The Art of Ruining a Rake (38 page)

“Would you show me the area the next time we’re in Devon?” Roman asked. “I’d like to see it for myself.”

“Yes, my lord,” Mr. Shaw agreed with a wide smile. “You’ll find our progress exciting.”

Roman sincerely doubted it, but he was willing to give it a go.

Mr. Shaw left. A few moments later, Dare wandered into his office. “You’ve made me into a great bore,” his brother complained. Dare tugged one of the wooden chairs set in front of Tony’s desk, rotated it around and straddled it. He rested his forearms across the top of the rail and settled his chin on them.

Roman tapped the dry point of his pen against his closed ledger. “You still have your evenings to do as you wish.”

Dare pulled a face. “Just don’t give me anything to read. I’ll be asleep in an instant.”

Roman eyed the pile of correspondence he’d been putting off. There was nothing to do
but
read.

Or maybe they could help each other. “Here.” He shoved the ledger and pen across the table. Plucking up the inkwell, he set it down in front of Dare, too. “I’ll read through the receipts. You’ll record them. Keep a running tally by page.”

Dare reached for the instruments. “Why don’t you bring on someone to do this? You could have an office full of clerks to manage this sort of thing.”

For some reason, the question didn’t irk Roman the way it would have coming from Tony. Roman pulled the first letter from the sheaf. “We will. Tony asked me to understand the foundation of our venture before we pass the daily upkeep along to a steward. Like you, at first I balked—”

“I’m not balking,” Dare interrupted sullenly.

Roman raised an eyebrow.

“Well, you
are
asking me to do the work of a common clerk. I’ve a diploma from Cambridge, you know. You do, too.”

Roman scanned the first document before him. There was no way for Dare to understand why it was important until he’d tried doing the work himself. “Just write down the expenses as I call them out. Three shovels: fourteen shillings. Two leather satchels, four wagon wheels and a nag: one pound, eight shillings. Nine yards of canvas—”

“I’ve marked down ‘Equipment’ for one pound, twenty-two shillings. Next?”

Roman looked up from the page with a quelling glare. “Write what I tell you to write.”

Dare sulked as he drew a line through his entry, then wrote out the correct words in barely legible script. “When will I be compensated?”

Roman leaned back and set his finger across his lip. It was all he could do not to reach out and cuff his youngest brother. “You’re not earning a salary, to be dispersed at a regular interval. We will all be paid when we’re able to turn a profit on the quarry.”

Dare set his pen down. “When will that be?”

“Certainly not before we record these expenses in the ledger.”

Dare’s countenance darkened. “You’re content to sit back and let Tony decide when we’re allowed a handout, like a couple of street urchins.”

Roman continued to watch his brother with a calm that only served to irritate Dare more.

Dare rose. “Tony’s got you by the short hairs. I don’t know why you let him lead you around.”

Roman felt a rage boil up inside him that would have frightened Dare if he’d been a man, instead of a mewling little puke. In an icy voice that barely escaped Roman’s grinding teeth, he commanded his brother, “Sit.”

Dare’s brows rose in surprise. “Now you’re giving orders?”

Roman slammed his hand on the desk. “
You
are going to stop sniveling like a spoiled child. Sit down. Take up the pen. Earn your place in this family.”

Dare glared at him. “I want two thousand pounds. Up front.”

Roman regarded his brother with incredulity. “Do you think I have it in my pocket? I can just dig around in my coat and hand you that astronomical sum?”

Dare leaned forward. He jammed his first finger against the desk. “Yes.” Then he stood up again. He inhaled so deeply Roman could see his chest expand, as if he sought his last vestiges of patience from deep within the cesspit of his soul. “Look, it’s not that I don’t understand what you’re trying to do. I’m a rotter. I know it. But I can’t get on with becoming a better man until I’m able to put my past behind me. Do you remember the day Constantine was attacked?”

Roman watched Dare suspiciously. “The day you nearly got your twin brother murdered on your behalf?”

Dare gave him an annoyed look. “It’s not like I did it on purpose. I didn’t want to tell you this, but I’m in for eight thousand quid. Those thugs—”

Roman shot to his feet. “
Eight thousand
? Have you lost your mind?”

Dare paled, but didn’t flinch. “You knew they were after me. Tony didn’t tell you why?”

Roman could barely find the words to respond. “Yes, but eight
thousand
? Do you know what eight thousand pounds means to this family? We’ll never have it!”

Dare came forward. He leaned toward Roman again. “We will. That’s the only reason I’m not scratching at a wooden coffin right now. We
will
have it. Our quarry guarantees it.”

Roman saw red. “My quarry. My lands. My hard work. You little—”

A muscle clenched at Dare’s jaw. “I think Tony would have something to say about that depiction.”

Roman picked up the pen and tossed it at Dare. “You’re going to work for your supper. Sit down. Close your mouth. If I hear one more complaint from you, you whining little codpiece, I’ll summon your moneylenders myself. Do you understand me?”

Dare rolled the pen between his fingers, considering. Then he muttered, “It’s nice to know at least one of you believes in me.” He pulled the chair aside and straddled it again. Tipping forward, he righted the ledger and dipped the pen into the inkwell. Then he looked up expectantly.

Roman ought to have known he hadn’t said his last.

“If I’m to be good for the whole eight thousand,” Dare said, “would you mind providing a letter to that effect? I like my knees where they are, thank you very much.”

Roman went back around his desk. He started to pull out a sheet of vellum and a seal pellet, then stopped. He looked at his weasel of a brother. One corner of his lips curled up. “No.”

He had the pleasure of seeing Dare turn pallid again. Wisely, however, Dare didn’t argue. Rather, he mused as he wrote, “Nine yards of canvas? Is Tony having a dress made up for himself?”

Roman shook his head slowly, more at his own idealism in thinking he could help Dare and less at the poor attempt at a jest.

“You don’t think I’m funny?”

No,
Roman almost said. And he wasn’t quite sure where this left him. He wanted Dare to behave like a man nearing thirty years of age, not a stripling who spent his pocket money before it was doled out.

He also wanted Dare to take over his arrangement with Letitia. It had seemed the perfect solution: Dare needed money, and had previously expressed interest in Roman’s private arrangements. Letitia desired a man who wasn’t burdened by moral scruples and had a pressing need for coin.

But if he gave Dare a simple solution, his indolent, shiftless brother would take it. And while Roman owed Letitia a moderate one thousand quid, with the promise of unlimited resources, Dare would undoubtedly run up debts in the tens if not hundreds of thousands. Where would that leave Dare? At Letitia’s mercy. Not a place Roman wished on anyone.

It had seemed so obvious last night. But in the light of day, fobbing Letitia off on his younger brother seemed less a brilliant solution and more an opportunity to make a muck of a quagmire.

“Nothing about this amuses me,” Roman said, finding the next receipt by date and smoothing it flat.

Dare rolled his eyes. “A stick in the mud, like I said.”

Yes, that was exactly what he’d become. It wasn’t anything he’d ever expected to be, but it was who he was now.

He thought of Lucy, and the word she hadn’t finished writing.
Love.

He’d become the stodgiest marquis in the land, if it meant being worthy of her.

RATHER THAN TORMENT herself by examining each moment of her night with Roman, Lucy filled her days with new chapters. James and Caro took pondering walks by the river, enlivened by rare, fleeting touches that hardly scraped the surface of her body’s yearning.
 

Her pen flew across the page, capturing the delicious agony of missing him. She wanted to see him again. She ached to be in his arms, to feel warm and protected and cherished. Nothing else mattered but being with him.

Twice Mr. Barton-Wright and Mr. Tewseybury called, but they didn’t tempt her. Roman had, as the terminology implied, completely ruined her for any other man.

Yet she remained wary. He’d plied her with lies and half-truths. He’d been fickle. How many women had there been before her? How many were left to find?

How did she know he truly loved her, when he claimed the emotion so freely?

At first she didn’t hear Carson calling for her attention. Slowly, she became aware of her lady’s maid standing at her elbow.

“Miss?” Carson said again. “A caller for you.”

“Lord Montborne?” Lucy’s heart sped. She set her pen aside and turned in her chair. It had been three long days since he’d left her bedchamber. Had he missed her as much as she’d missed him?

“No, my lady. His brother, Lord Darius.”

Lucy deflated. “Oh.”

Her maid seemed to realize her spirits had tumbled. “He says it’s a matter of some urgency. He won’t be seated, just stands and prowls the room.”

Lucy looked at Carson. Her expression was earnest. Almost as if Lord Dare had frightened her.

Lucy remembered how badly she’d been scared on the night he’d brandished the pistol. “Did he intimidate you?”

Carson’s hands, clasped in front of her, wrung together. “He was a perfect gentleman, aside from his obvious impatience. I only wanted to say he won’t like to be kept waiting.”

Lucy frowned. “Then he should have sent word ahead.”

Carson indicated a note card set on the corner of Lucy’s escritoire.

Lucy snatched up the missive and unfolded it. “When did this come?”
 

“Earlier this morning, miss. I’m sorry, but I thought you’d seen it.”

Lucy concentrated on the single sentence done in near-illegible male scrawl.
Please see me.
“Never mind it,” she murmured. “I was woolgathering.”

She quickly refolded the note, then stood. “Tell Mr. Gordo there is no need for tea.”

She donned her wrap and went down. Dare stood facing the window, booted feet spread as though he were balanced on a ship tipping its way through precarious waters.

He turned the moment she entered the small parlor. Dark circles betrayed a long night—or several. His unkempt blond hair was so overlong and unruly it was beginning to curl at the ends.

He opened his arms to her. “My dearest Lucy.”

She stayed where she was. “Lord Dare.”

He smiled wanly at her. The weak turn of his lips didn’t reach his blue eyes. “Surely we are on better terms than that.”

She remained at a distance. “What do you want?”

His smile faltered. The tormented look in his eyes grew bleaker. “Must I have a reason to see you?”

She raised her chin a notch. “Yes.”

“Because of Montborne?”

Whatever undercurrents raced between the two brothers, she didn’t want to be caught in their riptide. “Because the last time we encountered one another, you terrified me.”

He dropped his arms, as though realizing she would not be swayed into greeting him with familiarity. “Ah. That.”

“Yes, that!” she cried, taking a step forward. “Tell me you didn’t bring one of those
pistols
into my house.”

He shook his head profusely. “No, of course I didn’t. I came to ask for your forgiveness, if you must ruin my apology. I wouldn’t even think to startle you again.”

She raised the folded note card. “Then don’t send me vague missives. Don’t arrive at my house before calling time. Don’t scare my maid. You look like Death is haunting you. How am I not supposed to be alarmed?”

He eased infinitesimally, then took a tentative step toward her. “You see my distress. It’s clear to you what I’m up against. I’m frightened out of my wits, Lucy. I don’t mean to scare
you, but
I’m
the one quaking in my boots. Roman thinks all I need is a stern call to the carpet and a good lawyer and everything else will fall into place. It won’t. Not in time. Lucy, help me. Please.”