A Perfect Gentleman Read online

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  “What do you mean, you have compromised Earl Patten’s daughter?”

  Neckcloth untied, coat unbuttoned, Stony was in his study going over the account books one last time before heading to bed and pleasant dreams. Then this nightmare walked in. Captain Brisbane’s hand was shaking too much to pour the wine from the decanter on the viscount’s desk. Stony took the bottle and filled the glass—then drank it down himself. “Damnation,” he said, “you were supposed to dance with the girl, by Zeus, not destroy her reputation!”

  The half-pay officer sank into the facing chair without waiting for an invitation. “She said she felt ill. I led her toward an empty room, thinking to go fetch her mother, our hostess, or a maid. Anyone. What did I know about women’s ailments? But somehow when we reached the room and I steered her toward the couch, she fell against me. And my bad leg, you know.”

  “No, I do not know how your bad leg could have ripped her gown, dash it!”

  “Well, it collapsed, and we fell to the couch. I tried to grab for the table, only I seem to have caught the lace at her bodice on the button of my coat and there was this awful sound and she screamed, and then her mother and half the guests ran in, and her father, Earl Patten, started shouting. And—”

  “And you are betrothed. I wish you well. The lady might be a bit vaporish, but her handsome dowry ought to provide proper medical—”

  “No.”

  Stony shook his head. The brandy could not have addled his wits so quickly. “No…what?”

  Brisbane studied his shoes. “No, I will not marry the earl’s daughter.”

  “But you’re a gentleman, by all that’s holy!”

  “Who is going to marry the woman I love, on my honor.”

  “On your honor? Honor demands you marry— What is her name anyway?”

  “Lady Valentina Pattendale. That is the family name.”

  “Right. Well, you have ruined the girl. She’ll likely want to be wed on St. Valentine’s Day, so you have nearly a year to grow fond of her.”

  “You do not understand. I love another. I am promised to her.”

  Stony poured another glass. This time he remembered to pour one for his guest. “And you never thought to mention the young lady to me?”

  “What for? I cannot afford to marry her yet, so nothing is official. Her guardian disapproves.”

  The viscount let out a sigh of relief. “Well, there you have it. No notice in the papers, no ring on her finger. No, you are Lady Valentina’s, all right and tight.”

  “No.”

  “Deuce take it, someone has to marry the cursed female!” Stony slammed his glass down on the desk.

  The captain did not meet Stony’s gaze. Silence fell like a shroud. Finally Brisbane said, “The earl is calling on you here in the morning. Or his seconds are.”

  “Oh, Lord. You’ll have to meet him, you know.”

  “No.”

  “Gads, man, you cannot keep saying no! Everything that makes us gentlemen demands giving the earl a son-in-law or satisfaction. He is entitled to one or the other, by Harry.”

  Brisbane stood. He wobbled a bit on his bad leg, but held himself erect with a soldier’s discipline. “War taught me how little the gentlemen’s code of conduct matters. It taught me the value of life, my own included, and the horror of taking another’s. Besides, I do not think the lady was taken ill at all. No, I will not meet Patten on the dueling field. Or the church steps. I am leaving London tonight. I merely came by to warn you, and to offer my regrets.”

  Regrets? Stony already had enough regrets to last a lifetime—or the few days he had left before Earl Patten put a pistol ball through his heart.

  Chapter Two

  The earl was apoplectic, understandably. Not only was his daughter ruined by a poor soldier, but Earl Patten had been paying the crippled bastard to keep her safe from fortune-hunters and libertines! To add insult to injury, the penniless, landless, untitled ex-officer refused to marry the girl!

  “I don’t care if the blackguard is betrothed or back at the front lines. I’ll have a husband for my daughter or I’ll have my pound of flesh.”

  The earl’s face was turning redder with each pound of his fist on Viscount Wellstone’s desk. Luckily the brandy decanter had been emptied long ago, so it could not splash wine on Stony’s suddenly empty appointment book. The earl, it seemed, had been at his clubs shouting his displeasure all night. Canceled invitations had been arriving at Wellstone House all morning. Who would trust his womenfolk to such a reprobate? What woman wanted to be seen with a man whose services and smiles were strictly for hire?

  Earl Patten had been quite thorough in his castigations. And in his violation of confidentiality. Along with the cancellations, Lord Wellstone had received two of his bouquets tossed on his doorstep, and one slap in the face. Then there were Gwen’s tears. A duel was sounding more appealing.

  Pistols at dawn were not harsh enough penalty for Stony’s sins, it appeared. Patten shook his fist inches from the viscount’s nose this time. “You! Why, you are not much better than that lily-livered soldier.”

  His own honor notwithstanding, Stony had to stand up for his friend. “If you are speaking of Captain Brisbane, he is one of the bravest men I know, following a higher code of honor than either of us will understand. He nearly lost his leg, almost his life, fighting for our country. How can you call him a coward?”

  “He ain’t here, is he?”

  Stony sat down again, farther from Patten’s fist and the shower that accompanied the earl’s diatribe.

  “Pshaw,” Patten spit out. Stony reached for his handkerchief, but he’d handed his last one to Gwen. “Be damned if you are any more what I had in mind for a son-in-law than that craven was. A paid paramour, a Fancy Fred, by Jove.”

  Stony would have protested the epithets—hell, he would have called out any other man using those terms—except he was too relieved to be offended. “You mean I don’t have to—”

  Too soon.

  “Good grief, my daughter will never be able to hold her head up in society. I suppose I can ship the two of you off to India. Or the East Indies. It will break her mother’s heart, but better than seeing the gal a laughingstock for the rest of her life. Damn you to hell, Wellstone.”

  Which marriage to Lady Valentina Pattendale would certainly be. Stony took a deep breath. In contrast to the earl’s furious blustering, he spoke in low, even tones. “My, ah, wife and I shall reside at Wellstone Park in Norfolk. The house is in some disrepair, having been standing empty these past years, so I hope your daughter is handy with a needle. And a mop. I’ll be busy with the sheep, so I’ll expect her to look after the chickens.”

  Now the blood drained from the earl’s face and his mouth hung open. “What? My daughter? A mop?” he sputtered. “Chickens? But her dowry….”

  “Oh, I would not live off my wife’s fortune. It is a matter of honor with me, despite what you might think of my morals. I’d set any of the lady’s income aside for our children. We’ll want a whole parcel of them, to help on the farm, you know. But do not worry, I hope to come about in a year or two of hard work. Maybe five at the most. Then we can afford to hire more help. If we can get any of the locals to accept employment at the Park, that is. My uncle hanged himself there, if you don’t recall the scandal. They say he swings from the chandelier still, but I always thought the motion was caused by the drafts in the hall. I suppose I’ll have to see about fixing the windows. Or should repairing the leaking roof come first?” Stony scratched his head, deliberating.

  “But…but this house…?”

  “As you said, London will be less than comfortable for your daughter, now that you have told everyone and his cousin about my, ah, vocation. Besides, I shall have to leave the London house to Gwen, my father’s second wife, you know. Unless your daughter would feel more comfortable having her mother-in-law reside with us? I know my stepmama would adore having a daughter to bathe her forehead when she suffers the megr
ims, as the poor dear does so often.”

  When Patten started to wheeze and gasp, Stony took pity on the older man. He didn’t want the earl expiring on his Aubusson, either. “Perhaps there is another solution to our little dilemma. If you are willing to sit and listen…?”

  At this point, Patten would have listened to a castrato chorus singing sea chanteys. He sank onto the seat facing the viscount’s and mopped his forehead with his sleeve. The old fool must have given his clean linen to his weeping women, too, Stony thought.

  In the end, the matter was resolved peacefully, to everyone’s satisfaction, like the gentlemen they were. Lady Valentina’s reputation was restored by an enviable betrothal; Earl Patten’s honor was redeemed by a respectable alliance; Stony’s freedom was secured…by sacrificing his other associate in the escort business, Lord Charles Hammett.

  Charlie thought it a great joke, wedding a female even his father could approve, without being ordered to do it. If he waited for the duke’s choice, he could do a lot worse than Lady Valentina Pattendale. The gal was pretty and lively and well dowered. What more could a second son ask?

  The earl was content. So what if the young cub had no chin? His neckcloth was high enough to hide the lack, and who knew how healthy that older brother of his was, after all?

  Lady Valentina was delighted. Anyone was better than the Member of Parliament her father was threatening her with if she did not settle on a match this Season. She only wished she’d thought of Lord Charles before setting her sights on that broad-shouldered wounded hero. She could have been spared an uncomfortable night and gone straight to planning her betrothal ball.

  Stony told himself he was the happiest of them all, even if his future was the most in doubt. For a brief while he thought he might have to return to the card tables, and low dives at that, after such a disgrace. But he was not exiled from the beau monde, as Gwen had feared, not after accomplishing such a matrimonial coup. On the other hand, with his means of income made public, no young lady trusted his compliments or accepted his invitations. Even the plainest, shyest, doomed-to-spinsterhood misses would rather remain on the sidelines than dance with a man suspected of being paid to do so.

  No one was paying him to do anything, anymore. The only ones hinting of doing so were women of a certain age or disposition whose conversations were rife with innuendo, whose bodies brushed against his too often to be accidental encounters. After one such overly familiar contact, Stony discovered a pound note tucked down his waistcoat. He found a handsome footman to return it to the lady, with his compliments. Then he cursed, kicked at a footstool, forgetting he was wearing flimsy dancing slippers, then limped home in the dark, forgetting he was supposed to drive Gwen on to another party.

  Hell and damnation, he could not erase the image in his mind of some country bumpkin with food stains on his linen, slipping a coin between the sagging breasts of a sweaty barmaid in a low-cut, faded gown. That was how cheap he felt, how degraded.

  Not for the first time he wondered about the lives of prostitutes, women whose only options were to sell their bodies or starve. He should have given that hot-blooded baroness’s money to one of those unfortunates. Then the whore might have a choice, at least for a night or a week, or however long it lasted, if she did not spend it all on Blue Ruin, to forget.

  Stony put down the fresh bottle of brandy he found on his desk. No, he would not go that tempting route. He had a choice. He’d go to Norfolk, as he’d told Patten. The house was no longer in as bad repair as he’d indicated, nor was it haunted by anything but bad memories of his parents’ arguments, his father’s drunken carousing. If he could not afford to set up a stud farm, by heaven, he’d learn to shear the bleating sheep himself. He’d learn to knit their blasted wool into tea cozies, if that was what it took. He was his own man, body and soul.

  Then he remembered Gwen.

  Sweet, silly Gwen deserved better, especially after all the support she had given Stony and his escort service. She loved filled calendars and crowded ballrooms, the latest gossip and the newest fashions. She’d hate the country. But he could not afford to maintain two establishments, much less keep her in the silks and furs and jewels Gwen had every right to, considering that Stony’s father had frittered away her marriage settlements. Coming to him as a pretty young bride, she had kept the old man content for his last ten years, and kept him from falling into worse depravities. She was still a pretty female, but now she was nudging forty, about which she lied so effectively that she’d be younger than Stony in a few years. What was to become of her if Stony took up farming?

  For that matter, what was to become of her if he was not in attendance at that next party? She had enough friends that she could find her own way to the ball, but what if some aged roué thought Lady Wellstone’s services were for hire now, too?

  Blast. Before he left to fetch his stepmama home, Stony checked the hall looking glass to make sure his neckcloth was not creased and his hair was not tousled. He’d be damned if he’d go to a dance looking like he was ready for his bed—or fresh from someone else’s. He also checked the tray where the mail was placed, hoping against hope for an offer of honest employment, if one could call playing the cavalier for coins an honest occupation. Stony no longer knew if he was any better than an organ grinder’s monkey dancing for pennies.

  One letter caught his eye from among the bills and Gwen’s correspondence. For a moment… No, his name and address were written in a feminine script. He tossed the letter back on the pile so fast it almost skidded off the table. With any luck the cursed invitation, or assignation or whatever it was, would fall behind the furniture, never to be seen again.

  His luck holding true to form, the letter appeared at the breakfast table, along with the eggs and toast and bills.

  Gwen was opening her own mail, exclaiming over Lady Walsh’s first grandchild, Mrs. Mallory’s husband’s gout, and the come-out ball for Miss Nathania Fisk-Hamilton. Stony was not listening. He was reading. And calculating how much dancing a monkey had to do for one hundred pounds.

  “Gwen, do you know a Miss Ellianne Kane?” Gwen was trying to decipher another of her letters, this one written both down the page, then up, reversed, to save postage. She could barely make out the salutation without resorting to her detested spectacles. “I don’t think so, dear. Should I?”

  The viscount silently passed her his quizzing glass. “Thank you, Aubrey, dear. Oh, my. Lady Farnham’s daughter has given birth to twin daughters. I thought her husband has been serving with the army on the Peninsula this past year. Or was he the one in the navy? Of course, he may have had leave that no one told me about.….”

  Stony took back the magnifying lens. “Gwen.”

  “Yes, dear? What was that you were saying?”

  “A Miss Kane has written to request my escort about Town for her and her aunt.” The reassuring, respectable reference to an aunt had kept Stony reading.

  Gwen rotated the page of her own correspondence, trying to make out another line. Frustrated, she set it aside until she was in her own chamber, with no one to see her wearing glasses. She started to butter a slice of toast sparingly, ever mindful of her figure. “I don’t suppose the woman heard about… But she must have, to write to you so openly. Although no one in polite society would have put it so boldly.” Gwen set the knife down, her forehead creased by a frown that she quickly erased lest it leave a permanent line. “Oh, dear. She must be a dowdy, rag-mannered, provincial miss thinking you can find her an eligible parti. With our own credibility somewhat diminished, we might not… That is, perhaps you should not accept such a forward, encroaching kind of girl, although you have been worried about—”

  Stony interrupted, as he had learned to do when his stepmama was thinking aloud. “She sent me a bank draft for a hundred pounds, in advance.”

  “Why, how lovely. I am quite looking forward to meeting dear Miss Crane. I am certain we can do something for the poor girl, unless she is terribly ineligible. But how ine
ligible could she be if she has a hundred pounds to hire a… Um. And I suppose I must not refer to her as poor, if she—”

  “That is Miss Ellianne Kane, not Crane, and the hundred-pound check is drawn on Kane Bank, in Devon.”

  Gwen forgot all about her figure in light of the figure Stony named. She reached for a sweet roll instead of the dry toast. “That Miss Kane! Why did you not say so! Oh, my. She has to be one of the wealthiest heiresses in all of England, if she is Ellis Kane’s elder daughter. She must be, if she is named Ellianne, wouldn’t you think? Such a pretty name; she must be quite attractive. Whoever heard of an ugly heiress, anyway? I swear I never have, although that Lady Frederica Sniddon who came out the year I wed your father did bear an unfortunate resemblance to her own lapdog, but—”

  “But you do not truly know anything about her? Miss Kane, that is, not that other female.”

  Gwen looked affronted. She knew something about everyone who was anyone. Miss Ellianne Kane was someone. “Now that I think of it, there was another Kane girl in town not so long ago. Isabelle, I think her name was. Or Annabelle? No, Annabelle was the mother, Lady Annabelle Chansford she had been, the daughter of the Marquess of Chaston. I do believe that to be so, although she was before my time, of course.”

  “How much before?” Stony was trying to gauge the woman’s age, and thus the daughter’s.

  Gwen waved her hand in the air. “Oh, ages.”

  Which meant, Stony understood, that Lady Annabelle could not be all that many years older than his stepmama. The daughter must still be a young woman.

  Gwen hurried on before he could ask her to be more specific. “They say it caused quite a stir when Lady Annabelle ran off with a banker’s son. The families became estranged. The younger Kane daughter—I am fairly certain it was Isabelle—was staying this winter with Lady Augusta Chansford, however. Lady Augusta was Lady Annabelle’s spinster sister, so they must have reconciled, don’t you think?”