Chapter 71

She seemed to read his silence as deliberation. "Imagine how benevolent it would make you look if, for the sake of argument, you were to find it in your heart to let this go, Your Grace."
Benevolent? Him? He did not think so. Not for a quarter of a quarter second. As for imagining, he didn't do that either as a rule.
He stared at the remains of the complicated, swirling patterns on the rug. "Seventeen?" The word was rust on his tongue. A rust he wanted to spit out.
"Yes, Your Grace. His birthday is next week, in fact, now you're asking."
"I wasn't."
Ironic, wasn't it? How once he'd been seventeen himself, and no one had put in a single pleading word for him, certainly not a shapely snit like this. Although he had waltzed happily to his doom. For the best part of three years, he had even loved every minute of it, because there had been no suggestion that the older woman he had been inveigled into marrying to secure his family's fortune was anything less than what he'd thought her. And even when the doubts set in, for the next three years he had still managed to overlook what had stared him in the face.
When Marietta left, it had been so easy to level his pistol on another man's heart because his own heart was a wilderness, a blasted heath, a blackened place where no one dared venture. Had death done so, it would not have been an unwelcome stranger. How he had prayed for it. Then.
But now?
Could he grant this? Spare the boy? Put the snit, standing there with bated breath, out of her misery? Simply because no one had pleaded for mercy for him was no reason to shoot anyone. Was it? He walked to the mantelpiece.
"Well, him living to see his birthday is something he should have considered before endeavoring to win by cheating, if that is indeed the case."
"Cheating? Nathan has no need of stooping to anything as low as cheating. How dare you say so. If that is what you think, you're wrong. Or deluded. Nathan is a master of the game."
He raised his face heavenwards. "Of course the little sneak is a cheat. Probably the biggest one in Christendom too. You should just admit it instead of making out I'm the one who is deluded. Then I might be damn well disposed to listen to you. But this? This is just families all over."
"What?"
Didn't the Dowager Duchess of Stokes refuse to speak to him to this day because plainly it was all his fault her daughter had run off with another man, his fault for all the cruelties she had inflicted on him? Marietta was perfect after all. He lowered his gaze, glanced in the mirror. Perhaps it was the word cheat?His visitor was struggling to contain her claws as if he'd personally called her one. It was time to spare himself the further irritation of watching her lose her temper and attempt to strangle him with her veil.
"Now. If you will be so good, the hallway is there behind you."
Had he just felled her at forty paces? If so that was what he'd call good.
She took a tiny step toward him. "Well, I might be so good, were it not for the fact that his mother, his father, even us cousins, in fact, his entire family, depend on him. Who will take care of us if you kill him?"
He'd heard it all. Was this family waiting in his cold hallway to be ushered in? It wouldn't surprise him. All that surprised him was how far he'd let her advance. He let go of the mantelpiece. A drink was in order. Not a large one. A putting-this-in-perspective one.
He crossed to the side table, nodded at Chasens still standing like a sentinel at the door to leave-the man had no doubt, seen and heard enough. He deliberately waited till he'd filled the glass before asking. "Pardon me for asking, but why don't you do that? Take care of your family, that is?"
She stopped fiddling with her veil, smoothing whatever hair was underneath it into place. "I'm sorry?"
"Spending a fraction less on your frivolous dressmaking bills would keep them in coal and candles for a year."
Unless he was very much mistaken, that damned rag she was wearing looked to have cost an arm and a leg. Lace, silk, and velvet? Completely inappropriate in this weather. Completely inappropriate, period. And she expected him to ignore a damned cheat because the family depended on him? Small wonder the cousin dressed like a guttersnipe. Keeping this snit would land the nation in debt, never mind the average family.
Christ in whatever conveyance he could procure at short notice, was this the kind of snit his father had run off with, leaving Kendall with a pile of debts and no option but to marry Marietta? Except, of course, the snit his father had run off with had been a common, serving-wench snit.
"My dressmaking bills?" she said after a long moment.
How nice to know he'd struck a nerve. Now at the very least, she might desist from running up more. He set the stopper back on the decanter. "Yes. You must have them to dress like that."
"Well, perhaps that is so. But I was really hoping to discuss-"
"Hope? Hope's like air. Something people die of starvation trying to live on. And please don't even think of attempting to get back on your knees. I don't want women lying on my carpet."
"But how can you be so cruel?" She tilted her chin, giving him the benefit of a glimpse of her hair through the concealing veil. Strawberry-bloody-blonde. Of all the damnable colors in the paint palette, it had to be that one. Marietta's. Let this business of the duel go? He toyed for a second with the decanter and in that second made up his mind.
"Quite easily. The way out is there. Thank you again for giving me your cousin's name. At least I will now have the pleasure of knowing it before I have the equally damnable pleasure of killing him. Now, if you don't mind ... ?"
Yes. The crows might caw and the dawn turn dark. Whoever this foolish woman was, by tomorrow night the boy would be just another sadness at the bottom of just another glass.