Gentleman Jim Read online

  “It is not baseless!” Jane snapped back. “Everyone knows you challenged Lord St. Clare. And as Miss Honeywell’s closest friend, I consider it my duty to give her fair warning when the man who controls her fortune is embarking on a course of action that will end with him getting his head blown off his shoulders.”

  Fred gave Jane a look of withering scorn before turning his attention back to Maggie. “Put it out of your head, Margaret. And from now on, restrict yourself to more feminine concerns.”

  Jane wasn’t so easily dismissed. “Feminine concerns? Like supper parties and the theater and shopping for new gowns, do you mean?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And how shall Miss Honeywell pay for these new gowns.”

  Fred shot a hard glance at her over his shoulder. “Not that it’s any of your business, but Miss Honeywell is very well provided for.”

  “She’s wearing ill-fitting clothes that are years out of fashion.”

  “She’s been in mourning!”

  “As that may be, to the rest of the ton it will simply look as if you’ve been unreasonably keeping her fortune from her. And when one sees you wearing a coat that appears to have been cut by Weston, and boots that have no doubt been polished with champagne, they’ll further surmise that you’ve been enriching yourself at her expense.”

  At her words, Fred’s face went scarlet. “If you were a man, an accusation like that would—”

  “Hold a moment.” Maggie placed a staying hand on his sleeve. “Jane isn’t accusing you of anything. She’s only telling you what conclusions other people will draw when they see how poorly I’m turned out. And you must own she’s right.”

  Jane gave Fred an innocent smile. “In order to scotch these unfortunate rumors, Miss Honeywell will need a whole new wardrobe.”

  Fred fixed his gaze on Maggie. A muscle worked convulsively in his cheek. “I’ve never denied you anything, so long as you asked me in a polite and civil manner. Go to the dressmaker and the milliner, by all means, and have the bills sent to me. But not today. Today you’re to retire to bed. Tomorrow, if you have recovered your strength from the journey, you may go shopping. But you’re to take Bessie. I shall have a word with her before I go. She knows her duty.”

  He took his leave of them, then. Jane summoned a footman to fetch his hat and cane and show him out. As the drawing room doors closed behind him, she muttered, “How generous you are. We are both so very much obliged to you.”

  Maggie leaned back in her seat. As a girl, she’d been energized by arguments. Fueled by raised voices and heated words. Now such things only served to exhaust her. “What a colossal waste of time.”

  “Not entirely.” Jane sat down across from her in Fred’s vacated chair. “He’s given you leave to purchase as many new clothes as you like. And if he thinks I mean to take you to Grafton House for a bargain, he’s much mistaken. We shall go to Madame Clothilde, that new French modiste in Bruton Street that everyone’s raving about. Très exclusif, apparently. She only dresses the richest and most beautiful ladies in town. You’ve lost a bit of your bloom, I know, but she’ll not turn you away.”

  “How can I think of shopping? There’s still the duel to consider in the morning, and I haven’t the faintest idea what I…” Maggie closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead again.

  “A headache?”

  “No, no. Well, that is…yes, my head does ache, but I think I have an idea.”

  “To throw yourself between them?”

  “Indeed not. But it occurs to me that, if I can’t reason with Fred, the only course of action left is to try and reason with the viscount.”

  Jane stilled. “Lord St. Clare? But how can you? You haven’t even been introduced to him. And even if you had…he’s a single gentleman. You can’t simply pay him an afternoon call.”

  “Of course not. By tomorrow afternoon, it will be too late. I must go today. Or tonight, rather, for I can’t be seen paying a call on him in broad daylight.”

  “My dear, you cannot go at all. There’s your reputation to consider.”

  “I suppose I shall have to go under cover of darkness,” Maggie said, thinking aloud. “When I’m least likely to be observed.”

  “If you won’t consider your own reputation, you must at least consider mine. I’m your hostess and responsible for your—”

  “I won’t ask you to accompany me, if that’s what you’re afraid of. And I won’t involve your servants, either. I can very well take a hackney to the viscount’s residence.” Maggie hoped that would be enough to protect Jane’s good name. “Unless…Gad, he doesn’t live in bachelor rooms in St. James’s Street, does he?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so. I’ve heard he’s staying at the Earl of Allendale’s residence. A big mausoleum of a place in Grosvenor Square.”

  “But that’s not very far from here at all.”

  “Yes, I daresay you might walk there,” Jane said dryly.

  “I know you disapprove, but you must advise me. Is St. Clare as unreasonable as Fred, do you think?”

  “I haven’t the slightest notion. We’ve never been introduced. Though I have seen him twice at the theater. He was sitting in a box with his grandfather. I must say, he didn’t look like a particularly amiable gentleman. On the other hand, I can’t conceive of anyone being as disagreeable as Fred.”

  Maggie considered this. “Well, I suppose the worst thing that can happen is he’ll laugh in my face. Or refuse to admit me altogether. It’s very likely a fool’s errand, but if there’s a chance he might call off this stupid duel, I must make the effort to see him.”

  “The worst thing that can happen…?” Jane was incredulous. “Margaret, no one knows the viscount well enough to judge his character. He’s been on the continent for ages. For all you know, he’s a rake and a libertine. A vile seducer. To go to his house alone—and at night, too—you’re practically offering yourself to him on a silver platter!”

  “I shan’t go alone,” Maggie said. “I shall take Bessie with me.”

  Maggie stood outside the monstrous structure in Grosvenor Square that the hackney-carriage driver had assured her was the town residence of the Earl of Allendale. It was cold and the mist had come up, blanketing the street in a gray fog barely penetrable by the glow of the gas lamps that lined it. She wrapped the folds of her fur-trimmed cloak tighter around her as Bessie paid the hackney driver.

  Bessie hadn’t been as reluctant to accompany Maggie on her errand as Maggie had expected she’d be. Indeed, her former nurse had taken the view that any behavior resembling that engaged in by Maggie in her wild and headstrong youth ought to be encouraged.

  “You were never a frail, wilting sort of female, Miss Margaret,” Bessie had said. “Not until you took sick. Who knows but that an adventure or two like you used to have might not put the color back in your cheeks?”

  Maggie was oddly touched by her maid’s loyalty. Especially considering Fred’s all-too-frequent lectures to Bessie on the duty she owed her mistress, and his constant threat that, were anything to happen to Maggie, Bessie would be sent off without a reference. As if such a thing were in his power! He wasn’t Maggie’s husband. Not yet, at least.

  “The driver has promised he’ll wait here to take us back to Green Street after we’ve seen the viscount,” Bessie said, approaching Maggie through the fog. Her own cloak, made of a nondescript drab, billowed around her large frame. “Though if you ask me, his lordship’s as like to be in bed asleep as anything.”

  Maggie followed Bessie’s gaze to the darkened windows of the house. “It’s only one o’clock. I daresay there’s more of a chance he won’t be home at all. Most gentlemen hereabouts keep town hours.”

  Bessie pursed her lips in disapproval as she accompanied Maggie to the front door. “Wrap yourself up tight, Miss Margaret. No need for you to be getting a chill on Master Fred’s account
.”

  Maggie nodded, and while Bessie rapped at the door, she tugged the fur of her cloak up around her chin. It had been a gift from her father, given to her over six years ago when she returned home from her first season in London. A fine, deep blue velvet trimmed in sable. “The same blue as the wildflowers at Beasley,” Papa had told her.

  “Town hours, indeed,” Bessie muttered, rapping at the door again. “Where are the servants, then, I ask you?”

  Maggie briefly closed her eyes. Her cheeks were warm despite the cold, and within her chest was the familiar feeling of heaviness she experienced whenever she’d overtaxed herself. The journey had worn her down. She hated for Fred to be right.

  She was just beginning to consider whether or not she should tell Bessie that it was all a mistake—that they should get back into the hackney and return to Lord and Lady Trumble’s—when the front door opened and they were confronted by a stooped, white-haired butler with a candle held in his upraised hand.

  He looked at Bessie first before dismissing her and turning his rheumy gaze on Maggie. His eyes swept her from the top of the sable-trimmed hood of her cloak to the toes of her kid half-boots. Seeming to have satisfied himself that at least one of the party was a lady, he lowered his candle. “Madam?”

  Maggie stepped forward. “I’m come to see Lord St. Clare,” she said in the same firm tones she used when directing the servants at Beasley Park. “It’s a matter of some urgency.”

  The butler’s face was devoid of expression. “Your name, Madam?”

  She swallowed. “Mrs. Ives.”

  It was Jane who had suggested that Maggie present herself as a married lady. “Servants are prone to gossip,” she’d said before Maggie departed Green Street. “It would be far better if St. Clare’s servants didn’t know you were Miss Honeywell. Indeed, it would be best if they didn’t know who you were at all.”

  Bessie had heartily agreed, even going so far as to volunteer her own last name for Maggie’s use. It was a small deception and would surely harm no one, but Maggie was uncomfortable with it all the same.

  “I will see if his lordship is at home.” The butler began to withdraw, moving as if to close the door.

  Maggie delayed him a moment longer. “If he is at home, inform him, if you please, that my visit pertains to his dawn appointment.”

  The butler betrayed no signs of knowledge about the duel, but Maggie suspected her own knowledge of it underlined to him the urgency of her visit. He disappeared into the house, and after a short time, during which Bessie grumbled incessantly about the rudeness of servants leaving young ladies to wait on the stoop with no care at all for whether they would develop an inflammation of the lungs, he reappeared and welcomed them inside.

  The entry hall of the Earl of Allendale’s residence was far grander than that of Lord and Lady Trumble’s house in Green Street. An enormous crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, and a sweeping staircase curved up to the floors above. The floor was tiled in marble, and the silk-papered walls were lined with statuary and artifacts.

  Maggie pushed back the hood of her cloak and looked around, her eyes settling first on a sculpture of a horse and then on an eerily shaped bust that, upon closer inspection, appeared to be some sort of a death mask. A shiver ran down her spine.

  “His lordship will see you in the library.” The butler guided them down the hall to a set of closed doors.

  Maggie raised a self-conscious hand to her hair, smoothing any stray locks back into the simple chignon in which Bessie had arranged it before they left Green Street.

  The butler opened the door for her, and Maggie preceded him into the library, Bessie not far behind her. The room was lit by only a few candles and the crackling fire in the hearth. Its dancing flames cast the bookshelves and furnishings in an ever-shifting pattern of shadows.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man stood in front of the fire, his back to the room. Lord St. Clare, Maggie presumed.

  “Mrs. Ives, your lordship,” the butler said.

  “Thank you, Jessup.” St. Clare’s voice was a deep, rich baritone. “You may leave us.”

  As the butler withdrew, St. Clare turned and approached his visitors. He was a big man, standing well over six feet, and had the sort of lean, well-muscled build that set off the current fashion for skintight pantaloons and close-fitting coats to magnificent effect. Unlike Fred, whose bulky frame had made him look oddly uncomfortable in his snug garments, the viscount seemed perfectly at ease, moving with a languorous, masculine grace that put Maggie in mind of a great, predatory cat.

  A rake, Jane had said. A libertine. A vile seducer of women.

  He emerged from the shadows to stand in front of her, promptly executing a slight bow. “Mrs. Ives. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  Maggie stared up at him, her wide eyes meeting his stormy gray ones.

  Her breath caught. “Oh,” she said weakly.

  And then, she fainted.

  Strong arms caught Maggie before she fell to the ground, effortlessly sweeping her up and carrying her to the leather library sofa. A pillow was arranged behind her head, and long masculine fingers untied the ribbons at the neck of her cloak, revealing the modest kerseymere gown she’d worn beneath it.

  “Fair exhausted, she is,” Maggie heard Bessie saying as she slowly came around. “Only arrived in London this afternoon and refused to rest, no matter how much the master and Miss Trumble prevailed upon her.”

  “She’s ill,” St. Clare said.

  “A nip of brandy will set her to rights. If you could spare a glass, your lordship?”

  Maggie felt St. Clare rise. She heard the clink of crystal as a decanter was unstopped and a glass was filled. Then, before she knew it, a powerful arm was sliding beneath her shoulders, carefully raising her up. She smelled the familiar fragrance of horses and leather combined with a seductive, purely masculine scent that might have been the viscount’s shaving soap. “Steady now, Mrs. Ives,” he said, placing the edge of the glass to her lips.

  “You mustn’t trouble yourself, my lord,” Bessie said. “If you’ll allow me. I was her nurse long before I was her maid.”

  “Her nurse?”

  “Aye, indeed I was. There’s many who say she wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for my nursing.” The glass was taken from St. Clare, and now wielded in Bessie’s capable hand, pressed again to Maggie’s lips. “Just a swallow, Miss Margaret,” she urged, compelling her to drink it. “A sip won’t harm you.”

  St. Clare’s arm tightened reflexively around Maggie’s shoulders. “Miss Margaret?”

  “Oh, well, as to that…”

  Bessie was saved from explaining by Maggie herself who, after swallowing far more than a sip of the proffered brandy, had not only been revived by it, but had also promptly proceeded to choke. “It burns like the devil,” she gasped, opening her eyes and coughing. Thankfully, the aftereffects of the fiery liquid were short-lived. After a brief moment, she composed herself and, blinking several times, looked up at the figure of Bessie hovering over her.

  And then she looked past Bessie, to the face of the gentleman cradling her in his arm.

  Her pulse raced.

  Lord St. Clare was a dangerously handsome man who, at first glance, put Maggie in mind of Byron’s Corsair. He had well-formed features characterized by a strong, chiseled jaw, lean cheeks, and firmly molded lips that were inclined to curl into a sneer. His thick golden hair looked as if it had been tousled by a cold north wind. And his skin appeared to have been bronzed by the sun of some exotic land.

  There was a faintly weathered look about him. A hint of world-weariness. Had he been a sailor, perhaps? An officer in His Majesty’s Navy? Or was his appearance merely the result of years spent traipsing about the continent?

  He was undoubtedly aristocratic, Maggie could see that quite plainly. His bearing was that of a gen
tleman who’d had wealth and privilege since birth. Indeed, it was that precise quality of subtle, patrician arrogance that, when combined with the healthy glow of his skin and the lazy, masculine grace of his body, gave him the look of a man who spent all of his time out of doors—riding, driving, and very likely dueling lesser men to the death just for the fun of it.

  Good lord, how could she ever have thought this man was Nicholas Seaton?

  He couldn’t be, could he? It was impossible. He was too big. Too strong. Too old. Too highborn. Too…everything.

  And yet…St. Clare’s eyes were the same unique shade of stormy gray as Nicholas Seaton’s, and they held within their depths that peculiar mix of humor, bitterness, and anguish that Nicholas’s had had all those years ago at Beasley Park.

  And he smelled like Nicholas, too. Not the expensive shaving soap—Nicholas had never had anything half so fine—but the fragrance of horses and leather and that other scent that had so uniquely belonged to him.

  Maggie met St. Clare’s eyes, unable to contain the swell of longing within her.

  How many years had she wasted waiting for Nicholas Seaton to return to Somerset? Too many to count. He’d been her first love. Her only love. She’d long ago resigned herself to the fact that he was dead. He’d have joined the army. He’d have been killed in the Peninsula or at the Battle of Waterloo. He must be dead. For if he were still alive somewhere in the world, he would have found his way back to her.

  “The brandy was not to your liking, I see,” St. Clare said. “Shall I send for a glass of wine? A cup of tea? Pray tell me what you require, Mrs. Ives, and I shall endeavor to supply it.”

  Maggie struggled to a sitting position. “I thank you, my lord, but I don’t require anything. I’m much better now. Indeed, if you’ll be so kind as to release me…”

  St. Clare waited until she was fully upright before removing his supportive arm. He then drew back, taking a seat in a nearby chair. His gaze never left Maggie’s face. “It is Mrs. Ives, is it not?”