Ashlyn Macnamara Read online

  Blast. Not only compounded interest, but usurious rates. “Here now, what gives you the idea I don’t?”

  Henrietta allowed a moment to pass before replying. “When’s the last time you won?”

  “Ah, excellent point, Miss Upperton.” Leach smiled so broadly, George had to tamp down an urge to slam the man’s teeth down his impeccably cravated throat.

  And he would, too, if Leach made any sort of improper advances toward Henrietta. Not that Henny would stand for it. She was clever enough to see past these ton nobs. But then she was returning the idiot’s grin, and the devil take it, were her cheeks coloring? After the conversation they’d just had, how dare she?

  He’d be damned if he saw his sister married to such an overdressed simpleton. Hell, the man would probably compliment Henny’s musical talents. “Didn’t Mama say she wanted you to keep close watch on Catherine? Make certain she got the right sort of introductions? That kind of thing?”

  “Oh, I’m sure Mama wanted you to do that.” She didn’t even glance in his direction, so riveted was she on Leach.

  Leach. And just what sort of name was that? It wasn’t one that needed to be passed on by any stretch of the imagination. He ought to have gone into trade, or better, become a doctor. “Now—”

  The sound of someone clearing his throat cut him off. He turned to find a footman hovering next to a flowerbed. Poor man, he’d had to come the roundabout way to find his quarry. “Mr. Upperton, this message just arrived addressed to you. It’s apparently most urgent.”

  George eyed the folded scrap of foolscap on the footman’s tray. It hardly looked urgent. In fact, it looked rather flimsy. A stiff breeze off the ocean might snatch it away at any moment. He found himself wishing for that very event to occur. Then he could go back to ensuring his sister didn’t accept any proposals from idiots with preposterous names.

  Then he could cheerfully ignore whatever dire news that innocent little scrap of paper held. For his gut told him it was dire. A good many so-called gentlemen liked to call in their markers with just such notes.

  He trudged toward the servant. The liveried man stood, his face expressionless—just carrying out his duty. Of course. The blandness alone weighed even further on George’s stomach. If it was good news, the man would have occasion to smile, or at least ease up on his jaw.

  Feigning nonchalance, George plucked up the scrap of paper and opened it slowly, as if it mattered not at all what the note contained—certainly not as if he were reluctant to read it.

  Ah yes, a marker all right, or one being called in. God, and not one of the lesser ones, either. Did he really owe Barnaby Hoskins five hundred guineas? He must have been thoroughly in his cups that night, for he did not recall it. He did, however, recognize the old bastard’s signature, black on white, as clear as the sun sparkling off the Channel. And then his glance drifted further down to a second signature, and the dead weight in his gut ignited.

  The unfamiliar scrawl, once he deciphered it, spelled out Roger Padgett.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PADGETT. LUCY’S great, hairy ape of a brother. Damn his eyes, how had he found George in the wilds of Kent? And why had he acquired Hoskins’s marker?

  George’s mount, the deuced thing, surged ahead, an attempt to catch up to its fellows, no doubt. He sawed on the reins and shifted his weight back in the saddle, but the blasted horse tossed its head and pawed the ground. Revelstoke had assured him the creature was gentle, but the morning’s ride had only proved the master a liar. That, or the nag was an expert at deception. Either way, the beast was most definitely in control.

  He squinted along the path ahead. Encroaching trees, their leaves already edged with red and gold, closed in. The rest of the party had already ridden out of sight. So much for healthy companionship. Even his sister had abandoned him to fate—or at least his musings. Worse, if a few of the gentlemen took it into their heads to run races, George wouldn’t be on hand to wager on the winner.

  “Ho there, you blasted thing.” Once more, he pulled on the reins and leaned back. The beast pulled to an abrupt halt, allowing George a breath of cool late summer air, tinged with the tang of salt. “Better. Now at least stand still long enough to let a man think.”

  But the sea tang called to mind the previous day and images of a secluded beach surmounted by high bluffs. No, not that. He shook his head. He needed to work out what bloody Roger Padgett was up to, and how he was going to get himself out of this mess.

  As if that small movement of his head were some kind of signal understood only by equines, his horse let out a snort and reared. The world tilted. For an instant, George knew a sensation of weightlessness, but then his rump hit the ground with a tooth-cracking jolt. His ungrateful nag wheeled and galloped for the stables, the earth trembling beneath the thunder of its hooves.

  George drew in a painful breath. “Goddamned, bloody, foul, bugger of a wretch.”

  Why he’d ever allowed Revelstoke to convince him to get on the beast in the first place was a complete and utter mystery. He’d have done much better to lie in bed, only then he’d have had to endure his mother’s matchmaking when he finally turned up at breakfast. At the moment, sitting in the middle of a bridle path, his tail-bone aching and a sharp stone jabbing him in the arse, he reckoned he’d have stood a better chance with his mother.

  With at least a mile between him and the manor, he might as well set off on foot. He pushed to his feet and dusted himself off. A perfectly good set of buckskins ruined, and of course, he couldn’t afford to replace them until he’d settled the matter of his mistress and her brother.

  Damn the wench. No, no. He oughtn’t think of her in those terms. She hadn’t got herself with child all on her own. But a child. What was he to do with a child? Lucy, at least, ought to see to most of it, but he’d be expected to pay visits and, above all, contribute enough blunt to ensure the child’s future.

  He tried to call up an image, not of a tiny babe, but of a boy, perhaps about Jack’s age. A little blighter, but full of the devil with a quick grin, a sharp tongue, and a glint of mischief in his gray eyes. A streak of fearlessness, as well, enough to send him haring into the ocean even if he couldn’t swim—just like Jack.

  George recalled the steady weight of the child in his arms, the clinging bite of small fingers tightening their grip against his nape, the suppressed trembling. No, old Jack wasn’t about to let on he was afraid. The scamp, he needed a man about to teach him such useful things as swimming and standing up for himself once he got to school.

  But then Jack wouldn’t go to school, would he? Certainly not away to a place like Eton where he’d have to fend for himself or be consumed by the system. Fortunate for Jack, perhaps, that he’d avoid such an education, but the boy still needed a father.

  George shook his head. Why was he even concerning himself? The lad wasn’t his child, while in a few short months Lucy would present him with his own little bundle of responsibility. The thought settled heavy on his stomach. Thank God he’d foregone an early breakfast. Eggs, kippers, kidney, and all such were liable to come back up to make room for the weight of impending fatherhood.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  George started. The voice, familiar and youthful, had come from somewhere above. He peered through the branches of a nearby oak. Jack sat on a limb, his bare feet dangling at least six feet above the path. “I say, how did you manage to get all the way up there?”

  “Climbed.” Jack swung a smudged foot. “What does bugger mean?”

  “Now don’t you go repeating that to your—” He looked about him. “Where is Isabelle?”

  “You mean Mama? She’s at home.”

  Home? Yesterday, he’d assumed they lived in the village, but that had to be a mile distant. Jack and his mother certainly didn’t reside on Revelstoke’s estate. “And does she know you’re here?”

  “Don’t reckon she does.” Something in the boy’s tone—a hard note—gave George pause.

 
; “Why don’t you climb out of that tree, and we’ll go see her?” He planted his hands on his hips as if the gesture would lend him a measure of authority. “She’ll worry if she misses you, and you already gave her enough of a scare yesterday.”

  “I’m vexed with her.” A hint of petulance crept into Jack’s words. “She said she won’t take me back to the beach after yesterday.”

  “Ah.” He reached for the boy, hoping he’d take the hint and lean down, but Jack simply sat there, arms crossed and brows lowered. “The thing about women, see, is they need time to get over something like that. If you wait a few days, she might come around.”

  “I don’t want to wait. I want to go now.” Then his expression softened, and he leaned into George’s waiting arms. “You wouldn’t take me, would you?”

  “That would hardly be sporting of me.” George let the boy slip to the ground. Small but sturdy, that one. “I’m afraid we’ll have to respect your mama’s wishes for now. How about I take you back home? Will you tell me where you live?”

  “I bet when you were little, your mama let you do all manner of things.”

  “She most certainly did not.” He stopped himself before adding he’d got away with enough forbidden things on his own. Jack was clever enough to work that much out for himself. He hardly needed any further encouragement.

  “Then what did you do for fun?”

  “Same as most boys. I teased my sisters.”

  Jack reached out and plucked a stray branch from the ground. “Don’t have any sisters.”

  “Aren’t there any other boys your age in the village?”

  Jack shrugged. “Only the vicar’s son, and he’s not allowed to play with me. Not that I want to. He’s too namby-pamby.”

  ISABELLE ran a forefinger across the bonnet’s delicate lining, careful not to let her work-roughened skin damage the fabric. Silk, white and pure and virginal. Costly. Far beyond her means. Like the ball gowns she’d taken when she left home, she might have sold the entire piece for as much as a crown, but the one and only time she’d worn it, she’d caught the outer shell on a branch. The most she could do now was salvage what she could.

  She took a needle, pulled in a breath, and began picking the lining from the worn straw, one careful stitch at a time. Some harried milliner had spent hours until her fingers ached and neck cramped from painstaking stitchery in creating this bit of headgear.

  All so some young lady making her come-out could wear it for a few fashionable hours in Hyde Park before casting it aside. During her single foreshortened season, Isabelle had spared little thought for the shop girls. Now, as she undid their handiwork, she appreciated their efforts. The fine fabric would turn into a few fancy cases for her herbs.

  A knock at the door made her jump. “Blast.”

  She couldn’t afford so much as a pull in the fabric with a slip of her needle. This scrap of a bonnet was the last of the lot. Through careful management, she’d lived on the proceeds of her ball gowns for the past six years, her dwindling funds supplemented by what herbs she might sell. She set the headpiece gently on the floor before pushing herself to her feet.

  “Who’s there?” Who indeed would pay her a call? None of the village wives, certainly. As for the men … She reached for the shears.

  “Mrs. Weston” came the muffled call from beyond the door.

  Isabelle let out a breath. The vicar’s wife, a relatively safe prospect, that is, as long as Jack had obeyed her latest dictate and stayed away from the woman’s son. Despite a similarity in age, the two boys seemed incapable of getting along. Whatever the truth of the matter, any tears and wailing were invariably Jack’s fault.

  She opened the door to find the other woman standing calm and cool just beyond the threshold. A proper distance. It went with her upright bearing, the respectable poke bonnet that covered her cloud of dark hair, and her very proper morning dress that fell in precise folds to her feet.

  Isabelle resisted the urge to smooth her rough skirts. “Your pardon. As you can see, I wasn’t expecting callers.”

  “I’ve come about Peter.”

  Isabelle closed her eyes for a moment. “What’s Jack done to the boy now?”

  “Oh, this has nothing to do with Jack.”

  Isabelle held in a sigh. Apparently she wasn’t about to be treated with a litany of her boy’s shortcomings—a result of his mean birth, no doubt. Not that Mrs. Weston would ever be so rude as to make such a bald statement, but the implication always lay behind her words. Her family connections might not be worthy of the beau monde, but the woman’s tongue could lash just as sweetly and politely as any doyenne of the ton.

  “It’s my boy,” she rushed on. “He’s poorly again.”

  “Have you sent for the doctor?” The vicar’s wife, after all, ought to be able to afford an educated medical opinion.

  “Oh, I don’t think this warrants the doctor.” Mrs. Weston advanced into the room. “Not when that infusion you gave me last time did the trick.”

  Last time, she’d offered a bottle of one of Biggles’s brews, since she had it to hand. “Is it his stomach again?”

  “Yes, it pains him.”

  “But not enough for the doctor?”

  Mrs. Weston paled. “The doctor insists on bleeding him, and I don’t think …”

  Isabelle hesitated. On that count, at least, she agreed. A quick glance at her open cupboard, on the other hand, told her Peter might have to face the lancet after all. “I seem to be out of stomach remedy.”

  “Oh, would you make another recipe?” Mrs. Weston fished in her pocket. “I can pay.”

  A few shillings glinted temptingly in her gloved palm. They’d perhaps buy a bone from the butcher’s, enough to flavor a watery vegetable stew and remind her how beef tasted. “Of course. I’ll bring it over as soon as it’s ready.”

  “Please hurry. I hate to see him all pale and aching.”

  Mrs. Weston placed the coins on the table and left. Biggles had walked to a neighboring village to visit an old friend, but surely Isabelle had learned enough to brew a simple stomach remedy without supervision. All she needed was some meadowsweet, pennyroyal, and peppermint, but she already knew no peppermint hung from the rafters. They’d used up their supply.

  “Jack? Jack, I’ve got an errand for you.”

  No answer. She drummed her fingers against her thigh. She might have known the house was too quiet. He’d probably gone outside.

  She raised the window that looked over the back garden. A riot of color floated on graceful stems in the morning sunlight. Butterflies floated from flower to flower.

  “Jack? Wherever you’re hiding, come out at once.”

  Still nothing. That boy. A cold thread of unease drifted through her belly. An image of him at breakfast, sullenly spooning gruel into his mouth, flashed through her brain. What if he’d defied her and gone back to the beach alone?

  He was fully capable. He was as mischievous as any boy his age, full of the dickens at times and as hard-headed, well, as hard-headed as his own mother. Blast it all, she didn’t have time for this. She’d have to give Mrs. Weston her money back. But she couldn’t take the chance.

  Hoisting her skirts, not bothering with a bonnet, she bolted through the door and pounded down the street toward the path to the shore. Soon her breath shot from her in ragged spurts, her ribs crushed against her stays. The late August sun pressed on her, but despite its heat, a cold trickle of sweat coursed between her shoulder blades.

  And what if a wave had taken him again? What if he’d been pulled into the icy grip of the Channel? Tears blurred her vision at the thought of his small body tossed from wave to wave on merciless currents. Her Jack, at once sturdy and fragile, tough enough not to show his fear and yet no match for the power of all that water.

  Blindly, she stumbled down the crumbling chalk that led to the strand. When her feet slipped on yielding pebbles, she took a breath to steel herself, opened her eyes.

  Nothing, save the mournful
cry of a lone seagull. The wind rushed along the empty shoreline, its steady hiss underscored by the relentless rhythm of the surf.

  Her knees buckled, and she slumped against the wall of rock at her back. A sob choked her, and she pressed a fist to her mouth to hold back the pitiful wail. She should have kept a closer watch. Should have long since sought an apprenticeship for him. A boy his size might find any number of menial tasks within his capacity that would keep him occupied.

  She needed to let go of the notion that the grandson of an earl was above such things. Her family had cast her out, and rightly so, because of Jack. She’d failed at acting the proper society miss, and now she’d failed at motherhood.

  A shout from the pathway above reached her ears. Oh God. Someone was about to discover her shame yet again. Unwilling to face whoever it was, she stared at the broad expanse of pebbles that stretched from the cliff face to the waves lapping at the shore. So deceptively gentle today, so calm. Even the pristine shoreline mocked her in the perfection of its smoothness. Not a single hint of a footprint marred the surface.

  Not a footprint?

  She clenched her fists. Blast it all, if the boy wasn’t here, where on earth had he gone? She turned, and the source of the shouts became clear. Jack and Mr. Upperton picked their way down the slope.

  “Jack!” She raced up the path toward her son. The heart-pounding sensation of panic turned hot. “Where on earth have you been?”

  He’d begun to trot in her direction but stopped short, his smile fading. His brow puckered in uncertainty. She was so rarely harsh with him. Biggles claimed she wasn’t stern enough. She knew she ought to be, but every time she strove to be firmer, part of her wondered if she wasn’t being overly hard on the lad.

  She hadn’t wanted him, after all. Hadn’t wanted any of this.

  “Did you come looking for me here?” Jack asked.

  “I couldn’t find you anywhere.” Her voice quavered at the memory of the hollowness in her gut when she realized he was gone. “Don’t you ever, ever run off like that again.”