Really, Josie. I hardly think that level of detail is necessary.” Charlotte’s tone was more abrupt than usual, but a night of fitful sleep would do that, and her dearest friends would forgive her.
Indeed, Lady Josefine Augustus Pembroke responded by sticking out her tongue and then retrieving a spool of gold thread from her basket.
“They are orphans, not actresses,” Charlotte continued. “Where do you expect them to wear something like that?”
Josie shrugged and licked the end of the thread. “It’s pretty. Don’t orphans deserve something pretty?”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I’m not saying they shouldn’t like what they’re wearing; I’m simply saying that you could sew five dresses in the time it’s taken you to embroider that one.”
Unfazed by Charlotte’s logic, Josie took the hem of the dress in hand and added accents to the elaborate edging she’d been working on this past fortnight. “Well,” she said. “I would prefer one pretty dress to five plain ones.”
There was no arguing with her. Josefine was as impractical a person as Charlotte had ever met. Thankfully, her lack of common sense was offset by the sweetest of natures. Charlotte turned to the third in their party, Lady Henrietta Hastings, for support. Hen deliberately kept her eyes trained on her own work, staying well out of the spat.
Charlotte finished casting off the blue knit jumper she had been working on since last Tuesday. She’d become quite good at knitting these past months. It wasn’t a craft she’d bothered to learn when she was younger—embroidery was more appropriate for a woman of her station—but when she’d heard that the Hollyhock Orphanage was in dire need of clothing to dress the young girls in their care, she’d quickly formed a circle to meet the need. With the weather as it was, a knitted jersey would be far more practical than a sewn pinafore.
Henrietta wrinkled her nose, a frown forming between her brows as she studied the project in her lap. “Have you decided how you are going to approach Mr. Drumwithel this time?” she asked, without looking up.
The Reverend. Insufferable man. Charlotte had never met a more arrogant, condescending man, and her brother was a duke. She entertained the most arrogant lords in London on a daily basis. “I’m going to refuse to hand over any of these clothes until he lets me through those orphanage doors,” she said as she wove the loose end of the yarn through the hem.
“Perhaps Mr. Drumwithel is correct. Perhaps it’s not an appropriate place for a lady to be,” Josefine said.
“And perhaps we should be the ones to determine what is and is not an appropriate place for us to be,” Charlotte said. “The Reverend is more than willing to take the money we raise and the clothes we make, but he has yet to demonstrate any evidence that these clothes are even making it onto the backs of his wards. Why, for all we know, he is selling these for a profit and those children could be wearing rags.”
Hen held up the jersey she’d been working on, lopsided with dropped stitches and one arm significantly longer than the other. “You think he’s selling these for profit?”
Josie snorted, and Charlotte, had she not been trying to prove a point, would have done the same. “Well, not yours, obviously,” Charlotte said. “But Josefine’s could fetch a pretty penny. One more reason you should focus on quantity, not quality,” she said to her friend. “So Drumwithel isn’t tempted to sell them.”
Josie stuck out her tongue once more and continued on with her tiny, tiny stitches.
“Has anyone heard anything about a certain viscount?” Henrietta asked before the bickering could start in earnest. “This morning’s papers say that he was seen arriving in London two days ago.”
Charlotte turned her attention back to the perfectly knitted jersey resting on her knees, but not before she saw both friends train their eyes on her. Neither of them spoke, and after a long, frustrating minute, Charlotte balled the knitting in her hands and stared back.
“Fine. I saw him last night. He joined Edward for dinner.”
“And?” Josie asked.
“And I don’t want to talk about it.” As she lay there trying to sleep, it had played on her mind how ridiculous she must have looked swathed in her voluminous nightgown. Not even one of her nice nightgowns, but the six-years-out-of-fashion but oh-so-comfortable nightgown that was now slightly too short to be appropriate. Good grief, she hadn’t even been wearing her slippers. He saw my toes.
She sank down in her chair, wishing the floor would open up and swallow her.
“You don’t want to talk about it? You, who talked of nothing else when you realized he would return to England?” Hen raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
“Not to mention all those years prior,” Josie added. “We discussed him so often as children that he’s mentioned a hundred times in my journals.”
“One moment…” Henrietta’s brow creased. “How did you see him at dinner? You were with Peter and me for dinner last night and then we were at Francesca’s ball.”
“Quite,” Charlotte bit out.
“He was still there when you returned?”
“He was.”
“Well, that was lucky,” Josie said. “You looked splendid last night. Truly Madame Genevieve outdid herself with that blue silk.”
“She did.” It would be a snowy day in hell before she told her friends the truth.
“So why are you so snippy?” Josie asked, her brows drawn together in concern. “You saw John, your lost love, for the first time in what? Ten years? I thought you’d be ecstatic.”
Charlotte swallowed hard and did her best to appear unaffected. “It didn’t go as I thought it would.”
Her two friends shared an apprehensive look. “No?” Hen asked.
“He was…curt. And rather dismissive. Perhaps I was mistaken in my earlier assessment of him. Perhaps he wasn’t the gentleman I thought he was.” Even as she said the words, she knew them to be false. She’d as good as told him he wasn’t welcome with her shocked demand to know why he was there, and like a gentleman, he’d left. Drat.
Her friends’ looks of apprehension deepened, and then Josie, who could always be counted on for support, said, “Well, how foolish of him. He’ll find it a hard thing, moving in our circles after his brother’s death, and he wouldn’t have had a better ally than you.”
“True,” Hen added. “And if you deign to grace him with your assistance settling in, he had better show his appreciation of such fortune with better manners.”
Josie cocked her head, her lips pursed in thought. “Of course, if you were to help him, that would be the kind thing to do.”
Hen nodded in response. “Very true. Quite the charitable thing.”
Charlotte could see what they were about. Josie and Hen thought that if they appealed to her kindness, she would be bound to offer John her help, and then who knew what might happen next?
And they had a point. Offering to help pave his way into society would be a good excuse to see him. A good excuse to spend time together. His close friendship with Edward and Fiona made it almost expected that she would offer her assistance, didn’t it?
* * *
John was drifting in and out of somewhat peculiar dreams about toes—pink, soft, and slender. There was a touch, a caress, and the feet flexed; the soles arched; the toes curled. Through the fog of sleep, he could feel the throb of his cock.
A sharp knock at the door woke him.
“Damn. What?” From the floor beside the bed, Newton raised his head and barked, echoing John’s frustration. Mosely had been told not to wake John in the mornings. His best ideas came at night, and this morning he’d still been working on his projects as the chambermaids rose.
His bedroom door opened a crack, just wide enough for the butler’s profile to show.
“Lord Heywood and his daughter, Lady Luella Tarlington, to see you, my lord.”
“I’m not at home.” That was one of the few benefits of London society. It was perfectly acceptable to lie about one’s presence and refuse to see people. If he were in Boston, he would have had to open the front door himself and then pretending to be absent wouldn’t have been an option.
“They have a solicitor with them, my lord. They plan to wait until you are ‘at home’ regardless of how long that might be. Although they hinted that it should not, in fact, be long.”
Blast. John groaned. Walter’s ever-growing list of creditors was proving more and more troublesome. This was not the first time a lord had shown up at his door demanding money. Nor was it the first time he’d been approached by a solicitor. But it was the first time he’d had to face the lord and lawyer at the same time.
He threw the blankets off. “I’ll been down shortly. Show them to the study.”
His mood did not improve in the time it took to throw on clothes, find his spectacles, and hastily tie a cravat. He tempered it, though, as he walked down the corridor to the study. It wasn’t Heywood’s fault John’s brother had run up debts. The man had a right to call them in. What continued to amaze John was the fact that every creditor thought they were the only individual to whom Walter owed money. His brother’s charade had been remarkably effective.
The butler opened the study door as John approached, Newton padding quietly beside him. John took a deep breath, held it for a count of five to keep his frustration at bay, and exhaled before he entered. “My lord,” he said as he bowed.
As he rose, he noted a woman by the window and recalled that Mosely had mentioned a daughter. Though why Heywood would bring his daughter to a meeting about what were, presumably, gambling debts, John couldn’t fathom.
She turned, an eyebrow raised, and stared at him, her gaze traveling from the tips of his toes to the still-tangled knots of hair he was suddenly conscious of. He could feel his anxiety building. He didn’t want to be the center of anyone’s attention. He didn’t want such scrutiny. Especially not from one of the haute ton. He already knew how they viewed him.
Beside him, Newton growled, his body stiff, his hackles raised. John put a comforting hand on the deerhound’s neck.
Lady Luella regarded Newton with a condescending look before locking eyes with John and delivering a tiny, dismissive hmph. Then she returned to staring out the window.
John’s gut twisted at the brush-off. Newton’s growl deepened, and the deerhound took a step forward, placing himself between John and the intruders.
“Is that dog safe?” one man asked.
“Quite,” John responded, but he did cross the room and open the door to the garden. Reluctantly, Newton exited, but not before stretching up to put his paws on John’s shoulders. Standing on his hind legs, Newton was bigger than most men. Every “guest” in the room shrank back.
John closed the doors and took a seat at his desk, in front of which the two men sat. Lord Heywood was grey-haired with the look of a man who knew plenty of decadence and little work. His cravat, stuck with a diamond the size of a robin’s egg, was tied in an intricate knot beneath his double chin. His violet velvet coat stretched taut across his paunch.
The lawyer, by contrast, was lean in the way a fox was, and had the same predatory air to him. “Lord Harrow, I take it you know why we’re here?”
John nodded.
“Then I’m surprised you haven’t seen fit to address the issue earlier,” he said.
From the window, Lady Luella muttered, “Indeed.”
John drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to fool his body into relaxing. He wanted nothing more than to tell the condescending lawyer he was one of a hundred creditors so far, and that he could bloody well get in line. But until John had found his feet in London, he’d keep that information to himself.
“With respect, seeing to my brother’s obligations has been a time-consuming experience.” More than they could know.
“Regardless,” Lord Heywood said, “you’ve been in England for months. You should have made the time to visit your fiancée.”
John’s stomach dropped, and his jaw dropped with it. What the devil?
“P-p-pardon?” He flushed as he stumbled and cut short the rest of his question. What blasted fiancée?
He looked at Lady Luella, just as she turned to face him once more. Objectively speaking, she was beautiful. Her hair was a pale shade of blond. Her face was perfectly symmetrical. Her lips were full with a lusciousness that was echoed in the lines of her figure. But despite this, his blood ran cold at the sight of her. It was her eyes. They were hard and mean and had the same look to them he’d seen many times over in his life—always before a cruel insult was thrown his way.
Marriage to this woman would be a miserable thing.
Her father and the solicitor exchanged glances. The solicitor leaned forward. “Your brother entered into an engagement contract with Lord Heywood a year ago, the day before his…incident.”
The day before Walter died. The same day Walter had cleared out what little funds remained in the estate accounts. “My brother is dead.” John had inherited Walter’s debts, but surely not his fiancée as well.
“The contract your brother signed didn’t specify which Viscount Harrow was to marry Lady Luella. Just that the Viscount Harrow would.”
Damnation. John removed the glasses from his face, cleaning a nonexistent smudge from the lens, buying time to gather his thoughts. Walter could not have made John’s life any more difficult had he planned it. “You have a copy of this contract?” he asked eventually, hoping there was an escape within it.
Lord Heywood’s face reddened. “Are you calling me a liar?”
The lawyer shook his head at his employer and reached into his satchel for a sheaf of papers, sliding them across the desk.
John scanned them quickly. It was a contract, and, from his experience, it appeared legally binding. At the bottom of the second page was a signature—unmistakably Walter’s.
He didn’t need to scan it a second time. That was the thing about a perfect memory. It only took one quick glance for the image to be burned permanently into John’s brain, a memory ready to be retrieved at a moment’s notice.
The pertinent lines remained clear, even as he closed his eyes and sighed. The contract didn’t specify Walter’s name. It didn’t specify the fourteenth Viscount Harrow. It simply said that Lady Luella Tarlington would marry Viscount Harrow.
He’d have his solicitor look for loopholes, but he wasn’t confident the man would find any. Another line from the contract stood out: Lady Luella’s dowry—eighty thousand pounds.
It was an enormous sum. Combined with what John already had in his bank account, it would see the estates free from debt, the fields sown, the cottages repaired, and the houses staffed.
When Wilde had suggested marriage as a solution to John’s problems, John had balked at the thought of having to woo a wife. But here one was presented to him, with no need to search her out, and her dowry was more than he needed.
It was an amount that was almost unreasonable, which gave him pause. “Why so much?” he asked.
Lord Heywood’s lips thinned. “It’s a generous offer. Much more than you deserve.”
“Is she defective?” As soon as the words were spoken, he knew they were the wrong ones.
“Defective?” Luella’s voice cut through the air like metal wheels braking against a metal track. “Like you? P-p-poor st-st-stuttering id-diot. Yes, I’ve heard all about your deficiencies.”
John froze. His tongue locked up against the back of his teeth. The sound of the solicitor tut-tutting felt like gunshots ripping through silence.
“Luella, shut up,” Heywood said, scowling. He turned back to John. “She’s not a virgin, and half the ton knows it, though no one has come right out and said it. Her tongue has run off every suitor that might have overlooked that point, except Harrow. The real Harrow, that is. That boy found something to like in her.”
That “something” was undoubtably the chit’s dowry, but her vicious nature had likely appealed to Walter as well. Like attracted like, after all. John looked at Luella. Her gloved hands gripped together so forcefully she was probably losing circulation. He could tell from the slight depression beneath her tightly pressed lips that she was biting the inside of them. Her expression was stone.
“I’ll think on it.” It was all he could say. He needed her dowry, but God, marriage to her…
The stare she gave him could have slaughtered a fully grown American buffalo. “Let’s be clear. It’s bad enough that I’m forced to marry Walter’s lesser brother, who is neither as handsome nor as witty. I won’t have people thinking that you aren’t ecstatic at your good fortune.”
His good fucking fortune, indeed. Damn Walter.
“You’ll call on me tomorrow morning,” she continued. “You’ll make it clear that you’re determined to earn my affections.” With a final sniff, she swished her skirts and stalked out of the room.
John turned to the two men still sitting in front of him. The lawyer’s eyes were wide, as though he himself could not quite believe her comments. Lord Heywood bore a look of half anger, half resignation. “The day my daughter becomes your problem, I’m going to open a bottle of the king’s scotch. I’ll see you soon, Harrow.”
He stood and followed his daughter out of the room. The lawyer nudged the contract on John’s desk before he followed.
John wanted to toss the papers in the fire. He wanted to call Newton, head to the docks, and board the first ship back to America. He wanted to crawl into a dark corner and hide.
But he couldn’t. Because when he agreed to return to England to take up the mantle of the viscount, he agreed to take responsibility for the welfare of all those who relied on him. That didn’t mean he couldn’t return to Boston. In fact, he planned to return as soon as humanly possible. He simply couldn’t do it until he’d sorted out the crisis Walter had left and installed some responsible, trustworthy stewards to run the place in his absence.
Perhaps sorting out the crisis meant marriage to a woman like Luella. But could he leave a wife as easily as he planned to leave his estates? Even one as awful as her? The dowry could be his salvation. It could see him home before the end of the year. But even though she was as caustic as stomach acid, abandoning her didn’t sit well. He didn’t think he could do it, which meant taking her to Boston with him.
If she was this wretched in London, just imagine what she’d be like when forced to endure the comparative savagery of America.
John stood and pushed the door open for Newton to enter. Then, he crossed to the lounge at the other end of the room, untying his cravat as he went. Perhaps if he closed his eyes now, he’d manage a few hours’ sleep.
He had just settled in when a shriek of outrage split the air. “You cannot possibly be considering marrying that witch.”