Читать книгу Much Ado About You - Eloisa James - Страница 12

Quite late that night

The man who marries your eldest ward gets Something Wanton? In truth?’ Mayne exclaimed.

‘There were only four offspring of Patchem in all the British Isles,’ Rafe confirmed. ‘And my lawyer just told me that each of my wards has one of those horses as her dowry. Something Wanton, as the eldest Thoroughbred, is Tess’s dowry. The other three are foals — two fillies and a colt.’

‘A horse as a dowry,’ Lucius commented. ‘A peculiar provision. This Brydone must have been an eccentric man.’

‘He could have ordered the horses sold, and the proceeds converted to a dowry,’ Rafe said. ‘But the will very clearly states that the horses are the dowry. I can only gather that he wanted his children to marry men who were as mad about horses as he was.’

‘There’s nothing to stop a man of poor moral character from marrying one of the girls, and then selling the horse at auction,’ Lucius pointed out. ‘Any of the four would bring at least eight hundred guineas at Tattersall’s. And since Something Wanton almost won the Ascot last year, he’d fetch even more.’

‘The lucky man is not allowed to sell his wife’s dowry for a year,’ Rafe said, looking back at the documents in his hand. ‘But, of course, you are right.’

‘Something Wanton!’ Mayne said. And then, with a broad grin: ‘Were you gentlemen aware that I am looking for a wife?’

‘I will confess that the thought had occurred to me that perhaps I could persuade you or Lucius to marry my eldest ward,’ Rafe said. ‘Teresa – Tess – is a beautiful woman.’

‘Exquisite,’ Lucius said briefly.

‘You and she would be perfect for each other,’ Rafe said, looking at Lucius. ‘She’s remarkably intelligent, and unlikely to serve you up tantrums. And you haven’t, as far as I know, any serious female interest at the moment.’

‘This is a most improper conversation,’ Lucius observed.

‘Oh, don’t be so damned gentlemanly,’ Rafe retorted. ‘If you don’t want to tie the ribbon, just say so.’

‘You’re in luck, Rafe,’ Mayne said, leaning back in his chair. ‘I’m considering it. But in truth, what is there to consider? She’s good-looking – not as gorgeous as Annabel of the golden curls, but pretty damn beautiful. My sister is forever nattering at me to find a wife. And here is a perfect wife: beautiful and endowed with a horse.’ He swallowed another gulp of brandy. ‘She’ll need a bit of training in social niceties; those girls don’t seem to have spent overmuch time with a governess, but if she’s that intelligent, she’ll catch on quickly. I’ll do it.’

Rafe narrowed his eyes. Mayne had been possessed of a wildness ever since he was rejected by a countess whom he wished to make his mistress. ‘Do you think to love her?’ he said, finding the words queer on his tongue, even as he said them. But he was a guardian now; presumably this was the sort of question guardians asked prospective spouses. Or brothers asked men who wished to marry their sisters.

‘Love … that I doubt,’ Mayne replied, peering at the wallpaper through the golden film of brandy clinging to his glass. ‘But there’s no need for love between us. I shall be faithful, and if not, discreet, and Tess shall probably be faithful, and if not, discreet. We shall enjoy each other’s company on a regular basis until I am pitched from a horse into a ditch somewhere.’

‘Precisely as her father did,’ Lucius put in, a warning in his voice.

‘Most likely.’

‘Or shot by an irritable husband?’ Rafe inquired.

‘Always a possibility.’ That prospect didn’t seem to bother Mayne either.

Rafe stared at him. He didn’t know how to help his old friend, who appeared to spend all his time flitting from the bed of one married woman to another. Mayne never stayed long enough to break a heart: that was all that could be said of his night-time activities. He was getting an edge, a sharp, twisting tongue, and a dissolute gleam in his eye that Rafe didn’t like.

And had no idea how to solve.

‘If you hurt her,’ he said, surprising himself yet again, ‘I’ll do you an injury, Mayne, for all you’re my friend. I know you think I’m a lazy — ‘

‘Lazy?’ Mayne interrupted, arching a mocking brow. ‘No. Just slowed to a genteel stroll by brandy knees.’

‘You know what I’m saying.’ Rafe turned to Lucius again. ‘Are you quite certain that you don’t wish to make an offer for Tess’s hand?’

‘I would almost venture to guess that you’re showing prejudice against me,’ Mayne interrupted, turning his glass again and again in the golden light.

‘I am,’ Rafe confirmed. ‘I think that Lucius would make Tess an admirable husband.’

‘Stubble it!’ Mayne said sharply. ‘I’ve offered for her, and Lucius doesn’t want her. Let’s leave it at that, shall we? Why don’t you start brokering the lovely qualities of whoever’s next in line? Imogen is a raven-haired beauty. You do have three more girls to get off on the market, Rafe. No rest for the weary.’

‘Why are they all unmarried?’ Lucius asked. ‘It seems peculiar, given their ages. There’s three of them in their twenties: virtual spinsters, from an English point of view.’

‘The Scots are all gelded,’ Mayne said. ‘I loathe the entire country.’

‘Perhaps there were deaths in the family that postponed their debut?’ Lucius asked, ignoring Mayne. ‘When did their mother die?’

‘My understanding is that their father never had the money to bring them out,’ Rafe said. ‘According to my secretary, Wickham, the estate is in a terrible way. Wickham stayed for a few days helping the new viscount, who’d been living off in Caithness and hadn’t seen the estate in Roxburghshire for years. Apparently it was grim. All unentailed land that might have brought in rents had been sold years ago. The house was a monstrous pile, and falling about their ears. The new viscount was beside himself when he found that the horses were willed to the girls: all the money made on the estate in the past ten years had been poured into Brydone’s stables.’

‘Brydone spent all his blunt on horses?’ Mayne asked.

‘He wasn’t niggardly with the girls. It’s just that there wasn’t anything to give, unless he were to sell one of his horses. From what Tess told me at supper, it seems he was counting on some big purse to bring them to London for a season.’

‘And until that moment arrived, his four daughters were left to moulder unmarried in a tumbledown house?’ Lucius asked.

‘He undoubtedly didn’t live up to your standards of gentlemanly behaviour,’ Rafe said, draining his glass. He had a fierce headache coming on. Too much brandy: one of these days he was going to have to give up the drink, for all it made life tolerable. The splitting headache seemed to come on earlier and earlier.

‘Any number of men will line up to take the other three of your hands,’ Mayne pointed out. ‘By the time the season opens, they’ll be out of mourning. I got the impression that Maitland is taken with Imogen. He’s got plenty of blunt.’

Rafe shook his head. ‘The marriage to Miss Pythian-Adams was set up years ago. What’s more, Maitland has run untamed ever since his father died, and lately he’s gone from bad to worse. He’s mad for racing and belts neck-or-nothing all over the countryside at all hours of the day and night. He’ll find himself planted, one of these days.’

‘Not a bad way to go,’ Mayne said idly.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Rafe snapped at him. ‘If you’re to marry Tess, you’ll have to mend your ways. No more endearing yourself to married ladies and risking your neck.’

‘I vow to be a model husband,’ Mayne said, and there was such a deep strain of tedium in his voice that Rafe narrowed his eyes.

But Mayne continued. ‘I’ve given up married women, hadn’t you noticed?’

‘No,’ Rafe said bluntly.

‘Well, I have.’ He didn’t look up, just kept flipping a quill over and over in his long fingers. ‘Lady Godwin – and I never had her – was the last, and that was all of four months ago. So Tess will have me all to herself, such as I am.’

‘That’s not a bad bargain,’ Rafe said, his deep voice falling into the silence. ‘For all you seem to be inclined to think it so, Garret.’

Mayne looked up. ‘You know I loathe my Christian name, dammit.’

‘Using it always wakes you up,’ Rafe said. ‘Now you’re awake, I’ll have you ten to a hundred on a game of billiards.’

‘I’m off to bed,’ Lucius said, stretching.

‘Here’s hoping you find a chaperone by Sunday,’ Mayne said to Rafe. ‘I’ll have to elope with Tess if Clarice Maitland remains in the house long. The woman gives me hives.’

‘I’ll send a note to my Aunt Flora,’ Rafe said. ‘She lives in St Albans. Perhaps she could be here as early as next week.’

‘So I have your blessing, then?’ Mayne demanded. ‘I’m to start my courtship tomorrow?’

‘Unless you think it better to wait until Tess is out of her blacks,’ Rafe said.

‘Can’t,’ Mayne said briefly. ‘The Lichfield Royal Plate is in a month. If I’m to race Something Wanton -’ He shrugged.

‘An unseemly reason to rush posthaste into marriage,’ Lucius remarked.

‘Gentlemanly rubbish,’ Mayne said, draining his glass. ‘You remind me of all the sanctimonious bastards wandering around London, forever hinting that I’m a loose fish and not daring to say so to my face.’

‘And aren’t you?’ Lucius asked, his voice controlled.

Mayne considered it. ‘No. I’m lecherous, and I sleep – have slept,’ he corrected himself, ‘with a good many married women. But I’m not an ugly customer, although I’ll be damned as to why I have to defend myself to one of my oldest friends.’

‘Perhaps because you’re planning to marry a woman simply to get your hands on a horse and race it at the soonest opportunity,’ Lucius said.

‘There’s nothing irregular in that. Marriage is nothing more than a trading of assets, and Tess will receive far more than a horse from me. And I might say, Lucius, that all this talk of civility from you is hard to bear.’

Lucius’s jaw set. ‘Why so?’

‘You’re not exactly a slave to society yourself. You more than dabble in stocks; you damn near control the English markets. There are those who would think my irregular courtship is nothing to some of your irregular financial manoeuvres. Lord knows, no one bred with a silver spoon is supposed to engage in anything resembling commerce.’

‘I gather you agree with my parents’ estimation of acceptable activities,’ Lucius said. There was an ugly moment of silence, and then Mayne sighed.

‘I don’t give a damn what you do with your pennies, Lucius, and you know it as well as I do. And you’ve never given a damn whose bed I frequented either. So why are you suddenly making me feel like the devil’s spawn when all I’ve done is declare an intent to become respectable?’

‘At least you’ve both kept your figures,’ Rafe said morosely, ignoring the rage that had sliced through the room in the last moments. ‘My closest friends are a lecher and a merchant, but at least they — ‘

‘A charming threesome, we,’ Mayne broke in. ‘A drunkard, a lecher, and a merchant. The flowers of English society. At least we inherited our sins honestly … from our forefathers.’

‘My mother would not thank you for that reminder of my father’s birth,’ Lucius said wryly. ‘She decided long ago that my head for figures must have come from his side of the family.’

‘Your mother’s a fool,’ Mayne said, but without venom, turning up his glass for the last drops of brandy. ‘You’re the best of us, even if your father’s inheritance was his face and not a fortune. Ah, well, at least I’m reforming! First marriage, then children, and before you know it, I’ll take up my seat in Lords.’

Rafe doubted that. But it was true that Tess could hardly hope for a better match in a worldly sense, which was precisely the sort of things guardians were supposed to pay attention to. ‘It can’t be a public wedding,’ he said. ‘She’s still in mourning.’

‘Strictly special licence,’ Mayne said. ‘My uncle’s a bishop, y’know. He can give us the licence and do the ceremony, right here. You have a chapel, don’t you?’

‘All right, but Tess has to agree. I’m not forcing her into a marriage that’s too hasty to feel comfortable.’

Mayne gave him a faint smile. ‘That shouldn’t present a problem. God knows I’ve had enough experience making women love me. I’d give it two days at the most. A few compliments and some poetry should do it.’ He said it without boastfulness, simply accepting of his own place in the world and his own skills.