An Unexpected Gentleman (25 page)

He experienced an unfamiliar twinge of uncertainty at the thought of some of the intangible expectations he was facing. Until now, he’d given them very little thought, concentrating instead on what he wanted from Adelaide and what he could easily provide in return. He wanted Adelaide to wife, and he could provide her with the security of his name and his wealth.

But there was more to being the head of a household than the supply of provisions and a surname. Ideally, a lady with even a thimbleful of blue blood would marry a man who was a gentleman by birth. Barring that, she’d marry a gentleman by nature.

Connor knew full well he was neither. According to his father, a gentleman never wavered from his dedication to honesty, integrity, and courage. He had abandoned the first two before the age of twenty.

Then again, fidelity had been conspicuously absent from his father’s list of gentlemanly attributes. And there were any number of men the ton considered paragons, and whom Connor wouldn’t trust with the care of his boots.

His brother came to mind. Like as not, there was no such creature as a true gentleman, only those who could play the part well and those who could not.

There could be no doubt the late baron would consider his younger son a failure in the role, but Connor shoved aside both his uncertainty and the old, unwelcome lick of shame. He wasn’t marrying his damn father. The only expectations and ideals that need concern him were Adelaide’s. And like every other gentleman in existence, he could meet the ones that suited him, and he could fake the rest.

T
he trip home proved to be as diverting for Adelaide as the roadside picnic. For three hours, she and Connor kept up a lively, rambling conversation.

He asked about her parents and about what she’d been like as a little girl. He teased her mercilessly when she admitted to once having a great affection for mawkish poetry and entertained her with stories of his travels abroad.

He was charming and attentive, and for that brief period of time, she forgot to think of lies and debts and quests for vengeance. Connor was once again her secret gentleman from the garden; that was all that mattered.

Before she knew it, the carriage had rolled through Banfries . . . And then right past her house.

“The driver seems to have forgotten where I live,” she said to Connor.

“I’d like you to meet someone at Ashbury Hall, if you’ve no objection. It won’t take long.”

It was growing late, already dusk. A visit to Ashbury Hall meant she likely would not return home until well after dark. A lady did not go about with a suitor after dark. Then again, a lady also did not go riding about in closed carriages. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought.

“I’ve no objection. Who am I to meet?”

“My men.”

She assumed he was referring to Michael and Gregory, the men who had come from Boston with Connor and shared a prison cell with him in Scotland. It occurred to Adelaide that those men were probably the closest thing Connor had to true family, and yet she knew nearly nothing about them.

“I should very much like to meet them.”

In comparison to her first visit, Adelaide found Ashbury Hall to be a hive of activity. There were two footmen waiting to assist her from the carriage, a butler to open the front door, and a maid waiting to take her bonnet.

Her eyes grew wider with every member of staff she ran across, and by the time the housekeeper arrived in the front hall to assist the maid, who looked a trifle lost in her new home, Adelaide wasn’t sure if she wanted to gape or laugh.

“Mrs. McKarnin?”

The housekeeper, a tall, thin woman with a mop of white hair hidden under a cap and a bright smile spread across her narrow face, gave a low curtsy. “As you see, Miss Ward. Good evening to you, Mr. Brice.”

Adelaide chose to gape, and did so until the housekeeper left the hall with the maid. She’d met Mrs. McKarnin several months ago, when she’d been Sir Robert’s housekeeper. She’d recognized the footmen, butler, and maid for the same reason.

She turned to Connor. “Did you steal Sir Robert’s staff?”

“Nothing of the sort,” he assured her briskly. “They were free of Sir Robert’s employ when they were hired this morning.”

She watched as another familiar footman walked by. “What, all of them? Today?”

Connor gave a small, dismissive shake of his head. “They’re well rid of him.”

“Yes, they are, but how on earth . . . ?” Laughing, she held up a hand. “Never mind. I don’t wish to know.”

“Excellent. I don’t want to tell you.”

Unable to determine if he was in earnest or not—and loath to admit she couldn’t tell—Adelaide refrained from further comment and allowed Connor to usher her into the front parlor, a room she felt to have more in common with Ashbury’s great hall than any parlor she’d ever seen. It, like everything else in the house, was immense in proportion and luxurious in decor. The upholstery and drapes were a lush green velvet, the fireplace marble, and the carpet thick enough to swallow her shoes. The Great Parlor, that’s what it ought to be called. In fact, all of the rooms at Ashbury ought to begin with a similarly descriptive title. The Grand Music Room, the Colossal Library, the Lesser Yet Still Unnecessarily Oversized Family Parlor.

She stifled a giggle and turned at the rise of voices coming down the hall.

“Stand still, damn you. It’s only a bit of—”

“Stay away from me with that. I’ve not put powder on my head in thirty years, and even then it weren’t on purpose. Scuffle with a magistrate—”

“Are you wanting the lass to think we’re savages?”

“I’m not wearing it, and that’s that.”

A moment later, a generously proportioned middle-aged man and an elderly man with too much powder in his hair appeared at the open doors. Both were garbed in gentlemen’s clothes, and both gave the impression of being decidedly uncomfortable in the attire. The younger man was stretching his neck as if he might work it free from the constricting cravat, and the older man kept jerking his head to the side, leading her to the assumption that either the hair powder was irritating him or he was possessed of an unfortunate tic.

Connor introduced her to the elderly man first. “Miss Ward, may I present Mr. Gregory O’Malley. Gregory, Miss Ward.”

Gregory came forward and executed a surprisingly jaunty bow for a man of such advanced age. Then he straightened and smiled at her. “Will you be forgiving an old man for frightening you, lass?”

Oh, dear. The poor man had grown a little daft in his old age. “You haven’t frightened me, Mr. O’Malley.”

He beamed with obvious approval. “Sure and I didn’t. You see, boy? Spine.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, but he was clearly pleased with her, and she was inclined to be pleased with anyone who referred to Connor as “boy” and got away with it.

The second man stepped around Gregory with a limp and ran a smoothing hand down his coat.

“Miss Ward,” Connor offered. “Mr. Michael Birch.”

“A pleasure,” Adelaide murmured. The surname rang a bell. She looked closer. “Have we met before?”

“Not proper. But I’d wager you burnt a hole in the back of my head when you was in the garden.”

The back of his head . . . In the garden . . .

It came to her then. Mr. Birch, her obstacle at Mrs. Cress’s house party, was the same Michael of whom Freddie had spoken.

“You?” Aghast, she looked from Mr. Birch to Connor. “The two of you?”

“The
three
of us, lass,” Gregory corrected.

Connor cleared his throat. “Gregory was the gentleman in the hall.”

“The gentleman . . . I . . . You . . .” She glared at Connor, then Michael, then Gregory O’Malley with extra heat because she’d felt a little sorry for him a moment ago.

The old goat wasn’t daft at all.

Disappointment twisted in her chest as she realized she’d found yet one more string, one more deception. Until now, she’d retained the hope that some part of that night in the garden had been real. She’d known Connor had sought her out, of course, but she’d not realized just how much of their first meeting had been staged. Now she couldn’t help but wonder if every part of it had been an act, and if she would ever be more to Connor than a useful toy.

To her eternal horror, she felt a lump form in her throat and the burning threat of tears. To cover it, she planted her hands on her hips and turned her anger on Michael and Gregory. “The
nerve
of you, sneaking about a lady’s home, uninvited. Conniving to compromise an unsuspecting woman. Grown men behaving like callous youths. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Both of you.”

They didn’t look ashamed, particularly. Michael was grinning. Gregory was rubbing his hands together enthusiastically. “Aye. Spine.”

“Aye.”

Adelaide tossed her hands up. “Oh, for pity’s sake. You cannot—”

“Have a seat, Adelaide,” Connor suggested softly.

She shook her head without looking at him. She was reluctant to meet his eyes, afraid of what she might see there. Was he laughing at her? Was he feeling proud of himself for having maneuvered her so cleverly?

“I prefer to stand,” she replied coolly. What she truly preferred was to concentrate on her anger. Also, she wanted to deliver a proper set-down to Gregory and Michael, which was fairly difficult to accomplish from a seated position.

“We’ll discuss it later,” Connor murmured. “Privately. Have a seat, wren. Please.”

Finally, she forced herself to look at him, and she noted with relief that he didn’t appear amused or proud of himself. Unfortunately, he didn’t appear especially ashamed of himself, either. His expression was guarded, his green eyes carefully shuttered, and she realized there were to be no answers or apologies while his men were present.

She looked back at Gregory and Michael. They grinned in unison. Clearly, there was also nothing to be gained from them.

“Very well,” she replied with as much dignity as she could muster.

Defeated, she took a seat on the settee, and for the next half hour, she listened to Gregory and Michael talk and laugh, swap barbs and insults. It seemed bizarre to her that they should carry on so, as if they were all old friends sharing pints and conversation round a table at a tavern. And it was further distracting to have Connor seated next to her. His arm was draped over the back of the settee, and every so often, his fingers brushed along the nape of her neck, or toyed with a loose lock of hair. His touch sent warm chills along her skin, and she was torn between wanting to move away and wanting to lean into him like a purring cat.

She stayed perfectly still and tried to focus on the conversation. Gregory, she learned, was the third son of a failed Irish jeweler. Michael had been born to parents in service to a prominent English family, and orphaned before the age of ten. They’d met as sailors aboard a merchant ship and, after a particular grueling voyage from London to the Americas, agreed to pool their savings and become Boston businessmen.

“What sort of business?” Adelaide inquired.

Michael gave her an odd smile. “We was what you might call . . . purveyors of fine art.”

“You sold art?”

“Aye,” Gregory said. “But we weren’t what you’d be calling successful. Not until we met our Connor.”

“How did you meet?”

Connor pulled his hand away from her neck. “I don’t think—”

“Caught the boy trying to lift my purse,” Michael explained cheerfully.

“What?” She turned on the settee. “You were a pickpocket?”

“No, I worked on the docks . . .” Connor shifted in his seat. It was a small movement, but she saw it. “But I may have picked a pocket or two when an opportunity presented itself.”

“Did opportunities often present themselves?”

“Define often.”

It seemed best to reply with silence.

He shifted again. “Now and then. I hadn’t the training or practice to be confident in the game.”

Michael laughed. “There’s the truth of it. I’ve known East End doxies what weren’t so grabby as you.”

“Remember you’re speaking to a lady,” Connor said before looking to Adelaide. “They put me to work. I ran errands in exchange for food and lodging. Later, when I’d proven I could be trusted, they made me a partner.”

“Selling art?” Somehow, that didn’t seem right. The savings of two sailors couldn’t possibly have been sufficient to enter into such a business, and Connor had made no mention of his interest in art when she’d spoken of Isobel’s painting. “What sort did you—?”

Connor rose to his feet. “It’s growing late. We should get you home. Gentlemen, you’ll excuse us.”

Michael leveraged his considerable girth out of his chair. “But we were just getting—”

“Another time.”

The men were slow to leave, mumbling their farewells and dragging their feet across the carpet. Michael turned around at the door and spoke in a tone that approached, but didn’t quite reach, apologetic.