“Your daughter is a jade!” Tammadge said later that night in one of the reading rooms of White’s Club where he encountered Lord Rivington relaxing with a glass of cognac.
The earl had just returned from Oxford. He’d felt tired, but pleasantly so, and his mood had been mellow. Tammadge’s words, however, brought on a sharp stab of anger, as did any reference to Maryann, and the inevitable prickle of apprehension caused by Tammadge’s obvious displeasure.
With forced casualness, he asked, “What’s she done?”
“Done? Nothing … yet. But she’s rebellious, disobedient, and forward. On top of that, she made me feel a complete and utter fool. Why the devil didn’t you tell me it was she who’d been the driving force behind that ridiculous clause in the marriage contract?”
“Keep your voice down, for heaven’s sake.” The Earl of Rivington’s florid face turned a shade darker. “Do you want every dammed soul in the club to know you have a problem with Maryann?”
“I?” Tammadge’s pointed brows rose. “It is you my friend, who has the problem. I admit, since I’ve made up my mind to marry and beget an heir, I’d as soon marry your daughter as anyone else’s. But if she doesn’t suit, I won’t hesitate to call an end to the betrothal.”
“And our partnership? You said it was contingent on the marriage.”
“Naturally, our partnership will be dissolved. It’s not important to me.”
Lord Rivington gulped. He could not afford to dismiss their arrangements lightly.
“Maryann’s a beautiful girl,” he said. “The spit ’n’ image of Irene when she was younger, and you always said you couldn’t tolerate anything but exquisite beauty around you.”
“She is a delicious morsel, but you assured me she’s the meekest, most timid creature on earth. Just the kind of wife I was looking for.”
“Can I help it that you didn’t bother to exchange more than two words with her since the engagement?” Rivington demanded belligerently. “She’d have told you about the bargaining for the dowry and consols readily enough.”
“Then you admit you misled me?”
Rivington flinched at the silky note in the viscount’s voice. Running his fingers through the remains of hair that sat like a dull gray crown on his head, he reflected bitterly that the only reason he had allowed Maryann a say in the marriage contract was to ensure she was well disposed toward Tammadge. And the one time he had given the girl her head, his leniency worked against him.
“She is biddable,” he said, grimly determined to make her so.
“She’s damned impertinent! Objected to living at Sevenoaks.”
“Opposition has never stopped you from staying the course.”
“She’s inquisitive to a fault. Questioned me about Farrell. How I met him, why he doesn’t seem at home in society.”
“I don’t tolerate it when she questions me,” said Rivington, his eyes hard and cold. “You shouldn’t either. But, about Farrell—who is he? His family?”
“He’s a down-at-the-heels adventurer and, I admit, quite out of place among the members of the ton. But if I sponsor him,” Tammadge said softly, “what reason or right do you and your daughter have to pry into his history?”
“Stap me, Tammadge! Can’t a man be curious?”
Tammadge ignored the outburst. Rising, he bowed with just the correct degree of deference and familiarity to old Lord Ponsonby shuffling into the reading room. The venerable gentleman had been a very good friend of his grandfather.
“Good evening, sir. I hope I find you well.”
“Is that you, Tammadge, my boy?” Leaning heavily on his cane, Lord Ponsonby peered short-sightedly into the viscount’s face. “Aye, and looking and acting every day more like your father and grandfather before you.”
“You are too kind, sir.”
“They would’ve been proud of you, my boy. Mighty proud. That speech you gave last week on the hardships of climbing boys—just what your grandfather would have said. You’re a chip off the old block.”
Nodding to himself, the old gentleman shuffled toward the far corner of the chamber where the most comfortable chairs and a set of footstools were reserved for him and three or four others of his generation.
Tammadge’s thin mouth twisted cynically. His sire and his grandsire, under the influence of his Quaker grandmother, had expended time, energy, and vast amounts of money on such projects as foundling homes, orphanages, charity schools, and asylums for fallen women who wished to change their way of life. Thank goodness, they had both succumbed to a virulent fever, picked up while sticking their long, pious noses into various prisons and the prison hulks on the Thames, before they could totally deplete the family coffers.
Young Francis Tammadge had realized at an early age that he had absolutely nothing in common with his father and grandfather. At the age of five, he had known that his own inclinations were best served if kept hidden, unless he wished to spend his childhood kneeling and praying for his salvation on the hard floor in his grandfather’s room. By the time he attended Oxford, he was a master of dissimulation, and when he came into his inheritance shortly afterward, he was regarded by the ton as a pattern card of rectitude and respectability.
He was at liberty to make his fortune whichever way he chose and, after conscientiously discharging his obligations to the charities set up by his forebears, he chose to spend it on the opulent beauty of Eastern treasures, on paintings by masters of the Italian and Dutch schools, on exquisite furniture unearthed in some tumbledown French chateau. Never again would he live in the austerity introduced by his Quaker grandmother.
He was considered a great matrimonial catch, and while insipid daughters were paraded before him by starchy matrons of the ton, he could satisfy his less orthodox cravings in the flesh houses of London’s slums and stews.
Tammadge prided himself on having led a double life for nigh on twenty years. To work for him, he had chosen men whose primary drive was greed. Avarice was as effective in ensuring a man’s silence as a gun held to his head. And if he became too grasping—or careless, or curious—he was eliminated. London held an endless supply of men and women clawing for an opportunity to escape poverty, and never, until Rivington, had Tammadge chosen a partner for one of his ventures from among the ton.
Giving the earl a covert look, Tammadge resumed his seat. He hadn’t been surprised when Moll, who ran one of his gaming establishments in Soho Court, had told him a year ago that Rivington cheated. Nothing much astonished Tammadge, and he himself enjoyed every now and again the fleecing of a gullible sprig of noble family or winning the property of some country bumpkin. However, he did not tolerate anyone but the dealers to cheat in his gambling salons.
Ordinarily, he would have instructed Moll to issue a warning to the Earl of Rivington. If that didn’t do the trick, well, all of his gaming hells employed a set of strapping fellows capable of persuading the most recalcitrant client to do as he was bid.
But Tammadge had been bored at the time, bored with life and effortless, unchallenged success. He had for some time toyed with the notion to expand his gambling facilities—right into the heart of the ton. Rivington’s house in Mount Street, he knew, already had a room ideal for his purposes.
And so he had merely watched Rivington, had noted the earl’s distaste for scandal, the obsessive pride in the Rivington name. He’d had him followed on frequent journeys to Oxford, where—strangely, he had believed at first—Rivington was honored as a benefactor at Christ Church. He had bided his time while the earl plunged deeper into debt, losing at the races, dropping a bundle on the Exchange, and, despite his cheating, losing at the gaming tables.
Then providence in the shape of Countess Lieven at Almack’s had introduced him to Rivington’s youngest daughter, the Lady Maryann. He had known instantly that he must possess her.
She was not voluptuous like the women he picked as his mistresses. Maryann’s beauty was as delicate as the beauty of carved jade. And although freshness and innocence were not qualities that appealed to him in general, they were a prerequisite for the future Viscountess Tammadge.
But now, it seemed, the Lady Maryann had feet of clay.
Remembering her in the Effingham garden, the blush and stammered explanation that Farrell was, after all, very different from other men, remembering her dismay when she saw Farrell with her friend Bella, he scowled at Rivington.
“On top of showing her curiosity, your daughter makes no bones about it that she’s intrigued by Farrell.”
“Maryann?” Rivington gaped in astonishment. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. The chit’s never shown an interest in any man. Five suitors I sent off with a flea in their ears last season, and not so much as a sigh from her.”
“Undoubtedly they were all young, and none of them had a guinea to his name, or any immediate prospect of inheriting.”
“So? Neither, apparently, has this Farrell fellow.”
Tammadge beckoned to one of the menservants hovering near the door of the reading room and ordered more cognac. He silenced the earl, when he opened his mouth to speak, with an impatient flick of the ubiquitous handkerchief. Only when the glasses had been placed on the table between them and the waiter had returned to his post by the door, did Tammadge address his companion again.
“Neither was your daughter safely engaged to be married to a very wealthy man last year. Don’t you see, Rivington? She’s already on the look-out for a lover.”
“Come now!” Offended by what he considered a slur cast upon his name, the earl felt obliged to protest. “You’re doing it too brown! I think you’re misreading what she said, judging her by the women you’ve known so far.”
Tammadge shot him a look of disdain.
“Maryann is a Rivington,” the earl blustered.
As though it were yesterday, he remembered that night in March of ’97 when he had planted the seed of their fifth child in Irene. He had caught Irene with the four older girls and that infernal German wench sneaking out through the garden. Irene was taking the children to Germany, she said. Just because he’d given the puling Augusta a cuff on the ear.
Well, he had made sure his wife wouldn’t run off again. He had seen to it that she never had so much as a shilling in her purse, and he’d made it clear she wouldn’t see any of her daughters again if she tried to leave him. He had been certain the child conceived that night would turn out a son—his heir. But it had been another girl, Maryann, and Irene had not conceived again. Damn them both!
“Maryann is a Rivington,” he repeated grimly. “On that I’ll swear my oath. And she’d never—”
“Rivington or not, her blush gave her away. She is as transparent as glass, and I know she has a fancy for Farrell. I had to stand there and patiently make her believe I’m besotted enough to blow her lover’s brains out when I’d as soon tell her I’ll strangle her if she attracts so much as a breath of scandal to my name.
“Are you saying you wouldn’t blow the fellow’s brains out?”
“Rivington, you are a fool. I’ll see to it that she’ll forget about Farrell. I have plans for him. He’s too good a man to waste on a woman’s fancy.”
Swirling the cognac in his glass, Tammadge sat staring at the amber liquid. His expression was such that the Earl of Rivington deemed it prudent not to break the silence.
Tammadge raised his eyes. “But if he dares approach Maryann, you may be sure I’ll kill him. Not, my dear Rivington, because I’m besotted with your daughter. I’d kill him because he aspires to what is mine.”
Rivington suppressed a shiver. “Then why the devil did you go through that rigamarole with Maryann, trying to convince her you’re taken with her?”
Tammadge raised the glass and drank deeply. “I’ll woo and pacify her if I must,” he said softly. “It is unwise to frighten a young girl before the nuptials.”
Rivington glowered. “It may be unwise for you, my friend. But if she encourages Farrell, I’ll have her hide.”
“I hope you jest,” Tammadge said coldly. “She’s mine, and it is up to me to chastise her. If, when, and how I think best.”
“She’s not yours until the knot is tied.”
The viscount’s pale eyes narrowed. “You see to it that she stays in line until the wedding. But put one blemish on her, Rivington, and the marriage is off. And when the marriage is off, our deal is off.”