Worth Winning (14 page)

Eventually Archie had learned that that was simply the way of the world: Richard the heir, Russell the spare. Which had left no room for him.

As the third—and clearly unwanted—son, Archie had been sent away to distant relatives, told that he’d have to choose a
vocation
of some sort, that service in the military might be a tolerable option. When Archie had turned ten, his father had taken him aside one night and explained: they hadn’t intended to have a third son (his mother had wanted, and eventually gotten, a daughter). Thus, they had no intention of providing for him. Nor should he expect to be a
burden
upon his brothers, who would have duties and responsibilities aplenty.

That was the summer he’d been introduced to his Aunt Edith, the lonely widow who’d eventually left him Langley and its surrounding land. At the time, he’d thought it would be the only thing he’d ever inherit, and he’d been piteously grateful. Though they only ever met a handful of times, he’d written scores of secret letters to her, reporting on his academic progress, his dreams of become a famous barrister, a novelist, perhaps even a man of the cloth. His chosen career had changed often, but his aunt had never discouraged him. She’d told him that he was a creative, an eccentric, just as she’d been, and said that he’d always have her support.

Well, that was neither here nor there. Those days were long past.

Langley was the second-smallest of six different properties now. He hadn’t even bothered to visit it since he’d inherited the title. Lord Robeson. After all those years, finally to be
Lord Robeson
.

Now he had servants aplenty to clean up after him. But what he didn’t have, at least not for much longer, was the luxury of smashing fine crystal wine glasses. Which was why he
needed
this to win this wager. He had creditors nipping at his heels. He sneered. He, a viscount, having to answer to commoners, who fussed and moaned because his credit was a tad overextended.

He took a deep breath. Perhaps it was time to face the truth: he wasn’t just slightly overdrawn; he was in dire, quite dire, straits. With the added expense of reopening Langley House and bringing and hiring enough staff so that neither Billings nor Dresford would sense anything was amiss . . . even paying off the interest would be a challenge this month.

Archie remembered his father lecturing Richard about how necessary it was to choose his people wisely, and that selecting servants to run an estate was an art. At the time, Archie had only listened with half an ear; the lecture was for Richard, as all the wealth, and its assorted responsibilities, would be Richard’s to inherit, not his. But now, he finally understood: wealth needed to be managed; choosing people one could trust, if and when it happened, had to be taken seriously. Otherwise, even the greatest of fortunes could slowly evaporate over time.

He’d lost a little on a wager here and there. A bad night at roulette. A few games of brag where he’d bluffed when he should have folded. A couple of investments that hadn’t quite paid out as they’d ought to have. Three horses he’d had a mind to breed (and which he still might, if he could turn things around), a new carriage, some fine wine. A handful of art pieces and some bejeweled fobs that were practically a necessity in keeping up appearances and maintaining his station in life.

Each purchase, or loss, had seemed small at the time. Yet somehow, it had all added up, and what had once seemed like a bewilderingly vast inheritance was now . . .

It wasn’t like any of this was
his
fault, really. If he’d been trained in property management, if his father had prepared him for the expenses of keeping up six different estates spread over three different countries, he’d never have landed in this predicament.

But he hadn’t been trained; he’d received the barest modicum of instruction in how to deal with such responsibilities, and while he’d learned from his mistakes, by then, it had been too late. He’d borrowed money to cover the small debts, and then more, to pay off those . . .

He’d yet to have to sell anything of substance, and he knew better than to start: down that way lay nothing but darkness. He’d watched his friend Ray Clifton sell off his unentailed properties one by one. Once he’d begun . . . Robeson shuddered. Clifton barely had enough capital to stay afloat, and the obvious solution—marry a dim-witted heiress—was not one Clifton could easily pursue. For one, he didn’t have the looks, or title, to compete with the dashing rakes and penniless viscounts, and for another, word had clearly already gotten out. Women, like dogs, smelled his desperation. They rejected him before even giving him a chance to plead his case.

And so, though he needed funds and had a variety of notable valuables like the Rembrandt and several estates that he could sell, Robeson was not about to sell them.

He’d been racking his mind for what had seemed like ages, trying to come up with a way to pay off the creditors once and for all, when he’d seen Dresford, dressed in all his finery, motioning to the servants as if they existed solely to cater to his every little wish and need, and that’s when a plan had been born.

It seemed almost too fitting: one final wager to clear out all the little debts that had accumulated because of a series of unfortunate littler wagers. Except this time, the outcome was assured. He’d get to stack the deck, pick the location, and choose the girl.

Julia Morland.

A woman with more prickly points than soft curves. A woman he knew, from personal experience, would be unwilling to explore the physical side of a relationship, even if she proclaimed to have deep feelings. Though it had been eight long years since he’d last seen her, he still remembered the crazed way she’d attacked him when he’d done little more than embrace her the way any two people who were courting might. She’d clawed at his face, had kneed him. He’d been surprised not only at her ferocity, but also how well she fought—almost as if she’d been trained specifically to repel a man’s advances.

Robeson rubbed at this chin, thinking about how long it’d taken for the scratches she inflicted to heal. Despite the fact that he’d come into his inheritance shortly after and had given her a memorably vicious verbal dressing-down, he still wasn’t quite satisfied. That a girl like Julia Morland should have thought herself better than he, who even then had been the third son of a viscount, and whose notice should have been an honor, even before the inheritance. It had never sat well with him, and he’d always secretly hoped to hear that she’d come to a bad end. Putting her up for this bet, against someone whose arrogance would no doubt rub her own supercilious nature raw had seemed the perfect opportunity to settle two scores at once.

Both Dresford’s well-practiced charm and his inherent snobbery were completely at odds with Julia’s poor-little-common-man views and causes. And as for Julia, as a woman she was not just incompatible with but was antithetical to everything a man like Dresford could possibly be attracted to. He’d thought that, as soon as they’d been introduced, Dresford would take one look at his intended quarry and give up. Resign like the gentleman he always purported to be. What was two thousand pounds to a man like Dresford?

Robeson had even played the scene out in his mind. He’d be magnanimous, gracious; he’d let Dresford dangle for a little bit, let him feel the discomfort of having to be publicly humiliated—lowered for once, to their level. He’d imagined and reimagined Dresford’s look of consternation. And then, in front of everyone who’d known, he’d waive the apology. He’d accept the two thousand promised pounds and say,
“Let’s just let bygones be bygones, old chap.”

They’d all promise not to say anything, of course. But word
would
leak out. And in the end, Dresford would be just as humiliated (perhaps more!) than if he’d apologized, Robeson would be two thousand pounds richer, which meant that he’d be free from all his most pressing debts, and Julia Morland . . . well, he hadn’t given much, if any, thought to her. She’d go back to her old life, whatever that was these days.

But somehow, since that initial awkward meeting by the lemon tree, Dresford had made progress with the chit. He’d established a rapport with the girl, and how much further he might or might not have gotten was any man’s guess.

Robeson slammed the glass onto the desk. It did not break, a small mercy for which he was grateful. Mistrusting himself with any more of Aunt Edith’s valuables, he stood up and began to pace.

Damn it all, if ever there was a woman who would disarrange his plans, he should have known it would be Julia Morland.

Robeson stopped pacing in front of the library window. There were only two ways out of this, as far as he could see.

He could seduce the damn chit himself. She’d been drawn to him once, after all. And failing that, well, he could always reveal Dresford’s true identity to her. If he added a few choice embellishments . . . He’d almost been a writer, after all. And even if he didn’t really know Julia any longer, he still remembered, quite clearly, some of the fears and preoccupations she expressed most emphatically.

There was more than one way could win this bet.

And he would win. He just had to.

To say that Julia hadn’t enjoyed the picnic would have been a drastic misrepresentation of the truth. Julia
hated
being the center of attention. She particularly detested being involved in games and situations that were designed to embarrass and titillate, to create socially awkward scenarios that could be gossiped about and debated, whispered and giggled over for weeks to come.

And her gaffe with Charles Alver—questioning him and revealing her prior knowledge of him, smiling at him as though there was no one else—well, Julia had no doubt that there would be sly questions and meaningful lingering glances for weeks to come.

Near the end of the picnic, Nadine Clark had made a point of coming up to her and had laid a hand on her shoulder and said, a bit too meaningfully, “We
really
must catch up. It seems as though
all sorts of things
have”—she’d lowered her eyelashes and leaned forward, saying in a too-loud whisper—“
developed
since we last spoke.”

As if they were friends. As if Julia could be friends with someone who thought she had to put
special emphasis
on every other word. As if she’d ever, ever tell someone like Nadine Clark anything!

Luckily, before Julia had had the chance to say something direct and forceful, which she’d probably regret later, Penelope had come and tugged at her elder sister’s arm. “Don’t mind her, she’s nervous about Thursday’s musicale,” she’d joked lightly.

And when Nadine protested, Penelope had merely used the universal trump card that siblings so often use: “Mother’s looking for you.”

Still, Nadine’s less-than-subtle query set the mood for the rest of the night. Julia’s father, oblivious as usual, remarked that it had been a lovely picnic; Phyllis was another matter. She’d looked faintly worried and distressed during most of the dinner, to the point where Julia wished she had a way to bring up the topic, to allay her stepmother’s fears. True, the two were not very close, but that didn’t prevent a small pang of discomfort. She hadn’t meant to embarrass her stepmother, and Munthrope was the type of village that liked to talk.

“Damn!” Julia thought. Why couldn’t she seem to act
normal
when Charles Alver was around?

After dinner, Claire walked up with Julia to their bedrooms; she yawned and declared herself exhausted from the day’s activities and then said, in her stern, no-nonsense voice, “And you: we’re overdue for a talk, you and I.”

Since Julia didn’t have any answers, for her stepsister or herself, she’d woken up early the next day and decided it would be best to go on her normal Sunday morning walk. To clear her head before the battle, so to speak. It was one of her favorite times of the week. In the absence of the normal weekday bustle, with most of the town still barely stirring, the fields and streets always seemed particularly quiet and peaceful.

Julia grabbed her basket and shears, and seeing that the sun was barely up and that it was a cool, foggy morning, she left a shawl wrapped loosely around her shoulders and didn’t bother to do more than half-heartedly arrange her hair in a topknot.

About thirty minutes into her brisk walk (rather faster than usual, as she’d consistently tried to outpace her jumbled thoughts) Julia heard the distinct pounding of hoofbeats in the distance. She told herself not to turn around, that there were any number of people who might be out for a ride at this time of day. But she knew the village of Munthrope well, and she knew that almost no one liked to be up this early on a Sunday, which meant that the rider was most likely one of three men: Mr. Charles Alver, Lord Billings, or, of course, the man she was trying to train herself to think of as Lord Robeson.

She’d yet to see Lord Billings anywhere, doing anything, before noon. Archie, she knew, had never been a morning person. Which left only one real possibility: Mr. Charles Alver, who only had to look at her to make her knees weak. Who only had to smile at her to make her forget her surroundings and that there were people watching and judging, with rapt attention.

Even as the hoofbeats grew louder, Julia still averted her gaze and walked purposefully toward the river path. If she looked and made eye contact, it would be like an invitation: come here, come talk to me. Flirt with me, do all the improper things that I haven’t done for years, that I haven’t even dared to think about for forever. If she didn’t look . . .

The sound got closer and closer, until finally, it would have seemed rude to ignore it. She turned. Up until the last moment, she tried to convince herself that it might be anyone: the smithy, testing out a new shoe he’d made or a saddle he was reworking; it could be Jack, returned from his newest set of voyages. Jack never told her ahead of time, saying he preferred to surprise her, catch her unawares. It could be . . . Archie. Lord Robeson. Which, of course, was infinitely worse.

Her mind wandered for a moment, wondering whether there was a way to express a quantity larger than infinite, for such a small word did not seem to do justice to the shame, embarrassment, and sheer mortification that she was feeling. She’d been thinking about Charles Alver, when really, shouldn’t she have been worrying about Archie? Lord Robeson? The man she had once thought she would marry? The person she’d cried over for days, weeks, months? Quietly, in the dead of night, when she thought no one could hear her.