer and fixed Leach with a frown worthy of any protective older brother. He’d been on the receiving end of enough of them in his younger days to have mastered the art. “Perhaps such knowledge is best passed on by family.”

“Nonsense, George. I said I’d like to learn from someone who knows what he’s about.”

Blast. Not only compounded interest, but usurious rates. “Here now, what gives you the idea I don’t?”

Henrietta allowed a moment to pass before replying. “When’s the last time you won?”

“Ah, excellent point, Miss Upperton.” Leach smiled so broadly, George had to tamp down an urge to slam the man’s teeth down his impeccably cravated throat.

And he would, too, if Leach made any sort of improper advances toward Henrietta. Not that Henny would stand for it. She was clever enough to see past these
ton
nobs. But then she was returning the idiot’s grin, and the devil take it, were her cheeks coloring? After the conversation they’d just had, how dare she?

He’d be damned if he saw his sister married to such an overdressed simpleton. Hell, the man would probably compliment Henny’s musical talents. “Didn’t Mama say she wanted you to keep close watch on Catherine? Make certain she got the right sort of introductions? That kind of thing?”

“Oh, I’m sure Mama wanted you to do that.” She didn’t even glance in his direction, so riveted was she on Leach.

Leach. And just what sort of name was that? It wasn’t one that needed to be passed on by any stretch of the imagination. He ought to have gone into trade, or better, become a doctor. “Now—”

The sound of someone clearing his throat cut him off. He turned to find a footman hovering next to a flowerbed. Poor man, he’d had to come the roundabout way to find his quarry. “Mr. Upperton, this message just arrived addressed to you. It’s apparently most urgent.”

George eyed the folded scrap of foolscap on the footman’s tray. It hardly looked urgent. In fact, it looked rather flimsy. A stiff breeze off the ocean might snatch it away at any moment. He found himself wishing for that very event to occur. Then he could go back to ensuring his sister didn’t accept any proposals from idiots with preposterous names.

Then he could cheerfully ignore whatever dire news that innocent little scrap of paper held. For his gut told him it was dire. A good many so-called gentlemen liked to call in their markers with just such notes.

He trudged toward the servant. The liveried man stood, his face expressionless—just carrying out his duty. Of course. The blandness alone weighed even further on George’s stomach. If it was good news, the man would have occasion to smile, or at least ease up on his jaw.

Feigning nonchalance, George plucked up the scrap of paper and opened it slowly, as if it mattered not at all what the note contained—certainly not as if he were reluctant to read it.

Ah yes, a marker all right, or one being called in. God, and not one of the lesser ones, either. Did he really owe Barnaby Hoskins five hundred guineas? He must have been thoroughly in his cups that night, for he did not recall it. He did, however, recognize the old bastard’s signature, black on white, as clear as the sun sparkling off the Channel. And then his glance drifted further down to a second signature, and the dead weight in his gut ignited.

The unfamiliar scrawl, once he deciphered it, spelled out Roger Padgett.

CHAPTER FOUR

P
ADGETT
. L
UCY
’
S
great, hairy ape of a brother. Damn his eyes, how had he found George in the wilds of Kent? And why had he acquired Hoskins’s marker?

George’s mount, the deuced thing, surged ahead, an attempt to catch up to its fellows, no doubt. He sawed on the reins and shifted his weight back in the saddle, but the blasted horse tossed its head and pawed the ground. Revelstoke had assured him the creature was gentle, but the morning’s ride had only proved the master a liar. That, or the nag was an expert at deception. Either way, the beast was most definitely in control.

He squinted along the path ahead. Encroaching trees, their leaves already edged with red and gold, closed in. The rest of the party had already ridden out of sight. So much for healthy companionship. Even his sister had abandoned him to fate—or at least his musings. Worse, if a few of the gentlemen took it into their heads to run races, George wouldn’t be on hand to wager on the winner.

“Ho there, you blasted thing.” Once more, he pulled on the reins and leaned back. The beast pulled to an abrupt halt, allowing George a breath of cool late summer air, tinged with the tang of salt. “Better. Now at least stand still long enough to let a man think.”

But the sea tang called to mind the previous day and images of a secluded beach surmounted by high bluffs.
No, not that. He shook his head. He needed to work out what bloody Roger Padgett was up to, and how he was going to get himself out of this mess.

As if that small movement of his head were some kind of signal understood only by equines, his horse let out a snort and reared. The world tilted. For an instant, George knew a sensation of weightlessness, but then his rump hit the ground with a tooth-cracking jolt. His ungrateful nag wheeled and galloped for the stables, the earth trembling beneath the thunder of its hooves.

George drew in a painful breath. “Goddamned, bloody, foul, bugger of a wretch.”

Why he’d ever allowed Revelstoke to convince him to get on the beast in the first place was a complete and utter mystery. He’d have done much better to lie in bed, only then he’d have had to endure his mother’s matchmaking when he finally turned up at breakfast. At the moment, sitting in the middle of a bridle path, his tail-bone aching and a sharp stone jabbing him in the arse, he reckoned he’d have stood a better chance with his mother.

With at least a mile between him and the manor, he might as well set off on foot. He pushed to his feet and dusted himself off. A perfectly good set of buckskins ruined, and of course, he couldn’t afford to replace them until he’d settled the matter of his mistress and her brother.

Damn the wench. No, no. He oughtn’t think of her in those terms. She hadn’t got herself with child all on her own. But a child. What was he to do with a child? Lucy, at least, ought to see to most of it, but he’d be expected to pay visits and, above all, contribute enough blunt to ensure the child’s future.

He tried to call up an image, not of a tiny babe, but of a boy, perhaps about Jack’s age. A little blighter, but full of the devil with a quick grin, a sharp tongue, and a
glint of mischief in his gray eyes. A streak of fearlessness, as well, enough to send him haring into the ocean even if he couldn’t swim—just like Jack.

George recalled the steady weight of the child in his arms, the clinging bite of small fingers tightening their grip against his nape, the suppressed trembling. No, old Jack wasn’t about to let on he was afraid. The scamp, he needed a man about to teach him such useful things as swimming and standing up for himself once he got to school.

But then Jack wouldn’t go to school, would he? Certainly not away to a place like Eton where he’d have to fend for himself or be consumed by the system. Fortunate for Jack, perhaps, that he’d avoid such an education, but the boy still needed a father.

George shook his head. Why was he even concerning himself? The lad wasn’t his child, while in a few short months Lucy would present him with his own little bundle of responsibility. The thought settled heavy on his stomach. Thank God he’d foregone an early breakfast. Eggs, kippers, kidney, and all such were liable to come back up to make room for the weight of impending fatherhood.

“What are you going to do now?”

George started. The voice, familiar and youthful, had come from somewhere above. He peered through the branches of a nearby oak. Jack sat on a limb, his bare feet dangling at least six feet above the path. “I say, how did you manage to get all the way up there?”