Educating Caroline (22 page)

“What were you talking about, anyway?” Jacquelyn demanded, interrupting his private musings. “You and Caroline Linford, back there in the Dalrymples’ garden? And don’t deny you were there with her, Braden. I
saw
you two together.”

“Guns,” he said, automatically. “We were talking about guns.”

She paused as she worked an ivory button. “Guns. You and Caroline Linford were in the garden—in the dark— talking about guns.”

“That’s right.”

Jacquelyn stopped dressing and looked at him. There was no heat at all in her gaze now. Her dark eyes were back to being flat and dead.

“Caroline Linford,” she said, quietly, “hates guns. She’s quite morbidly obsessed with getting rid of all of them, because of what happened to her brother.”

“Yes,” Braden said. “I know.”

But he was not really attending to what Jacquelyn had said. He was still thinking about Caroline.

It had finally gotten so bad, there at the Dalrymples’, watching her with Slater, that he’d been forced to leave. It was true what he’d told her, that he was interested in her. But it would have been more truthful to say that ever since she’d come to his office that first time, and shocked him so thoroughly with her highly unladylike proposal, he’d wanted her. In his arms. In his bed. In his life. More than any other woman he had ever known.

And why not? There was no doubting she was the most genuine woman he’d met since he’d left the Dials. She didn’t seem to care a whit for convention, said exactly what she was thinking (most of the time, anyway) and once she got an idea in her head, clearly couldn’t let it alone, and to hell with the consequences. Caroline Linford had all the qualities he had most admired in the girls back in Seven Dials—loyalty and an almost brutal honesty amongst them—and none of the affectations of the girls of the so-called polite society he so despised, coupled with a disarming sense of humor and a red-hot temper. All that, and the fact that she was, it had to be admitted, the most easily aroused woman he’d ever had the good luck to lay his hands on, convinced him that this was a fight worth fighting, no matter how high the body count rose.

Except, of course, for the fact that he was supposed to be marrying somebody else by the end of the month.

The somebody else who was, in fact, glaring at him very unhappily indeed that very moment, as she struggled back into her crinoline.

Jacquelyn said, “I think you should know, Braden—” She pulled the steel cage up around her hips. “—that I have every intention of suing. If you call the wedding off, I mean.”

The scarred eyebrow rose, just a fraction of an inch. “And what,” he asked, kindly, “makes you think I would ever want to do something so rash as to call off our wedding?”

“Maybe,” Jacquelyn said, with a toss of her night-dark hair, “because you haven’t touched me in over a month.”

“Merely observing the social niceties,” he said, “ considered so important by you and your friends.”

The lifeless eyes narrowed. “I mean it, Braden. It won’t be pretty. I’m talking about all of it. The men I’ve turned down since I’ve been with you. The emotional anguish—”

“Don’t worry, my dear,” Braden said, almost gently. “If it should come to that—my calling off the wedding— you can be sure I shall have very good reason for doing so. The sort of reason that holds up very well indeed in court.

“Get dressed, Jacquelyn.” There was no gentleness at all in his tone now. “I’ll have someone drive you. I’m sure Crutch will be delighted to do it.”

Or would be, once Braden pressed a few pound notes upon him. It was too bad, really, that Lady Jacquelyn wasn’t so easily appeased.

17

T
he ninth Marquis of Winchilsea had not left much, it was true, to his children. He had not, poor man, had much to leave, except of course for his title, and a run-down abbey in the Lake District.

But one thing he had managed to leave for Hurst was a membership in his club, a rather exclusive men’s club, for which the marquis had, it was true, not paid dues in some time, but which was so exclusive that no one dared mention this to the new marquis, who, it was hoped, could be appealed to for the back dues when his impending marriage to the wealthy Earl of Bartlett’s daughter became fact.

But it was not his tardiness in paying his dues that had earned the new marquis the contempt of the club’s employees. Rather, it was his inherent stinginess, not tipping, even so much as a ha’penny, the grooms who kept his horses brushed while he was enjoying luncheon, or the sommelier who brought him his claret.

Worse, for all his stinginess, the new marquis was exacting to the extreme, complaining if a bay leaf was found in his stew, or if he had to wait so much as five minutes for anything.

So it wasn’t perhaps to be wondered at that the club employees would not hesitate to declare the marquis “in”—when every other member was always, without question “out” to anyone who came calling (with the exception, perhaps, of the Prince of Wales)—to a man who called himself Samuel Jenkins, but who was, in reality, The Duke.

And to show a man like The Duke to the marquis’s chair, in which he’d been slumping, staring dully into the fire—well, that was a sign that Hurst was very unpopular with the club staff indeed.

“Hello, there, my boy,” The Duke said, as he lowered his impressive bulk into the leather chair opposite the marquis’s. “Been a while, hasn’t it, then?”

For almost a full minute, Hurst could only stare at the man sitting across from him, rendered completely speechless at the sight of him. So it was true. It was true after all, the thing which he’d most feared. He’d told himself over and over again that he was being ridiculous. The Duke couldn’t know. The Duke couldn’t possibly know what he’d done. Who’d have told him? It wasn’t as if the two of them traveled in the same social circles now, was it?

But someone had told. Someone had to have told. Because The Duke had come to London. Come to London, and apparently come to London in search of Hurst. It had been The Duke who’d put the tail on him. The Duke, and not Granville.

Oh, Lord. If only it had been Granville.

Hurst shot the hireling who’d led the corpulent man over to his chair a look of rage, which the servant pointedly ignored, choosing instead to bow politely to The Duke—from whom he’d already received a pretty tip, just for showing him in—and inquire, “Brandy, Mr. Jenkins?”

“Yes, I think I will take a brandy,” The Duke said. “You, my lord?”

Hurst shook his head, much too stunned to speak. The Duke—whose real name Hurst did not know; it certainly wasn’t Jenkins—was risking a great deal, showing his face in London, where, if the marquis wasn’t mistaken, he was wanted for a vast number of crimes, not the least of which was capital murder. And what in God’s name was he doing in Hurst’s club, where anyone—even a criminal court judge—might happen by, and spy him?

Well, at least, Hurst thought, running a finger under his cravat, which suddenly seemed a bit too tight, he could not possibly intend to kill him. Not here, in front of all these witnesses. . . .

“Now,” The Duke said. “I think we’ve some things to discuss, you and I.”

Hurst found that his palms were sweating. As it was quite cool in the room where they sat, he could not blame this on a sudden change in temperature.

“If it’s about the money,” Hurst burst out, “I still haven’t got it. But I’ll get it. In about a month, I’ll have it.”

“Now, my lord,” The Duke said, with a good deal of fatherly patience, for a man known to have such a violent temper. “You know perfectly well it isn’t about money. Well, except in a roundabout way.”

“I don’t—” Hurst looked about the room. Was there no one at this club who could recognize a member of the underworld when he happened to be seated right in front of him? Would no one come to his rescue? “—know what you mean.”

“Don’t you?” The Duke lifted the delicate ballon of brandy the waiter had brought to him. The graceful piece of crystal looked ludicrous in the sausagelike fingers, and he held it the wrong way, by its tiny stem. Burying his thick nose into the mouth of the glass, he tasted the amber liquid with his plump lips, found it acceptable, and nodded to the waiter, who left with a smile and a little extra change rattling in his pocket. “I’m not surprised to hear it. It’s been some time, ain’t it? Since before Christmas, most like. That’s the last I seen of you, anyway.”

Hurst’s grip tightened on the arms of his chair. “I—I had a friend. He fell ill. I had—had to see that he was looked after.”

“Ah,” The Duke said. “I’d heard that, actually. Do you know what else I heard?”

“N-no. . . .”

“I heard your sick friend was someone I thought I’d taken care of. That bloke you brought round. What was his name? Oh, yes.” The Duke eyed him over his brandy snifter, which he held with his pinky finger in the air. “Linford.”

Brains had never been something much appreciated by Hurst’s clan, who preferred a fellow who could hunt over a fellow who could philosophize. But he flattered himself that he was at least as intelligent as The Duke. Which was why he attempted to prevaricate.

“Oh, yes. Lord Bartlett,” he cried. “Yes, yes, of course. Yes, Lord Bartlett was the, er, gentleman with whom you had that disagreement—”

“He called me,” The Duke said, his voice dropping to a low growl, “a cheat.”

“I remember, I remember.” Hurst leaned forward in his chair and spoke to The Duke in a low voice. “But that’s not why I left Oxford, you know. Lord Bartlett’s not my friend, you see. It was another fellow, back here in London. Dueling injury. Quite serious, really. I meant to send you a note, but it must have slipped my—”

“Don’t play games with me Slater. I’ve had you watched, you sodding bastard. I know it was Linford. You’re marrying the bloke’s sister come June. It was in all the papers. You may think me illiterate scum, but I
can
read. Next time you try to run from me, boy, I recommend you stay out of the social pages.”

Hurst realized his attempt to prevaricate had not succeeded. He shifted tactics.

“All right,” he said, coolly, leaning back in his chair. “Yes, all right, then. I’m the one who fished Linford out of the gutter. I’m the one who saw that he was patched up and shipped home. I did it for you, you know. You ought to be thanking me, instead of sitting there, reviling me.”

“Thank you?” The Duke glowered at him. “Thank you for what?”

“For saving the poor bloody boy. What were you thinking, shooting him like that? He owed us a thousand quid!”

“He called me a
cheat.”

“So you tried to kill him,” Hurst said. “Very bright. Very intelligent. How did you plan on collecting the thousand quid?”

“I planned,” The Duke said, “on wringing it from your scrawny neck. You’re the one who brought him into the game in the first place.”

“If you had just let him win a few rounds now and then—”

“What?” The Duke’s porcine eyes, half hidden between folds of sunburned fat, glittered. “If I had just let him win a few rounds now and then,
what?”

“He wouldn’t have gotten so suspicious,” Hurst said, in a calmer voice. “He’s an excellent player. That’s what you wanted, right? Good players, confident in their ability, who’d bet high. Well, he bet high. And he lost big. Too big, too many times. He knew something wasn’t right.”

“Of course he did.” The Duke sipped delicately at his brandy again. “That’s why I shot him.”

“I warned you. I warned you before. If you didn’t let them win a few rounds, they’d get suspicious.”

The Duke grinned at him.
“You
didn’t,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” Hurst said. “But I was quite drunk. . . .”

“Not as drunk as Linford was.”

Hurst frowned. This was true, of course. He hadn’t been as drunk as the earl, and he’d never suspected a thing. He’d lost, and lost, and lost, and kept right on playing, until he owed more . . . well, more than he could ever hope to pay back in a lifetime.

But that hadn’t mattered, in the end. Because he had something other than money, something The Duke and his friends needed badly: connections. Connections with other young men like himself, only wealthier. Much wealthier. Hurst knew he wasn’t a clever man—not nearly, he knew, as clever as the Earl of Bartlett—but he was blue-blooded, by God. And breeding always won out over brains, any day of the week. Or so Hurst had always been assured by his grandmama.

“All right,” he said, testily. “All right. So you found me out. It wasn’t as if I were avoiding you, or anything. I planned to come see you.” A lie. A blatant lie. “Well, after my wedding, anyway. I should have the money I owe you then. I won’t be able to continue working for you, of course, once I’m married. I shan’t have time to make all those trips up to Oxford. But I’ll still steer all the willing lads I can in your direction—”

“Aren’t you just rolling in the clover?” The Duke stretched out his legs and folded his sausage fingers together across his vast expanse of belly. “Isn’t everything just so bloody nice for you now?”