Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch. Miranda Jarrett

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      “I’m sorry, Caro.” Tears of sympathy welled up in Desire’s eyes. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

      But Caro shook her head again, this time with a fierce determination that the other woman never expected. “You mustn’t pity me, or judge my life empty. I may not have children, but I do have Frederick’s love, and he has mine. For me that is more than enough.”

      “You love your husband that much?”

      Caro’s chin inched higher. “That much, and more.”

      “So it is with me and my Jack,” said Desire softly, her hands cradling her unborn child. “I’ll pray for your husband’s deliverance, and rejoice in your happiness when he returns to you.”

      Yet Desire’s expression was anything but happy as she turned back to her brother, standing these past minutes as a silent witness to the women’s conversation, his face shuttered and his thoughts his own. Gently she touched his sleeve. “That’s your answer, too, isn’t it, Jere?”

      He cocked his head and frowned. “Meaning?”

      Desire took a deep breath. “Meaning that you intend to sail for Naples on this lady’s behalf, and nothing George Stanhope or Hamil Al-Ameer or I can say or do will make you change your mind. Not that I’ll be foolish enough—or selfish enough—to try again.”

      In that moment he realized she knew everything: what had happened on the Chanticleer, his failure to save his ship and crew, the fears that haunted him still. She knew, and she understood why he couldn’t turn his back on the one chance he would have to find peace with himself. What was it she’d said about Jack? That she loved him enough to let him leave? Not that he’d ever doubted the bond between them, but now he realized how strong a woman his little sister had become.

      “You’re wrong, sister mine,” he teased with more tenderness than he knew. “I’ve no intention in the least of acting on this lady’s behalf.”

      Caro’s heart plummeted. Though he’d said nothing to her of his plans on the long ride from Portsmouth, she had assumed that he’d agree, or else he would have left her behind. Instead he meant to abandon her here, now, crushing her last fragile hopes forever. For what must be the final time she looked at him, the tall, handsome man she’d believed would be her champion.

      But to her confusion, he met her gaze and grinned. “I’ve never done anything in anyone else’s name, Desire,” he said, “and I’m not about to begin now. If the lady wishes me to sail to Naples, why then, she’d damned well better be coming with me.”

      Thomas Perkins sat back in his leather-covered chair and pursed his lips with displeasure. He had put off seeing this particular gentleman as long as he could, hoping that perhaps he would leave the offices on his own, but here it was nearly dusk and still the man had insisted. Clearing his throat, Perkins drew off his spectacles and lay them in the exact center of the packet of papers on the desk before he answered the gentleman who sat opposite him.

      “I don’t believe I can accommodate you, sir,” said the lawyer in the careful, clipped speech that had served him so well in the courts. “I don’t understand how such gutterborn gossip can have any relevance at all to the well-being of my client.”

      “What’s gutter-born is your client, Perkins,” said George Stanhope sharply. “Her current behavior is absolutely no better than anyone can expect.”

      “Her ladyship’s behavior both past and present has never been anything less than exemplary, Mr. Stanhope. I pay no heed to rumor, sir, and instead make my judgments on my own knowledge. And I know, sir, that Lady Byfield is incapable of the activities of which you charge her, just as I know she has gone visiting friends, as her butler told me last Thursday, when these rumors first surfaced.”

      George struck his fist on the edge of the desk. “Then she’s tricked you, too, just as she tricked my uncle! She winks once and shows her dimples, and you old men turn into blathering fools. You know she’s taken young lovers for years. She’s even made overtures to me—told me what she’d do with me if we was ever alone, bold as brass. Like mother, like daughter, they say. She’s probably given my uncle more horns than a ten-point buck.”

      “You go too far, sir.” Perkins realigned his spectacles a fraction more to the left. “I have told you before, Mr. Stanhope, that I’ve no wish to discuss her ladyship with you. Now if you will excuse me—”

      “No I will not, Perkins! Dash it all, how can you defend the creature? She has run off with a common thief, the very man who robbed us both on the road! They’ll hang him when they catch him, and God help her if she’s with him when he’s taken.”

      “But I thought you’d said earlier that her ladyship had been kidnapped by this ruffian, that you were waiting on tenterhooks for his ransom note?” Though Perkins’s expression didn’t change, he did allow a breath of irony to creep into his voice. “You’ve been quite thorough in that, haven’t you, Mr. Stanhope? The warrant, the handbills, the whispered story that’s nearly as common as the one about the French war.”

      Flustered, George eased a finger around the edge of his fashionably high neckcloth. “You must have misunderstood, Perkins,” he said weakly. “Misheard it all, eh?”

      But Perkins continued as if George hadn’t spoken. “So thorough, in fact, sir, that I almost suspect the entire escapade to be of your own invention.”

      George dropped back into his chair, rubbing the thumbnail he’d earlier bitten to the quick against the inside of his palm. It took all his self-control to keep the telltale fingernails—or what was left of them—hidden from the lawyer. Why the devil hadn’t he thought to wear gloves? If Perkins were to guess how brashly he was bluffing, the lawyer would be on his neck like a weasel.

      He couldn’t let that happen. He needed to have his uncle declared dead, and to do that he needed Perkins’s help, not his antagonism. If he didn’t become the Earl of Byfield soon, his whole extravagant empire of credit and promises would collapse beneath him. He’d never dreamed he’d slip so far into debt, but then two years ago, when he’d first heard his uncle’s ship was missing, he’d never dreamed he’d have to wait so long for what was his by every right, either.

      God, how he hated Caro Moncrief! It was her stubbornness alone that was stifling him, making him wait the full seven years until the law would declare his uncle dead, instead of going through the motions herself. He didn’t have five more years. He didn’t even have five more months.

      But he did have one last card to play against her, one final trump that she’d never expect. That is, if she were even still alive. When his footman, his head bandaged, had haltingly confessed that an armed man had kidnapped the lady in the attic room, it had been all George could do not to shout with joy. If a ransom note had appeared, he was determined to ignore it, but when the hours stretched into days with no word, he’d allowed himself to imagine, quite delightfully, how that huge, violent brute had seized Lady Byfield for his own amusement. To have her gone so effortlessly was a true wonder, a sign that surely George’s luck was changing for the better.

      Perkins cleared his throat again. “Good day, Mr. Stanhope. The porter will show you out if you’ve forgotten the way.”

      “Not yet, Perkins.” George reached into his coat for the letter, his trump card. “You’re determined to be deuced illmannered to me, but you won’t be so quick to be rude once you’ve seen this.”

      He СКАЧАТЬ