Chapter 70

She stopped dead in the middle of his rug, her throat fluttering beneath the veil.
"Us?"
"Have you just wandered off the streets? Come to the wrong house? Or are without the slightest idea of the ruin this will spell for your reputation?"
"For sure, if our paths had ever crossed, I would be certain to recall someone so very charming and caring as your good self."
"Well, that's a relief. Even if no one's said I was that before."
He wrinkled his nose. What was that smell? That awful stink assaulting his nostrils? Orange? Bergamot? Rose-musk? Lilac? Myrtle? Every hideous odor in the flower bed snaking about his sitting room. His sacred place that smelled of cigars, brandy, and decay. He walked to the window and threw up the sash, breathed deeply three times of the essence of horse dung and dead rodents, let it wind up his nose, strike the casing of his skull, then he blew his breath out again and dragged up his head.
"Out. Chasens, remove her."
"I-" she began.
"Now."
"In a moment, Your Grace. When you have heard what I have to say."
The thundering realization was replaced by a more subtle reflection. He'd given Babs that bracelet. Surely she knew the bracelet was as good as a ring? And really she must know she had his heart. It cost all of fifty guineas. The bracelet, that was. His heart wasn't for sale. Not at any price. Not when Marietta hadn't just ripped it out, as if she'd a raptor's claw attached to her wrist, she'd stood on it as casually as this chit did his rug, leaving an empty cavity in his chest. But whatever he gave, whatever he refused, did it merit Babs sending this chit here like this to catch him out when he was at a low ebb? And get him to say something he did mean? With every bone in his body. Babs' move obviously. One he'd check.
He released the window ledge. "So, that's what this is about?"
"I beg your pardon?"
He affected bored eyebrows. "How damnable is this? How damnable is Lady Langley to have got you to press your way in here so you can get some quote from me and then write about it in your miserable society newspaper for the whole of London to read? 'The mean, cantankerous earl who shall be nameless.' Well, it wouldn't be the first time."
"Me? Write for the newspaper? I could I suppose, but ... Gracious, is that what you think?"
It didn't discomfort her half as much as he'd like so he continued.
"You. Well, do you know what I do with your type? What I do with your rag and all it says about me, Miss, whoever you are?"
"Malachi."
"Every morning, after breakfast? Sometimes before?"
"Oh, let me think."
He could stride to the door but why wear out his boots? He liked them as they were. "Assuming you do. But in case you don't, allow me to say it again-"
"Please don't bother. Especially not when the answer is probably to shoot it at dawn."
His mind thudded. Exactly what he was going to have to do tomorrow to that damned boy, or look a damned fool, because of Babs.
"Chasens. The door. Now."
"I mean ... " She gulped. "I mean it is of no interest to me what you do with your newspapers after you have read them."
"Isn't that a crumb to be said for you?"
Despite what he'd thought about wearing out his boots, he swept across the rug.
These were his rooms, and his rooms were a male preserve. There wasn't a chamber maid, and he'd dismissed the last cook in a heated, throwing-the-pots-against-the-wall row over a slice of venison-it was overdone. As for scullery wenches chopping their fingers instead of the potatoes and forgetting to remove them from the pot? He couldn't stand scullery maids any more than he could stand having this woman here, standing like a dying kipper in her green veil and dress, a rancid damn color he loathed with passion and hatred, just as he loathed newspaper reporters. For good reason. He grasped her velvet-clad elbow.
"Now go."
"Well, I could." She dug her heels into the rug. "Yes, I suppose there are those who might say why not go? Just go now and say no more, but you see-"
"Then do it," he snarled. "Don't have me drag you to the door, because I will. I don't want you here."
"I just wanted to say that you played my cousin, Nathan, earlier today at the chess competition at Boodle's."
"Sir." Chasens drew himself up as if a ramrod had been thrust up his spine. "You must forgive me. But she said she had come from His Grace, the Duke of Brampton himself, on a matter of tournament etiquette, or I should never have let her in."
"Indeed, I did, sir," she said, "and indeed he did, although, of course, His Grace, the honorable duke, does not actually know I am here. No. I took it upon myself to do that, hoping you would not mind."
He fought not to snap something, like the door clean from its hinges, and throw it at the fireplace. "Mind? Are you out of yours, by any chance?"
"I don't see that necessarily follows-"
"Your cousin?" He glared at her. "You mean that damnable little sneak is your cousin?"
"He is my cousin. Yes. But whether he is a damnable sneak-"
"You have debased yourself coming here to speak to me, for a damnable cheat? Incredible."
As was the feel of her rumpled indignity against his body, her clinging to her veil as if she was terrified it would fall off. What was she doing, digging her heels into his rug? What was he doing, trying to dislodge her? He never got in tangles with women like this.
"I have come here to ask for your mercy. Please." She grabbed hold of her skirt.
"You are under some foolhardy impression that I have any? Christ in an air balloon, do not kneel on the floor."
He raised his voice. The floor was not where he wanted her. All right, it was, especially now he caught a glimpse of the ridiculously pink seam of her lips through the veil that had ridden up and was stuck to them. He tightened his fingers around her elbow before she sank any lower. "Get up, now."
"If you say so, Your Grace. I just-"
"Stand," he managed, just, to say, difficult when she thudded onto the floor.God, but she was clumsy.
"I-"
He held out his hand. Her gloved fingertips clasped his, the feel, warm and pleasant. He abhorred warm and pleasant. He abhorred mysteriously rustling green dresses and gauchely, awkward, over-perfumed women in them too, but his throat wasn't the only thing that tightened as he drew her to her feet.
Damn Babs to hell. It was the second time today he'd been inexplicably ambushed. First with that damned boy, now this. He never found boys attractive, or women whose faces he couldn't see. Since Marietta, he'd striven to keep his attractions under control. Until Babs chanced along, he'd succeeded.
"Your cousin?" he heard himself say.
"Nathan." She swiped her veil back into place, clasped a hand around it and her throat. "Yes. Of course, he doesn't know I'm here."
"You mean he might have saved you a wasted journey?"
"That remains to be seen. There is something you should know."
Whatever it was, he'd no desire to hear. Christ on the cross with nails in his feet, could the man whose wife had divorced him and who had disinherited his daughter afford to be seen as soft, regardless of his distaste for killing yet another man? A boy actually, who probably couldn't shoot straight? The answer to that was no. There was nothing this woman could possibly say that would change his mind. He might as well forestall her from trying.
"That he didn't cheat?" he grunted. "Is as innocent as the day he was born?"
"Both these things actually, Your Grace. He-"
"Cheated and now seeks to-"
"Is not even seventeen."
For a second the tick of the mantelshelf clock, the rise and fall of his visitor's breast clearly outlined by the smooth texture of her gown, were all he was aware of. Christ on the cross, seventeen?
The carrion crows had come home to roost in the ruined walls of his tarnished heart sure enough.